A Little Help

I stood on the street corner and held the sign.

"A little help" is what it read.

I stood there embarrassed as cars waited at the stoplight.  I looked down at the cardboard sign so I didn't have to make eye contact.  First two cars stopped, then three, and still two more added to their number before the light gave reprieve.  Panic set in.  What would I actually do if someone gave me money?  Would I graciously, humbly take it?  Or would I decline their offer and explain I was only part of an experiment?

I stood on street corner and held the sign.

It was an object lesson - an education in empathy - of what our homeless friends feel everyday.  Vulnerable, needing the help of another, shame, poverty...out of options except to stand with a sign.

For the upwardly mobile woman, being out of options is akin to hell.  I like change.  I need a way of escape when faced with discomfort.  Options are tokens I collect on my shelf and run to cash in when I've grown tired of adversity.  But the woman who holds the sign while her stomach grumbles, well, she has no currency to spend in this choice-grabbing economy.

I stood on the street corner and held the sign.

The lesson was learned.  Jesus should have known that.  Until He showed up the next morning....

Wrestling with the Sermon on the Mount, anger and two, recent wound-causing relationships should have been enough for Him, right?  I just wanted Him to give me compassion and some options.  He gave me neither.  Instead, He handed me the sign.

"You have not murdered anyone...but you are angry with them.  In my book, that is the same thing.  The attitude of your heart that justifies your anger is the same that would allow you to murder them.  No options.  Oh, and Tara...blessed are the poor in spirit."

I stood confused in my living room and held the sign.

Now, I figured I had a pretty good working, commentary definition of poor in spirit but I never really had to actually live it.  Up to this point, the upwardly-mobile-Christian in me had been pretty good at seeing options and seizing opportunities.  As the anger in my heart seethed at the offenses endured, I turned to my option trophy case only to find the shelves of selection were bare.....except for a ripped cardboard sign that read "A Little Help", and the echo of a Voice that reminded me "you're blessed when you are at the end of your rope.  When you acknowledge the poverty of your heart, only then are you able to receive a little help from Me. "

I stood before Jesus and held the sign.

Eyes downcast, ashamed at my failure, how could I make eye contact with Him when I couldn't even make eye contact with those drivers the day before?  That was an experiment; a little play acting.  This was not.  I had options yesterday.  I had none now.  The poor - and the poor in spirit - know this.  They know the meaning of poverty.  They know their lives depend on "a little help" (or a lot!!)

I stand before Jesus and hold my sign.

"A little help" is what it reads.

I am still angry, still struggling, but still with no choices - needing "a little help".   All options are gone because my heart is the problem.  It is poor and bankrupt. 

 And there are no options for the heart - save One.

Was Jesus "Biblical"?

Coming home this morning from dropping off one of my kids, I heard a lady on the radio describing a betrayal in her 34 year marriage.  She revealed that her husband had been leading a double life (ie sexual infidelity) and she had "all biblical grounds" to leave him.  She, however, was choosing not to.

It made me think about how many, many times I have heard the logic of "biblical grounds", and then I wondered if Jesus himself would use that defense.  Was Jesus "biblical"?

When the Pharisees came to him and asked him about the "biblical" grounds for divorce that Moses had allowed, Jesus replies that is was because of hardness of heart that Moses permitted divorce, but it was not supposed to be that way from the beginning.  When Jesus is challenged about his "biblical" working/healing on the Sabbath, he asks about what is "biblical" (or lawful) on the Sabbath - doing good or evil, saving a life or killing it?  To which the "biblical" folks were silent.  When a smug group catches a woman in the "unbiblical" act of adultery and brings that woman to Jesus, he doesn't deny the sin, but gives them freedom to "biblically" kill her as long as the one who throws a stone at her finds no sin in himself.  

Jesus, of course, lived with and under the authority of the Scriptures.  He was a good Jewish boy who had studied the Torah, prayed the Psalms and knew the stories of God's deliverance.  He saw in the Scriptures the calling - the vocation - on his life.  He was to be the long promised Messiah.  In that sense, Jesus was totally "biblical".  

However, as I am reading through the book of John, something deeper and beyond "biblical" seems to always surface in Jesus' life.  He seems to come back to phrases like, "I only do what I see the Father doing", "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me", "I always do the things that are pleasing to the Father", and the writer of John describes Jesus as "the one who is closest to the Father's heart".  It seems when Jesus needs to justify his actions or his words, he doesn't grasp at the word "biblical" (like the religious of his day), but clings to the Father.

To Jesus, this "doing only what I see the Father doing", isn't a cop-out to avoid conflict or a weak, sissy response.  But it also isn't a rigid this-is-the-way-things-have-always-been-done reaction either.  Instead, for one occasion it looks incredibly gentle (as he invites little children to come to him) and on another, violent (when he topples tables and chases people out of the temple with a whip).  To him, the Father's heart is much deeper than the status quo and transcends all categories and rules.  And it is funny, isn't it?  When Jesus "only does what he sees the Father doing", he gets accused by people (of his day and ours!) of being "not-biblical"!!

And this got me thinking.  I grew up as a Christian in an solid, evangelical, Bible church.  I heard the word "biblical" more times than I can even imagine.  There was always a "biblical" answer for everything as if there were a frozen interpretation to every position.  But I heard very little talk of "only doing what we see the Father doing".  To be sure, the Scriptures reveal to us the Father's heart, but I wonder how many times we just pick our favorite parts and dig our heels in in those places?  I wondered, this morning, how many times I have used the word "biblical" to protect my ego and avoided really pursuing and asking God what He thinks about the issue at hand?  (And how He wants me to bring His kingdom into those places.)

Of course, this doesn't only happen in a Bible church.  It happens all over Christendom, doesn't it?  We love to talk - both the right and the left - about what is "biblical" or what the bible really means when it says something.  But again, I hear very little conversation about searching for the Father's heart, and even less action in really grappling with what it means to "do only what we see the Father doing" in the situation at hand.

If I call myself a follower of Jesus (and I do), should not one of the defining marks in my life be trying "to do what I see the Father doing"?  My self identity then, is not in being as "biblical" as possible, but in searching the Scriptures to discover the Father's heart...and then keeping my eyes on Him all through the day to see how He wants me to move in the place I already am.

God, forgive me for when I have claimed "biblical" but it has just really been to avoid Your heart.  There are two things I know:  I really want to say with Jesus that I only do what I see You doing, and I really know I am so self-deceived and don't know where to start.  Would You let me see, through Your Holy Spirit, what you are doing today...and enable me to live out what I see right where I am standing? 

The Prodigal

I wrote a piece for a Lenten meditation about Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son, and thought I'd post it here.  (And I added some extra images of a Prodigal Son statue that I am so intrigued with.)

Scripture:

  Then Jeus said, “There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’ So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any. That brought him to his senses. He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.’ He got right up and went home to his father. When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’ But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time.

All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ‘Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.’ The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’ His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!’”

Perhaps the most well known of all parables, the Story of the Prodigal Son, is really misnamed. The story Jesus told had two sons in it – both prodigals in their own way – but they are not even the central characters in the narrative. The father is. This father who gives when disgraced, who runs, who embraces, who showers with generosity, who throws a party, and who goes out to both sons is the central focus in the picture Jesus painted. The same is true of Rembrandt's painting. Jesus' story and Rembrandt's picture are both about two prodigal sons. Both of these boys traveled “to a far distant country” - one physically, one on the interior. Both needed to return home. Perhaps, a more fitting name for the account would be Returning to the Embrace of the Father.

Focal Points:

Looking for light: Rembrandt's use of light in this painting tells us where he wants us to look. Three people are illumined in a golden light – the father, the younger son and the older son standing on the right. In addtion, the light falls mostly on the hands of the father, the back of the younger son, and on the hands and face of the older son.

Father and Younger Son:

Clothing: The father is dressed in fine clothes of rich, regal red. Though elderly, he has a fullness to his stature. He is substantive and has a presence that takes up most of the left side of the painting. His red robe is in an arch shape, like an open door welcoming in those in need of shelter. The kneeling son, on the other hand is dressed in rags the color of dirt. He is emaciated and is dwarved in comparison to the more substantial frame of his father. The sandals on his feet are worn out – perhaps depicting his long journey home or that he has come to the end of his own resources (or both!)

The father's hands: Two hands embrace the younger son's back, but on closer examination, they are very different from one another. The father's left hand is strong, muscular and quite masculine. The fingers are spread out and active. There is a certain pressure about this hand, as though it is not just touching the son, but holding him with a gentle strength. The father's right hand is refined, soft, tender, looking almost feminine. It does not hold or grasp, but just touches with an elegant quality to it. Its feminity offers comfort, consolation and a tender caress.

Interestingly, this caressing hand is right above the bare, wounded foot of the kneeling son, while the masculine hand parallels the foot dressed in the sandal. “Is it too much to think that one hand protects the vulnerable side of the son, while the other hand reinforces the son's strength and desire to get on with his life?” (Henri Nouwen)

Older Son: The man standing to the right in the painting is thought to be the older son. He wears the red robes of his father, showing he belongs to the household. However, his illumined hands show a marked difference from that of his father's. His hands are clasped, closed and held close to his body. While his eyes are totally focused on the interaction before him, his face is stern looking with no smile or emotion. There is a good distance between him and what is going on before him. (This could depict physical distance, as in the story Jesus told, the older brother was not there when his younger brother actually returned, or perhaps it represents the distance his heart had traveled from his “home” in the father.)

Looking for darkness: “The return”, though central to the scripture in Luke 15, is not centered in Rembrandt's picture. All the action between the father and younger brother is positioned on the left side while the older brother is on the right. In the Luke account, both boys have a choice to make. Will they leave their darkness and move into the light. We know the younger son makes his journey through darkness back to the father, but what of the older son? We are left wondering. Jesus tells us he is invited in by the father to join the celebration but we do not know what he eventually chooses. In Rembrandt's picture, his face is illumined, but he seems so be unmoved by the father's joy. Right in the center of this picture is a large, dark, open space, perhaps creating the tension of the question, “Who will truly come home?”

Reflection:

Spend a few moments looking at the picture, allowing your eyes to rest on places that pique your curiosity. As you settle into gazing, move your eyes back to one area of the picture that intrigues, evokes emotion or disturbs you. Ask the Father why He has brought your attention to this place at this time. What is it He wants to say to you? Don't be afraid of whatever comes forth, remembering that the embrace of the Father is generous enough to hold it all.

Perhaps you see yourself in the face of one of the main subjects of the painting. Which person do you most identify with? Are you one of the people sitting in the darkness, just watching and inquiring about this Father's great love? Are you the younger son who believes he is “no longer worthy to be called a son”?(Luke 15) or are you the returned younger son who lays his head on the Father's chest and senses His embrace? Are you the older son who “has been working hard on the father's farm, but has never fully tasted the joy of being at home?” (Nouwen) Whoever you identify with, can you hear the Father who reminds all sons (and daughters) of who they are? “You are extravagantly loved. Come home to Me.”

The Vocation

Part 3 of the story...(final part for now!)

The other day, I was writing a piece for a friend about Rembrandt's painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son.  As part of my study, I came across a great little book by Henri Nouwen about the painting.  His experience of Rembrandt's work of art so strikingly mirrored my encounter with The Kiss, I found myself weeping over it as I read it.  

I guess I had known that God "gave" me the picture of The Kiss at a time of hardship and had used it to sustain me for a long, six year period of darkness in my life.  And for that I am so, so grateful!  What I didn't know was The Kiss would move from being a bolster to hold me up in dark times, to the voice of a new calling in my life.

"I have a new vocation now", is how Nouwen describes the transforming effect of his picture.  That is how I feel about The Kiss.

I have a new vocation now.  To speak and write and live from the vantage point of The Kiss:

As one who is loved

As one who is enveloped

As one who can let go of her rehearsed speeches

As one who knows that the Father "is not listening", so I don't have to either

As one who holds on and is held

As one on my knees before my Love

As one held close

As one who gives in to the embrace

As one who is kissed

To live from The Kiss is to speak into realms void of affection; to convey freedom to places of bondage.  It is to move energized by the Father's great abundance into houses of scarcity and hoarding.  It is to remember that everyone I see is invited into the kiss, and to remind them of that fact.

I have a new vocation now.  

And in case that wasn't totally clear already, as I was praying over all of this, here was my "fortune" from a dinner the other night.

Funny how God keeps using some sort of canvas and color to get my attention!!

The Kiss

Part 2 of my story...

I came across a phrase when I was seventeen that summed up my love affair with Jesus.  Written by an Argentinian poet and translated into English, it was etched onto the tablet of my mind as pure truth.

"He kissed me and now I am someone different."

That was what had happened between me and Jesus.  He had kissed me!  And with that kiss, my heart, my mind and my life were transformed!  Like the old fairy tales where a dark spell has been cast upon the princess and she has fallen into a deep sleep, so I was awakened by the kiss of a Stranger, and life would never be the same again.

Many years passed from those early moments of first love (and first kisses), but the poetry of it reverberated always through the halls and corridors of my soul.  Sometimes soft...sometimes loud... the kiss always lingered near.

Until I came to a time of great adversity.  The echo of the kiss was fading as life was difficult and aching.  I was struggling deeply with who I was and what I was called to do.  I found myself living in a new place - both physically and in my soul - disoriented.  Labels and categories that had once been useful, were now confining me and squeezing me in.  They had been places of comfort before, but now just caused confusion, angst, and resentment.  I was trying to find my way by listening to the voices - of people and society - around me but though I longed for guidance, it all sounded like gibberish.  I was propelled by the internal voice of "should"....'I should be this...I should do this....I should have this....'  My heart ached.

During this time, I took a trip to Europe to go visit some friends and ended up on a spur of the moment journey into Vienna.  And I found God waiting for me there.

All over on display in Vienna was Gustav Klimt's painting, The Kiss.  I had never seen it before, but now it was all around me - on posters, in stores, on match boxes, on shopping bags...everywhere!  The funny thing is, I hated it!  It seemed gaudy and excessive; too gold and geometric.  It offended my eyes, but I could not get away from it.  And, like a thistle that secretly attaches itself to a sock or pant leg while on a hike, unknowingly I returned home carrying this picture in my mind.

Back on this continent, I soon received a letter from a friend from Singapore.  She knew of my internal struggle and the voices that seemed to dominate the conversations in my head.  Though she had no advice for a fix, her closing line to the letter was simply, "May you enjoy His many kisses".  

(Funny...for the first time in my life, I think I understand the Psalmists use of the word "Selah".  When a spark of God's beauty has been glimpsed and the only response is to stop and pause in wonder!)

Perhaps you will think me dense, or perhaps you will see God as a great, persistent Lover, but even after all this, I did not "selah" - pause and reflect.  I did however, walk into the house of a friend of mine and there, hanging at the top of her split level stairs was a picture of Klimt's, The Kiss!

Still fighting my distaste for the picture, a few mornings later, I relented and met God on the couch.  I really didn't feel like I needed a lesson in kissing, but rather clarity on my life direction.  I needed answers, and relief, and peace from Him.   Instead,  He directed me to the story of The Prodigal Son.

Perhaps the most well known story in the scriptures, I am sure I had read it a hundred times.  I was skimming my way through the passage when I came to the part where the squandering son comes to his senses and decides to go back to his father.  Reading a little more slowly, I could see the picture Jesus was painting when he said, "when he was still a long way off, his father saw him.  His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him and kissed him."  (emphasis mine)

Klimt's picture flooded my mind...and was transforming into something beautiful before my eyes.  God had given me a picture of a "prodigal daughter" through Klimt's image.  While I was a long way off (away from the original kisses of my Love), He saw me.  Not only did He see me, but He came to me (all the way to Vienna and back!)  Not only did He come to me, He kissed me...again!

Through tears, I read on in the story.  The son begins to confess to his father - true things - that he had sinned and wasn't worthy to be called a son.  Those were true things my heart understood, because I knew that was my confession too!  But then the story turns to the central person in the narrative and a phrase, like the one when I was seventeen, changed my life.

"But the father wasn't listening."

The father wasn't listening.  He was too busy calling for clothing to be put on this child of his, for rings and shoes to be lavished on him, for food to be prepared, and for a celebration to begin.  (And I'd like to believe the father was clutching the child's face and showering it with kisses in between shouting out those orders.)  

It was in that space, between the confession of the son and "but the father wasn't listening", that God said, "Tara, all those things you say about yourself or labels you put on yourself...well, I'm not listening.  All those voices that bombard you to tell you what they expect out of you...well, I'm not listening.  All the "shoulds" that berate you...I'm not listening to them.  Here, with me, all that matters is My embrace and My kisses.  I am not listening to anything else.  And if I am not listening to any of the other noise, you don't have to either!"

That is where I find myself.  Kissed and changed.  A prodigal extravagantly (in spite of everything) loved.  An embraced woman in a picture covered with elaborate robes.   

I find I have a God who pays no attention to the voices that would try to define me.  Rather He reminds me of who I am - the beloved finding her identity only in what the Lover says about her.  So, I become the woman in Klimt's picture - resting and delighting in the embrace of my Love, and enjoying His many kisses!

Branding and Love

A pastor from our church spoke yesterday of advertising and the process of branding a product or service.  As a business owner, I wanted to listen intently to what he had to say.  I am always struggling (in business) on the thin edge of following the practices in corporate America and what it looks like to be a Kingdom business owner.  I wrestle with questions about social media and my business image - why should I use Twitter?  what will an Instagram account gain me?  how can I be a value to my clients and not give into the "selfie" way of advertising.  After all, when people see my business, what do they see?

The truth is, I can use every social media outlet and hire people to make me a great logo and catch phrase, but if there is no substance to what I offer to my clients, the whole thing will quickly fall apart.  The question I always need to be asking myself is not how much money I want to make or how to advertise in the hippest, coolest way, but what is the substance of of the product?  What is really there when all the glitz and tinsel is removed?  (And that is a question it is so easy for me to lose sight of!)

Of course, the pastor's point was not about focusing on our business careers, but rather, he turned the same concept to our walk with God.  If we bear the "brand" of Christian, what is really the substance of the product that is actually there?  Does it turn out to be an anemic, diminished version of what we advertise it to be?  Or is there enough substance there for those who know me to say "yes, she walks in the Jesus way".  And not just that, but would people know the calling on my life from spending time with me?  (Heck...do I know the calling on my life?)

This past week, God seemed to pull multiple pieces together to help bring a flash of clarity to my life.  The Sunday message was one of them; memories of past events, a picture and a writer's words joined the patchwork quilt to reveal a pattern of substance (or calling) that God has been creating in my life since I came to know Him.  He is kindly reminding me of the substance of our relationship and the identity He wants to carry into the world.

This will be a three part revealing of that substance and His branding.  Here is the first:

I am not sure what happened the night of April 17, 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.  Afterall, I was raised in Canada, a country not known for being formed by the Christian story.   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.  “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 didn’t 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. That was Jesus there on stage and I wanted Him. 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 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 did not know the right things to believe, I did not 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.  (And even at that, it was a love not from gratitude for what had been done for me, but a passionate love like a lover to her Companion.)

I have been asked lots of times what it was about Jesus praying in the garden that affected me so much.  Twenty-seven years later I still don’t have the answer.  Who knows why love appears so magically out of nowhere?  Doesn’t it always surprise us and take us aback a little?  All I know is I walked in to see a play and walked out in love with this man Jesus who had already begun to transform my life.

A Tree in Winter Stands

A tree in winter stands.  That is all it can do.  Gone are the flourishing leaves, the bejeweling birds, and the warm yellow sun.  Left is barrenness, nakedness and sluggish sap that moves little, if at all.  It stands in air that is an blue-cold enemy, piercing, and uninviting.  

A tree in winter stands.  There is no life growing energy to exert, just roots that cling to cold soil, hoping their hold is enough to brace against the next frosty storm.  Even the blanket of moss that covers the trunk abandons it as it falls off in rough, icy pieces.

A tree in winter stands.  It stands in the cold shadows cast by the low sun.  Its extended arms reach longingly for a warmth that does not come.  It cannot hide its undressed limbs, nor wrap those appendages around its body for modesty or protection.

No...a tree in winter stands.  And that is all it can do.  It has no bounty to give the world around it - no shade, no fruit, no beauty.  It only stands - waiting, longing, hoping - while the onslaught of winter weather is relentless.  

But in its standing months, it learns to be unmovable and anchored.  It also learns the opposite: to be flexible - dancing with the prevailing winds.  It learns what great vanity there is in holding on to its adornments and so will be grateful instead of prideful when its leaves return.  It learns that cold and snow, ice and freezing temperatures are inevitable and can be endured. And though it stands in shade, it knows that there must be light somewhere to create that deep shadow.

Within the winter-stand, the tree learns who it really is.  One called to be deeply rooted, strong and upright, with branches reaching high into the sky.  With all else stripped away, it can unashamedly embrace its calling.  When all the flourishes return and it becomes useful again, it is grateful, but does not mistake its outward appearance or its utility for its core vocation.

A tree in winter stands.  That is all it can do.  And its Creator smiles as the tree begins to understand that truth.  

(Sometimes, I think I might just be a tree.  How about you?)