Found

Good Friday is special for Christians everywhere.  We remember the last day and death of Jesus, who trusted the Father so completely to go to the cross to save humans from the tyranny of sin, death, and evil.  We also remember that is was love that kept His focus on what had to be done; love that took Him to that cross and to death.

Good Friday is also special for me.  It is the day that Jesus found me....

I am not sure what happened that night in 1987.  I went into the building at the invitation of a friend and I left having fallen deeply in love with a Man who would change my life.  I thought I had come to watch the play, so elaborately set up on stage.  But really, I was to encounter the drama not as a spectator, but as a participant.

It was Good Friday.  I was a sophomore in high school struggling with teenage angst - friendships, purpose in life, where I fit in this world.   I was not particularly religious.  After all, I was raised in Canada, a country known for its multiculturalism not its Christianity.   I received the invitation from my friend to attend an Easter Musical and since I believed it was good to go to church a couple times a year, the Easter season seemed like a good fit for that (Christmas being the other one!).  I went with her expecting to see the story of Jesus’ last few days of life and his supposed raising from the dead.  We would watch quietly, then clap for all the actors and go home.

That plan of mine was well on its way to being carried out when that Jesus character, having had that Last-Supper-thing with his guys, wandered into a garden to pray.  As all his friends fell asleep around Him, he began to talk to this invisible God.  Here is what I heard the actor on stage say that evening:  “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah….Father, I am praying not only for them (the snoozing friends), but also for those who will believe in me through them...blah, blah, blah, blah…..Father, I want those you gave me to be with me, right where I am….so that your love for me might be in them...blah, blah, blah, blah.”

I am pretty sure I did not hear anymore of anything from that point on.  I am sure the Judas-actor came and betrayed Jesus with a kiss. I am sure Jesus was nailed to the cross and then rose again.  I am sure the pastor came up front to recap all we had just seen and to give us an “invitation” to believe in Jesus.  

But for me, the whole universe stopped on that solitary figure, agonizing in prayer in a garden.  All I knew was that I was no longer just watching a play about Jesus.  My heart was breached and as it ruptured, the floodgates sent out such a torrent, I found myself trying to tread water in a raging storm of affection.  All I knew was that in an instant is that Jesus had found me and I had fallen in love with that Man.  

His prayer was the only invitation I needed.  Like a person sinking in raging waters, I wanted to reach out and grab him. I wanted his life to be in me and my life to be in him.  And I knew nothing else - I didn’t know the right things to believe, I didn’t even know I was a sinner - all I knew was that love compelled me to want Him.

Thus began my journey with this Jesus.  I have learned many things since that beginning day of our romance - lots of facts, lots of doctrines, lots of religious opinions - but my journey began deeply rooted and grounded in this thing called love. By love, He found me...by love, He opened my heart...by love, allowed me to grab hold of Him...by love, He has never left me these 28 years. By love, I am absolutely sure of all these things.

I am so grateful for two Fridays in history!

The Symphony of the Temptation

Traditionally, a symphony is written in four movements, each a distinct section in and of itself, but also part of a larger whole.  Beginning movements are great vehicles for development through the entire work of art.  Themes and variations, like carefully hung Christmas tree ornaments, can be heard throughout the full piece.  

So has been my journey with the story of The Temptation of Jesus.  A Masterful Composer has brought me back to this account many, many times. The key of the story has never changed, but He’s introduced contrasting styles, interlinking melodies, harmonies, dynamics and rhythm alterations.

Movement 1: Sola Scriptura

As a young believer, I was taught this account was all about scripture. In his temptation, Jesus answered with quotes from the scriptures and that was the point of the story.  It was about combating lies with truth.  It was about answers, fixing the problem, and Jesus being an example of how I was to live.  This movement of the symphony was very geometric, formulaic, and easy enough to understand.

Movement 2: A New Human

As years went on and my faith suitcase was shaken up a little, a new variation emerged from this supposed mathematical story.  In the temptation, Jesus, the Messiah, was being the Israel that Israel had failed to be.  The temptations of hunger, testing God, and who to worship were ones that Israel, as God’s chosen people, had failed in the desert.  Here, however, Jesus was, in one sense, re-writing the story.  He would be the truly human one - the one who really acted like God’s chosen.  He used scripture not just because it was a confrontation between truth and lies, but because he was pulling the ancient story of the Israelites in the desert into the present and saying, “This is how it was supposed to be done”.  His actions and response gave credibility to his call of “Follow Me”.

Movement 3: Solidarity

The symphony slows down at this point, almost to a funeral dirge.  The overtones turn dark and haunting as the Wilderness became my habitation, not just words I read on the pages of my Bible.  Jesus being led into the wilderness by the Spirit, his extreme hunger, his aloneness, were becoming my experience too.  I knew the picture of Jesus sitting alone on the dark, jagged rocks of the wilderness.  I knew weakness and a great weight bearing down on my shoulders that threatened to crush me.  My life became part of the symphony and I felt, perhaps for the first time, a wholly human Jesus.  He chose solidarity with humanity!  As my life and the story were woven together in the adagio (slow music), it became clear that Jesus was with me (and I with him) in the wilderness.  The oh-so-human experience of temptation was breached, not by an army but by a God who chose to experience it himself.

Briton Riviere, The Temptation in the Wilderness

Movement 4: The Way

Much to my embarrassment,  I think I’ve always been cynical of whether or not Jesus actually was tempted in all the ways I am...until the fourth movement of the symphony.  While the specifics of the tempting offers were important for the music of earlier movements, these now gave way to the greatest temptation in all of it.  When faced with the choice between wanting legitimate pleasures in life and intimacy with the Father, Jesus chooses the Father.  The crescendo of the symphony is Jesus singing (between the lines), “I’d rather have the Father and nothing else than everything without Him.” (quoting Larry Crabb).  That is the root of my temptation too.  Do I want the Father more than I want anything else I desire, and will I chose to stay close to Him?  Jesus not only sympathizes with my temptation because he’s experienced it, but he says to me that I can do what he did.  Because I follow him and his Spirit is alive in me, my greatest desire can be (is) the Father and I can choose Him even when hard pressed.

Photo by Jennifer Kitson

Thank you for the symphony, Lord!  One movement does not have to be thrown out or negated, but rather in the hands of a Master Composer, each piece takes its rightful place, adding to the beauty of the whole.  Though I am stubbornly impatient, I am so grateful for the years it took to fashion this beautiful symphony.  You were in each movement...and I am sure you will be in the ones I cannot yet foresee too!

On the Edge of Ashes

Last year's Hosanna's have gone.  Palm branches have been burned and what is left resides in a small container no larger than my hand.  The ashes, the dark, smudgy ashes are ready for marking.  But what do they mark, really?  What do they remind us of?  Why do so many in the world chose to have this mark imposed on them?

DIRT

These sooty ashes are applied with the words "You are dust and to dust you will return", and so they remind us of our earthiness.  They speak of our mortality, for we shall return to dust, but they also remind us of our humanity.  They whisper the ancient story of a God who fashions creatures out of soil.  These ashes remind us of our beginnings and endings, ans so teach us to number well our days.

LIVE

Yes, they may remind us that someday we may die, but they shout at us to live!  To live, not in sin, but in new life.  To not get stuck but to walk toward something (or Someone) with new practices.  These ashes beg us to live by letting go...or taking up some new action.  They cheer us on to life - not half-lived in mediocrity, but toward rigor, challenge, and a robust faith.

REPENTANCE

Ashes have long been a symbol for sorrow and grief.  These ashes remind us to take inventory of our lives, and in the ensuing sorrow, lead us to repentance.  The cross of ashes whispers what many in our world do not know:  there is freedom in serving only one Master.  Repentance becomes the door to transformation.

TRANSFORMATION

The ashes declare that transformation is possible, and we do not go it alone.  Through the renewing of our minds, through allowing God to change our psyche, a new person can emerge.  We are not left to ourselves in a fatalistic universe.  God has intervened and we can become new creatures!

PRAYER

The ashes also offer us an invitation to come and follow Jesus into the wilderness.  They invite us to fast and pray for 40 days.  Jesus, the Master, dis it and we are to follow Him.  These cinders invite us into a new kind of humanity that we find in Jesus.  A humanity who chooses the Father and His will over and above the screeching temptations of "take care of yourself", "prove yourself", and "indulge yourself with power".

Coming to the edge of ashes takes courage.  Will we allow them not to just mark our foreheads but our whole being as well?  Will we let them do their full 40-day work, even long after we've rubbed off their smudges?

"Oh God, let something essential happen to me, something more than interesting or entertaining or thoughtful.
Oh God let something essential happen to me, something awesome, something real.  Speak to my condition, Lord, and change me somewhere inside where it matters.
Let something happen which is my real self, Oh God."     (Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace)

Desire

Is our desire in the redemption of circumstance?  

Is our trust in a resurrection of well-being?

Desires drive us, and so at the turn of a year, a good question to ask is, "what do we most desire?"  Is it our greatest ambition to see all the parts of our life work?  Do we most yearn for a positive change in our circumstances?  Do we thirst most for a healing somewhere deep in ourselves?  A wholeness that makes us feel put together?  Or do we desire a Person?  Do we really want God Himself - to know Him, and love Him above all else?  To know His beauty, His kingship, Him as Lover?

Desiring the Person may actually satisfy our appetite for the first two but in ways unexpected as we abandon ourselves to Him.  Making the first two our central aims will take us down paths of "never enough" and keep us grabbing all we can for ourselves.  We would do well to pay attention to what we are chasing after. We can make it look "spiritual", but it may keep us frenzied, easily satisfied, and turned in on ourselves.

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”  - CS Lewis

Grace Through Confession

A fearful question arose in me the other day...do I use the word "grace" as a coverall for those things in my life my don't really want to  deal with?

How much am I like our original ancestors, Adam and Eve, who when caught in sin, hide?  And then not only hide, but sew together some sort of leafy makeshift clothing to cover my shame...but then try to downplay it by calling upon something known as grace?  I wonder if I want a god who sees my fig leaf attire and who will chuckle at my wayward ways.  I wonder if I want him to say, "Ah, humans will be humans!", wink at what a scoundrel I am, and send me on my merry way.

But instead, I know a God who walks among us, asking me (like He did to Adam and Eve), "Where are you?" When I explain my fig leaf covering to him, he names it for what it really is...stinkweed.  He exposes the reality of my vestments made from noxiously scented plants and calls it sin.

So often - out of protection or fear, or shame - I Christianly package that deep sin.  Psalm 4 haunts me by asking, "how long will you love what is worthless and aim at deception?"  That is the sin planted so deep in me.  I cling for life - I love - worthless things....self-protection, self love, self cultivation.  But 1 John tells me:

If we claim we are free from sin, we're only fooling ourselves.  A claim like that is errant nonsense.  On the other hand, if we admit our sins - make a clean breast of them - He  {God} won't let us down.  He'll be true to himself.  He'll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing.

God says these things to me because He knows something I often forget.  I want to hide and claim a fuzzy, tolerant concept of grace, but so often....

Grace comes through confession.

It is the difficult way, but any other way is misnamed.  Grace can come as I am exposed for who I am - a lover of worthlessness, liar, "little sin" person, or part of a tribe skilled at packaging my behavior with a "Jesus" label to make it OK.

My little sins are actually big.  "Continuing grudges. Competition for recognition.  Power plays in work gatherings and board meetings. Weariness in well-doing that excuses laziness and justifies my insistence that others notice me.  Ten-second peeks at pornography.  A few minutes of "harmless" fantasies before I go to sleep.  Materialism hidden beneath gratitude to God for good income.  Resentment at my spouse for not coming through for me.  A commitment never to hurt again like that.  The resolve to be in control of how my kids turn out.  Too much television that helps me pretend I'm not lonely." (quoted: Larry Crabb)

And all that must be confessed.  I must admit what God already knows; I am invited to agree with His vision of reality.  And He - the One who could rightfully accuse - chooses forgiveness and even cleanses me of the deep sin that would destroy me.  That is grace!

It is this continual confession that allows me to know grace, not by covering myself with some renamed leaves of self-protection.  While I might want a god who says to us, "It's OK.  I understand", I actually have a grace-full God who says, "It's not OK and I understand your condition far deeper than you know.  I love you so much but your sin is killing you.  It needs to be exposed, confessed, forgiven and you need to be cleansed.  Only I can do that for you.  Only then will you know real grace"

Hi Daddy!!

Where did you learn the Lord's Prayer?  From years of standing and reciting in unison with a gathering of people?  From a Sunday school teacher?  From a good-hearted grandmother who gave you a thick children's bible full of stories?  Maybe you inadvertently learned it from the bible-as-literature class you were required to take in college?  Though I've known the words of this prayer for years, I learned it afresh this summer from a 4 year old redhead with special needs.

On a recent service project trip with our church, I found myself living with 17 other people for a week.  We had meals together, and had to share common spaces in the home we were staying at.  People of all ages were on the trip and the family of belonging to the little redhead was among them.

Their room was at the top of two flights of steps, causing them to have to descend the staircase to get to any common gathering rooms.  As it usually happened, the adults arose before little ones and would be enjoying strong cups of Dominican coffee before we would hear little feet moving on the ceiling about us.  Without exception, as those footsteps came down the stairs and turned the corner on the landing, giving them full view of the living room, the owner of those little feet would see a man sitting at the table and exclaim in a slightly surprised and fully delighted voice, "Hi, Daddy!!!"

Eager to greet this figure she has seen hundreds upon hundreds of times, she would run over and clutch his legs, hugging them until he bent down and gathered her into his arms for well-placed Daddy kisses.

This activity happened over and over again, not only every morning, but anytime she would see her dad from a distance.  Each time her surprise and delight was palpable.  She never grew tired of seeing him and greeting him.  She was always a little amazed to find him in her line of sight as she came around a corner.  Usually, she had no request for him other than to gain his smiling attention and the occasional opportunity to be lifted into his arms to see life from a new perspective.  And when she did have a request for him, it was mostly to share some sort of snack he was enjoying.

She is a child of few words, for that type of processing is a hurdle she is having to climb in her life, but she is a keen observer of life.  Her little eyes see things grown up eyes move too swiftly over.  There is a sweet simplicity about the items she gives her attention to - a bus, her well-loved stuffed animal, trying to fit new marraccas  into her pockets, and of course, her daddy.

Each time I heard the sing-song cadence of "Hi, Daddy!!" from her mouth, I had to grin and my heart was invited to awaken to a new reality.  I saw in her the picture of who I am to be and how I could approach God in the Lord's Prayer.  So much more than a formal system for asking God for stuff, it is the surprising delight of finding a Father already waiting for me and my invitation to greet Him with a "Hi, Daddy!!"

The Lord's Prayer gives me, when I too find words difficult to form, something to focus on.  Simple things - sustenance for the day, forgiveness, keeping my feet our of places they should not be - and trust in a Father who enjoys me sitting with Him.  This little redhead reminded me that to ask to be lifted into Daddy's arms gives a better perspective of the lay of the land.  So too with the first part of the prayer.  As I recite those words, it is an asking to see the world from His height and in His arms.

Here is how she taught me to pray....

Hi, Daddy!!!  You are so important                        Our Father, who art in heaven
to me and I'm so glad to find you here.                    Hallowed be Thy name

Will You lift me into Your arms so I                        Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
can see from where You are, not from                     On earth as it is in heaven
my perspective way down here.

Do You have any snacks in Your                            Give us this day our daily bread
pocket, because I am hungry.

I'm sorry when I do something wrong                      Forgive us our sins as we forgive
and please help me to forgive my                             those who sin against us.
brother when he is mean to me.

Will You pick me up when I am in                           Lead us not into temptation but
danger?  And put me in safe places?                        deliver us from evil

I love you, Daddy!                                                  For Yours is the kingdom, the
                                                                               power and the glory!

Obviously this is not a straight across translation, but for me, it is a new way to approach the praying of the Lord's Prayer.

Thank you, little redhead!!  I want to be like you and each morning want the first words out of my mouth to be, "Hi, Daddy!!"

Soup

Does a caterpillar know her destiny from the beginning?  Does she know the life she is born into will be shortened by an event that will both bind her and transform her at the same time?  For my part, I don't think the fuzzy creature has a clue.  If she did, she could not move in the world as a caterpillar.  Instead, she would be paralyzed by fear of what must come and she would vainly fight against inevitability.

Instead, the caterpillar goes about her caterpillar life.  She walks, learns to protect herself from predators and voraciously devours any plant life put in front of her.  And she grows - almost exponentially.  Driven by her eating habits, she consumes and consumes and swells larger, more voluminous by the day.  Preoccupied with eating and growing, what that caterpillar doesn't know is that just below the surface of her skin, there are thin, fragile structures forming.  Unaware of their existence, this anatomy resembling wings, antennae, and long legs remains dormant until their use will become necessity to her.  She, like any member of the animal kingdom, simply goes about her day learning - capturing experiences in her memory.  These recollections, so vital to her survival, embed themselves in her brain and form her reactions, decisions and her movements.  They fashion her story.

At some point, the eating, growing life of the caterpillar stops.  Does she choose it?  Does it "happen" to her?  Is there some biological countdown clock that, like a timer on a bomb, once it reaches zero, causes a cataclysmic, cascading chain of events?  I am not sure anyone can even answer those questions, but what we know for sure is, the caterpillar enters darkness.  A chrysalis is formed around her and great opaque doors clang shut - closing out light and life as she knew it.

Then, the waiting begins.

It was once thought the caterpillar completely died inside the chrysalis, or that she underwent a slow, gradual metamorphasis.  If the chrysalis was cut open during the process, so the logic went, we would find a half caterpillar, half butterfly mutation.  This however, is not the case.  Those useless structures the caterpillar hid unknowingly just beneath her skin roll up and hide against the side of the dark chrysalis cave.  And then rest of the caterpillar turns to soup.

Her body, her legs, her eyes, her everything...liquefies and the caterpillar ceases to be.  She dissolves.  And now, she must wait.  She must exist as soup...though all the DNA to form a butterfly floats about in the amalgamation.

Evidently, soup needs time.  Any sense of solid form must be abandoned and forgotten.  Is the transforming creature grateful for that chrysalis?  It causes the liquefying and promises only darkness, but at least provides a container - walls so the liquid doesn't spill out into nothingness.  This torture chamber at least holds the soupy mess together.

How long the soup lasts is unknown.  Perhaps some biological, cosmic clock begins another countdown.  Something begins to be formed inside the darkness.  The wing pieces, the antennae, and long legs, once useless, join the new creature and become an integral part of her new identity.  And, the funny thing is, it seems some of the memories and experiences from her former life make it through the soup too.  Yes, the caterpillar dissolved, but small pieces of her survived and are embedded in the body and mind of this new winged creature.

And so the butterfly emerges.  She is completely different from what she was , yet still carries pieces of who she used to be inside her.

The caterpillar's story is mine too.  I spent many years happy - devouring "food" in my local church.  I ate and ate...and grew and grew, until one day, the cosmic countdown reached zero.  Through a chain of events and a deeply felt betrayal, God built me a chrysalis and shoved me in.  In that dark place, I dissolved, turned to soup and waited.  

That place was both friend and foe.  It bound me, undid me, dissolved everything I thought I was.  So many times the squeezing of the walls was too tight, but it was the only solid sense of anything I had.  That dark chrysalis, as much as I hated it, was, at times, my only sense of God.  In the darkness, I floated with no concept of any direction.  I lost all labels.  I entered a churning confusion and anger that lasted years.

However, somewhere in the midst of the liquefied state, transformation was underway.  So minute, it could never be quantified.  The great Creator was doing what He always does - stringing amino acids into proteins into chains of DNA and creating new life out of soup.  Old memories were woven into new creation and useless structures of the past were now prominent, vital pieces of who I was to be.

At some point, the dark soup gives way to solidity and color, but it all happens in darkness.  The coming butterfly never sees the forming beauty.  All she knows is the tight dark hold of the chrysalis.

And so, I am learning to live again, transformed and new, yet carrying old memory.  I who once crawled am now called to fly.  She who endured darkness for years is invited into the light once more.  And my soul finds trepidation in it all.