what shines brightest

I haven't always been a peacemaker. I used to be a peacekeeper. I hoarded peace like a child with his Christmas stocking full of Andes Mints and Pez candy dispensers. I kept peace to myself, sure that if I could pet it, and feed it, and care for it, it would stick around. I kept it like a kept girl, made it work for me, paid its wages at the altar of hiding in groups and keeping relationships at arms length. I kept peace by repeating after myself that I was not at fault for the grenades flying over my head or the words flung across wooden tables or down long hallways.

Romans 12:18 says to live peaceably with all and, well, I have tried to do that. No one can accuse me of bringing wrecking balls into life's infrastructures in the past decade. No sir.

Tonight I think about the rest of that verse, though, or rather, the beginning of it: If possible. So long as it depends on you. Then live peaceably with all.

If possible. Meaning: when all other outlets have been explored, when I have sorted through the cans and wills and dos and don'ts of possibility. When I have exhausted improbability and taken no thought for the bullets colliding through my unchinkable armor. When I have braced myself for the fall that will inevitably come when I am most certainly misunderstood and when I am blacklisted from here til kingdom come. When it is possible, do it.

Stop writing the rebuttal. Don't blog the discourse. Don't preach to the choir or to the vagrant in the back row on whom you have your [plank-filled] eye.

Why? Because it's possible. It's possible for you to shut up, pursue peace.

So long as it depends on you. Meaning, and don't miss this: the world will spin madly on.

Eliza Doolittle sung a bit of theology for us all when she sang to Prof Higgins, "And without much ado we can all muddle through without you." So as long as we hold the beautiful ability to pursue peace with all men, we ought to. So long as it depends on us, we should trust that our meddling in affairs that bring an end to peace, well, people die on hills like that and we wade through the carnage for centuries.

Tonight I sat in a room with some beautiful people and we shared some broken things, some carnage, places where we didn't pursue peace or where someone didn't pursue peace and we were the wreckage left behind.

But here is the beautiful part of that: wreckage will be left while we wander this earth, but what's ultimately left, when the All Consuming Fire has come and burned away everything but what shines brightest, what shines brightest will be the Prince of Peace and we add nothing to that beauty with our earthly bickering.

[PURE?] ENJOYMENT

"I enjoy your company." Because life is too short to mess around, I admit, I've asked a guy frankly on more than one occasion, "What's your intention?" The conversations are never fun, never comfortable, and never feel very fruitful. But it scratches the itch, gives them the opportunity to 'fess up, and lets me let my heart move on. In about 98% of these conversations I hear this one line: I enjoy your company, but...

This past weekend JR Vassar spoke at a conference for the home-group leaders at my church. He spoke on the Trinity and it was, let me tell you, enjoyable. It was heady and theological, it was convicting and reassuring, and it was life-giving and healing, but more than anything else, it was enjoyable.

He spoke about enjoying the gospel and never have I wanted to simply enjoy someone enjoying the gospel before as I did him. He's a brilliant guy with a deep love for Jesus and the Word, he obviously loves my church family and my pastors deeply, he's the pastor of a church plant in my native north—what is not to enjoy about this guy? But see, he wasn't talking about enjoying him, he was talking about enjoying the gospel—a different thing altogether.

This week, this month, I'll tell you, it's been hard to enjoy the gospel. There are some things weighing on me, family, time management, book details, the heaviness of my job, homesickness, tight finances, roommates, sleep, these things push in and crowd out my joy quickly.

I've started to enjoy things and people who enjoy the gospel, but it's not the same is it? It's not the same as enjoying the gospel. Enjoying the depth and richness that exists in being rescued from the clutches of death, covered with the righteousness of Christ, and called a son or daughter of a King. There's joy there, right there, sitting in that.

Yet I'm too busy enjoying the substitute instead of The Substitute, the creation instead of the Creator, the friend instead of the Groom.

But He's truly is the better choice. He is.

So here's my question to you today: what or who are you enjoying today?

Are you enjoying the company of a girl or guy because you haven't found "the one?" Are you enjoying religious things instead of God Himself? Are you enjoying the attention of your children, your readers, or even your spouse instead of dwelling deepest on the enjoyment that God has in you and you can have in Him?

RUNNING [away] WALKING

Last night we talked about being small and running away. Finding tall pine trees in our native north and shimmying our way up to the nearest branch, then climbing, climbing, climbing until we were at the top of our tower of Babel, touching God and letting Him touch us. And then we'd climb down, forgive our strict parents their brief irrationality, and go home.

Late last night as I drove home I thought about not stopping, just driving, finding the lowest branch and clawing my way out of here. Away from the metroplex, the bubble, the place where I am known and where I do not feel known.

Instead, I called a friend and left a message.

"Call me," I said. That's all.

I unhatched my plan without hesitation, with or without her, but she agreed and so we threw swimsuits, tshirts, and spare change into our bags and we left Dallas at 11:32pm.

Rolled the windows down and left.

We found a hotel a few hours later, convinced the kind gentleman at the front desk to let us go swimming and then we slept hard and hardly.

We woke at 7am and the city was still. I couldn't help but feel like this was what people have meant for the past two years when they have said that I will love Austin, that Austin will feel like home. We read and journaled at a coffee shop, strung a hammock between two trees, talked, talked, sat, and just enjoyed one another and the Lord. And then we drove home.

My heaven will be a still one. A quiet one. The sort of place I can fly fish or enjoy Debussy (who I hope will be there). My heaven will be a place free of distractions, where the groaning of creation has stopped and we have come to a grand rest. It is still.

I am learning more than ever that I cannot run the race.

Everywhere around me people are running the race. The prettiest. The godliest. The best. The most. The biggest. The fullest. The busiest. And I find even the mention of running the race exhausts me. I toe the start line and already feel the defeat. I can not run it.

I crave stillness. I crave quiet. I crave even the groaning of creation over the groaning of concrete roads and the suburban sprawl. I want to shimmy up my tree, find a solid brand on which to stand and I want to touch God.

We're on our way home, less than 13 hours later, and I tell her that all I really want in life is to be like Enoch. Enoch who walked with God and was no more.

"Your heart, Lo," she says. "He loves that about you."

And I suppose He might love that about me. I suppose He might. The bible doesn't say that Enoch died, it just says He was no more, that God took him. I can't help but think that God in His goodness, just took Enoch home with him, plucked him from the race of life, and brought him home where he belonged.

I wouldn't mind being like Enoch.

[In any case, all of you were right, Austin did feel like home to me. Thank you.] 

THE ORIGINAL LOVE

You might have noticed a curious absence from my story last week. Or you might not have noticed at all (Narcissism is one of my greatest qualities, so I'm always concerned with you being concerned with me.). The absence was this: the Love of God for me.

And it was no mistake that kept it out. That was intentional.

Perhaps it was because I was so intolerable as a child and teen, or perhaps it was because being tolerable wasn't even enough, but I spent much of my time sent to my room or grounded or put away from people and things I loved. I grew to equate me being a disappointment with distance from those from whom I wanted love most.

If you are grown now, you know that feeling like a disappointment is a nagging itch that won't be scratched (or perhaps your greatest quality is ego, in which case I will pray for us both). I think that failure, or even fear of failure, is the mercenary messenger sent to grind us into harder work or hope for heaven. Either one will do. If I fail you, it is only a short reminder to you that I am still human, but it is a long reminder in a slew of reminders to me that I have been sent to my room with no dinner.

This morning I worked from home, finishing a project that's been good for me in the work-with-your-hands sort of way. From original sketches to scanned images to vector files to letterpress machinery to my kitchen table this morning for the final brushes of watercolor before mounting on mats—it has been a labor of love, but labor nonetheless. Piles of prints with Psalm 18:19 on them, "He rescued me because He delights in me."

Half are being hung on the walls of girls we've rescued from the red-light district in India and the other half are our gift to donors who helped rescue them.

It is very easy for me to believe that those girls have been rescued because God delights in them.

It is also very easy for me to believe that our donors who have sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears to rescue, are delighted in by God.

My roommate drinks her tea this morning while I am bent over the cards with my paintbrush. "Don't forget that that's about you too" she says and taps the prints. And I look up at her because it never occurs to me that God delights in me.

He saved me, yes.
He chose me, yes.
He sanctifies me, yes.
He teaches me, yes.
He pursues me, yes.

But delights in me?

Draws me near to him?

Loves being around me?

Surely not.

I'm still very good at lining up my disappointing behavior and coming up with reasons why I ought to be grounded for life, yet all the while He's saying, "Come close, come near, be near."

I write to a friend the other day that the beauty of progressive sanctification is that "there isn't a part of yesterday's me that doesn't contribute to today's me. My hordes of sin, my mistakes aplenty and the proof of them only show that there's work to be done."

It seems to me that the best place for that work to be done is close to my Maker, the artist who crafted me from the original sketches and who will finish me to completion.

Note: If you are a parent, draw your kids close to you in times of disappointment. You will fight it. They may fight it. But I know of no other way to show them the length of God's love from a young age than to draw them close. Love them nearer to you and so nearer to Christ's love.

A QUESTIONABLE BEAUTY

It happened when I was nine, a skinny fourth grader, mousy brown hair and a stubborn soul. I don't know what I was told to wear that morning, but I know what I wore because it is there, memorialized in color, on a 5x7 school photo. Glasses were new to me and I had picked out blue plastic frames; it was the 90s, but still? I wore a patterned blue shirt, blue shorts, sandals with blue socks. I thought this meant I matched. When the photos came, as they did every year, in a big white envelope, I stared back at the face staring back at me and that's when it happened. That's when I knew what I was sure everyone must have known all along: I was ugly.

It was the comparison of the girls beside me, their hair in ribbons and their pretty plaid dresses pressed and flounced. It was the realization that my hair would never be sleek and shiny, or blond. It was the truth that my features would always be bigger or smaller, while the features of other girls would always be more beautiful, more feminine, more anything than what I could ever be. It was a belief that I've carried with me my entire life: I'm ugly, maybe someday I'll be a swan, but today, I'm the ugly duckling.

So when my roommate asks me to resolve to love my body this year, its nuances and its curves, its imperfections and its perfectly crafted parts, I balk. I can't do that. Loving others comes oh so naturally to me, loving myself is always a resolution for next year.

When a friend asks me to write a blog on whether looks matter in relationships, I tell him that I'm probably the last person to write that blog.

When I have a conversation with a friend the other night and I'm talking about the doubt in my soul regarding so many things related to looks (mine and others), she stops me and says, "What are you afraid of?"

What am I afraid of?

I'm afraid of two things: the first is that I'll find what is not beautiful to be beautiful, the second is that I'll never be found beautiful.

So I want to know, really, what is beautiful? And does it matter what is beautiful?

WHAT IS BEAUTY

I say it often enough about nearly every person I know, every piece of art in my home, the spate of days we've been having in Texas, the sunsets that make me gasp, the conversations I have with friends; it is never difficult for me to find beauty in every single thing I know. I'm prone to finding beauty in so many things, my friends just roll their eyes now when another exclamation comes from my mouth.

But what is beauty outside the eye of the beholder?

What is beauty when it can be teased apart from shiny magazine spreads and museum walls and computer screens in a midnight bedroom? What is beauty when it is seen through the lens of the gospel and nothing less?

I only know to start with the fact that Jesus spent his earthly time and energy teaching us to turn a kingdom of classes into a kingdom of completion. His interest was in the poorest, the lowest, the outcast, and the richest, the most corrupt, the most beautiful. This morning my pastor spoke how Christ came to reconcile us to Himself and us to one another, but what most struck me is that Christ came to reconcile us to ourselves.

Ourselves.

Myself.

My self.

IMAGO DEI

Self love is not a topic I want to talk about when I think about beauty. Here's why: I want all the beautiful people to start loving the unbeautiful. I want the perfect people to start loving the imperfect, the unlovely. I want there to be an impact that is measurable, tangible, and I don't know that self-love is the most productive way of getting there.

But here is the argument I'd like to make: if we do not love the self we have been given, we are exercising ungratefulness toward the God who created us in His image. We are, in essence, rejecting God who dwells in our temporal temples.

And I would add this, when we reject what God has called beautiful in others, even if we ourselves do not find it instantly attractive, we are denying what God has created in them.

When I call that fourth grade photo ugly, I look at the imago dei, the image of God, and I blaspheme what He has called good.

When I look with a critical eye at the mirror tonight while I wash my face and brush my teeth, I blaspheme what he has called good.

Hear me when I say that simply because God has called it good does not mean it has not been broken by the fall. It has and this is my great, great comfort on days when I feel the curse of having the body of a woman and all the lovely things that entails in particular times of the month (!).

There is a brokenness that accompanies us wherever we go, hanging on to our backs like a trained monkey. But sometimes we chain that monkey to our own back, buying magazines, feasting our eyes on what is even more broken, in hopes that we can attain what? More brokenness?

DO LOOKS MATTER?

Yes. Oh yes they do. Praise God they do. Praise God that He put us here on earth with a garden to tend and pray to Him that we tend it well. Pray that we tend our own plot well and pray that we are attentive to the plots of others. Praise Him that He created different sizes and shapes and colors and genders. Praise Him for His creativity in design. Praise Him that we find anything lovely at all.

Paul says "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." God help us to find beauty wherever we find these things. If we do, we will find that beauty is found readily.

DO LOOKS MATTER?

No. No, they don't. Not really. Not in the end of the story (which is really just the beginning). No, they don't matter here on earth where we will all either grow bellies or waste away to nothing, where the grey hair eventually goes white or disappears completely, where wrinkles grow exponentially, breasts sag, and strength fails. Beauty is so fleeting, so temporal, a vapor.

Gone.

But, which is more, and so much more beautiful, looks don't matter because one day everything that does not glorify the Lord will be purified out of us. Everything. Every sag, every wrinkle, every mark, every love handle--and, don't miss this, each and every perfect nose, every straight tooth, every sculpted muscle, every six-pack abdomen. Every health nut and every couch potato, every beauty queen and every street child. If it is not proclaiming the majesty of the Only One due glory, it will be consumed by the All Consuming Fire.

My fourth grade me and my 30 year old me. My best version of me and my worst version of me. My joyful reflection of Him and my mirror's sickening reflection of me. All of it will glorify Him. 

THE REAL QUESTION

The question is so much more than What is Beautiful? or Do looks matter? The question is, am I valuing what God values in me and am I valuing it in others?

No matter what my fourth grade photo instilled in me, He is the standard of my beauty.

The real beauty in that is because He is the standard, I know I can't ever measure up.

There is nothing good in me but what He has redeemed for His glory, so I am always the ugly duckling who was picked even in my ugliness. He didn't wait for my inner swan to grow. He's not waiting for some future version of me to materialize. He's not waiting for me to match a magazine spread or even grow happy with this earthly version of me. He's after me seeing the depth of what He's done in me. Through me. With me. For His glory. Alone.

He's after me seeing Him in the mirror.

pinterest

Related resources that I've been mulling on:  Do Looks Matter on the Gospel Coalition Blog New Year, New Self-Control by Jen Wilkin January 8th sermon by Matt Chandler (This will be online in the next few days)