Thirty Years of a Hidden Life

I have become aware that God has a relationship with me. What I mean by this is that He moves within my heart and life without a single bit of opposition or the constraint of my disapproval.  He does things with me which are sometimes hurtful from a human point of view—yet it is what he sees fit for me.  I hardly  understand, though I know for sure that He moves without hesitation and without restraint. His goal in these last 30 years has been to answer the question, who are you? This is one of those matters that rises to the level of simplicity and mystery simultaneously. For it is Christ within me that I am getting to know.  Jesus who understands the blessedness of being poor in spirit, of delighting in servanthood, a foot washer of his brethren. Jesus who understands that the reign of God is  like a grain of sand or a small seed which would only come to growth in later years and he is in no hurry. He is also a man that is not afraid to eat and drink with sinners and who understands himself as bread that is to be broken for the world. This is the summary of my life as I follow Him...carried through the valleys of obscurity, poverty, wretched rejection and endless hours of walking among the lowly and cast down. I see that I am often offended by His life.  

As I move through these changes in my self understanding, in which my sovereignty is consistently ignored, I am confronted by change and challenge. I see that God is God and He will do with me what He pleases. Jesus, as the Son of God, also had to be formed, but unlike me, He knew things that I do not know, nor take seriously, such as the seasons or the mysteries of man and beast.  I, however, am like a proud bride outraged  by an arbitrary rule her king has set. This is how I have lived. Uninvited He has moved in residence and given me a life about which I know nothing. I confess, I did not know who He really was in this dispensation. Nor did I know who I would become, though I strongly suspected that my words held secrets that would only be revealed at his discretion with power and wisdom. An Oracle. Yet he has also let me live the part of the fool and the simpleton, as I have had to learn what is me and what is Him. Only too well have I learned that He is at my constant disposal with the poor in spirit and silent as a mouse among the teachers of the law. He will not give them a sign, neither then nor now.  I am no longer my own, but rather belong to another...who rules and is on a quest. 

God told Joseph and Mary to take the child to a distant land. Was Mary scandalized by a journey to the land of the unclean? What was the meaning of this abject humiliation? Mary raised this child and watched the evolution of her son, who was also the Christ, and pondered the ways of God—its meaning, its import—not knowing what He was doing. But in such implicit faith that all things were permitted by God she continued to believe and perhaps that is why is she is to be revered and called blessed. She trusted even when her heart was pierced with the Lord's  own sword.  She understood  possibly because she was nearer to prophetic stream of humanity than I am... some 2000 years later and living in an urban desert of unbelief and cynicism. At some point we must all wrestle with the question, who are we? Our answer is no less than John's, I am only a voice, crying in the wilderness "Prepare ye the way of the Lord!" I must now be about my Father's business this new year. This is my 2012 resoution. Now no empty promise but a sure hope. 

The Desert Way #2

"The radical challenge is to let God and the divine Word shape and reshape us as human beings, to feast each day on this Word, and thus grow into free and fearless people. Thus we can continue to witness to God's presence in this world, even when there are few or no visible results." Henri Nouwen

Blessed is He who is not offended in Me:

The minute a man or woman is called into the mission field, he or she loses all their worldly possessions. And with it go the comforts of citizenship and culture. But even more so, our identify which is so tied up in the American dream also becomes a thing of the past.  But the dominance of culture is so broad and so deep, it strongly influences the way in which we judge ourselves. When we look at ourselves through the eyes of the world, we see failure and pity. When we should be looking at Christ, at Jesus as our role model. He had no place to lay His head. He was homeless and without power in the world. 

After seminary I was full of ideas, having been exposed to the accumulated knowledge of many successful and top flight missionaries. Each one of my teachers were exciting and full of godly zeal for the Gospel. Ideas are a form of power. A new kind of power in a new kind of industry. The industry of good works and miracles. An industry of changing nations and being radical. 

It is easy to see why Judas was attracted to Jesus. Jesus had power. Power is the way to secure the nation from the Roman rule. Long they had dreamed of being sovereign once again. Judas wanted a good thing. He wanted national sovereignty. And so did I.  After years of pounding the pavement like a street cop, and with sparse fruit, I longed for the numbers that the big evangelists were talking about. I had one or two converts to Christ, they had their thousands. Not for my sake, but for the Gospel's sake and for their own well being. I had already seen the fruit of the Gospel in these little shanty towns. Every Christian home flourished. In former communist colonias, the houses blossomed with flowers, trees, grass and laughter. Before they had been gray, lifeless and depressed neighborhoods. The Mexican spirit was back!  Mexicans make terrible communists. It is not endemic to their national spirit. But, how will my mexican compadres adhere to the desert ways? 

Dust in My Mouth

The desert wilderness is designed to strip us of pride and supports that sustain our false images of ourselves. Imagine the desert, hot, dry, dusty and windy. The skin becomes dry, brittle and grey. All moisture is sucked out of it and we begin to look like we have elephant skin, dark, mottled and unattractive. Our feet swell and they spread, nails curve over the tops as our feet bend to suck the earth so that we may gain traction and make progress. So most likely the first thing we must do is look toward our own sanctification and ask if we are cooperating with the grace of God in this process.

Matthew 8:1 is the story of the leper. We ask, "What does that have to do with me?" Am I a leper? Yes, you are, and so am I. If you do not recognize your leprosy then stand before God and ask "Lord, am I a leper?" "Must I kneel before you too?" The story goes on that the leper was standing before God—humbly asking for help, for a drop of godship toward him. "Lord, reach out your hand—make me clean." I need this posture daily, "God make me clean" of my pride, my rebelliousness, my indifferent heart, my prayerlessness, my selfish narcissisistic ways. Make me clean from the defilement of my garments in my thought life, my passions, my appetites, my omissions. Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me.

The neat thing about lepers back in the day was that there was no way to hide. . . in fact, if a leper drew near a town, a bell ringer would run before him announcing his arrival. The children and ill were terrified of them, mothers grabbed their little children and ran in the other direction. Wouldn't it be helpful if that happened to us? We couldn't fool anyone with our righteous flesh, but most of all, we couldn't deceive ourselves about it. I think that as Christians, we'd run to the laver to be cleansed, IF we could only see our depravity and our unfallen spots in our garments.

So the desert. It will make us know who we really are beneath the shiny shoes and beautiful houses and expensive sports equipment, swimming pools and imported wines. . . Arrgghh the dust in my mouth tastes terrible and makes me thirsty for his pools of refreshing.

The Ways of the Desert

Nothing is more difficult than walking long distances through the medium of sand. Nothing to distract the mind of the monotony of the landscape save a gecko or two in an unpredictable moment. But it is an ideal place to reflect on one's life, one's "journey" so to speak. It is an excellent landscape for the journey of the soul. I want to talk, in this blog, about all the the ugly things that living in the back forty of the desert floor of Sinai entails. Moses knew its ways long before he lead God's people through it. So let us see what comes forth.