For the Daughter of God

I found this excerpt quite inspiring and think women will appreciate it:

Together with her Bridegroom [the Bride of Christ] builds the Kingdom of Heaven, the kingdom of life, of radiance and joy. Having been called to His side, she is taken up into His life. She let herself be called away from everything else, that she might go through life at the side of Him who has become her All, and so she does not have to rely upon herself. She need to calculate her talents, abilities, and personality. She does not need to consider what is available and what is possible. She has only to reckon with Him, the power of His love. Jesus, the Source of Life for all men, is the Fire of God, the Sun of the whole world, the Hearth of love. Will He not inflame the heart of His bride as well?

-Basilea Schlink, "Bridal Love--A Consuming fire," My All for Him

Seasons of Love

Today, one of my Lenten devotionals, the Magnificat Companion, said this:

"Has Lent been the sum total of my good intentions, or rather a time when I have recognized anew the presence of Christ who comes into my life?...Are you satsified, are you rejoicing, are you in love?"

On the whole, I have not, in past years, thought of Lent as the Season of "Love." I think of it as the season in which I remember what a worm I am, what dust I was formed from, etc. But I can truly say that this season, I've been thinking of Lent as a season of love. Often, and particularly in the world, love is connected to summer, warmth, bright colors, happiness, laughter, and lots of food and drink--not cold, Michigan winters, fasting, obedience, almsgiving, and abstinence.

And yet, the Lord drew two scenes together before me yesterday, two gardens: The Garden of Gethsemane and the Garden in Song of Solomon and gently encouraged me to consider that there may not be as much difference between these two garden scenes as I think. When I think Song of Solomon, I think summer, heat, intensity! When I think of Lent, I have to admit, I think: coldness, a season of measuring my distance from God, a time of looking more closely at my vices, a time for remembering just how un-Godly I am. But the Lord wanted to correct my vision. Here's the particular verse which struck me:

"Come, my lover, let us go forth to the fields / and spend the night among the villages."

-Song of Solomon 7: 12

It is this kind of love that compells Jesus to invite his closest friends to "spend the night" with him, keeping watch on the night before his death. My previous post was about the Garden of Gethsemane and about the friendship of Christ. But even the term 'friendship' falls short of describing properly the love which God has for us and the kind of relationship he desires to have with us.

Suffering, love, death, life--in the Song of Solomon, they get mixed together:

"Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm;
For stern as death is love
relentless as the nether world is devotion;
its flames are a blazing fire.
Deep waters cannot quench love,
nor floods sweep it away."

-Song of Songs 8: 6-7

Imagine if we were to pray this passage to the suffering Christ the night before his death, imagine if we were one of the disciples at table with him. "For stern as death is love." For our sake, Jesus endured death. Can we be as "stern" or "relentless" in our love for him as he has been, through his suffering and death, in his love for us? Jesus Christ did not suffer and die to make us feel bad about our sins. His only intention has been to Love. This is why the Magnificat Companion asks us whether we are ending Lent in "rejoicing" and "in love." Jesus passed through the "nether world" for our sake; can our "devotion" back to him be as "relentless as the nether world"?

All we need to do is stay near to him this week and watch what he does, love as he loves.

On Friendship

These words come from Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede and are quoted by Elisbeth Elliot in "A Strange Peace" in The Path of Loneliness:

The motto was Pax, but the word was set in a circle of thorns. Peace: but what a strange peace, made of unremitting toil and effort, seldom with a seen result; subject to constant interruptions, unexpected demands, short sleep at night, little comfort, sometimes scant food, beset with disappointments, and usually misunderstood; yet peace all the same, undeviating, filled with joy and gratitude and love. "It is my own peace I give unto you," not notice, the world's peace.

Suffering. Crowns of thorns. Often, when we suffer, we are brought to our knees and to the understanding that Christ wants to draw near to us in our suffering, and so we remember, once again, that what He always means to teach us is how to surrender to Him.

But has it ever occurred to us just how much and for what reason he wants to be near to us in his suffering? Has it ever occurred to us that He wants to be our companion in our suffering because He, too, Jesus Christ, fully man and fully God, has desired a companion during his own times of suffering? In the Gospel of Matthew, we see a powerful image of a vulnerable Savior:

Then they came to a place named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." He took with him Peter, James, and John, and began to be troubled and distressed. Then he said to them, "My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch."...When he returned he found them asleep. He said to Peter, "Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour?" (the full narrative, Matthew 26: 36-41).

Why did Jesus Christ want his disciples near Him while He prayed? Why didn't He just go up to Gethsemane alone? Why did he take with Him specifically Peter, James, and John? Because Jesus, too, wanted--but did not need--friends to be near to Him in His suffering. He has had the same desires and feelings as any human being. He, too, did not want to be alone in His suffering.

I often think of the exhortation Jesus gives to the disciples when He finds that they are asleep as a scolding from the Father: "Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." But it is Jesus here, in all His humanity and vulnerability and glory, who is speaking. Jesus Christ, who is about to be handed over and betrayed by one of His closest friends, wants His closest friends near to Him in His suffering. Jesus Christ, who is also praying that He may not undergo the test His Father is giving to Him, tells His disciples the encouragement they will need to hear in all their suffering: "Watch and pray, that you may not undergo the test" which the Father is going to give to you. Who can say that Jesus does not fully understand us?

We are often like these disciples, Peter, James, and John. We mean well, we are close friends of Jesus, to be sure, but we often "fall asleep" and become unawares of Him in our midst and the desires of His heart. Not only does He want to draw near to us in our suffering; He wants us to bring our sufferings to Him. Our sufferings are a part of His, and our sufferings often "wake" us up, and we find that we have fallen asleep in the Garden and have lost sight of Him. And Jesus Christ, so attentive to the Father and the Father's Will, even in a time of great suffering, continues to encourage us to turn to the Father, to do His Will.

Truly, there is none who can offer us such selfless friendship as Jesus Christ.

Tilling the Soil

The other night a friend and I were debating as to whether I am originally from the country or the city. I argued that I had sort-of come from the country because my folks' house is next to some fields. But my friend is right--I am from the suburbs. And anyways, the field is being turned into a subdivision.

I've recently been thinking about farming, fields mainly. At various retreats and conferences this semester, I've heard about martyrs and people like Hudson Taylor and Gladys Aylward and even my good friend Noelle Gornik who is being called to go to Africa as a missionary. My question has been, "Lord, what are you trying to tell me? Am I supposed to go to China? Korea? Africa? for the sake of mission?

But as questions like these have arisen over the years, the Holy Spirit has gently reshaped such questions for me and narrowed them down to one: "Lord, show me my plot of land in the mission field. All I want is to till my little plot very well, to stay in this plot and till and grow what you give to me." I can so easily look to those around me laboring and compare my little plot to theirs. And it is little because I am nothing without Him, and He gives us the right size of land, knowing what labor He has equipped us for. It may seem like someone near me is growing trees and starting a vineyard, and I am planting flowers, but if that is what the Lord is handing me, then it is His will, and I am content. It is enough to have seed--the Gospel--and it's the seed that is precious. It's a joy to have a little plot of land in God's plan.

We don't have to go searching for a plot of land in the mission field because we're already standing in the part of the field God wants us to be in right now. Yes, He may very well call us to go various places to serve. But I think when we look inside our hearts, we see the field, and we learn that the field begins with our hearts. The first field we are given, the first field that God wants us to till, the first field He wants us to let Him till is the field of our hearts. I could mention various parables and metaphors from Scripture concerning nature that are used to explain what spiritual growth looks like. But I won't. The main point is that God is after our hearts. Last year at a communal prayer meeting, someone gave this word: "God wants the one thing He lacks: our hearts."

If we can understand this, if we can learn to see when we look at the mission field not a field of places, cities, circumstances, or things but a field of hearts, cracked, broken, dry, empty, in-need of the Holy Spirit's tilling and not our own, then we will be very good missionaries because we will be looking at the field with His eyes:

Jesus went around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness. At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples: 'The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.' (Matthew 9: 35-8).

Verses 37-8 are often quoted in reference to mission, but I think it's important to consider what moves Jesus to say what he does: "his heart was moved with pity." Jesus Christ is calling us to have hearts that are movable, as His is movable.

But who can love as Jesus loves? Who can see these crowds not for what they could "do" or "be" but simply as ones who need love? Only one who has received Jesus's heart for mission first and received Jesus's heart for him/herself first. Can missionaries humble themselves enough to believe that they, too, still need to be evangelized by the love of Christ? Can we believe that Jesus Christ looks on us and is "moved with pity" because we are "troubled and abandoned"?

We are in what many Christians call the season of Lent, a time of fasting, prayer, and repentance. Jesus Christ looks on us and is moved. Do we notice His gaze and count ourselves as part of the crowds? Jesus says "Blessed are those who are poor in spirit." Do we know how "poor" we are, that we may know how "blessed" we are?

Let us count ourselves as those who need the Gospel. As we continue to acknowledge this we shall be free to share with others the true nature of the Gospel, that "all [have] fall[en] short of the glory of God"(Romans 3: 23). We will know the nature of the seed we have been given to sow in the little plot of land which God has given to each of us. And we will see the plot of land for what it is, a lovely gift from Him, and will be confident that the One who has placed us where He has an incomprehensible love for each of us.

Someone Else's Wisdom

This is today's Henri Nouwen meditation. Love it!

The Virtue of Flexibility

Trees look strong compared with the wild reeds in the field. But when the storm comes the trees are uprooted, whereas the wild reeds, while moved back and forth by the wind, remain rooted and are standing up again when the storm has calmed down.

Flexibility is a great virtue. When we cling to our own positions and are not willing to let our hearts be moved back and forth a little by the ideas or actions of others, we may easily be broken. Being like wild reeds does not mean being wishy-washy. It means moving a little with the winds of the time while remaining solidly anchored in the ground. A humorless, intense, opinionated rigidity about current issues might cause these issues to break our spirits and make us bitter people. Let's be flexible while being deeply rooted.

Hoping is Believing

Today, I share a few choice thoughts on hope from Thomas Merton. These are from "Sentences on Hope," No Man Is an Island:

But the pride of those who live as if they believed they were better than anyone else is rooted in a secret failure to believe in their own goodness.

Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair.

The faith that tells me God wills all men to be saved must be completed by the hope that God wills me to be saved, and by the love that responds to His desire and seals my hope with conviction. Thus hope offers the substance of all theology to the individual soul. By hope all the truths that are presented to the whole world in an abstract and impersonal way become for me a matter of personal and intimate conviction.

God bless Thomas Merton. These thoughts on hope express well the thoughts I sometimes have when I observe university students wrestling with the question of the existence of God. I especially think that this is provocative: "A life without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair."

Is that overly dramatic of Merton to say? I don't think so. So many people--and I'm mainly thinking of the students--have not experienced a suffering that has caused them to seek radical mercy. At the University of Michigan, there is, on the whole, a lack of certain types of experiential, deeply personal suffering. Students are educated, bright, capable, responsible, diligent, and many of them have monetary wealth. They're young and in great physical condition. What does the path to belief look like for one who is in possession of all this? Even us who are Christians constantly face the temptation of being in rather than of the world when we come into possession of some of the aforementioned things and so we, at the encouragement of Christ, forsake them.

The cost of having all of these things can oftentimes be a temptation to self-reliance and a belief that one can live their life without Him. Merton expresses this well in the first quote I gave: "The pride of those who live as if they believed they were better than anyone else is rooted in a secret failure to believe in their own goodness." What defines one's "goodness" if intelligence, health, money, and talents do not?

In dictionary.com, "goodness" is defined as:

-moral excellence, virtue

-kindness, generosity

-excellent of quality

-the best part of anything, essence, strength

So, to the world, being "good" means being moral, generous, excellent at things one does, being strong, and being the best. But here's the thing: only God fully embodies all of these qualities: He alone is Virtue, Kindness Itself, and Generous, Excellent, the Best, and Strength. I think that sometimes, we can misunderstand the heart of what God says about our identity. Our egos are so easily offended when we are forced to admit that we are not the source of our own goodness. Of course we are all of these things that the dictionary lists; we were created in His image and likeness.

God is our Father, and so we've inherited and reflect His goodness. What child with blonde hair would make this claim: "I am fully responsible for the blonde-ness of my hair, I and I alone. I pat myself on the back because I have blonde hair, and I like it." This would be absurdity. It was a matter of genes; the child inherited her blonde hair from someone. The same is true for our good spiritual qualities: they are a matter of spiritual genes. To deny this is to deny the relationship we have with our Father. This is the primary offense: we deny that God's love for us created us and placed us in relationship with Him.

Suffering and moments of self-realization of our shortcomings force us to question how those have come to happen. Thus some people come to believe that God is actually bad, evil, manipulative, and maniacal. They see expressions of what is bad and evil in others, the world, and themselves, and they think that these things have been passed along via the genes of a bad god. The assertion that we--and the Devil, one who also denied his relationship with his Creator--might be responsible for the evils in the world is overwhelming and is our blind spot. If a driver of a car hits a pedestrian who is crossing the road and who has the right of way, who is responsible for the death of the pedestrian? The driver who has a blind spot or the pedestrian? The question of the existence of God, I think, sometimes comes down to a matter of whether we can believe that we have a blind spot, and that this blind spot causes harm. Even if we have experienced a meagre amount of personal suffering, of being sinned against by the world or others, can we admit that we are capable of hurting others? The first step is admitting that we may have harmed others and thus ourselves--and then, ultimately, God.

I close with brief reflection on the third Merton quote: "The faith that tells me that God wills all men to be saved must be completed by the hope that God wills me to be saved..." Faith is incomplete when we only see the needs of others. To believe that only those without food or clothes are in real need is insufficient faith. We all suffer from spiritual poverty, a poverty of the heart. As Merton says, the first person's needs we need to see is our own, our own heart poverty. We need to see our own need for God, and that will change the way we see everything.

For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man seeth, why doth he hope for?

-Romans 8: 24

Growing into God's Apron

Tonight, I baked white chocolate chip dried cranberry walnut cookies, and they weren't for any UCO event. I started building a house out of Legos. I read Calvin and Hobbes. I finally feel like I'm taking a Sabbath, and I've been trying to do so for five days! Writing here every day is a part of this extended Sabbath experience, and I am grateful.

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Growth. How does it happen in the spiritual life? God's shown me a bit about growth through some fun things, like a book called Ella Takes the Cake, a children's book in which a little girl elephant is asked to run errands for her mother elephant who owns a bakery. The child Ella is asked to deliver a really fancy cake, and she has some troubles in trying to deliver the cake. But at the end of the book, the mother comforts and encourages Ella and then asks Ella if she would help her bake in the kitchen. Ella is stunned. The mother elephant gives her an apron, but Ella tells her mother that the apron is too big for her. The mother wisely says, "It may be too big for you now, but you'll grow into it."

God has told me many times in the past several years, "The apron I'm giving you now is too big, but I'm giving it to you so that you can grow into it." Sometimes, I am overwhelmed by God's call on my life, which is made concrete through various challenges in various areas of my life.

The apron metaphor reveals something of God's vision for us. He sees not just who we have been or who presently are but also who we will become. Because in Him there is no past, present, or future, He looks at us, works in us and through our construct of time and space and sees who we will become and wisely gives us aprons which are yet too big. And what if we make a mistake? What if we make a big mistake? It's okay. He's the One who gave us the apron and the tasks that go with it in the first place. He's not looking for perfection but a willingness to be confident and to begin being person who was made to fill out His too-big apron.

So, if we find the Lord giving us something--a task, challenge, blessing, etc.--that is clearly beyond our current capability to manage or steward, we need not worry. This is the apron that is clearly too big for us but that we will grow into. We can take it as a compliment from Him. David was a shepherd boy a field. Mary was a teenage girl. Peter was a fisherman.

Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.

-Luke 12: 27, NIV

Let's grow in holiness as the lilies do--without labor or spinning. Let's allow the Lord to dress us in the splendor of His blessings, His crosses which are always blessing, and His love.

Coming to the End of Myself

Well, I am trying to retreat and rest, but it's been difficult. I did my taxes today because you know, that's so relaxing and retreat-esque. Actually, doing taxes did relieve some stress!

But, overall, I am, as some have put it for me, "Coming to the end of myself."

Thus, I've prescribed myself to consider rest, burnout, and the like this week. During these past few days, I read a book entitled Watch Out for Burnout: A Look at Its Signs, Prevention, and Cure. This quote caught my eye:

Multiple causes account for dropout, but studies show acute fatigue one significant dynamic. The current duration-of-service norm for inner-city social workers and inner-city lawyers turns out to be only two years. One stateside psychiatrist says 50 percent of his clients are missionaries. A long-time missionary comments that a typical overseas worker lasts five to six years.

I found this very striking: half of a psychiatrist's clients were missionaries!

The book overall was not incredibly helpful, but I'd gotten it as a freebie about a year ago and hadn't read it straight through. Even reading an entire book on the subject of burnout was really helpful.

Perhaps the most fun and interesting chapter in the book was "The Healing Power of Humor." The author posits that having a sense of humor is a preventative and a healer of burnout, which is true, but I love that humor gets its own chapter! Here we go. This is good for me to read:

Humor allows us to live with the contradictions of life. The man who must always act rationally kills himself with intensity. He will embarrass himself by his own contradictory behavior. People laugh at his over-seriousness, but he cannot laugh at himself. To laugh at one's inconsistency reveals the deepest consistency...Humor allows us to live comfortably with ourselves...Perfectionism is the worst kind of seriousness, a poison that brings death to liberty and rigor mortis to the spirit. Humor is the antibiotic that heals the terribly perfect...

And another:

Work comes easier after side-splitting humor. Machinery moves more smoothly. Hope makes its reentry quickly, quietly, almost unawares. Possibilities grow luminous. Artifice and therefore stress disappear. When wheels squeak, apply the grease of humor.

So, yes, burnout. While I didn't find the book altogether that earth-shattering, I really liked the topics which were chosen for chapters:

God's Healing
The Healing Power of Humor
Genuine Spirituality
Stress and Distress
The Therapy of Creativity
God's Gift of Self-Esteem
Physical Fitness
Time
Family
Facing Fear
Converting Anger
Dealing with Guilt

What I liked about the table of contents is that the list is, I think a very creative, insightful and also Christian. But the book, on the whole, was a bit too psychologically-based; there was a particular emphasis on Jungian psychology. I would have liked to have seen the book more firmly and closely tied to Christian teaching and then been given practical suggestions on how to make changes in my life...

...Because here's the thing: knowing oneself, the basis of Jungian psychology, really only goes so far, but goes a decent distance, I think, in being the solution to caring for oneself and being a disciple. It's not self-knowledge that brings lasting freedom but that knowledge put into action, in real choices, and in Christ. If I simply know Lynne better, will I not burn out? That's part of it, sure.

But more fundamentally, I can trust that God knows me better than I could ever know myself, and my life is safe in His hands. Even when things look bad and I am at 'the end of myself,' He is there. Even when I don't understand something in my life or a reaction I have or an emotion I feel, He is there, and He alone is unchanging. Even when He is asking me to do something that "I" normally wouldn't do, He is there, still asking, still meaning to love me and others. For example, someone this year told me they thought I was quite the extrovert. And my reaction was "Huh? Heck no!" But through the Holy Spirit and over the past several years, I've been able to increase the amount of time and energy I can be around people and at some level, deny myself the luxury of only living out of who I am and what my preferences are, even if and especially if I know them. The essence of Polonius's stupid yet wise remark "To thine own self be true!" is and is not the answer to dealing with suffering and burnout.

Anyways. So the book wasn't stellar, but it provided good food for thought; it got some balls rolling in my head --not bad for a free book!