Drinking Often

I am thinking of the first communion these days, more part of the Easter story than the Christmas, but how can we love the birth if we do not love the death? I am thinking of that cup of wine, the sign of the new covenant, the blasphemous words of a man at a table with 12 friends: drink this new way of doing things, this new kindness of God. Drink it in remembrance of me.

"As often as you do it..." That's what he said. It's odd that a man who was saying, "I'm doing away with your rituals and sacrifices, your habits and your rules," was also saying, "do this often." But this is what I think about last night falling asleep: He has set for us pleasant perimeters. He says do it often, but remember it's not your religion anymore.

He knows us so well to use a word like often.

We need this, with our hearts so prone to attempting and trying, to sacrificing the modern lambs of our time, our tithe and our truant hearts.

We need this, we who do not understand that the kindness of God draws us to repentance and anything less is a marauder of faith and a shortcut to legalism.

I drink the cup this past Sunday with no resolve in my heart to do better next time or try harder tomorrow, no attempts to force a change of heart or fall into an apathy of my soul. I drink it with the freedom to drink it often, as often as I need a reminder of the new covenant, as often as I need the kindness of God drawing out my repentance. I drink it in gratefulness.

Someone said to me a few months ago: I'm only grateful for the Old Testament because it shows me where I'd be without the New Testament. I think about this often. That's really what Jesus was saying, drink this small cup, this sip of wine, do it to remember where you were and where you are now.

Doesn't that taste good?

(Published originally this past year on Grace for Sinners)

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

Sucking on Stones

Sometimes we just need to stay hungry, she says to me through tears, and I remind her that Jesus said His food was to do the will of Him who sent Him. We are silent for a few minutes before thanking one another for being bread and fish.

Last fall I wanted to ask for something or someone and the Lord told me no or wait or yes or maybe but that He would sustain in the meantime. What I did not expect was the sustainment He gave. She lives on the west coast, in rainy Portland, she studies Hebrew and is a whole head taller than me. She's blond and beautiful and has a sleeve tattoo and we regularly cry through our conversations. I didn't ask for her—she was not what I asked for.

Sometimes, she told me once, we think we're asking for bread, but we're really asking for a stone, and when He gives us bread we don't recognize it because we're still looking for the stone.

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

I read a quote from Kathy Keller in the book she co-wrote with her husband, the inimitable Tim Keller, "Sometimes a pig doesn't know the worth of a pearl, to him it's just a pebble." I underlined those words, scribbled beside them, and cannot stop thinking about them.

Sometimes I'm asking for a stone instead of bread and sometimes I feel like a pebble instead of a pearl.

I find it a bit strange that Jesus said He would built His Church on the rock, crooking his finger at Peter, petra, Rock. On the backs of men who would deny Christ three times before He could forgive His followers saying they know not what they do? On the backs of those who sink after three steps out on watery faith? On the backs of those zealots? Those fools?

It occurs to me that God is the only one who knows the worth of stones, pebbles, pearls, and rocks.

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

If we don't ask for bread, we might feel satisfied for a long time sucking on the cold, hard emptiness of a stone—thinking it was all He had for us. Or perhaps we have ourselves convinced, like the old fable, that our stone soup is satiating and full.

And still, somehow, He's building His Church, accomplishing the will of the Father, on the backs of stone-sucking fools like us.

Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work." John 3:34

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.

Endure Patiently

I can't even tell you how it happened that we sat there and cried hot wet tears, barely looking one another in the eyes. I take much of the blame, though my heart ached with hurt and couldn't find healing. Don't let the sun go down on your anger?

Well, what about when it's not anger you're bedding down for the night? What about when it's joy mixed with mourning so deep you don't know what else to do but be silent? Be silent for fear that your muddled mess of joy and mourning will be trumped by the latter and seen as such. So I kept silent.

A friend tells me a few weeks ago that I present my life as perfect and I want to tell her to read a decade's archives of presentations. This? This place on the web? This is my sanctification in process on view for the world, and if that's perfect, well, I suppose I've arrived a thousand times over.

Once I heard a story of an old man on his death-bed. He was asked if he found himself sinning less as he grew older.

"Sin less?" He asked. "I was never more aware of my sin than I was a moment ago."

"Well, then, do you find it easier to repent?"

"No, son," he said. "I just find the gap between me and the Lord ever closing as I turn."

It was Annie Dillard who said, "Where, then, is the gap through which eternity streams?" and I think that gap is here, and here, and this moment, and this one. Eternity streams through these small moments, adding up to one final jubilee, one long trumpet call, when our angers and hurts and fears and sins are bedded forever, never to wake up, not ever.

Do I find myself sinning less the nearer I draw to that final day?

No. I find I know my sin more, and every moment more aware than the last. But do I find it's easier to find God, to know His nearness, and to trust the days to him? Yes. I do.

It doesn't make the hurt less, but this earthly Christian life is not for the avoiding of hurt, but the enduring of it.

...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance... Romans 5:3

Comparing Weight

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for usan eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison... I Corinthians 4:17

Tonight I'm on the phone with a friend and we're talking about the weight of glory like we know what we're talking about. We've seen our fair share of light momentary afflictions and we're both crying "Maranatha!" in our stronger moments.

Come quickly, we're saying, and in the meantime we're shouldering our share of the burden.

"Did you know that the Hebrew word for glory is the same word for heavy?" she asks me. She's in seminary and seminarians know these things. I tell her I didn't know that but it seems fitting, doesn't it? If you can follow it through, the weight of glory is the heaviness of glory is the glory of glory is the glory of heaviness is the glory of weight—and isn't it a beautiful picture when you put it like that?

This light momentary affliction is preparing us for the glory of bearing it through til the end. Finishing well. Finishing without comparison, because we know there is no comparison or coupling in heaven—we will be all too enamored with the King of Kings to consider our neighbor.

And let me be straight—our momentary affliction is not the stuff of real suffering, we have food enough and friends enough and He carries us through in the meantime. But our momentary affliction comes from the comparison we are so wont to do here on earth, and isn't it the way for us all?

No one else seems to struggle here or with this. No one else has to muscle their way through this experience, so why us? Why me? These are the existential questions of our momentary affliction. It is fitting, then, that Paul would use the word comparison when he talks of the weight of glory, isn't it? Listen here, he's saying, you who are looking around you and experiencing the stuff of the earth in deeper and more painful ways than your counterparts are, what it's preparing you for is a glory you can't compare, not even on your best day.

I imagine, for one moment, Isaiah in the year King Uzziah died, seeing the Lord in all His glory. Isaiah, who was undone by all that glorious glory. "Woe is me." I imagine the burning coal touching his mouth and his admission that he would go anywhere the Lord sent Him.

I imagine that and I can bear almost anything.

God, are you there?

I found the raspberry ale, the one I like because it costs more, some small round clementines, some ginger lemon tea, and I've been wearing my glasses all day and no makeup. An old tshirt.

You think you know what I'm talking about when I tell you this week was a beating, and you might know a fraction of why, but you don't know the whole of it. You don't know the tears started on Sunday and have fallen clear through the floor of my heart all week. You don't know the ache settled itself somewhere in my throat and caught itself there strangling me with my old friend Fear all week.

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

In The Brothers K there's a page where the oldest brother, Everett, spouts prayers off at the dinner table in front of his devout Seventh Day Adventist mother. His prayer starts, "Oh, God, if you're there..." and proceeds onward. It's one of the most achingly poigniant pieces of prose I've read in a long time, the whole chapter, and what we find, sweet readers, is that Everett wrestles with the beautiful question we all ask. We all have to ask:

God, are you there?

We have to ask this question, we all do, because if we don't ever feel the full on, gawking, haunting lack of Him, we cannot feel the full on, grasping need of Him. And I want to say we ask the question once and done, and it's answered in pew-side confessionals, altar call moments, or gasping breaths on the floors of our bedrooms. I want to say the question is brought once to our lips and then in holy awe, He touches our mouth with a hot coal and we go, we go, we cannot help but go.

But even Jesus, there on the cross: "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?"

My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?

Are you there?

The heaviness of my soul this week was not death fringed around my doorstep or martyrdom for the cause of the Gospel. It was being jilted of an invite, being misunderstood by a friend, an unexpected email, feeling like a pebble instead of a pearl, a glance shooting disapproval my direction, an inbox that didn't stop filling with reactive messages all week and still. It was not having enough time to read or pray or write or be. It was leaving work and someone noticing my tires needing air and saying so. It was me saying I need a husband because I can't do this. I can't be alone anymore. Not if it means putting air in my own tires for the rest of my life.

It was the cross He asked me to bear this week. And it was a down-pillow compared to His cross.

But somewhere along the way I asked the question: God, are you seeing this? Are you going to battle for me? Are you going to defend me? Are you going to be near me? Are you going to sustain?

I wish, reader, I didn't have to wrestle with this question as often as I do. I wish belief came as naturally to me as unbelief does. I wish I had natural born faith instead of fear.

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

I learned in one of my classes this week that we in the Church have been taught to believe belief leads to new birth, but the Bible teaches it the other way around: being reborn leads to belief.

And I nearly wept, right there, I didn't care who saw. I nearly wept because I can grab hold of this, because I know I'm reborn. I know it with every fiber of my being, I know Jesus is right and real and good, and His word is true and Holy and forever. And I know belief is born in the truth of my new birth and that's it. My birth, the new freshness and delight of my salvation, doesn't change because my belief is pushed on and what a comfort it is.

I felt the gawking, aching hole this week. I felt the lack of belief, but not the lack of birth, and I sit deep in this tonight. God is here, patient and parenting, battling and bearing on my behalf.

The Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes.  Deuteronomy 1:30

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.

s t i l l

It came to me over lunch, baby carrots, blackberries, and tiny purple potatoes. I was reading, underlining a sentence I wanted to think about later. Later. When later?

I took a deep breath and took another bite, letting the blackberry jewels burst against the roof of my mouth and the sweet juice fill every corner. I always mean to be part of the slow food movement but my life doesn't let me. It is enough that I am a part of the whole food movement and it has to do for this season. Slow food, like slow reads and slow moments, take time and time is a luxury in these days.

And it came to me then: still. I thought the word for 2013 was going to be ask, but what if God was asking me to stop asking and just be still? What if He was saying, "Enough already, I've heard you, you persistent widow, you poor and needy, I've heard you. I'm on my way. Now be still."

Someone told me once a quote he'd heard, "Single men run better with a heavy load," and I couldn't help but feel it was applicable to me. I know how long stretches of idleness go for me and they never go well. I run better with a heavy load.

But what if God is pulling off the heavy load I've piled on, and asks me to stand still while He does so? Will I stand, like the child getting her shoes tied or the old man getting his hair cut or the woman waiting at the window, still?

I think about Still all afternoon. It smacks of someone left behind, but in its fullness, isn't Still also something that is constant and steady, still going, still faithful? Isn't Still an image of beautiful life frozen in time? Isn't Still the act of being calmed, stilled? I have never wanted to be left behind and it is mostly all I have felt my whole life (Those are honest words, but God is Still faithful to me.), but what if being Still is the way God brings something beautiful to me?

What if this year He wants to be the Deliverer instead of me the offering?

What if this year He wants to be the Servant instead of me the savior?

What if this year He wants to be on the move on my behalf instead of me on His behalf?

What if this year, Still?

All Things New, Even When It's the Same Old

Last year on this day it was a balmy 70 degrees. We spent the entire day out on the back porch in our pajamas, reading, reflecting, and reveling in the time together. Every year-end my ritual is to close out the year asking myself seven questions, declare the year over, and then ring in the new year with five expectant questions. I do this because I love Mondays and the firsts of the months, the thresholds of sermons and new babies. I love new. Whether I finish well or not matters little to me—I love the thrill of new.

The thrill of new has taken me all over the world, to life in different cities with strangers, to new experiences and new challenges, it has taken me places emotionally and spiritually that I never thought possible. It rarely disappoints.

But this year, at the end of 2012, I'm a little slow to ring in 2013. Maybe it's the melancholy skies, the raindrops outside my window, maybe it's the marathon 2012 was, or the marathon 2013 promises to be. I don't know. I just want to stay the moments, if I can. I know I can't, but I wish I could.

__________________

In 2012, some small miracles happened that let me take a month long sabbatical to spend working on a book. I know. A book?! It's a book that is nearly complete, but for various reasons I won't let out of my hands for some time, it just isn't time yet. But 2012 let me write it, and you all helped.

In 2012, I've had the opportunity to participate in the pilot year of a discipleship program at my church. For me it means waking up in the 4am hour, reading and wrestling through difficult portions of scripture, and attempting to do school again after many years absence. To spend ten months studying theology and each book of the bible, to grasp some principles of pastoral theology, and to be invested in by some great minds—2012 gave me that.

In 2012, all three of my roommates fell in love in a three month time span. I felt hurt, neglected, overlooked, and finally, beautifully seen by God in deep and rich ways. He did not give me the love I wanted, but He gave me some gentle fathering and better bread.

In 2012, I made it all the way through a one year lease and then some. This has never before happened to me in my life. We have just begun year two in this small home on Meadow Lane and never have I been more at home in a house. Thank you 2012 for making space for me.

In 2012, I walked into a publications scheduling meeting at work discouraged, tired, spent, ready for a change, though still deeply passionate about my job and place of employment. During that meeting I was surprisingly offered a position change for 2013 that was a direct answer to prayer in multiple ways.

In 2012, I asked for bread and fish and God did not give me the bread and fish I asked for. But He did not give me stones or serpents, as I'd come to expect, and this is growth friends.

In 2012, Sayable more than tripled her subscribers, more than quadrupled her readership, and quit using comments. She felt like work to me like never before, like trudging through mud to plant seeds where there is no guarantee of fruit. There are pockets of joy in her field, but to be honest, those pockets are harder to find. More readership means more accountability, more accountability means more joy—even if it is simply eventual joy. Thank you, dear readers, for pushing me toward the pleasant boundary lines, the places of deepest joy—even if it means staying out of other fields.

In 2012, God showed me what it is like to press through when the thrill is not there, when all things feel old, when nothing feels new, when skies are grey, and when it seems to rain on my parade. The Father is showing me what it means to stay the course, plant deep, subsist on today's manna, to let tomorrow worry about itself, to trust that if the only new I ever see is that final and glorious day when He makes all things new—that is enough.

Dayenu.

Roadside Crosses and What He Bears When We Can't

Whenever tragedy strikes, for the young boy who has lost his dog or the recent Connecticut shooting, it's in these hollow places our theology makes itself known. We may say we are not theological, but Tozer once said that "what a man thinks about when he thinks about God is the most important thing about a man," and so we are all theological. It is in these dark moments that we think about God the most. His existence or His absence, the strong tower or the hollow void—we shout our questions out and wait for an answer, or don't. We think about God and so reveal ourselves.

Mere hours after the shooting on Friday crosses formed on the school property, candles were lit, and people kneeled down, heads bowed. Churches filled for vigils and our President read from the Word breathed words. Children singing Silent Night opened Saturday Night Live, and today a rendition of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah circulated from NBC's The Voice.

It seems that when tragedy strikes we all find ourselves pulling at the familiar spiritual things, bringing forth faith in an agony akin to childbirth with none of the beautiful reward.

But sometimes our hallelujahs are empty because we don't know the God with whom we're pleading.

______________

After my brother was killed, I can't remember whether it was days or weeks or months after, a family friend erected a cross, painted it white with his name on it clear: Andrew David Ferguson. My father put that cross in the ground less than a mile from where we lived. I was there when my brother died, misshapen on the wet highway, and the cross is nearly forty feet away.

I passed that cross for years and it's still there, I'm sure, overgrown with weeds and tall grass—and every time it is not a reminder of my brother, but instead my father. My father, though he tried to get there quickly from seven hours away, was not there with us on that rainy April morning. The cross is a reminder of the void—not of my brother and the tragic way he died, but of my father, the one I wanted to take care of us, explain this, clean this mess up, make sense of it.

______________

And so in moments like these, when we are all seeking sense, building towers of thought and politics, I understand the fumbling words people say and don't mean, the beautiful heretical tributes, the plastic crosses and empty prayers, the haunting hallelujah song and the comfort we find in trite verses. I understand we are all trying to make sense of it all—using whatever we understand to make our way there.

We are all looking for a Savior in the hollow places. We are all betraying our theology of belief or unbelief. We are looking for someone to make a way, make sense, make whole.

______________

So be gracious in days like these, hold the gospel near if you believe it is truth, and if you don't, come near, come and drink. God is not a God who promises answers, even to His children, but He does bind up the brokenhearted and set free the captive.

He was once a Father who set up a cross in a moment of unspeakable tragedy too.

________________________________________

If you're interested, I have a guest post up at Everyday Awe today on The Worth of a Soul.

"He shouts, breaking in, throwing his grand cloak over our unrighteousness, our unworthiness, our most tender parts and our weakest shames. She’s mine! He says. He’s mine! He says. I’m claiming this weary soul. I’m calling its worth.

A new and glorious morn."

A Trustworthy Saying

Suppose there is someone in your life you trust implicitly. Suppose on every issue you gladly turn to this person for wisdom, counsel, support, encouragement. Suppose this person loves you, has your best interest and God's glory in mind. Suppose in every direction, whichever way you look at it, this person takes the proverbial cake. Except in one area. Say it's that they cannot bake a good cookie. This person repeatedly disappoints you, continually confuses you, and surprises you every time with how lousy their chocolate chip cookies turn out. No matter how you look at it you cannot make sense of this one small area.

Now, suppose that God asks you to trust Him beyond how you trust this person, and in spite of their continual failings in this area. Suppose that God says, "I know this person cannot be counted upon to make a perfect chocolate chip cookie, they continually forget necessary ingredients, and almost always burn the cookies, but that's okay, trust Me, because my faithfulness supersedes theirs and always will. Trust Me."

Now you have a choice: do you trust God (even though you've never actually seen God make a half decent cookie of His own) or do you keep your eyes on this person who, despite this one little thing, has never failed you yet?

That is the question, isn't it?

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Psalm 20:7

When You Don't Know What to Do

There is a paralyzing fear that grips the temples of its captive and pounds in every step in every direction. It is a paralyzing fear built of doubt. It creeps in slowly at first, comes with indecision and an inability to make a firm and stayed plan. It strangles slowly, giving credence to two good options or the lesser of two evils. It tightens its grip, bringing with it death that sounds like, "What if I'm messing up my life [or someone's life] by making this decision?"

This fear is verbalized as a doubt in oneself: am I making the right decision? Am I doing the right thing? Am I changing the course of my life with this choice?

But we know that whatever doesn't proceed from faith is sin and where should our faith be borne but God?

This paralyzing fear is nothing more than idolatry on stilts.

It is the course of our life (a mere vapor, dew on the morning grass; vanity of vanities, the preacher said) set high on faulty holds. It is the person we'll marry perched atop a totem. It is the person for whom we'll vote sitting on the tip of a flagpole. It is this school or that school, this church or that church, this place or that place wrapped into a head and set upon a body. It is the idol of self and it is passing away.

If God is Creator and we are the created, then we trust Him to be creative with our lives—even in unexpected and surprising ways. Even in ways that cannot be figured on graph paper or whiteboards. If God is God and we are mere mortals, flesh, dew on the morning grass, than the only master plan that matters is His. He has no plan B.

And your Plans A, B, and C will fail anyway, trust me, and I'll pray it's sooner rather than later. You're welcome.

So here is what we do:

We eat, we drink, we go into this city, we leave this place, we make His name great right where we are, we make His name great in the place He calls us to next, we delight, we find joy, we breathe.

We make decisions born of faith in Him, not in us.

We commit to life because of Him, not because of our convenience.

We marry to reflect His nature, not because we don't want to be lonely.

We commit to our church because she is His bride, not because she is always beautiful.

We covenant in life because we know the end of the story and, for Christ, it is already finished, and so for His children it is too.

Go make a hard decision today. Go and do it in peace.

He is not only with you, He is for you.

Selah.

Common Stones

Remember last week when I told you about asking for a fish and getting a stone? A friend told me afterward that sometimes we think we've asked for a fish and still receive a stone, and when that happens it's because we cannot fathom the unending blessing and goodness of God—what we're really asking for is a stone and what He is giving is a fish.

Protection, she called it, from what would ruin us, because He knows best what is best.

I hear that and receive it, but I don't like it. I don't like it because I like fish and I like a particular kind of fish and I see other people getting the fish they asked for and I can't figure out why He won't give me the particular fish for which I crafted a beautiful ask.

Instead he plops a stone down into my lap—it's hard, uncomfortable, and it's covered in dirt.

Well, what am I going to do with this stone, I'm asking Him.

And He's not answering. But it's not because He's not good—I know it's because He is good and sometimes answers come slowly, like rocks eroding in a river instead of fast like fish swimming downstream.

So I'm turning this rock over in my hands and trying to see the beauty in it. And if beauty cannot be found in it, I'm trying to see hope in it. And if hope cannot be found in it, I am trying to see His goodness in it. And the truth is that His goodness can be seen in every common and broken thing on earth.

How to die beautifully

There are things I ought to have learned in science class, but I was too busy hankering for art class to pay much attention. Did you know that the reason the autumn leaves are so spectacular in the northeast is because the weather has an indecisive air to it? It’s true. One night it’s cold enough to frost and the next day it’s warm enough to kayak in a tshirt. In the mountains the reds and oranges are deep and rich, and in the valley fields the green is vibrant and lush. The sky is almost always a steel blue, nearly grey, but still clear. I cannot describe this well enough, I know. I’m sure I tend to romanticize it because I tend to romanticize everything. It makes for a better story, see?

But trust me: it is beautiful here. Even today, while it rains steadily outside the side porch where I complete my wedding tasks of the day, it is beautiful (of course it helps that my wedding tasks for the day were to take buckets of flowers and make them into eleven presentable bouquets).

Tonight I’m going to leave these bouquets of roses and hydrangeas, seeded eucalyptus and ranunculus here on the porch. Outside, where temperatures will probably dip into the forties. I’ll leave them here. And for the same reason that the leaves get more and more spectacular, I have no fear for these flowers.

It goes against my gut to do this, leave them outside. Because flowers bloom in the warmest months, I assume that that’s where they’ll thrive best. But a year in Texas is teaching me that while the heat may force a bloom to open, it does little to sustain it.

We all need a little indecisive air, a bit of a chill, to be sustained.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day and she’s asking the right questions: why does it have to be so hard sometimes? Why does it have to hurt?

I don’t have answers for her. I’m finding the more I know, the less I really know.

But I know this: those leaves wouldn’t take our breath away if they weren’t dying in the process.

And I don’t like that. That makes me uncomfortable. I hate death, it is nothing but stings and barbs. But I love life because it is nothing but newness and cycles.

I love life because I know that I will die a million deaths until that final one, but each one makes me a little more vibrant in the process, and each one brings the promise of newness. That’s something I can plant my soul in.

This post was originally posted in October, 2011. But in honor of peak week at home, I'm posting it again. Enjoy your leaves northern friends!