Much Afraid and Perfect Love

My friend JJ and I had a really good discussion the other day.

We talked about things that go on but that we can't see, how the Bible is very elusive in its hints about spiritual warfare, and how, while this can be exasperating, is also gracious. How we have to trust instead of having tangible facts, and how trust is really all we have anyway. How hard of a grace that is to live in.

We talked about age, how it seems that one grows older with experience, younger with love.

We talked about the odd connection that some people have -- she called it being on the network -- the connection where they hear other people's heart-cries. About how maybe, if you hear those cries, you could walk away rather than give yourself in responding, but you have to lie to yourself ever after. Walking away is not a good way to live. People call that heartless, said JJ. But they call it insanity to stay, I said.

To stay when it hurts, to to remain in the fire by choice, can look like insanity. It has a cost. It refines your strengths and breaks you at your weaknesses, and you can emerge knowing yourself. Knowing what you need to be striving for in sanctification.

JJ pointed out that you can often look back on those crucible times and see the linking chains of grace. The grace upon grace, grace leading to more. Gras ar ben gras, I thought, because that's the name I had for it for most of last semester.

The grace is what saves.

The what-ifs whisper condemnation, those things that replay and haunt after those times in the furnace, aching fears that the grace is a shadow.

And we talked about how, in those fears, we find that we do not yet love perfectly, for perfect love casts out fear. We long to love that way, but find ourselves thwarted at every step by our flawed love for God and for others.

JJ's confession, "I am much afraid" is mine too. I am a disciple of little faith, one of those panicking during the storm. Never mind that the Lord of Storms is enough at ease to sleep.

I am much afraid, but He is all love. So my life is caught in a tangled, delicate tension that every moment and action and breath flows out of. Sometimes gloriously and sometimes painfully, woven in between natural fear and the real love.

We thanked God that His mercies are new every morning.

And morning came while we talked, and we said 晚 安, goodnight, and went to sleep, to wake to new mercies.

[Sandra McCracken has sung two hymns that fit beautifully with these subjects.

Grace Upon Grace

In every station, new trials and new troubles
Call for more grace than I can afford
Where can I go but to my dear Savior
For mercy that pours from boundless stores.

CHORUS:
Grace upon grace, every sin repaired
Every void restored, you will find Him there
In every turning He will prepare you
With grace upon grace.

He made a way for the fallen to rise
Perfect in glory and sacrifice
In sweet communion my need He supplies
He saves and keeps and guards my life

To Thee I run now with great expectation
To honor You with trust like a child
My hopes and desires seek a new destination
and all that You ask Your grace will provide.

and I Glory in Christ

God forbid that I should glory,
save in the Redeemer's cross
Counting shame for Him but honor,
Counting earthly gain but loss
All the love of God is here,
A love that casteth out all fear

God forbid that I should glory,
save in Christ my Lord alone
Him I lean on; Him I follow
Him, before the world, I own
All the love of God is here
A love that casteth out all fear

God forbid that I should glory
save in Christ the Son of God
Him who sought me Him who bought me
Him who washed me in his blood
All the love of God is here
A love that casteth out all fear

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:7-21)]

Nightfall and Vows

Here's what caught me tonight reading Fellowship of the Ring:

"On [the Ring-bearer] alone is any charge laid... the others go with him as free companions to help him on his way. You may tarry, or come back, or turn aside into other paths, as chance allows. The further you go, the less easy will it be to withdraw; yet no oath or bond is laid on you to go further than you will. For you do not yet know the strength of your hearts, and you cannot foresee what each may meet upon the road."

"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens," said Gimli.

"Maybe," said Elrond, "but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall."

"Yet sworn word may strengthen quaking heart," said Gimli.

"Or break it," said Elrond. "Look not too far ahead! But go now with good hearts!"

Oaths do make and break hearts. They bind, and sometimes the binding is what breaks us most deeply. But we cannot live without them.

My family revolves around vows -- my parents' wedding vows, the vows taken at the adoption of my siblings, my vows of church membership. There are other, more implicit, more subtle vows that bind just as much. I'm a student by choice, so I work hard on academics. I'm a sister. I'm an officer in a club. I'm a friend.

And I'm still grateful for people who have made me be intentional about what I bind myself to. A lot of it went on as I grew up and Mom gave me more influence in what I studied. I remember a lot of that going on freshman year: the ones who made me think about communion, the ones who made me think about friendship, the ones who made me think about academics.

For all the ones who said, "What do you really want? Is this what you really want?" and then looked at me as I said, "Yes."

One of the songs made for the Fellowship of the Ring movie has the catching line,

May it be

When darkness falls

Your heart

Will be true.

May it be indeed.

What other than a vow to walk in the darkness would ever press us onward when we do finally see nightfall?

Crazy Plans

"There remain two more to be found," said Elrond. "These I will consider. Of my household I may find some that it seems good to me to send."

"But that will leave no place for us!" cried Pippin in dismay. "We don't want to be left behind. We want to go with Frodo."

"That is because you do not understand and cannot imagine what lies ahead," said Elrond.

"Neither does Frodo," said Gandalf, unexpectedly supporting Pippin. "Nor do any of us see clearly. It is true that if these hobbits understood the danger, they would not dare to go. But they would still wish to go, or wish that they dared, and be shamed and unhappy. I think, Elrond, that in this matter it would be well to trust rather to their friendship than to great wisdom."

I was reading this part, with the choosing of the Fellowship, to my youngest brother tonight, and thinking about how amazingly true Gandalf's words -- and Elrond's as well -- are. If I knew what lay ahead of me in life, I would be paralyzed with terror, because that is way more than I can handle.

But I love, love, Gandalf's rebuttal. While it is true that we would not dare to act if we knew the danger, it is well to trust to friendship.

The verses of 1 Corinthians 1:27-28 really sum up the core of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series:

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.

The cross is that way. We're that way too. I've been learning that all year, as I watch God work in my crazy, busy, insane life at school and bring what He wants from it -- friendships, academics, growth; as I worked at camp and ran on levels of exhaustion where I wanted to stop in the middle of walking down a hill and cry, when I didn't have words to say to a camper and God still spoke. He uses the weak things.

Which is scary, because that means that He uses people like me.

And things like the incarnation.

And He tells us to trust in His crazy plan, and trust that He knows best, and trust that He calls us friends.

Letter to a Friend

No, your words don't surprise me.

I knew as soon as I began reading that you were writing out your soul, that you were reflecting how you see yourself. And I was impressed, not only with the story you were weaving, but with the perception that it took to see yourself accurately enough to portray yourself as a killer, and with the honesty you showed in sharing the story.

It doesn't surprise me because I know what is in a man. I read the words and I recite them back to myself, in my living room, perched on a rock in the middle of campus, confessing that I cannot live up to God's law,

that

I have a natural tendency

to hate God and my neighbor

that the

fall has so poisoned our nature

that we are born sinners ---

corrupt from conception on.

that

we [are] so corrupt

that we are totally unable to do any good

and inclined toward all evil.

It helps to grow up catechized with those words. Then at least I couldn't say No one warned me, not the night when I heard confessions of what porn really does to you, not the night when I saw what too much alcohol really looks like, not the night I heard stories of abuse, not the night when I found that I am not strong enough to break through all the damage of trauma. Those things still come as a shock, as something horribly wrong, but at least I already knew it.

It helps that I know that I'm dark inside too.

So let's talk about these things, talk about how we don't come into the light because we're scared of being exposed and we're scared of being healed and we're scared of hurting someone else with all the pain locked inside ourselves, so instead it drips down like poison and we die.

Don't start thinking that it's fine for things to be the way they are, just because I expected it. It's not okay. Things suck sometimes.

But I want you to fight. I want you to find joy in being alive. Your words are grey with pain, saying that you're struggling just to feel alive at all. There's more out there than existentialism, and I am praying that it will take over in you and you'll be able to breathe and laugh.

I'm praying for things to surprise you. For joy to break in.

We are so beautiful when we sleep

Hearts of gold and eyes so deep, deep, deep

But love won't cure the chaos

And hope won't hide the loss

And peace is not the heroine that shouts above the cause

And love is wild for reasons

And hope though short in sight

Might be the only thing that wakes you by surprise

Surprise, surprise

Here's the best surprise: God became a man! And moved in with us. And the tomb is empty, and death is conquered.

I know that leaves a lot of mess in your life right now, and in mine too. But this is bigger. This is the beginning of the healing of all the broken.

The sunrise shall visit us from on high

to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,

to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Peace comes costly, with tears and stories and hugs and anger and fighting and death and blood. But it comes. Don't give up.

Why I Need Advent

Yesterday one of my wonderful roommates sent me a link to the blog Six Year Med, and I've been reading the back articles. I like finding out what makes people tick, and Danielle is an excellent writer.

Tonight I found this post, Evidence of Things Unseen.

It was a good reminder. Sometimes we run from responsibility that we should have shouldered. But sometimes we carry it too long, carry what never should have been ours originally.

Jars of Clay:

All of those nights
Spend alone in the darkness of your mind
Give it up
Let it go
These are things you were never meant to shoulder...

Conversation with a sobbing friend:

"This was never your choice to make. You have been faithful much..."

"I should be the one paying the prices."

Because we're prideful and we want to carry the world on our shoulders and be the savior.

I know, because that's me.

The good thing is, I'm not the world's savior.

He is.

It's good to be reminded from time to time that it's not my responsibility to save the world. Rather, to be faithful.

Tim Keller's book Counterfeit Gods does an excellent job of issuing this reminder again. He writes,

There is legitimate guilt that is removed through repentance and restitution, and then there is irremediable guilt. When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important to them then God's.

It sounds silly, and I'd love to be able to say, "No, my identity is fully rooted in Christ, and I only rely on what God says about me to know who I am." But I don't. Because I'm prideful, and it's a lot more in keeping with what I'd like to think about how the world depends on me.

But I need to know that it doesn't. Because it's weight that I cannot carry, weight that only a Savior who is God can, and only a Savior who is man can understand how it breaks you.

That's why I need Advent, because I need Christmas, because I need Him to be born and live and die and be my great High Priest.

The King Who Did Not Forget

Before the creation of the world, they had made a covenant, binding themselves in a relationship without end. There would be the creation, the bringing-everything-to-be. And beyond that lay the darkness of the image-bearers who would blind themselves by looking too long at the light as they tried to overthrow it.

The agreement was that he would redeem the rebels, this covenant made even before they were created. He entered into this willingly, despite the dreadful cost, pledging his very life to save those who were born to be his subjects but were self-determined to be his enemies.

The morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Ready?"

The children, wrapped in their blankets, huddled by the fireplace, nodded.

The story began with Once upon a time, as many good stories do, this story of the fulfillment of the covenant. He was born into a land of the planet hostile to him, as had been agreed. He had to grow up humbly, with none of the honor that he deserved. He learned to work with his hands, this one who had created the universe, laying stone in the lovely small town near his home in the hills. He was a master craftsman, but there was nothing about his appearance to suggest that he was anything extraordinary. He was just one of a handful of children, and some still wondered about the legitimacy of his birth.

He may have looked ordinary, but he hadn't forgotten the reason why he had come.

He waited patiently, preparing, until the day of the battle. To the shock and dismay of his small army, he went unarmed into the enemy's camp, all too vulnerable. To be sure, his hands were strong, but the strong hands of one man couldn't defeat the world's best trained army.

They may have forgotten that he had already been living in enemy territory, but he had not.

And he died there, life bleeding out with a desperate cry of forsakenness. Those who had followed him hid. They didn't understand, hadn't heard, the terms on which he gave up his life.

Give me back my people. Give me back my bride.

Like the heroes of Greek and Roman legend, he went down himself into death to pursue and free the captives, to hound hell. Unlike those heroes, he did not fall prey to any of the alluring traps of death, and so it had no hold on him. He slipped out of its grasp, subduing it instead.

He led those he had redeemed out of the deep dark places, into the light. He reclaimed his bride, washing away her shame and covering her with his grace. He trained them to fight, an army to carry on with the final battles until he'd come back again.

"And now we are part of the King's family, too," added a sleepy voice. "Don't forget that part."

"Now we are the King's children too," said the storyteller with a smile. "We won't forget, because he didn't forget. So we live... happily... ever... after."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The happily ever after doesn't come immediately, not when you are part of the forces left in country still occupied by enemies. Sometimes they crowded together, lonely and cold in the vast open spaces, clinging to the memories and the words that were left, the promise that he would, in fact, come back some day. They were wanderers, tethered to the real by the stories passed down from generation to generation, stories more true and lovely than any fairy tale.

Firelight flickered on their grimy faces and bloody hands as they fell asleep, weary, to dreams of a world more real than their own and the King who would return.

The King who had not forgotten before, who would not forget them now.

He was coming.

Thankful...

As I walked back from the dining hall today, I heard a voice singing quite loudly. It made me smile, this guy coming out of the freshman dorm singing, and so I began thinking of how many amazingly good things have happened in the last few days. So I thought that I'd make a list of some of these things that I'm thankful for...

• Dinner with Katie E and her parents on Thursday night and studying for our bio test in her room... it was very fun and relaxing, as well as productive study time.
• The immune system. I really enjoy studying it. I knew there was a reason I was taking more bio.
• Dinner with C-1 on Friday night and listening to how ridiculous we were all being. Finals are definitely approaching...
• Story writing and discussion with a roommate on Friday night...
• Filmfest on Friday night... and getting dressed up... and seeing a lot of campus looking classy. And, of course, getting to see a bunch of amazing films put together by the people I get to go to school with. This included one of the RD's son returning in 20 years to save the college, one based on Rear Window by my roommate Jordan (Part I, Part II), some amazing longboarding footage, and some impressive stop action/animation (here's one done by my friend Josh, and here's another one...).
• Repair day with Dag on Saturday... fun times with the Dag'ers, and a good mix of new and old members... really good pizza... many repaired weapons... chasing to get and avoid being in pictures...
• Going to the Christmas concert last night; it's always wonderfully done, the church is beautiful, and I got a ride down and back, plus time with some friends who I've seen less this semester.
• Sliding down the slippery sloped floor in the shoes with no traction as I waved at Katie E and both of us going from very happy waving to very confused expressions... then Bill fake-tripping me and semi-insulting my outfit...
• Coming back to my room and watching 9 with Jordan. It was kind of creepy but very well animated, and parts were really cute.
• Lots of blankets and a very warm bed to sleep in.
• Caitlyn calling this morning about the snow on the roads. I'm glad for safe drivers.
• Getting to hear Titus preach as a result of snow, and being at church with Caitlyn and Fiona. I love worshipping with friends. (That is going to be one sweet thing about heaven.)
• Christ's encouragement to the church in Philadelphia. (Text for this morning's service.)
• Warm boots and wool socks and a warm coat and gloves.
• Snow falling in fluffy clumps.
• The color orange, and my amazing orange shirt which my mom found for me.
• The photos on the wall above my bed.
• The opportunity to make a mosaic downtown on Wednesday night... it was fun and very relaxing. And I got to know some girls who I didn't know much before, and catching up with some who I knew vaguely.
• The kid who walked out singing and made me think about this all.
• A beautiful new mosaic glass necklace made by Yonpli.
• Music by Michael Card, especially The Promise and Soul Anchor CDs.
• Chocolate. (And randomly being given it!)
• The many faithful witnesses to Christ who have gone before me.
• Friendliness of people who I haven't seen in a long time.
• Salt on sidewalks.
• Heather Dale's music (and the fact that Greyhound is not stuck in my head still, as it was all yesterday.)
• Light.
• Smells. Last year every time I smelled our suitemates' room, I felt relaxed and safe, and it's similar this year in my apartment.
• Poetry.
• His coming.

How about you?