Ask, and Sometimes It's Not Given

We filled our glasses and pulled our chairs close to the fireplace. Only a few of us, but enough still to carry the conversation, none of us noticed when midnight rolled past, and so we asked more questions. I don't make resolutions because I know I can't keep them. Instead I just ask God to birth and build in me what I cannot do myself. Two years ago it was fearlessness. This past year it was to ask. I still don't know what 2013 will be, but I'm afraid it might be to just ask again.

This morning I read Psalm 1 and I tell myself I am the tree—planted by streams of water, but who only yields fruit in its season and this is not my season. This is the season to ask, but not receive. It doesn't make me less a tree because fruit doesn't fall from my laden branches.

It is winter and the trees are bare outside, cold wet cowlicks standing stark on flat brown Texas spreads. I stand outside this morning in the damp cold, the gray skies overhead, cupping my coffee and asking for what seems impossible.

The acorns and leaves carpet our backyard, fruit borne in its season, now lifeless on floor of the earth, making space and way for new fruit.

I turn my hand up and ask for fullness in the right time and not before.

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.

Year of Biblical Politics

It seems that in the middle of every feud, be it theological, political, who left the toilet seat up or the toothpaste cap off, there are those who will staunchly dissect and throw their fist in the air, tout truth and justice. Rightness is the aim. And then there are those who will seek peace, restoration, claim mercy and love as the higher standard. Progress is the aim. What is interesting here, though, is that those of the justice persuasion will rarely come over to the side of mercy, but those of the mercy persuasion will come over to the side of justice only when their acts of love are being infringed upon.

Who ends up looking like the bad guy here?

The just of course. The less progressive one.

Nobody likes a bully. And the world, and the Church, is full of bullies. Those who throw big words and the Bible around with little regard for the people it affects.

But I would like to propose, if I may, the fact that the sneakier of the two is the merciful turned just.

We ought to be wary of sneaky people. The world, and the Church, is full of sneaky people. Those who have agendas in every direction and woo us in with good-feeling words.

And someone wants to talk about feelings here, I know (because you are the merciful ones). But when I begin to infringe on yours, you bring out the big guns and talk about how I ought to be just and not be too mean because someone's feelings might be hurt. (Let the record stand that I am by nature a Mercy, and by nurture, Just.)

Here's something:

Instead of taking our cues from culture, from just judges or merciful peacekeepers, from liberals or conservatives, from caps on or seats up, maybe we should take our cues from God who is perfect judge and perfect mercy.

He is perfect judge, so sin is not tolerated, holiness is the only acceptable state, watered down faith isn't helpful, and nothing but the best will do.

But He is also perfect mercy, so He gave a Substitute, laid on Him the sins of us all, but still, nothing but the best will do.

In our pursuit of mercy and love and all the good feeling parts of our faith, let's not forget that sin entered the world and our heroes of the faith still fall miserably short of anything good—and that sin (false teaching, acts of unrighteousness, mockery of God, poor leadership) ought to be exposed for God's glory and our good.

And in our pursuit of justice and truth and all the certain parts of our faith, let's not forget that the same righteousness that covers us, covers our sisters and brothers too—and that the call on all of us is glory to glory, faith to faith, further in, further on, nearer to God, nearer to glory.

WHAT did HE MEAN?

These days it seems authorial intent is an aside, an afterthought. What really matters is how the piece of music or poetry or prose made us feel and feelings are something we westerners are never short on. And so praise God for twitter and facebook, and someone thank Him for LinkedIn too, because without these outlets of immediacy, how would we ever know how anyone felt about anything? This morning a short twitter exchange:

Him: Sometimes I need to be reminded of what I sometimes believe. Me: Almost all the time I need to be reminded of what I almost never believe.

So this has me thinking about doubt this morning.

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In my Old Testament class we began our study of Deuteronomy today. It is, in short, the paraphrase of the previous four books of the Bible and, in long, an instructive to remember and rejoice, remember and rejoice.

Forget authorial intent and even my innermost feelings, remembering and rejoicing slip my mind more than anything else.

Remember: what God intends, who He intends it for, and why. Rejoice: that God has not forgotten me or His promises, or most of all, His faithfulness to His character and word.

The other night a friend challenged me deeply. I sat on my bed Indian style, while her words came across the phone, and eloquence aside, she finished with, "So get up off your ass and do something about this situation..." Lest you think she's of the coarse, unfeeling sort, she sent me an epistle of love the next day filled with all sorts of right thinking and gospel truth.

Why?

Because I forget. I forget what God has done. I forget what He has promised. I forget what He does intend and not just how it all makes me feel.

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This morning reading through the first few chapters of Deuteronomy with the rest of my class I'm reminded that there is cancer in that room and death, loneliness and confusion, joblessness and despair. In that room of 38 people who love Jesus deeply, who serve Him radically, who have been tapped on the shoulder by leadership at my church to come out and lead well, in that room of 38 people things do not always go well.

There are some of us asking: will we ever get to see the promised land? Has our sin been too great? Has His anger been too deep? Has our doubt been too strong?

And it's not because we don't know the gospel or the grand intent of God's hand: it is because we do not remember the gospel and sometimes forget the grand intent of God's hand.

So Deuteronomy is a sweet comfort to me today. Because it is a book about remembering and rejoicing—even if we never see what we think is promised to us. It is a book of history, of Ebenezers set at which to point and say, "Look what God has done thus far." It is a book about God's intentions, even when our feelings run rampant over truth.

Remember.

And Rejoice.

Deeper Church: Thirty Blackbirds or More

I've had a love/hate relationship with the Bride of Christ most of my life. In the times I have needed her most, I have felt failed by her, and in the times I have felt myself stray far from her, she has pursued and loved me. These are strange words to use about an entity, a full body of individuals, imperfect men and women stumbling through life and the Bible as clearly as they can, but they are true words. There is nothing on earth I love more than the Church. 

I have felt her failings near and I have chased her down in desperation—and there is no other place I would rather commune, break bread and share wine, than within her haven.

Ephesians 4 speaks of building the unity of the Church and oh how that resonates.

To see a whole body purified, strengthened, and grown into full maturity, ready to be presented to Christ—this I love.

And so I'm grateful that I've been asked to contribute monthly to a publication that pulls from every fold of her robes, every particle of her skin, and every joint and marrow, to build up and unify the Church as best we can with our earth encrusted words.

My first column is up today:

Bearing the Weight of Thirty Blackbirds or More

I pass a field of blackbirds every morning on my way from class to work. There are a thousand of them wide in a Texas spread and I can’t stop trying to count them with my mind. Thirty of them are perched on a shrub close to the ground, but its branches do not bend or weep. I marvel at its strength. I marvel at the lightness of the birds, all thirty of them.

This desert shrub carries the weight of the blackest birds and I think of Jeremiah 17 while I drive. Continue reading...

MASTERING the CURVE: Dear Me

Dear me,

You were standing around the corner when a pastor's wife said, "pleasantly plump," and your face burned with shame because she was speaking of you.

You are thirteen. A woman because you have small changes happening in your body, but a girl still because you have smaller changes happening in your soul. You alone know the tag of your jeans says size six and you know your babysitter wears a two. She said so when she folded your clothes a few weeks before while your parents were gone for a week.

You feel the numbers between two and six as acutely as you feel your chest begin to grow and your too small face and your uneven teeth. You feel every inch between two and six and you feel the inches around your thighs, your waist, your hips, your chest. You cup your curves and you swear you will not love them. You will hate them until they know they are hated and you will carry the hate in the curves and nooks and shapes of your heart. You will bed the hate there and you will tell yourself in ten, thirteen, & fifteen years that this is why no man will ever want to bed you.

You, a five foot brunette, with clear blue eyes and a smile that fills your whole face when you let it, you grip that hidden tag on your jeans and swear it will not master you.

And it does.

All your life it has mastered you.

When you are 19 and your world falls apart, when death and divorce and courtrooms become your life, you will cook pasta for your younger brothers, determine to keep home safe because nothing else is, you will be a size 14.

When you are 23 you move to a foreign country and you spend every night on the concrete bathroom floor, vomiting and sick, you lose 50 pounds and you are gaunt, thin, a size six again. People will ask you what your weight-loss secret was and you will tell them you have bugs in your stomach.

When things begin to break again and you are 27, you create home and community and try to make it best where you are. You are a size ten when you leave New York. You bike to the grocery store, walk to the coffee shop, you are not skinny, but you love your curves because you are nourished and healthy.

When you are 29 and you live in the suburbs where everyone drives and eats fast food; you do drive but you do not eat fast food. You eat healthy food, local and happy. And still the curves they grow. You eat less and the curves are unloved again. The curves are starving and still they grow.

Those curves, those inches, and the tag on your jeans, they will master you, sweet blue eyed smiling girl. All your life you will feel them mastering you.

I wish I could take you by the shoulders, dear thirteen year old me. I wish I could take your face in my hands, lovely girl. I wish I could turn you around and point to a line of beautiful women, women who are not ruled by the tag on the inside of their jeans. Who are not ashamed of the 10s, nor boastful of the twos. Women who know that they are intricately designed inside, who look around their family and see that curves run in it—that aunts and cousins and grandmothers and mothers wear their curves too.

I wish I could do that for you. The truth is that I can't. But I can do this. I can tell you that near 20 years from now the mastering of your heart then affects the mastering of your heart today.

Today you looked up at your beautiful roommate, the one who is tall and graceful like a swan, slim with a flat stomach, who can eat anything she wants and never gain a pound: Do you ever feel like you're not enough? you ask her.

And she comes, sits down beside you, takes your hand in hers and dips her head and asks the God, the real Master, the one who knit you together and crafted you perfectly and knows your curves more than you ever could, she asks Him to be near, to minister, and to show you His love.

So here is what I can tell you, dear girl, He sees you. He knows you. He places you and puts you and covers you and never thinks about the tag on the inside of your jeans. He knows your sixes and your tens and your fourteens and He knows your cells and your biology and your DNA and your genetics.

He knows you.

Love me.

Written for Emily Freeman's Dear Me. 

If you would like to comment on this post, consider clicking over to my author page on Facebook and Liking Sayable. 

HOW to be a good INTROVERT

You don't get to be a successful introvert without having somewhat of a panicky gaze on your heart and head and all things you fairly constantly. What I mean is, if you want to know who's going to struggle with preoccupation of self more than anything, look in the mirror first, and then look to your left and right. We're everywhere—you can't hide from us. Why? Because we can't even hide from ourselves.

The benefit of this self-awareness is that if you want to know what I think about any issue, you can ask me. I will probably have a litany of thoughts on which I have ruminated and masticated until they're confiscated by some other mounting question. You want thoughts, I have thoughts.

The damage of this self-acuity is that when it comes time to put my eyes on someone or something else, I have so poorly trained my eyes in the direction they should go that I cannot hold my gaze for very long without looking away.

I can train this heart of mine to follow the tracks, but even that doesn't stop the train from derailing. The only steady things sometimes are the rails themselves.

The train has been derailing for me this year. It began with a glance away from beautiful Jesus and faithful Father, and it continued downward until my eyes have been setting somewhere south of healthy. So it's time to trust the tracks. Time to trust that training my heart will get me home and, oh friends, there is no other place I want to be than home.

The tracks for me are repentance and rest, quietness and trust—and if this post resonates with you, I would guess those are the tracks for you too. To do those things, though, it's going to mean sacrifice and I'm willing to do that.

Here are three of the ways my sacrifice might affect you:

I. If you primarily come to Sayable from Twitter, nothing will change there for you.

II. If you come from Facebook and you aren't a close friend, family, or colleague, I would recommend that you go over and Like this page. This is because I will be slowly be straightening the rails of life by keeping a close watch on what I ingest on social media—beginning by removing the amount of people on the friends list of my personal page.

III. I will also be shutting down comments on Sayable for a season. If you'd like to contact me, please do so through email, though understand it may take some time for me to respond.

I said above that I know my heart more than anything else I know, and the truth is that I love interacting with readers. I love hearing your stories. I love when you track me down, find me, and say, "Lore, your words, they have encouraged me and changed me." I love that. I love it mostly because I love knowing that the deep and agonizing work God does in me results in deep and beautiful work in you. But I'm afraid that sometimes all the words coming back at me don't bear the sort of fruit I want the beautiful work of God to bear. Please don't read into that statement or assume it to mean anything other than what I am saying: I want the work that God does in me to result in good fruit. If it does not, I want Him to prune it.

Thank you for loving me well and thank you for space. Thank you for always encouraging and thank you for challenging. I long to write for Jesus, but He lets me write it for you too, and I'm grateful for that.

OIL, WATER, and the LIES we tell ourselves

I’ve got layers of lies that I don’t even know about yet. Sara Groves

Here’s what happened:

A friend told me something and I believed her. I do that. I’m a believing, trusting sort of person. The thing is, what she told me was only half true. Not half true to her—she told me the truth as best as she could, but it was only half of the whole truth. I didn’t know the other parties involved, so what could I do? I believed her. This is what friends do.

But the water has sunk to the bottom and the oil has risen to the top and with it all the floating particles that are still coated with enough water that I can’t look into that cup without seeing more of the whole story.

And my heart is sick.

Because her true-to-her story was only half of the story and now I know the other half, and the other half is my friend too, and when you love oil and water, even if they hate each other, what can you do? You believe them both with as much grace as you can muster. This is what good friends do.

But at some point the whole thing gets shaken up again and it takes a while for things to settle and while it’s still shaken you feel sicker and sicker still because there are always three sides to every story, hers, his, and the horrible, awful, honest truth. With a choice so divided, what can you do? You choose truth. This is what the truest friend does.

To choose truth, though, means to lose other things, namely trust.

Today trust was lost and I mourn that. I mourn it so hard and so deeply because I have been lied to, though neither of them did the lying.

I was the one lying all along. And that is the most heartbreaking of it all.

Paul admonishes the Thessalonians to “aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you.”

I’m stuck on that today because I didn’t live quietly and I listened to the lies. But the lies were of my own making and they said something like this: You are big enough to handle the heartbreaking details of someone’s life all by yourself. You are big enough to have an opinion on lives that aren’t your own. You are big enough to discern truth from lies and from opinions and cries.

The truth is that I am not a part of the problem or the solution here; I am only a particle that floated to the top of his story, coated in the residue of her story. Just one small particle.

And if God did not give me the grace to handle this (at least without some amount of bellyaching), then it is probably best for me to simply bow out.

YOU, ME, and EVERYONE we know

Imagine with me a kingdom. A palace set on a hill with a town below littered with small homes of people—and a Troubadour making his way from Palace to People, back and forth. In the palace there are servants, kings, footmen, princes, cooks, and taste-testers; there are seamstresses, children, queens, and teachers. In the town there are servants, fathers, children, mothers, cooks, teachers, sellers, and tailors. And there is a troubadour making his way from Palace to People.

In the Palace everyone has a role and no one without a role is allowed in the door. There is a code of conduct within the castle walls and any outsiders are known, and all the insiders have things to say about them when their backs are turned.

Among the People outsiders are common and welcome, travelers pass through, sick people rest for a while, everyone earns his own way and they get there by the sweat of their brow. There is no protection out here and it is every man for himself. No one dares cross the threshold of the Palace.

And there is a Troubadour who goes from Palace to People to Palace to People.

From the People to the Palace he brings his stories, his lore, his songs, making melody from their harmony. He represents the town-people to the palace-people and they all clap their hands, their cheeks red with laughter and strong drink, they point and beg for more, more, more!

From the Palace to the People, he brings his secrets because who doesn't trust the ears of nearby troubadour? Plans and propositions fly mightily across the tables in the great hall when the wine flows freely and the kings toast in the presence of a mere entertainer.

The Troubadour never belongs in either place and carries with him the residue of both places, the People and the Palace. But kingdoms will rise and fall on the shoulders of this Troubadour, this ambassador, he who is never at home wherever he is, he who is just another person to the People and just another participant at the Palace.

Are you from the Palace or the People? Or are you a Troubadour, easily slipping in and out of both places effortlessly? There's no right or wrong answer here. I've just been thinking about cliques and culture and the people we trust to let in and the people we don't trust and, most of all, the people who purposefully don't fit anywhere.

ADOPTION as SONS

Once I climbed to the top of a Himalayan foothill to watch a sunrise over the Annapurna mountain range in Nepal. The sunrise was brilliant and beautiful, but what I couldn't take my eyes away from was a small girl and her brother who stood in front of their broken-down stone home at the top of that hill. I took her photo and she took my photo, black and white film. And then I put my hand on her head and asked God to give me babies of my own. They did not need to be babies made from love and knit in my womb—I asked Him for babies from other worlds and other hills, babies with black hair and black eyes. I asked Him to make me an adopter.

That was seven Augusts ago and I never knew it would take so long for Him to lend His ear to my cry.

I thought marriage would happen in between then and now.

I thought a baby or three would have been knit already within me.

I thought I would have been there and back so many times, bringing home babies without homes.

But sometimes God lends His ears to our cries and sometimes His answers are, "Not yet."

I have friends who struggle with their womb's inability to make, hold, and keep a baby inside them. I have sat across from them and I have heard their cries, the cry of a mother who feels less a mother because she has no child to mother. And I have felt that angst in me too. Singleness brings with it a form of barrenness, though we won't say that of course. We won't say that because only the married should expect to have progeny, seed.

Last night I think about God and I think about the groaning of creation to be with our Father. I think about how desperately my soul longs for heaven and God and all that is eternal. I think about my adoption into a kingdom like His. I stand in front of my broken down home and he puts His hand on my head and longs to bring me home.

I think about a father who has already adopted his children, but who is waiting to bring us home.

And I think about my Nepali girl and her broken-down stone home, my hand on her head, my ask to God. I thank Him that He has lent His ear, been near to the needy and brokenhearted, the orphan and barren. And I thank Him that what feels far off is a mere moment, a vapor, a breath to Him.

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 first-fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Romans 8.22-23

hey you

Hey listen, you. You hiding behind your litany of projects and your mountain of responsibility. You, with your put together persona and your perfect bouts of transparency. You, who reveals little to everyone but lets the world unveil herself to you because you are perceived as trustworthy and wise. You who picks up the burdens and carries them to the next rest stop. You who goes about your duties, shirking love and fearing commitment because it means you are needed and being needed is grounds for running away. Yeah you.

You’re the one I’m talking to.

And I’m saying this: you can’t hide.

You cannot hide.

Because you slip away, drive away, pull into a parking lot and put your head in your hands. You don’t cry because crying doesn’t help, but you sigh and you ask what’s wrong with you? Why is it so hard to be needed? Be wanted? Be loved? And how can you be those things and still feel like none of them?

You tell yourself the lies and then you tell yourself they’re lies and then you lie to yourself again and say it will be okay, that you’ll try harder next time, that you’ll say no next time, that you won’t feel the weight of the world next time.

But you do.

You stub your toe on the “too close, too long, too much” line and you back away slowly, desperate to grab your favorites parts of you back. You’re an introvert in an extrovert’s kingdom. You feel upside down because you’re called to decrease (which you like), but you’re also called to preach and make disciples and be discipled (which you don’t like). You feel inside out, like you’re walking around with your insides out and no one points and stares, they just expect it from you. They feel that they know the real you.

Here’s my heart, you say, it’s on my sleeve.

Here’s the only thing I have to say to you:

You cannot hide because I know where to find you, you’re always near me, like a second skin, like my own breath, my own heart. You’re like me.

And once, I was like you.

You cannot hide because I emptied myself for you, taking on your form, obeyed the sentence of death on my head, for you.

And you’re not beyond me. Trust me. You, with your litany of projects and mountains of responsibility: you still need me.

Falling APART

When I was in bible college I had a paperback bible, the cheap sort they give away in church seat-backs, the sort zealots cover with stickers identifying who they are apart from the words inside the book. My stickers were hiking destinations, a round REI one, a Life is Good stick figure standing on the side of a mountain. The truth was my bible was falling apart and the stickers were holding it together. The spine was all but gone and the pages were falling out in chunks, particularly in the New Testament. One of my professors took one look at it and quipped, "A Bible that's falling apart is a sign of a person who's not."

I swallowed the line that day.

I may have been in bible college but I was not a Christian. Not in the sense that I understood the Gospel was not self-help rhetoric, but a life-changing, redemptive way—the only way. This was before my brother died, before a group from the Bible college traveled 14 hours to my home for a funeral, and shared the gospel with me over broken bread and broken bodies on the eve of Easter. I had that bible with me that night, clutched it in hope there was hope out of this nightmare.

The church I found shortly after that Easter used the NASB translation and a teacher/professor/mentor there gifted me with my own leather-bound bible a few weeks before my 21st birthday.

But I never forgot what the first professor said about a bible that was falling apart.

And years later when my NASB was frayed and torn and falling apart and my life was too, I wanted to shake my fist at everything I thought to be true about faith, which was this: the harder you try, the better it will go for you.

It is ironic, then, that the person who gifted me with my current bible, a simple black leather-bound, was someone who had left the faith in a way. He'd wandered across the world and the United States for years, landing in our small college town for a few months, becoming my friend. We would talk for hours about faith and argue and he would frustrate me and I wanted to shake him so hard sometimes because it didn't even seem like he was trying.

It took someone who was falling apart to show me a bible that is falling apart is not the sign of someone who isn't. A bible that is falling apart might actually be a sign of someone who is trying to hold their world together.

I left my NASB back in New York when I moved here, in a trunk in a dusty attic, not forgotten, but not necessary to prove my worth anymore. I need it, though, for a class I'll be beginning soon and so my brother dug it out and is mailing it to me this week. He texted me a photo just to make sure it's the right one.

Holy. I said. Yes, it's the right one.

Holy is right, he said back.

Here is what I know about holiness: sometimes we bring rags before the King of Kings, rags because we have been torn and ravaged by life. And sometimes we bring rags before the King of Kings, rags because we have torn our own clothes, we have beaten our chests with candoitiveness and fortitude. We have shouted our worth and proved it by our piety. But in the end, it's rags we all bring before Him, falling apart lives, brokenness, emptiness, nothingness, and He breaks in, shouts our worth, and covers us with the finest robes, the signet ring.

And sometimes He does it in unlikely ways, through unlikely people, through people who are falling apart and a bible that isn't.

KILL your DARLINGS

It's humility that's got me down these days and I suppose that's not a bad place to be after all. I have no wish, desire, or need to draw any more attention to the recent happenings in the faith-blogosphere in internetdom. If you caught whiff of it, it was enough, and if you were in the unfortunate position of being a blogger yourself who is used to having people look at you for what to tweet and retweet next, well, even worse. I learned my lesson with KONY 2012—acts of division among the body are not my cup of tea, no matter what's in the water.

I sent a draft of a post of political nature to a blogger friend last week along with the question: should I post this? It wasn't the post itself, though, that made him warn me against posting it, but the subject: "People don't come to Sayable for this, they come for grace, for encouragement, and for the gospel." Or something along those lines. I deleted the draft and went on my merry way. In college a creative writing prof quoted William Faulkner in our class saying everyone needed to "learn to murder their darlings in their writing, and for pete's sake, Lore, would you quit murdering your darlings?" I've never been too married to my words.

But if there is one thing that these sort of hurricanes in the blogosphere teach me, it is that we maybe ought to perhaps at least divorce our darlings, sit down quietly, and let the Holy Spirit do what he does best—namely, to teach and guide his habitats into all truth (John 14).

So I've been thinking about humility this week, how low can we go, and all that.

John said, "He must increase, I must decrease." And Paul determined to "boast nothing but the cross." And I think we could learn a bit more from these apostolic fathers.

At the root of pride is the feeling that we have the corner on the market (or theology, or politic, or semantic), and the price of meat is just going to keep on rising. We feel, in error, that if we do not guard this piece of the pie with everything our mamas gave us, the whole world will go without pie. And what a pity that would be.

But the cross? The cross levels it. It somehow levels the misapplied doctrine, the faulty readings of scripture, and the sinner who can't stop sinning. We don't like to say this because we don't like to murder our darlings. We don't like to cross out the possibility that upon this doctrine He will build His church. But the truth is He's building His church and He's invited you and me to come along—pick up the bricks and slather the mortar. He's building it with or without us.

He's building it of people who know the only way to be first is to be last. He's building it of people who know the difference between close-handed and open-handed theologies. He's building it of people who will reach out to the least of these (even when the least of these thinks they're the greatest of these). He's building it of the little people, and dare I say, the little bloggers and tweeters and facebookers who think more than twice about stamping their feet, calling foul, and jumping on bandwagons, or defending their ilk with wit, sarcasm, and theology.

So maybe you didn't weigh in this week or maybe you never weigh in or maybe you were hanging laundry, shuffling littles, and clocking in at work this week and never caught a whiff of anything amiss. Whoever you are and wherever, He's building His church and He's looking for the lowly and humble to come along with Him.

He's looking for people willing to die on no mountain but the one on which cross stood tall and offered all: righteousness in Christ alone.

WHO is GOD?

The roads are pockmarked and uneven, my step is steady and forward. The sun is rising over the horizon in front of me and this past weekend's sermon sounds in my ears. The Holiness of God.

I have struggled for many years to understand the character of God. A misunderstanding of it ultimately led to a crossroads where I had to ask the question: am I saved at all? And I don't think that's too extreme. Some would say that He is a mystery, and I would agree, but for me to know Him at all the veil had to be torn in two, and He did that for me. He did that for me.

This morning I am reading Psalm 145 which is like flash fiction or the cliff notes for the story of God. His character there, splayed out on a quarter of a spread in my bible, mercy, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, enduring, gracious, greatness, righteousness, glorious. If ever I find myself waning on the character of God again (And I do. And often.), I can turn here and get inoculated for yet another slew of tiring, confusing, humble, failure-ridden days.

I don't have to be, because He is.

He already is, so I don't have to be.

And some, myself included, might argue that until they are flush in the face and full of can-do-itiveness. And some, myself included, will undeniably fall again, fall short of holiness, miss the mark, falter in faith, and try their best to make a mockery of God.

I ate dinner with a friend last night and as we stood by my car we talked about how God cannot be mocked. Paul said it to the Galatians and as much as I want to defend my faith against the cajolers and mockers of it, the truth is that left to my own devices, I make the greatest mockery of His name of anyone I know.

"It's why the cross." I think this morning, over Psalm 145 and my coffee. It's why the cross, I have to remind myself when I feel tired, confused, and ridden with failure. It's why holiness, perfect character, hung on a cross—so the veil could tear in two, so I could enter into His holiness with my wretchedness.

Are you struggling to believe His goodness today? I am. I'll tell you, I am. But here's something, friend, He knew that. At the end of Psalm 145, after David exholes the grandeur of God, he comforts the little people with this: The Lord is near to all those who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.

All I know some days is that He is all that I know to be truth and that's good enough for me. He is good. He is my good.

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COME to BE

I'm weary. Can I be honest?

I'm weary.

I'm tired as soon as I wake up in the morning and I'm tired long before I turn my light out at night. I'm tired of being and doing and having and knowing and I'm tired of being tired of those things.

In the past two years the gospel has felt oh, so near to me. It has been such a deep well to me and a rich source of joy for me. And, to be honest, I'm confused. I'm confused about why my heart feels so cold these days, so far from Jesus, and so indifferent to the Holy Spirit. He has and continues to abound with grace and goodness toward me, so why the weariness?

The truth is I don't know. I don't have an answer. I want to be spiritual and hope-filled and talk about the valleys of faith and how we have to experience the valley to find joy on the mountain or some other Christian-speak. But I have been doing this long enough to know knowing isn't enough.

So this is what I'm doing in my valley: I'm just being weary and I'm being okay with being weary.

There is one thing you can do in a valley you can't do on peaked mountaintop: you can walk a level path, a flat one, one made for the weary. And I'll take it. Today I'll take it.

I'm listening to Come to Me a lot these days.
(Written by our stellar worship team.)

Weary burdened wanderer
there is rest for thee
At the feet of Jesus
In His love so free

Listen to his message
Words of life, forever blessed
Oh thou heavy laden
Come to me, come and rest

There is freedom, taste and see
Hear the call, come to Me
Run into His arms of grace, 
Your burdens carried, He will take

Bring Him all thy burdens 
All thy guilt and sin
Mercy's door is open
Rise up and enter in

Jesus there is waiting
Patiently for thee
Hear him gently calling
Come oh, come to Me

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