It is hard to live under grace. It is hard to accept love without condition, without deserving any part of this favor shown me. To be loved not because I'm beautiful, or joyful, or good at washing dishes. To be loved not because I clean without being asked, or that I cook well, or that I am ever patient and kind. Loved because I am loved is hard to let be.
As I drive to visit my brother, I think hard on Galatians 2, freeing my head from my selfish desires for the first time in far too long. I try to reason out what it means, these life feeding verses, and how it is no longer I who live. Sun above me sharply glints against crisply reddened leaves. The sky spreads its arms wide to embrace my adventure. How is it no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me? My sins weigh heavily on me, even as I turn my glad face to the day.
Some people seem born to a holiness beyond what I will ever know this side of eternity. I have to slaughter myself daily in order to live in any semblance of holy. Would that I had cut off both hands and feet and ears and eyes and tongue...my mind would still corrupt and boil within me. Yet I have been crucified with Christ.
I want to deserve the immensity given to me. To pay back somehow for some small portion of this blessedness. I try harder, always trying harder, always more prone to fall harder. I refuse to meet God's eye, angry with myself for falling? Or is it anger with Him for letting me fall? I demand my own perfection sullenly, thinking that surely this time I have done enough wrong for many lives. No more, please. Take this dish back to the kitchen. It is underdone and wicked. The plate refuses to hold it. My testimony is already padded thickly. I have been given much, and surely God will require much, but I have nothing to show. Paul claims that he is chief among sinners, but he and I will fight for the title, and I am confident in my own success.
I live by faith because I have nothing else to offer. My belief must be counted as righteousness, for I am small. By law shall no flesh be justified. Dare I say that Christ's death was in vain? I must live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. This is the life I now live in the flesh.
Hills of rock and purple fringed bushes fly past me. I am still as worlds pass by, this trip by daylight, splashed across a brief word in my history. My smallness is surrounded.
Some people seem born into holiness, but I know my flesh, born into depravity. How much has been forgiven me. Joy rises out of this smallness. God made flesh. Immensity cloistered in human womb (Donne). My life drops from the faucet onto an ocean of saints who whisper softly from pages breathed of Sovereignty. "Endure for the joy set before you." In the presence of God alone is fullness of joy. Sin pushes me to my knees, to His presence, to His joy.
Oh, and doesn't joy fill my cup, my broken vessel, my humble clay.
It is raining now. It will not stop until I reach my destination, but Christ is in it. He is here in the rain. Every drop fallen onto my windshield is a new wave of Grace.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Cry Glory and Fight
It is easy to live in fear of this present time. This present evil age, as Paul said it, nearly two thousand years ago. I remember reading Animal Farm years ago with crawling flesh and a sick stomach, recognizing vaguely similarities not only to other countries, but more importantly to my own. I was unable to put into words my young but very real fear. I could only say with clarity that it was the creepiest book I ever read.
There is a conniving, deceptive attitude about things going on right now in our nation that scares me just as it angers me. Animal Farm fear of something unknown. The fear multiplies as we live, as we exchange stories with others, as we feel an invisible net being pulled tighter. Everything in our eyes is always reaching its worst. I think at such times perhaps we tend to go defensive, protecting our rights and liberties with jagged nail and canine tooth. There may be a desperation even about our actions and thoughts, as if already being trampled underfoot. But what need we fear man? There is nothing new under the sun.
Is our time really so much more evil than it was in Paul's day? Perhaps this period of complacency is giving way to a period of early church tribulation once again. Is this a thing to fear? There may not be another country for Separatists to flee to this time (except maybe Texas), but in the right perspective, won't the future be exciting? Who knows what God will do in this glorying of His Name to come! Shoot, our country may go legit communist and be thrown to the wolves. All the wolves. We may be threshed like wheat and burned like chaff, but won't God's name be glorified by the proud actions of His humble servants?
Oh friends. How petty our grievances against these weak created ones. Shall we stand confidently, and attack with assurance the deceptions borne to us? We may be driven like snow from the homes we once owned and the possessions we once worked for, but what an adventure future generations will then read in our pages. For pages we will always have, stories somehow passed on in the face of persecution. There will always be a remnant. Won't our heroic deeds be told in all their weakness and celebrated as God's own victories? Hallelujah.
We, our human selves, may not live to see this time we foresee gloomily, but We, the Church universal, may and I think will see it in no uncertain terms. Why then lurk in fear of what may already be coming? Let the light of battle sparkle in our eyes! A time is coming and is now at hand when we must stand for Truth in a world run over by the squelching half-truths and slim chances. Let's live it! Let's live this time of uncertainty in fierce delight. Our victory is sure.
God will be glorified. All praise His name!
There is a conniving, deceptive attitude about things going on right now in our nation that scares me just as it angers me. Animal Farm fear of something unknown. The fear multiplies as we live, as we exchange stories with others, as we feel an invisible net being pulled tighter. Everything in our eyes is always reaching its worst. I think at such times perhaps we tend to go defensive, protecting our rights and liberties with jagged nail and canine tooth. There may be a desperation even about our actions and thoughts, as if already being trampled underfoot. But what need we fear man? There is nothing new under the sun.
Is our time really so much more evil than it was in Paul's day? Perhaps this period of complacency is giving way to a period of early church tribulation once again. Is this a thing to fear? There may not be another country for Separatists to flee to this time (except maybe Texas), but in the right perspective, won't the future be exciting? Who knows what God will do in this glorying of His Name to come! Shoot, our country may go legit communist and be thrown to the wolves. All the wolves. We may be threshed like wheat and burned like chaff, but won't God's name be glorified by the proud actions of His humble servants?
Oh friends. How petty our grievances against these weak created ones. Shall we stand confidently, and attack with assurance the deceptions borne to us? We may be driven like snow from the homes we once owned and the possessions we once worked for, but what an adventure future generations will then read in our pages. For pages we will always have, stories somehow passed on in the face of persecution. There will always be a remnant. Won't our heroic deeds be told in all their weakness and celebrated as God's own victories? Hallelujah.
We, our human selves, may not live to see this time we foresee gloomily, but We, the Church universal, may and I think will see it in no uncertain terms. Why then lurk in fear of what may already be coming? Let the light of battle sparkle in our eyes! A time is coming and is now at hand when we must stand for Truth in a world run over by the squelching half-truths and slim chances. Let's live it! Let's live this time of uncertainty in fierce delight. Our victory is sure.
God will be glorified. All praise His name!
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Much Sin, Much Grace
It is surely wrong to wish sin on anyone, but the temptation is there, when I know how sin brought me to realization of grace. While I tremble in fear to wish the deep and obvious sin of my own heart, I think that surely a more accurate view of self-depravity may be desired. Still, strange as it sounds, I have had occasion to pity people for not having the power hungry struggle that I have with obvious, degrading, disheartening evil in my heart. Deception comes easily for me.
I wish people would be able to grasp reality without the pain and fear I have put myself through, but there is part of me that knows: The worst thing in my life was the best thing for my life. From much sin, I found much grace.
Sometimes people suffer from a righteousness that exceeds their own abilities--a crushing legalism of superiority. I wish they could be free. I wish they could have that one shattering moment of confession to dramatic failure of years past and present, and experience the stark otherworldly emptiness of a vessel cracked after a lifetime of stagnation. I want that moment for them, when they walk under a night sky and look at the stars with the new and numbing knowledge that nothing stands between them and their Creator.
I want these people to see the world as if for the first time~the world they've taken for granted all these years, because, you know, they're just children of the King and this is their home. This palace of earth is where we grew up, so maybe the novelty is lost on us until we have that moment of Grace Come Down. I guess I wish people would know firsthand the absence of honesty, just so they could experience its liberation and health with its sweeping fullness of gratitude.
Dear me. I want people, these people, us people, you people, to have at least one moment where joy is so overwhelming that there is no response sufficient. That your face might shine with God's own presence, because, for the first time, God gives you a glimpse of how little you deserve and how overpowering is His love for you. For you, His child. How I wish for this to happen for each one of us.
Redemption of an entire life's worth of unconfessed, unacknowledged, fearful lowness...there are no words to express it. I can only continue to hope for these many others to experience it. For you, many others. I can only continue to hope that the worst thing in many lives be turned into the greatest gift~as mine was~the discovering of grace become embodied. And may we all be stripped of our restrictive false righteousness to find fullness of joy in His presence.
All is grace.
I wish people would be able to grasp reality without the pain and fear I have put myself through, but there is part of me that knows: The worst thing in my life was the best thing for my life. From much sin, I found much grace.
Sometimes people suffer from a righteousness that exceeds their own abilities--a crushing legalism of superiority. I wish they could be free. I wish they could have that one shattering moment of confession to dramatic failure of years past and present, and experience the stark otherworldly emptiness of a vessel cracked after a lifetime of stagnation. I want that moment for them, when they walk under a night sky and look at the stars with the new and numbing knowledge that nothing stands between them and their Creator.
I want these people to see the world as if for the first time~the world they've taken for granted all these years, because, you know, they're just children of the King and this is their home. This palace of earth is where we grew up, so maybe the novelty is lost on us until we have that moment of Grace Come Down. I guess I wish people would know firsthand the absence of honesty, just so they could experience its liberation and health with its sweeping fullness of gratitude.
Dear me. I want people, these people, us people, you people, to have at least one moment where joy is so overwhelming that there is no response sufficient. That your face might shine with God's own presence, because, for the first time, God gives you a glimpse of how little you deserve and how overpowering is His love for you. For you, His child. How I wish for this to happen for each one of us.
Redemption of an entire life's worth of unconfessed, unacknowledged, fearful lowness...there are no words to express it. I can only continue to hope for these many others to experience it. For you, many others. I can only continue to hope that the worst thing in many lives be turned into the greatest gift~as mine was~the discovering of grace become embodied. And may we all be stripped of our restrictive false righteousness to find fullness of joy in His presence.
All is grace.
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