(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

On my way to work this morning I was replaying last night’s message in my head. I was convicted the moment I saw the title on the notes the greeter handed me. It was a message on the tongue. My back gets tense when I think of the standard God holds us to in regards to the words that come from our mouths… and how often I give in and miss the mark. Daily! Hourly! One minute to the next! Words just fly sometimes. I say a lot of good, encouraging things, but I just as often let negative words flow… and that matters (a great deal) because people remember the critical. And the Lord will not compete with our free flowing mouths. The point is for us to wait on Him to say things through us, as vessels… so often I find that I never needed to open my mouth in the first place (even if it was to say something I thought was helpful).  Ha, suddenly I can hear No Doubt’s melodramitic heart song begging “Don’t Speak.” But here’s the real kicker, a verse that  I think I’ve avoided my whole life up till last night, God makes a mandate: 

“If anyone considers herself religious”

that’s me, God

“and yet does not keep a tight rein on her tongue, she deceives herself”

but God, I try!

“and her religion is worthless”

(silence)

 ”religion that I accept as pure and faultless is this: to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”   James 1:26

He picks me up, brushes me off and invites me to rest with him awhile– hard lesson learned. But most of all I’m glad to be taken care of by a God who shows his love through boundaries.

I can smell success in today.

On my way to work I found myself actually thanking God for the traffic– an extra 40 minutes to be with him in the morning. Time with Him is so precious, and when I get it I find myself feeling relieved, relaxed and so grateful.

Where would I be without you Lord?

It is so good to be reminded that the Lord wants the best for us. He wants us to feel and to feel good;  it’s what our society considers the “simple things” that when experienced, prove to be the most fulfilling: the breath in our lungs, the sand at our feet, the wind at our back. God does not leave out the details. He is sure to bless us even in the unexpected, unanticipated joys that represent the simple things in life.

Simple yet powerfully significant… that’s you God.

L o n g four day weekend. We had fun. Foot washing and all. 

There is nothing like a good wedding– where you can relax, and without a shadow of a doubt know that it’s going to last… that no matter how quirky the two personalities, they are perfect for each other.

This weekend I was reminded that ninety-nine percent of the time it is not about me. It’s so easy for me to sit back and be a critic. As a spectator I have the advantage of saying, “well, I would have done it this way.” When attending an event, what is the point of even thinking beyond the present circumstance into how it could have been better? Or, how things could have been done? What I, as a guest, would have liked to have happened is irrelevant because I am there for the show. Such is life, the majority of the time. When people say that weddings are all about the bride, believe it, because it’s true. Parties and events are expressions of the ones who are celebrating, or if they are surprise parties they are expressions of love by the people who did the planning, and if they are extravagant dinners they are expressions of the host’s feelings for the guest. Too much analysis so often on my part. And who asked my opinion anyway? It’s time for me to stop ”showing up” and feeling the need to do a mental assessment. I go to class and rate my professors’ lecture, I go to church and pick apart the sermon, I go to a movie and think of how the plot could have been better. I am starting to think if I’d just rid myself of the constant compulsion to critique, I’d be a lot better off; I could actually enjoy the motions of being a passive spectator… of being a guest, as opposed to an assessor. Sometimes I gotta just hop in the boat and the let current float me downstream without letting it know if it has or hasn’t met my dubious standards.

I reverted back; I started to care about what other people think about me. I broke down and melted into someone else’s mold. I wanted to be what they wanted; I wanted to be fun, exciting, smiley, happy, life-giving, good-to-be-around… I wanted them to approve, to enjoy me and to ask me back. There is nothing like the feeling of acceptance. But at the end of the night, after a long ride home and finally closing your eyes, laying on your back in the dark, you replay the events and find that  based on this one night, you feel nothing. Nothing imparticularly fulfilling. You’re thankful not to be alone– to be cherished, to be understood, to be wanted, but it all stops there and the basic aloneness does not subside. I am finding that we, as humans are supposed to feel, essentially, alone. We stand before God and just ourselves, and although this might sound particularly univiting, compared to other people that is how we will always feel on Earth: slightly estranged. But before God, in our times of loneliness, or in the midst of crowds in our inner solitude of heart, in our meetings with God, we will find relief in the ability to feel conjoined…. to feel the unique power of a true merge, an ultimate fit. No one and nothing will complete us like the Lord. His omnipotence is our best friend. Who can love us like he can? Who can judge us as accurately? Who balances the scales more perfectly? The following is a poem on marriage by Kahlil Gibran. Some friends and I were discussing its meaning a few weeks ago. We came to the conclusion that even if one day we find the man that really understands our experiences, or the place where we can really feel at home, we never want to build up false hopes based on the exhuasting demand that anyone or anything can live up to our absolutistic expectations. We always were and always will be, alone. And this fact is not depressing, it is just the opposite my loves. . ..

From: “The PROPHET” on Marriage 

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

is it the way the world is now? or is it my cynical self? Everywhere I go, every person I talk to, every program I watch, I anticipate the worst. I expect pain, and grief, and regret and, you know, newspaper news. Social injustice is everywhere I go. Has it become the norm? Have I began looking for it?

Last night I made the argument that the Lord is the “great simplify-er”. That His peace is in His simplicity. That knowing God is simple (not easy). I found that as I spoke to the faces around the table, I was also speaking to myself. 

A huge part of spiritual maturity is about being able to accept the light and easy yoke of Christ. As baby believers we are so inclined to choose the heavy yoke of the self-made-man; the yoke that says, “I can do this, this is my burden to bare. I’ll pull myself up by my own bootstraps, thank you.” What we are tempted to take on, in our efforts to “get things done,” is the world’s chaos. The world’s yoke is complicated, it’s bulky, it’s uneven and overwhelming. The Lord’s yoke, on the other hand, is nothing of the like; yes, it feels like a yoke around your neck, but it’s surprisingly freeing. And every time you choose that light and easy yoke, you feel the same– protected, shepherded, pacified, directed and gratefully out-of-control. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. The simplicity of Christ is in His consistency. And as we begin to advance in our spiritual walk from baby’s milk to steak and potatoes, the simplier (not EASIER!) our relationship with Christ becomes. You wake up in the morning and you choose Him, because you know first hand His soverignty, you’ve experienced his faithfulness.  The world is a complicated place full of havoc, confusion, chaos, inconsistency, idiosyncrisy, injustice, and cheap-shots; but the greatest news on Earth is that Christ came to heal the broken pieces and offer us something that finally, finally, finally makes sense: yesterday, today and tomorrow.

O Lord Jesus, your words to your Father were born out of your silence. Lead me into this silence, so that my words may be spoken in your name and thus be fruitful. It is so hard to be silent, silent with my mouth, but even more, silent with my heart. There is so much talking going on within me. It seems that I am always involved in inner debates with myself, my friends, my enemies, my supporters, my opponents, my colleagues, and my rivals. But this inner debate reveals how far my heart is from you. If I were simply to rest at your feet and realize that I belong to you and you alone, I would easily stop arguing with all the real and imagined people around me. These arguments show my insecurity, my fear, my apprehensions. You, O Lord, will give me all the attention I need if I would simply stop talking and start listening to you. I know that in the silence of my heart you will speak to me and show me your love. Give me, O Lord, that silence. Let me be patient and grow slowly into this silence in which I can be with you.  

Tonight I am speechless and full of things to say. I am speechless by choice… well, that sounds too passive; mainly I am speechless because the worst thing to do would be to open my mouth.  I have all the words stored upstairs; pounding down the door of my mouth; but my judgement tells me that these pressing unspokens must wait. I feel like I am going to pee my pants.  I want it to be said, finally, but that would be selfish.  And so, I am anxious.

I have learned more about myself, it seems, in the past three days than the past three years. I am learning how to have self-control (the source of most of the anxiety, I’m sure). I am learning how to be a good friend. I am learning to be thankful for the mistakes I’ve made. The past, I am realizing, is something we do not have the liberty to regret. So in light of these things, in light of the new year, in light of the recent dramatic learning curve, in the spirit of embracing my broken past… there is nothing left to say on this third day of the new year but, “praise the Lord!”

When I asked God to show me signs, I had no expectation of that actually happening. Out of desperation (and utter impatience) one day I said, “God, please, just show me some signs!” What I was really doing was shamelessly telling God that I just couldn’t believe that He was the reason behind the sudden changes. It had to be more; bad luck, an old friend’s carelessness, circumstance… or so I thought. Bold move on my part to ask God to elaborate, to prove to me the way he was paving for me was actually His doing– without thinking about it, I was actually asking the God of the Universe to prove it to me.  But

God met me; He showed me my silly signs. And in the end,  that which gives me peace is not the proof, ironically, but that my Jesus would go through such great lengths to so tangibly reveal his love for me.

“As long as we are trying to run away from our loneliness we are constantly looking for distractions with the inexhaustible need to be entertained and kept busy. We become the passive victims of a world asking for our idolizing attention. We become dependent on the shifting chain of events leading us into quick changes of mood, capricious behavior and, at times, revengeful violence. Then our life becomes a spastic and often destructive sequence of actions and reactions pulling us away from our inner selves.”       Henri Nouwen

 i love this quote because it speaks directly to my greatest barrier in my walk with the Lord… it explains how frazzled I get sometimes, it explains how sometimes I just get turned around.  

about a month ago, I was talking to a dear friend about listening to God; mostly I was complaining about how hard it is. First you have to get things quiet enough to hear Him, then you have to rule out all the other competing voices: yourself, the devil (who, ironically, sounds a lot like God sometimes), other people… then once you’ve done that (if you haven’t given up by now) you have to interpret and accept what He spoke to you. <– this is my defualt mode for understanding/listening to God. But the deeper I grow in my walk, the more I am realizing how dysfunctional my default system of communication with God actually is. Having told this to my friend, it is what she said to me that brought some hope to the situation. She said, “Jen, above all, the Lord just wants to heal you. He wants to lay you on His operating table and do the necessary work.” It is her simple insight that has dramatically changed the way I approach the Lord for direction. Instead of going to him for the answer; the next step, the next plan, the next move, I go to Him to be healed, being out-of-control enough to be satisfied with healing and not omens. Funny to think that I am going to need to be healed for the rest of my life, daily, yearly, without a doubt… but the Lord’s operating table, unlike others, is a place of unexpected excitement and peace.