I feel like it’s August 1939 in eastern Europe; pending doom is palpable. “Hitler's government envisioned a vast, new empire of "living space" (Lebensraum) in eastern Europe. The realization of German dominance in Europe, its leaders calculated, would require war.”(1) Control, force and manipulation were of primary dominance in Germany and what started with a dictatorial vision later became the devastation of so very many. (over 70 million casualties)
Our country, and world for that matter, seem to be on the brink of disaster; I’m terrified of our decisions. A Great Depression is almost imminent and I feel like the world we now know is about to change. Forever. I know people say this, crazy people… They prophesy doom and destruction that most ignore while others scoff. I don’t want to claim I have any word of God, I just have a sense…we’re living in the beginning of the end. Times are changing; the empire hangs on by a thread.
What the church does and does not do in these times may make all the difference. Oppression and poverty, even persecution of the faith has often led to an outpouring of Spirit and revival, an opening of heaven. Yet western Christians have no idea of what it means to suffer for the faith or to go through hard times. We don’t know war on our soil, calamity or true manifest evil. We’re not ready to deal with tribulation; we’re not equipped to overcome the dragon.
A war between two kingdoms is prophesied but we stand blind, in the middle of a mine field. We hear the cries of the destroyed all around but keep walking, ignorant to the destruction, passive in our defense. The Gospel is under attack; the enemy has breached the walls and the church is destroyed one piece at a time, from the inside, out.
I want to scream, to say “people get ready” but alas, my voice is over-powered by the masses. We sit idly by while germanic ranks steal our neighbors and rob us of justice. We do nothing and say nothing though something is what is required. Offering, of self and life and even freedom for the sake of Truth and the preservation of Justice, is the price to pay. Are we so self-focused and blind that we cannot see the shifting, the pending destruction, the eminent take-over? The end is coming; where does our security lie?
(1) wikepedia: WWII
Monday, February 23, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
A Co-existing Forgiveness
Someone recently asked me the age-old question. “Do you have to forgive in Christianity when the person who hurt you didn’t ask for it nor has changed? And if so, how?” I get this question a lot. It doesn’t surprise me. God has had to do a lot of work in me to get me to this point, this point being the knowledge and understanding that forgiveness is a choice. The act of it requires no one other than a broken and honest heart speaking to a Healing and Trustworthy God.
In moments where I’m speaking to a new believer or someone who has known God for a long time but has never had to walk through hard forgiveness, I start explaining the process of forgiveness by giving my “story.” In the end, I simply say that instead of my bitterness and hatred affecting that rapist or that molester or that mean lady, it affected me. Down in my core, in my center, the place Spirit and blood reside, it affected me. It turned fluid to stone and movement into knots. Bitterness destroys. Un-forgiveness kills. Its roots touch hell.
If I’ve told my story once I’ve told it one thousand times. It’s not that mine is more effective but personal testimony, I’ve found, moves mountains. It gives the pain worth. And I quite literally believe that Scripture passage in Revelations which states that we will overcome the Enemy by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. I like to say, whenever I get the chance, that in this…in THIS area of chosen forgiveness, Jesus works! The way of the cross makes sense. It really is the best way to live, as Rob Bell put it.
After I share my story and encourage forgiveness, the conversation often shifts and I realize something. Most people, people who aren’t dealing with childhood wounds or serious past offenses, are really just asking the question, how do I deal with a person in my life when I find them offensive to my heart and abusive to my soul? How do I copy with a relationship I’m forced to be involved in (in-laws, co-workers, leadership, etc…) when it’s literal emotional torture to be around them?
It turns out, in most cases lately, that people are really just asking how to co-exist. It’s interesting that the question would originate with forgiveness though. As much as I believe forgiveness is a huge issue in our would and in our faith communities, knowing how to deal with difficult people is even greater. The questions abound, boundaries vs. confrontation vs. intentionality vs. co-existence. At what point can you “wipe the dust off?” At what point is “speaking the truth in love” imperative?
It’s my opinion that there are different forms of forgiveness. Going back and re-hashing a painful memory and forgiving the person involved is one form. That’s the form I’m most familiar with. But the other form is trickier because it involves a daily surrender of will and emotions – a constant surrender of self. Walking forgiveness, as I like to call it, is hard. Plain and simple. It’s the stuff “take up the cross and follow me” is made of. Only Jesus Himself was fully capable.
Over the next few days I’m going to make this a prayer focus. I’m going to journal about what this means practically and spiritually in order to give myself, and others if they’re interested, clarity and calm amidst their difficult relational moments.
In moments where I’m speaking to a new believer or someone who has known God for a long time but has never had to walk through hard forgiveness, I start explaining the process of forgiveness by giving my “story.” In the end, I simply say that instead of my bitterness and hatred affecting that rapist or that molester or that mean lady, it affected me. Down in my core, in my center, the place Spirit and blood reside, it affected me. It turned fluid to stone and movement into knots. Bitterness destroys. Un-forgiveness kills. Its roots touch hell.
If I’ve told my story once I’ve told it one thousand times. It’s not that mine is more effective but personal testimony, I’ve found, moves mountains. It gives the pain worth. And I quite literally believe that Scripture passage in Revelations which states that we will overcome the Enemy by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. I like to say, whenever I get the chance, that in this…in THIS area of chosen forgiveness, Jesus works! The way of the cross makes sense. It really is the best way to live, as Rob Bell put it.
After I share my story and encourage forgiveness, the conversation often shifts and I realize something. Most people, people who aren’t dealing with childhood wounds or serious past offenses, are really just asking the question, how do I deal with a person in my life when I find them offensive to my heart and abusive to my soul? How do I copy with a relationship I’m forced to be involved in (in-laws, co-workers, leadership, etc…) when it’s literal emotional torture to be around them?
It turns out, in most cases lately, that people are really just asking how to co-exist. It’s interesting that the question would originate with forgiveness though. As much as I believe forgiveness is a huge issue in our would and in our faith communities, knowing how to deal with difficult people is even greater. The questions abound, boundaries vs. confrontation vs. intentionality vs. co-existence. At what point can you “wipe the dust off?” At what point is “speaking the truth in love” imperative?
It’s my opinion that there are different forms of forgiveness. Going back and re-hashing a painful memory and forgiving the person involved is one form. That’s the form I’m most familiar with. But the other form is trickier because it involves a daily surrender of will and emotions – a constant surrender of self. Walking forgiveness, as I like to call it, is hard. Plain and simple. It’s the stuff “take up the cross and follow me” is made of. Only Jesus Himself was fully capable.
Over the next few days I’m going to make this a prayer focus. I’m going to journal about what this means practically and spiritually in order to give myself, and others if they’re interested, clarity and calm amidst their difficult relational moments.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Nothing New Under the Sun
Yesterday I wrote out some questions, questions of God and the church. Questions that may make me seem jaded and doubting and distant from God. As I wrote and dissected the pattern of my thoughts, I walked down a trail of reason that left me feeling fulfilled actually, validated almost, like I had found some secret treasure and was on the right path.
A few hours later I read a chapter from Rob Bell’s book, “Velvet Elvis,” and was bombarded by the same type of general thought and questions and reasoning as I had discovered previously in my personal time, that very day.
This has happened time and time again and it bothers me. It happened countless times while reading Blue Like Jazz, as well as Sex, Sushi and Salvation. It happened while watching The Changing Faces of Worship.
I’m not saying I have any brilliant thoughts or even profound new ideas but am frustrated when I realize that it seems I am two years behind the fore-runner ideas and patterns in post-millennium, ground breaking Christian thought.
Then I started thinking about Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, how it must have seemed pointless to write and create for a while after their brilliance was spread all over the world. But people did, eventually. They had fresh and changed views on faith and God and life and love and fantasy and worlds. People started to process again and eventually new-ish threads of faith and outlook and styles and vision were birthed and created.
And I thought about Augustine’s Confessions. Way back in 397, a great man created Emo. It’s been evolving ever since, the outpouring of flesh and spirit, and the confessions of struggling humanity. We know it now as a genre of music put to guitars and keys but back then, it was revolutionary. (actually, it took a while for it to be considered a classic, obviously, but still…you get the point)
I don’t even know what I’m rambling on about now but I guess I was just taken aback by how real and clear the “nothing new under the sun” verse spoke to me last night.
*big sigh*
I told my husband these things in bed, right before we went to sleep. My last sentence was, “I don’t want to do the ordinary or the two years behind the super revolutionary and have un-original thought. I want to be radical and ground-breaking. I don’t want to do good, I want to be good.”
I awoke much later to a very real dream, of my life. Something uneventful; just me being me. I wish I had been flying but instead I was talking. So ordinary.
A few hours later I read a chapter from Rob Bell’s book, “Velvet Elvis,” and was bombarded by the same type of general thought and questions and reasoning as I had discovered previously in my personal time, that very day.
This has happened time and time again and it bothers me. It happened countless times while reading Blue Like Jazz, as well as Sex, Sushi and Salvation. It happened while watching The Changing Faces of Worship.
I’m not saying I have any brilliant thoughts or even profound new ideas but am frustrated when I realize that it seems I am two years behind the fore-runner ideas and patterns in post-millennium, ground breaking Christian thought.
Then I started thinking about Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, how it must have seemed pointless to write and create for a while after their brilliance was spread all over the world. But people did, eventually. They had fresh and changed views on faith and God and life and love and fantasy and worlds. People started to process again and eventually new-ish threads of faith and outlook and styles and vision were birthed and created.
And I thought about Augustine’s Confessions. Way back in 397, a great man created Emo. It’s been evolving ever since, the outpouring of flesh and spirit, and the confessions of struggling humanity. We know it now as a genre of music put to guitars and keys but back then, it was revolutionary. (actually, it took a while for it to be considered a classic, obviously, but still…you get the point)
I don’t even know what I’m rambling on about now but I guess I was just taken aback by how real and clear the “nothing new under the sun” verse spoke to me last night.
*big sigh*
I told my husband these things in bed, right before we went to sleep. My last sentence was, “I don’t want to do the ordinary or the two years behind the super revolutionary and have un-original thought. I want to be radical and ground-breaking. I don’t want to do good, I want to be good.”
I awoke much later to a very real dream, of my life. Something uneventful; just me being me. I wish I had been flying but instead I was talking. So ordinary.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Great Wall
I listen to music. Every day, I sit and listen to different kinds of music - worship, rock, pop, even some ghetto rap. (What can I say; I get bored easily so I have to mix it up!) In our new home, if you sit in the living room and turn out the lights at night, look up and out our window, you can see an ornate roman cross sitting on a Catholic Church steeple, gleaming over the city streets. It stands tall, high above the dirt and the filth and the sin and the pain that limps around the streets of the north side, the place we call home. When I’m in prayer or worship, I find myself staring at it in wonder and fear, from the corner of my couch. I turn out the lights to watch it glisten, as if somehow, Jesus is there.
It’s funny, I don’t believe in idols. I don’t believe in making images to capture and solidify God or any aspect of the Triune Majesty I worship. Yet, this cross has come to, in some ways, be my golden calf. When I’m asking for wisdom or a sign to help me make decisions, I’ve found myself staring at this distant and highly held cross and wondering if Jesus hears me.
Tori Amos sings a song called “China.” It’s one of those beautiful chilling songs full of double meaning and intricate depth. Tori is always good for that. Part of the chorus says, “Sometimes, I think you want me to touch you. But how can I, when you build The Great Wall around you? ooohh, China…”
I was listening to this beautiful song during a darker moment a few weeks back and had this thought while staring at my window cross: what if God, in all of His glory and holiness, stands like that cross - high above the harlotry of humanity, protected by The Great Wall called the institutional church? True to Tori’s song, I do feel Him asking humanity to touch Him and to taste Him and to intimately know Him. He calls out, from the cross and from the streets even, Emmanuel, God with us. And yet, somehow, so many of us have lost the ability to find Him. All of a sudden, as I get closer and closer to the core of the church, I sense the looming Great Wall, a tremendous divide.
Something in the church, something about staring at that distant highly held cross, puts me outside the intimate place. While I know He is a relationship and not a religion, I stumble on the idea that to find Him and really know Him, the hoops and the hype of church are required to hurdle in order to be in the center of His will.
All of this, in darker moments, makes me wonder if I want to be part of any of it; the massive historic and deeply rigid walls the church has built that keep people in as well as keep people out. The rules, the hierarchy, the struggle for power and position and placement, the marketing of salvation and faith – Red China, The Great Wall, unbending. It’s hard sometimes to see, where He ends and His church begins. Something about The Great Wall blurs my vision and I’m left to really think through what it means to know my Savior inside and outside that wall.
Is He who He says He is, or is He what is demonstrated? Intimate or distant? Is He protected behind a wall of rules and reason and distance or is He a mystery and a relationship? These are the questions that pop circles around my head and my heart; after all, I’m part of the “jaded generation.” Regardless of personal belief and faith, I’m duty-bound to ask the questions.
And I am asking, limping and broken and unsure, I stare at the distant cross, feel The Great Wall, and pray with all feebleness and honesty that Jesus move and breathe outside the walls, away from the lofty steeples and glistening untouched crosses, to find me… in the dirty streets. To find us… who move in and out of China.
It’s funny, I don’t believe in idols. I don’t believe in making images to capture and solidify God or any aspect of the Triune Majesty I worship. Yet, this cross has come to, in some ways, be my golden calf. When I’m asking for wisdom or a sign to help me make decisions, I’ve found myself staring at this distant and highly held cross and wondering if Jesus hears me.
Tori Amos sings a song called “China.” It’s one of those beautiful chilling songs full of double meaning and intricate depth. Tori is always good for that. Part of the chorus says, “Sometimes, I think you want me to touch you. But how can I, when you build The Great Wall around you? ooohh, China…”
I was listening to this beautiful song during a darker moment a few weeks back and had this thought while staring at my window cross: what if God, in all of His glory and holiness, stands like that cross - high above the harlotry of humanity, protected by The Great Wall called the institutional church? True to Tori’s song, I do feel Him asking humanity to touch Him and to taste Him and to intimately know Him. He calls out, from the cross and from the streets even, Emmanuel, God with us. And yet, somehow, so many of us have lost the ability to find Him. All of a sudden, as I get closer and closer to the core of the church, I sense the looming Great Wall, a tremendous divide.
Something in the church, something about staring at that distant highly held cross, puts me outside the intimate place. While I know He is a relationship and not a religion, I stumble on the idea that to find Him and really know Him, the hoops and the hype of church are required to hurdle in order to be in the center of His will.
All of this, in darker moments, makes me wonder if I want to be part of any of it; the massive historic and deeply rigid walls the church has built that keep people in as well as keep people out. The rules, the hierarchy, the struggle for power and position and placement, the marketing of salvation and faith – Red China, The Great Wall, unbending. It’s hard sometimes to see, where He ends and His church begins. Something about The Great Wall blurs my vision and I’m left to really think through what it means to know my Savior inside and outside that wall.
Is He who He says He is, or is He what is demonstrated? Intimate or distant? Is He protected behind a wall of rules and reason and distance or is He a mystery and a relationship? These are the questions that pop circles around my head and my heart; after all, I’m part of the “jaded generation.” Regardless of personal belief and faith, I’m duty-bound to ask the questions.
And I am asking, limping and broken and unsure, I stare at the distant cross, feel The Great Wall, and pray with all feebleness and honesty that Jesus move and breathe outside the walls, away from the lofty steeples and glistening untouched crosses, to find me… in the dirty streets. To find us… who move in and out of China.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
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