Perfect Provision, Perfect Protection

No one has to be convinced that something went wrong somewhere in the bodies and beauty department. Stand in a grocery aisle and figure out how to beat those pesky inches, woo your disinterested man, and find more perfect clothes for perfect bodies. Something has gone wrong. So where?

It was at a tree. A food laden tree. Something good, beautiful, and delectable gone horribly wrong.

(Will Deutsch)

It began at the beginning of beginnings, Genesis, where food was made, food was eaten, and where all of our food issues began.

Strange, isn’t it, that one of our principles struggles is still there? With food?

We starve from it, binge on it, measure it out, disgust ourselves with it, pride ourselves on it, obsess over recipes, and TIVO our favorite cooking shows. Rarely do we see food as the perfect provision and perfect protection that it was designed to be. Provided for our health; protection from death.

God created food: a perfect provision for His creation. Then He clearly defined it as right or wrong: a perfect protection for his children. He set up His boundaries, endlessly good ones that felt good too, until they bumped up against the one ‘don’t’ rule: don’t eat of this tree.

Yet this is the tree from which they ate. First the woman and then the man.

Ignoring the plenty and subversively skirting the mandate by a subtle legalism, “God says don’t eat of it AND don’t touch it,” she fell the boundaries that God so lovingly placed on her and him and all of us.

Don’t we do this too? Don’t we see the plenty and choose instead the smaller portion, the lesser good? We add to the boundaries given. Sinking deeply into diets or delectable feasts, feeling helpless against the siren call that is food.

God calls out: Where are you? And we hide, behind exercise, behind enhancement, behind extra weight. We hide.

We hide because it is easier to hide than to be known. We’ve eaten off the tree of knowledge and now we think we know.

Yet still He seeks us. Pursues us. Finds us, shivering and scratching under the weight of man-made garments and expectations. I’m there. Are you too?

And all this because we added to what God said. He gave good boundaries and we made them smaller and tighter, thinking that more rules will keep us safer. God has said don’t eat of the fruit, but we think that it’s safer to just not touch it at all?

This is our great sin. This is our great fall. We add to what God has said and the boundaries become cages. We imagine He is a harsher God than He is.

We eat the fruit thinking it will make us like God and really all it does is make us into our own god. And we are powerless gods, always trying to find things to bulk us, beautify us, fix us.

All the while He is still giving perfect provision and perfect protection. The second time was in a much less beautiful environment. Dark, though midday, the place of the skull. A broken, bleeding, and bruised man. He is saying it is finished and we can hardly believe it is true.

So we are still adding to it. Principles. Practices. Helping God, we think, with clearer expectations on His people and on us. Don’t eat it, we say, or touch it. Or surely you will die.

The truth is that we are finished. Perfect in Christ’s eyes and through His provision. Nothing can be added or removed from you to make you more of who you’re intended to be in Christ.

He looks on you and sees clean, pure, perfect righteousness and beauty.

Polished Pearls and Unfinished Everything

I have always wanted to sell everything I own and buy the field. I have been the man who would give property, possessions, and pride to find the pearl of greatest price. A few years ago I did it. I sold everything I owned, packed what was left in my two-door Honda Civic and drove to Texas with no home, plan, or purpose. I found the pearl and nothing was worth more. When my best friend and I were young we made for ourselves a time-capsule. We put in it special mementos, notes from boys we liked, school pictures, concert tickets—junk to anyone else. We dug a hole in her back yard and planted it deep enough to let our friendship grow. When we dug it up in our junior or senior year it was covered in dirt, crusted with mud. Inside was safe and we have continued to treasure this tradition.

I think sometimes we are caught up in the idea that our pearl will come out polished and pristine. That we will have done the work, sold our belongings, bought the field, dug down deep, and the reward is something beautiful at first sight. But dirt isn't beautiful. And dirt-encrusted treasures are not beautiful.

The pearl we have sorted through mud and sand and tall grass and rocks for will not come out looking like it was worth any of the work at all.

There will be a time when we take the treasure home, rub it over with a soft cloth, wash it over with water, clean it up, and determine its worth. But we must not be selfish in our rush to determine the worth of what only looks like just another rock.

Today I am looking at the pile of stones before me. I asked—I asked for bread. I asked for sustenance and warm bread, and He has given me a pile of dirt-encrusted rocks. Friendships wrought with pain and surprise—not wrong, simply in process. Half-baked theological conclusions—not incorrect, simply unfinished. Relationships that never bloom—not trampled on, simply unopened. Ideas subject to time and space—not false, simply not full to fruition. To my eye this treasure has not been worth what I have given to get it.

The Lord is teaching me the process to a perfect pearl, a finely cut diamond, a shaped gold-piece, does not come without pain and it does not come without a grain of sand, a piece of rock, and a yellow vein in a dark cavern. The treasure is Christ and He wept in a garden, felt forsaken on the cross, and still has not come to take us home. We are his unfinished pearl and, in some ways, He is ours. He is already come and not yet.

Maybe none of this makes sense to you, and in some ways, I'm okay if it doesn't. This is my unfinished treasure, covered over with mud, stuffed full of meaning for me but junk to you. We are all standing behind dark and dim glasses, waiting to see face to face our dearest Treasure, and I never want to pretend my pearls are more polished than yours until that day.

Sticky Substances and the Spirit's Work

Two Tuesdays ago I burned myself; my hand brushed the side of the cast iron pan while my eggs sizzled and spit. I jumped back and let a loose word slip out. First instincts kicked in and I wanted to thrust my hand in a bowl of icy water but I reached for the honey instead. In my family honey was the remedy for allergies and colds, burns and cuts. We bought it by the bucket. Gracious words, these are like the honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones (Prv. 16:24)

And this is what I meditate on today because my heart was burned this week. Unknowingly, unassumedly, words cursed across my heart, searing and scourging. I want to self-medicate with quick fixes or find comfort in the coldness of a hardened heart, but I reach for the honey instead.

Honey pulls the swollen skin in, keeps the bacteria out, lessens the scar, and soothes in the process.

Lord, I confess I need honey. And I need it from You. I need what is sweet to the soul and health to these bones. I have been cracked and crushed and this week I feel pressed from all sides, fearful of everyone and everything. And, Lord, I don't understand why you use sticky substances to seal the Spirit's work. I don't know why what feels most natural and right, is sometimes not what is best. And, Lord, I want what is best.

And I trust you to cover me over with it, bathe me in it, and supply me with it as often as I ask.

So I'm asking.

Did God Grow Tired?

We know Jacob, the one who wrestled with God, because flannel-graphs and coloring books told us the story of a man who went toe to toe, head over head with the Almighty. We know God wins, because God always wins, but it was Jacob who showed determination: I won't let go until you bless me. Would the Almighty have let go first if Jacob hadn't said so?

I ask myself this often. How much does my determination result in what God considers a blessing?

I ask it that way on purpose because what I consider a blessing might not be what God considers a blessing.

God blessed him, yes. Changed his name, yes, but touched things that felt right, knocked them out of place so that they were right. And left him with a limp.

I wonder if this was the blessing Jacob thought he would get. I wonder if walking with a limp for the rest of his life was the sort of reward he wanted for pressing in, doing battle with God.

Here's what I pause on this morning: When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.

Did God grow tired? Did He sigh in frustration as He finally did the only thing He could do to make the man stop? I worry about that. I worry that God grows tired of me. That He is tired of my pestering, my asking. That He wearies of me when I am driving, walking, laying, talking, and there are prayers punctuating my breathing "Help me. Don't leave me. Show me." I worry that God will knock something out of joint, leave me with a limp. I worry that the tightrope I am trying to walk, careful, measured steps that guard me from being ungrateful or a badgering witness, I worry that God will finally knock me off completely.

And I know He will not. I know He is Father and He is good, but it doesn't stop the wrestling, or the worrying. Sometimes I wonder if the wrestle or the worry is in itself the limp with which I walk.

You and I and all of us, we walk with limps. Probably so accustomed to the limp that we barely recognize it anymore, it is the way we walk, slowly, painfully, determined, though seemingly normal, for us. But a limp is only proof that we have wrestled and He has won.

‘Tis all in vain to hold thy tongue, Or touch the hollow of my thigh: Though every sinew be unstrung, Out of my arms Thou shalt not fly; Wrestling I will not let Thee go, Till I thy name, thy nature know.

Charles Wesley

What limp are you walking with today? Is it an Ebenezer? Your "thus far?" Or do you feel debilitated by your limp?

You're Invited

The first words I remember hearing when I came to my church, "We're okay if you're not okay." And I knew it would be okay.

I would come as late as I could and still get a seat, sit in the back corner, closest to the door for a quick getaway. I knew I was still licking my wounds, but I couldn't let anyone else see them, not yet.

"Who wounded you?" I would ask myself because I loved my former church and I loved my family and I loved my college and I loved my life and there was the wound, I found. I loved my life.

There was nothing to love about my life: I was a washed up homeschooled kid, battered by extremes, ideals, and strange theology, still trying to figure my way through life when death and divorce swooped through and wrecked everything I thought would protect me from what I'd been protected from. I was not okay. But I grabbed and clenched every scrap of life left to love. And I hated myself for it.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Every generation of the Church comes along and finally corners the market. The Jesus Movement, the Bible Thumpers, the Emergent, the Young, Restless, Reformed—we're all taking back something of what felt stolen from us. We're learning to be okay in the face of what was not okay. We have never been a people much content with what we do have—we have pioneer blood running through our veins and there are always new lands to forge.

Someone asks me recently how it is that I am so okay with the wreck behind me and I remember the poet Adrienne Rich's words, "I came to explore the wreck; the words are purposes, the words are maps." I tell them I am not okay with the wreck behind me, but I am okay with not being okay. I thought once it was these words, the words I write every day, that let me be okay, but these words only help me navigate the invitation.

Peter was faced with the opportunity to listen to what others were saying about Jesus, and he said, "to whom else would we go? You have the words of eternal life!" He knew the invitation was not to fame or fortune, sense or stability—the invitation was to eternity and his only ride was upon the words of Jesus.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

We're okay if you're not okay, "but we don't want you to stay that way," is the rest of the invitation at my church.

This morning I read Revelation 19:9, "And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”

The truth is none of us will corner any market in the Kingdom of God. His kingdom is not a store or an auction, selling to the highest bidder or best-behaved sinner. On the threshold of His kingdom is a feast and a marriage; our King is a Lamb and all His children are invited.

So I don't know what your wreckage is, and I don't know what your story is, and I don't know how the Church has hurt or harmed you, or grown or strengthened you, but I know this: it's a blessing to be invited to the table and He's okay if you're not okay: He has the truest words of all.

Link Love

Why We Need More Women in Ministry: "Second, male leaders can intentionally seek out female input. Women have an incredible wealth of wisdom, insight and parallel perspectives to offer the Church and the world—as men do." Should a Christian Dentist Fire His Too-Hot Hygienist? "At the root of this is, I fear, a kind of misogyny which identifies women themselves as the problem rather than one’s own lust and self-control. That’s not what the Bible teaches."

Sanctification in a Season of Singleness: "I think that this regular emphasis on our roles as men and women, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, and so forth can obscure the one aspect of our identity that we have in common..."

In light of some blog-battles recently, regardless of where you stand on issues, we all ought to stand in goodwill and charity toward one another. It is not enough to simply admire someone's level-headed in matters of controversy, without taking a cue for oneself. A few bloggers had some good things to add.

The Blogs, the Battles and the Gospel: "I commend these seven rules to my fellow bloggers and to all of us who engage in online discussion."

Dude, Watch Your Jargon: "The easiest thing to do in a world where we get more air time but less ears is to nestle ourselves into a rut of discourse. We speak macro-jargon."

On the Separateness of Preaching and Healing: "Some broken people you want to love, and other judgmental people (even though we know in our hearts that this, too, is a form of brokenness) you want to give a double-barrel of exegesis."

And this week's winner of all, Say Something Right Now, or Else! "Silence is not always golden. But the “say something, or else!” form of public shaming is frequently manipulative and the cries are sometimes best ignored."

Words from a Weary Writer

It has been a while since I felt like writing. Last night I laid on the hammock in the dark, listening to dishes being washed in the sink indoors, the light from the dining room splaying across the back yard. I squinted my eyes and tried to make the words come, but they didn't.

And I know what you're thinking right now: "but you still write so much, how can you even say the words aren't coming?" What I said is it's been a while since I felt like writing.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I used to dream of being a writer. When I was 11 years old, I clutched my copy of Troubling a Star by Madeleine L'Engle and knew this was what I would do with my life, string words together beautifully. But any true writer will tell you writing is not about being published. To be published only is for narcissists and public relators. Writers must only write.

There are nebulous goals in front of me, always moving targets, "When this happens" or "When this does," then I will have arrived. But then I reach the nearest pinnacle and I find the finish line has moved back farther still. If it is to be noticed by respected writers and thinkers, I have arrived. If it is to be published in dream places, I have arrived. If it is to be offered a book deal, I have arrived. But nothing satisfies. Every writer who affirms me, I doubt. Every platform given me, I fear. Every offer of publishing, I second guess.

But what if it is only about the pilgrimage?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

My roommate comes into my room sometimes and crawls under my down comforter and we comfort one another with words like these: you're not finished yet, we haven't arrived, there's more for God to do in and through us, but sometimes? Sometimes we just need to slow down, be still, wait, and hear.

So I am in this place these days. I write and I write voraciously because it is expected of me and depended on from me, but the joy in it is missing these days. I do not feel like writing or saying or publishing or submitting. I feel like forgetting Troubling a Star and Madeleine L'Engle and middle school dreams, leaving words behind and being someone else entirely.

I felt I should tell you this. In case anyone else ever feels this way too.

Fear and the Monsters Under My Bed

I'm a born fearer but I wear the mask of bravado well. If there's a risk I'll plan for it and if there's a plan I'll risk it. But there are knots tied up inside of me these past few months and I don't know if I'm more afraid of what's out there or what's in here. The old presidential adage, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," comes to mind these days because what I fear is not out there so much, but what arrests my soul, captivates my mind, and plays chicken with my heart. I fear the fear of a fear, or at the very least I fear the fear.

I'm reading a book about preaching to oneself and today's chapter is on fear. I close the chapter and I receive a text message: "The truth is that God will do what He will do and provide what He will provide. Don't be shackled by fear!" I look over my shoulder to see who else is following me, who has their finger on the pulse of my heart.

A week ago I sat across from two of my pastors and one asked, "What are you afraid of?" Not, "Are you afraid?" but "What do you fear?" We all fear something, one said, so what do you fear?

When you name the monsters in your closet and under your bed, you can personalize them or demonize them. This is what I am learning.

To name the fears is to say them right out loud: of being hated, of being unloved, of being alone, of being not enough, of being too much, of being misrepresented, and of misrepresenting. And their power is released in the naming, or the shackles cling tighter still. There seems no perfect potion for fear-loosing.

I am reading II Timothy this morning, the favorited passage: for God did not give us a spirit of fear, but power, love, and a sound mind. But further up it is Paul commendation to Timothy, his mother, and grandmother of their faith.

So often I think the opposite of fear is courage, but that is not it at all. Courage comes from within, daring comes from the belief that one cannot fail, bravery is the belief that even if one fails, it was a battle worth fighting.

But faith? Faith comes by hearing and by doing, but there is nothing of self in it. And I think on that this morning. All the questions of my heart are variations of can I? will I? should I? am I?

And all the answers of Him are finished: I already did.

For by grace you have been saved athrough faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Ephesians 2:8

Tough Mud, Miry Pits, and Why God Won't Be Mocked

A blog-reader (and near friend) wrote me an email the other day containing these words:

l love the peace-speaking, life-giving nature of your blogs. You seem seized by your faith that the Lord can work out the differences in His Body—or at least help us live in peace despite them.

And then I read yet another diatribe about yet another divisive issue in the Church. And a biting tweet from someone who ministers effectively from an office about someone who ministers effectively from a garden. And then I heard someone snort behind me when a certain demographic was discussed.

Seized by my faith. Yes. But seized by my faith in a sovereign God. Yes.

Perhaps I'm simplistic, but I know how my brain works and the miles it runs every day, the questions it asks and the solutions it tries to find. I know how quickly I can survey the ground in front of me and how fast I can estimate the work to be done and the best way to do the work. So I don't think it's simplistic thinking that drives me to breathe deep at the factions, lift my eyes up and say, "But God."

We're all so concerned with defending truth, or at least our best white-knuckled version of the truth, that sometimes we forget that God guards His truth and He will not be mocked.

He will not be mocked (Gal. 6:7).

Westboro Baptist Church may seem to make a mockery of Him, but then Fred Phelps grand-daughter comes out and extols His name.

Chic-Fila may have walked into a hornet's nest, but then president Dan Cathy meets with GLBT spokesperson and puts flesh on the Gospel.

Mark Driscoll may tick a lot of people off, but Mars Hill Seattle is filled with hundreds of pastors who are on the ground, doing the work of the gospel and people are being saved.

But that's not all:

I have pounded my fists in the air and cursed God's name, and He still wants me.

He wants me?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

God will not be mocked and He will use arms, legs, hands, and feet shod with truth to take the Gospel to doubters and dwellers, skeptics and seekers, askers and atheists, pharisees and philosophers. He uses you and me—and all of us fools.

So the next time we're tempted to write a blog post denouncing yet another brother or sister in Christ, or type 140 characters about how we know so much more about another person's life or ministry calling, let's take a second and a second look at the miry pit from which we came.

He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. Psalm 40.2

He wants you. And He might have used a fool or two along the way to get to you.

Because, don't worry, He knows His sheep and they know Him. And His name is safe.

Rob Bell's New Book and Questioning Faith

It was a poor grasp of theology that led to me to confess in early 2010 I did not believe and could not believe, nor follow, the God I thought I knew. It was one particular line a few months later that turned me right around and into the arms of a Father unlike none I'd ever known: a simple line of truth about Who God Was and Is, and who I am not. Did I believe before that? Was there a moment of salvation in 2010? Did I need to get rebaptized? These were the questions I asked myself and others eventually asked as well. Questions that needed answers immediately, I thought.

Rob Bell is coming out with a new book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, and I watched the trailer for it this morning. Guy better brace himself because I don't care if you're the Pope or the President of the United States, the backlash about to unleash on him yet again is gonna sting. Should it sting? Well, that's a question I'm not going to address here, so take your snark and stinky attitude elsewhere—regardless of how much you love or hate him.

Here's what I will say: in early 2006 I got my hands on a copy of Velvet Elvis. First, it was the design of the book that appealed to me—I loved the space, the use of graphic elements in the book, and the smokey blue used throughout it. It felt fresh in my hands. I hadn't read a word and already I knew something beautiful was about to happen to me. I was right. My copy of that book is dog-eared and underlined, scribbled in with pages falling out. Someone was giving me permission to think and to ask questions.

All my life, and especially all my Christian life, asking questions was out of the question.

In Velvet Elvis I was able to wrestle with concepts and thoughts that had never been presented to me as beautiful or mysterious. I thought faith was something you got once and never lost, and could never understand why faith had always been so elusive to me. I was [am] a chronic doubter. Bell's book let me stick my hands in the side of Jesus, poke fingers through God made flesh and flesh made God. 2006 began four years of wrestling for me. What I wrestled with was never completely clear, and I see now it's because I was wrestling with mystery.

I had flesh on my Jesus—He looked like me and all the Christians I'd known my whole life: a bit radical, a bit bland, and a bit pragmatic.

But now I had permission to not understand the fullness of Jesus.

And that saved my life.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

At the end of those four years, sobbing on my bedroom floor, confessing I did not believe and could not believe, what I came to realize is that I did not believe and could not believe in the God I thought was.

This God who was black and white, clear and clean, four points and a poem, and this God who could not be understood at all, an enigma, a full-on mystery—neither God satisfied the deepest doubts and longings of my soul.

Slowly He began to reveal to me that He was both mystery and proof, solid and spirit, firm truth and full life. He was both/and, not either/or. He was stunning in His characteristics and humbling in His holiness. His beauty was in His immutability and His changelessness was in His triune nature, God in three persons.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

This is important because heresy will always exist and we must be stalwart to point it out, but we also must let each generation come to a place where they are wrestling with very real, very actual, necessary battles with and for their souls. If we do not fling open the doors to what the world brings at us in some respect, we will raise generations of robotic orators with no grounding to their faith. Can I endorse the content of Velvet Elvis knowing what I know now? No. But can I endorse the wrestling with faith that Velvet Elvis encourages? Yes. Without reservation.

We finished the book of Acts this morning in class and several of us offered reflections on what we learned, how we were challenged or blessed. Here's what Paul taught me more than anything in that book: He was ready in season and out because he knew his audience, he knew the Word, and more than anything he knew his God. He, Pharisee of Pharisees, Hebrew of Hebrews, persecutor of Christians, and mocker of faith, was brought low and shown the beautiful mysterious light of his Savior on Damascus road.

We all will have our moment of beautiful mysterious light, some will have it reading Piper or Edwards, some while reading Keller, Chan, Kierkegaard, or even Bell. Maybe it will take longer than we'd like for someone, or even ourselves, to see a faithful work of service behind us and a hopeful path set before us. Maybe some of us will have to hide out in the house of Judas for a few months or days or weeks.

As for me, I take comfort in this: Every knee will bow, every tongue confess, that He is Lord.

There is no mystery or question about that. It will be full-on, the most spectacularly beautiful culminating moment we could ever imagine.

Shelf Life

I have a shelf life of two years, three years max. Once I overheard someone say of me, "She's obviously wife material, my only fear is her aversion to commitment," and the words replay in my mind.

A friend told me last week the lies she tells herself the most are always in second person: you aren't smart enough, you aren't pretty enough, you aren't enough. I tell myself the truth, though, when I use the second person: you won't stick around long enough.

A man put his hand on my head many years ago and spoke these words: "He has given you a flexibility of spirit and there are those who will see you as a flitting butterfly, going from one thing to the next, but remember this: He has given that flexibility to you, He has made you adaptable and transient." I looked up from under his hand into the eyes of someone who knows my soul well, knows its propensity to fly the coop. I smiled; she smiled. But she still cried when I last left her house on my trek back to Texas.

The blessing of my singleness has been flexibility. It is moving quickly and easily, changing careers every few years, worrying little about accumulation of things or resources. It can be a selfish existence, but it can also be the quickest way to remember every single day this place isn't home and ought not feel like it.

The curse of singleness is the same curse on everyone—for man it is to work, to toil, and to commit; for me it is to birth, to nurture, and to commit. A pregnant friend told me once it wasn't until after the shock of knowing a child grew within her wore off, that she realized she had to be committed to this. Nine months of her body shifting and shaping, with an alien thing in her that would come out—the labor process terrified her. But she was committed not because she chose to be every second of every minute, but because the blessing is also the curse: it's a long painful commitment and there is no going back.

Though no child grows in me, and perhaps never will, I understand the angst of long, painful commitments, of nurturing when I feel like running, of entering in when I long to draw back. At times I feel unwilling to do this, to stay, to prolong my shelf life—I just want to go home. This week I want to go home to the northeast corner, some weeks I want to go home to my hometown, most days I just want to go home.

This morning I stopped on Romans 8 and stayed there, committed to it:

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

I rarely think of corruption in the way I think Paul meant it here. To me corruption is Wall Street businessmen and the Russian mob, politics and big government. But it also means to crumble, to rot, to fall apart. This is what we're doing, friends, all of us. Our shelf life is crumbling, rotting, and falling apart. We're bound to do it, all of us.

But.

But the redemption of our bodies is not long off, not at all. And this, oh this, I can count on and commit to—it's coming. If we're His children, it's coming. He's coming.

And He has no shelf life or homesickness or fear of commitment—He's in, all in, forever and ever.

Context Can Save Your Life

A friend told me a long time ago that it was the unanswered questions that scared him most. He is an answerer, his wealth of knowledge is vast and he gets paid to answer people's questions about faith and theology. "I fear being unable to answer a question for the lack of time or knowledge, or simply because the answer I give doesn't satisfy," he said. I thought about what he said for a long time, a few years, and I'm thinking about it still.

This week I'm thinking about it because I saw a quote from a theologian. The quote was taken out of context and not linked back to the original context, thus painting him (and his ministry) in a negative light. If I hadn't seen his name below the quote, well, I would've lost my faith in Jesus, humanity, and the Church if that's all I knew of it right there. It was that bad.

But I am also an answerer—though mostly for myself and not for others. I cut and paste the quote, found its original source and wept through the entirety of the sermon because it was so beautifully about God being God and on His throne and loving us as only God can love.

Context can save your life.

But this isn't what I told my friend the night he told me his fears. Instead I told him about the night I realized I didn't believe in Jesus. I told him it was because I had spent a year asking hard, hard questions and not getting answers. It was because I read everything I could get my hands on, listened to sermons, read blogs, prayed, fasted, and still.

Silence.

There isn't much context for silence.

A friend told me recently she sits by her window, sits long and quiet, waiting for God to say something to her. Anything.

But what if He doesn't? I ask her. And what if that's okay?

This morning I'm thinking about the phrase "out of context." It doesn't mean the words said were incorrectly quoted or never said. It simply means out of the context in which they were intended. Without the whole picture. Apart from the whole.

And I'm thinking about God who is so much more sovereign and good and holy and set apart and whole than I will ever be or see. I am a soul out of context, a body apart from the whole, a mind void of completion. I am only a part and I see only in part. I exist in unanswered questions for the whole of my days and, Oh God, I pray He gives me more vision, more sight, more view into the whole, but what if He doesn't?

At the end of my year of questions without answers, one night on my bedroom floor, I told God what I really believed about Him which was that I didn't believe Him. Not at all. I told him what I thought I knew to be true was not true. And He began to show me what I thought to be true of Him was taken out of context, apart from the whole. Then He spent the next year drawing me back, helping me to see the whole, and how fully beautiful the whole was, even if it was still only part.

Context matters. It matters to theologians and babies, mothers and sons, it matters to good writing and better thoughts. It ought to matter to us because it matters to God. He is less concerned with us getting answers than He is with us seeing in wholeness that He is the way, the truth, and the life. He is God and we are not. He is full of mercy and justice, goodness and fury, grace and insight. He is Whole and we are only part.

Wait Up

We're all waiting for something. You're waiting for the raise and you, right there, you're waiting for a baby. You're waiting for that guy to notice you and you are waiting for a job you love. You're waiting for a better living situation or your due date, something to make sense and something to stop hurting. You don't have to dig much to find what you're waiting for. A friend told me last night he's waiting for joy. Another friend is waiting for healing. One more is waiting for her wedding day. And one more can't wait until she gets to go Home, her final resting place.

In all of history there have only been 33 years where what we waited for walked here on earth. A mere drop, dew on the morning grass. And here's the thing: they didn't know their wait would begin again after that short respite.

Late last night I talked with a friend about what we wait for and where our hope is in the meantime. It's hard to wait. Doubly hard when we see others receive what we're waiting for. But the deeper truth is no matter what comes our way in this lifetime, 80 years and a few more, a vapor, a breath, a moment—He is the sustainer and He is the culmination of every lesser gift.

We wait for you.

Have a Good Really Bad Day

When I was ten we bought a Christmas tree from the firehouse lot. It was an immense thing because we had a cathedral ceiling in our living room and grand things made us feel grand. My father wrestled that tree from the roof of our station wagon and into the house. It was so tall though, that even though the bottom was bolted into the stand, it began to tip and then fall over altogether, ornaments and lights going everywhere. My dad laughed, my mom shook her head, and my older brother talked about something called Murphy's Law, and then all three pulled twine around the tree's upper branches and nailed it to the wall.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"If something can go wrong, it will go wrong," is not the sort of mantra I want to adopt on any day of my life, but there are some days. Some days, you know?

Some days when you wake in the middle of a deep REM cycle, jolted by the sound of your 4:30am alarm. Some days when you drop the toothpaste four times in a row and your contact lenses are irritated. Some days when you're already late and you hit the school zone exactly as the lights start blinking and the traffic slows to 20mph. Days when you drop your debit card out of your car window at the ATM and when the barista gets both your name and your drink wrong. Days when all three printers your computer is connected to at the office won't print content and time sensitive documents. Days when your browser crashes multiple times within the first 20 minutes of work. And it's only noon. And I didn't even list everything that's grating on my last nerve today, because, trust me, there's much more.

Those days.

Today.

I don't know about you, but I find it difficult to pray or think or even resemble a Christian on days like these, when everything that can go wrong (even if it's going right on time—like blinking lights in the school zone), will go wrong. I want to snap at everything and everyone who doesn't understand the urgency of just one thing going my way. Just one thing. My way.

I also don't know about you, but the last thing I want to do today is find some sort of comfort in a Psalm about peace or a Proverb about perseverance.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Today is the sort of day I'm painfully, awfully aware of my sin and the sin of everyone around me. I'm aware that baristas are busy and drivers without constraints are dangerous, printers are prone to malfunction and my frustration with the world at large begins with frustration at myself. Today is the sort of day I remember: oh, it will go wrong, it will go horribly wrong, from the moment I wake until the moment I sleep, but that is only a physical reality of a spiritual truth.

The Genesis curse swooped in on perfect days, idyllic pleasure, quiet ambling, and sweet romance. It swooped in and wrecked a whole lot of things, and January 16, 2013 is one of those things. I keep hoping my day will go better, but it might not, and it will be okay. It will be okay because there is a better day ahead, a final day, a full feast of what is only good and never wrong.

If you're having a bad day today too, let me just encourage you with the reality that you might not have anything pretty or perfect, smooth or safe today at all. But, if you're a child of God, you do have a better day ahead. He promises you that.

"But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ..." Hebrews 3:13-14a

Why Doesn't He Answer?

If you ask God for something and then you say you trust God will do as He wills (which is a good thing to trust Him for, because regardless of what or who you trust, He will do as He wills), you must be prepared for every manner of sniggering, sniveling, untrustworthy thoughts to enter your mind henceforth. You must know nearly everything and everyone will become an immediate threat to your joy and pleasure, even if they have loved you and proven it to you. You must realize every question and doubt plaguing your mind will relate to the Big Ask in some way. You must recognize the enemy creeps about seeking whom he can devour and devour he will do if he finds a way.

But you must also realize that God is on His throne and you are hidden in the shadow of the Most High. You must have your confidence not in the thing for which you have asked, but in the God in whom you have trusted. You must sit long, walk hard, pester deep, and touch hems of robes in clamoring crowds. And at the end of every day you must go home again and your home must be in Him only.

If you ask God for something and you never see the answer, it is not because He did not hear you or is not answering you. But it might be because you are looking too low, under branches, in dewy grass on meadow spreads, and He is high and lifted up, home in heaven with earth His footstool.

If you ask God for something and you never see the answer, it is because He is the last and final answer—and the last and better answer after all.