The Story Woven

The ground was white with snow.

We were spending the weekend in a "cabin" -- sort of a hunting retreat -- in the middle of nowhere, four hours' drive, slow behind the plow/salt truck. It was a long weekend for most of us, with no classes on Monday for MLK day, and we were taking some time to sleep and read, do homework and cook and catch up with each other's lives. With no internet access. With no phone service, except the landline, kept for emergencies.

And so -- Saturday -- we went for a walk in the woods. (A suibien kind of walk, my Chinese friends would say. It took me a while to explain that to my roommate once. I said I was going for a walk. "Where?" she asked. "Around campus," I said. "Where?" she asked. "I don't know," I said. "Nowhere." She stared at me. "Why?" "No reason, I just want to." She smiled. "Oh, a a suibien walk," she said, with understanding. It took me longer to get a general feel for what suibien meant. Random. Whatever you want.)

We slipped around on the ice and put our feet through where it was thin, endangering our shoes with the hidden pockets of freezing, muddy water. We posed on the hillside and took pictures.

And on our way back to the cabin, I took a deep breath. Thinking again about Proverbs 3:27, about a conversation that I had known I wanted to have from the time I decided to go to the cabin for that weekend.

Proverbs 3:17 says: Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it. I tend to think of that especially in terms of encouraging people, when you have a sense of perspective on their life that they are likely to not be able to see on their own.

If you've read older posts, maybe you've seen this one, the one called It's a Wonderful Life. If you haven't, the story makes more sense if you read it.

So I walked a little faster and caught up to him. We talked about jobs and school and such. And then I took another breath and said Thank you. I don't really remember exactly how I explained it. But I know that he is continuing to be in positions of authority; he has a wife, he has men under him. And he has much to offer in terms of growing them.

It unlocked parts of the weekend that wouldn't have been there, otherwise. Some laughter, because we got to know each other better than we would have. Some discussion, washing dishes -- So what has God been teaching you? What have you been learning? -- that came far more naturally when we knew that there was a context for it to fall into, that we'd already been part of the same conversation, if not really introduced to each other before.

It is beautiful how God weaves life together.

The Goodness of God

This point keeps coming up recently:

We sin because we don't really believe that God is good.

Last weekend I was at a staff training seminar for CCO where Tim Geiger, who works for Harvest USA, was speaking. His focus was sexual sin (and holiness), and he was talking about how sin -- any sin -- is based in a desire for something that's good. The problem is that we move this from being a good desire into being an ultimate end, something we're determined to get at any cost.

Tim Keller made this same point very well in Counterfeit Gods.

And I was discussing this last night with ZhongguoTim [okay, I realize that I have now talked about three Tims in a row. Not sure why that's how it happened, but there it is]. I know that this is where sin comes from -- that

each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (James 1:14-15) --

but I need to keep hearing it. It's easy to justify my behaviors and find acceptable behaviors that are still motivated by sin. We talked about grades, about building relationships with people. Are these motivated by desires to glorify God? Or to feel in control?

James gives us the antidote for this poisonous inclination in the next few verses.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:16-17)

If we believe that everything good comes from God, then we will trust Him.

We talked about this again today in my Environmental Ethics class, when we were discussing how God had decreed that Israel give the land a rest every seven years. How hard would that have been to obey? I would have thought, Are You crazy? I'll starve! My teacher summed it up well. "We think that if we obey God, bad things will happen."

Yep. There's the heart of the lie we believe.

So instead... we have to let go of trusting in ourselves and cling to the risky belief that God is trustworthy, that He is good. That He is omniscient and does know all of our circumstances. That He's omnipotent and has the power to work all things for good. That He's omnipresent and is with us in everything, is working in everything.

And mostly that He is all good, and that He desires good for His children.

Habits

[As a slight disclaimer... I've been meaning to post this for about a month, and just haven't gotten around to it. Not that it makes much difference, but here it is.]

I was reading The Divine Conspiracy (still; it didn't make my packing list for China so it kind of got put on hold) and hit a section on how much sin comes from habits.

I've thought more about habits in the past three months than I probably ever had before, because as soon as we got to China we started realizing that we had all kind of habits that were so deeply engrained we didn't even realize that they were habits, we just thought they were how life was. And we longed to rebuild a similar set of routine habits, so that we could do things like eat and buy groceries and shower on autopilot. It takes a lot of energy to consciously think about everything that we do in the course of a day.

Anyway, I think there is a lot to be said for what was being said in Divine Conspiracy: our habits are so unthought about that it's hard to remember that they exist, and it's hard to put effort into making whole something so ingrained that we've forgotten it's broken.

There are plenty of examples of this. I mean, why does George Bailey never fix the knob on the railing in It's a Wonderful Life? Does he even remember that it shouldn't pop off all the time by the end of the movie? Or last year, I went to a party at a friend's house and fell through one of his porch steps on the way up. Someone mentioned it and his response was along the lines of, “Oh yeah, that's been broken, you just have to skip it.” Or... fix it?

Maybe that was part of what was so radical and vital about the Reformation, the requickening of the idea that God says “Mine” about all of creation. That it's not just about Sundays and holidays and the clergy, but equally about Monday morning and Friday nigh, about the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker.

That God is just as interested in the money that we don't give in tithes and offerings as He is in the money that we throw into the offering plate.

So the motto of CCO that I grew up around – All of life redeemed – is a precious and beautiful one to have woven into your being.

And I think about Ann Voskamp (www.aholyexperience.com) and yes, how seeking to give thanks for all things at all times – this will protect us from much sin. It forces intentionality about many of the hidden desires of our hearts. It begins making whole what we forgot was there, let alone broken.