'til Love Returns

"'That there is brokenness,' he says quietly. 'That this world is brokenness. But within brokenness is the Unbreakable Name. How the whole earth groans 'til Love returns.'" (Joy Kogawa, Obasan, 1981)

Looking for Love

Evangelical Christians commonly offer Christ to mankind as a nostrum to cure their ills, a way out of their troubles, a quick and easy means to the achievement of personal ends... What we do is precisely what a good salesman does when he presents the excellence of his product as compared with that of his closest competitor. The customer chooses the better of the two, as who would not? But the weakness of the whole salesmanship technique is apparent: the idea of selfish gain is present in the whole transaction. (A.W. Tozer)

The sales technique works - there are many who follow the Christ in hope of some 'blessing'. They will find in the end that they have purchased an empty package. Unless what we seek is a freedom from that driving selfishness; unless we first find that ugliness destroying all that is beautiful and true in us, we may spend a lifetime steeped in Christian culture and church work, but we will neither seek nor find the only One who can and will set us free.

Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open up to us!’ then He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ “Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets’; and He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from; depart from me, all you evildoers.’ Luke 13:25-27

But to the sad truth that some are wrong about their acceptability to God, the Bible adds a promise that those accepted are not, as some assume, limited to the western world:

...And they will come from east and west and from north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God. (Luke 13:29)

We are not acceptable to God on the basis of our piety, but on the basis of our reaching for his mercy:

[Jesus] also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. (Luke 18:9-14)

On Arrogance and Awe and Dr. Suess

Dr. Suess's Yertle the Turtle is an ingeniously prophetic work. It is the tale of the modern Western man. Yertle is a turtle who has a yen for leadership. He wants to rule. As king of the pond of Sala-ma-Sond, he soon grows dissatisfied with the rock that serves as his throne. So he piles up all of the other turtles and steps on them, one by one, until he reaches the top. He styles himself king of all he sees:

I'm the king of a house! And a bush! And a cat!
But that isn't all. I'll do better than that!...

But, while he was shouting, he saw with surprise
That the moon of the evening was starting to rise
Up over his head in the darkening skies.

In the end, though, all it takes is a burp from one little turtle and Yertle finds himself king of the mud.

Aren't we Yertle? We've stepped on everything that can be put under us - nature, philosophy, history, humanity - exploited it and discarded it and climbed up on it until we really think we are the kings of all that we survey. We fancy ourselves infinitely more wise than any people groups who have failed to come, fawning, to buy and sell in our marketplace, and whose cultures have not yet been laid humbly before our own mass-mediated philosophies. Cultures throughout our world and throughout history have been aware of a world higher than the natural world - but WE alone are un-primitive and un-ignorant, so we can pity the poor sods who just didn't have our understanding of things. We can scoff at global warming and the energy crisis and the dearth of nutrients in our soils - because we are the greatest, and we frankly can't imagine a crisis that the omnipotent mix of our scientific forces and technological advances wouldn't be able to put to rights.

Like Yertle, one of the things we have lost is a sense of awe. Because science has allowed us to arm-wrestle nature into a kind of submission - at least for the time being - we think we can rule it. Because we can name scientific laws - some of them - we think we can control them. We toss around the bits we have learned about particle physics and black holes and we think we are the rulers of it all - because however little we actually understand, we can talk about it - a little. Just like Yertle, outraged at the moon, which dared ascend higher than him on his turtle-pile.

One little burp is all it's going to take for this pitiful little 100-year, several-country flash-in-the-pan to go Plunk! in the pond.

If only we had some inkling of the powers that are over us, and around us. We could see them, if only we could first admit our own weakness.

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.
Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.
Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
(Isaiah 6:1-5)

We have seen the enemy...

In the collective consciousness of at least Western society is a half-fantasy, half-fear of alien invasion. In our daydreams, the aliens are coming to destroy us. Their dark powers will spread throughout the universe unless they are put to death by charmingly innocent and grandly idealistic us. Sometimes they are robots; sometimes borgs; sometimes mind-forces. At all costs, they must be stopped before they destroy the whole universe.

We would like to believe that the darkness; the destruction, is something out there that may be met on the portals and finished off by the essential goodness of humanity. We need to face that fact that we are the the dark aliens. We are not the idealistic children we always let ourselves be in the sci-fi movies - we are the mutants, the devouring borgs who are systematically destroying every square inch we have the technology to reach. We have almost sucked this amazing planet dry. We are doing a thorough job of robbing it of its rich biodiversity and intricately balanced eco-systems. We have reached, as far as our technology allows us, into space.We pride ourselves on our scientific and technological achievements and our social sophistications. We forget the hideous and spreading corruption we have authored. We ignore the violence and oppression that run rampant despite our complicated societal codes.

The dark aliens aren't coming - they are here. They are us. And who is going to keep us from destroying the whole universe?

Oh, I am so disappointed in us. In people. In me.

We are so lovely, but for our wretched selfishness. That wicked, sucking heart of darkness reveals itself time after time, and we make excuse after excuse, but we know, if sometimes dimly, the truth.

There is only One who is lovely, trustworthy, pure. His name is Love and Jesus Christ. He doesn't hate us, the destroyers in a universe of beauty; he pities us. He comes without ray gun or flashing light sabre, but holds out his hand.

This is my body, which is broken for you... Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do...

When I am tired of the weakness, the lies, the unreliability of my own heart, I take refuge in One who is Truth. I am content to rest, then, at his dear feet. Somehow, though, he bids me come closer. If I will, he can set me free - free from that dark, clawing within that isolates me and eats away at all that is pure, making me something alien, to be feared and loathed.

He is not the God I have imagined, bending magnanimously to bless the humble penitent with his fingertips. Here is a Father and a Friend.

He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble... Psalm 91:15

I have sought in vain such a friend among humanity's hordes, but in Him alone my heart finds rest. He has given me pain, but never out of selfishness. He has let me cry and rage, but he has never deserted me.

Isn't this the One we need?

Wise Men on Wisdom

"There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;
No wisdom but in submission to the gods.
Big words are always punished,
And proud men in old age learn to be wise."
- Sophocles, Antigone

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding."
- Proverbs 9:10 (KJV)

Earth, Idealism, and God

I think I might be a bit of an idealist. I don't like that. I mostly like to think of myself as realistic, but from time to time, I sense the idealist shoe fitting pretty snugly about my little foot. This might be one of the reasons that I so often find myself disappointed. I don't realize, most of the time, that my expectations are anything more than modest. That is, until I come smack up against reality. -Pop- goes my shiny bubble, and I'm left wiping soap scum off the computer screen.

The boys in the reading club I teach are in the middle of a book about an alien who comes to earth. He writes back home about his experiences, and one of his observations is this: "Earth is a tough neighbourhood." I liked this statement. He's right. We humans are always trying to build trust, and always letting each other down. We talk about brotherhood and peace, but deep down, we only want those things if we can have them and all the other things we want, too. At our very best, we are broken.

There is only one thing in my life that has been better than I expected, not less; that hasn't left me feeling flat or disappointed: only God. Only He has been more warm, more kind, more lovely, more rich, and more trustworthy than I dreamed he would be. Only He has kept every promise. Only He satisfies, surprises, and delights the idealist in me with her high-flown expectations. What a sweet relief after I have got a look at the disappointing weakness of the human heart, and the failure that dogs the most noble of us.

And this is the message which we have heard from him, and declare to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. (I John 1:5)

Oh, here I can rest my weary heart...

Jesus still calls...

“Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matt 11:28-30

Waiting to Be Free

This is what the Lord says-- Israel's King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God. Isaiah 44:6

Perhaps the hardest thing a human being can do is bow herself before the God of Eternity, to recognize his awful authority and right. There is something deep and dark and long-clawed within us, that lays hold on the heart and will not let us go without blood.

I am waiting for the day when I will be free of that squealing, squirming self that reaches always for supremacy and rages in bitter disappointment against the God who refuses to give up his place.

Words and wishing, and God

The trouble with talking about God is that we all use the same words, but they mean such different things. When many people talk about "God", they refer vaguely to a magical being who decides how everything is, and yet - despite the horror and confusion we see around us - is also somehow good. People talk about love and mean warm, fuzzy feelings that make you want to talk all night and buy flowers for no reason.

The "God" I want to tell of is not God because he or someone else decided that he could be, nor because he won a shootout with the other powers in the universe. He is God because he is Love, and Love is the most powerful force there is. The "love" I speak of is not the thing they make movies about. You know you've encountered it because it sits like lead in your chest. It forces you out of bed in the morning, and half- sets you free and half- kicks your butt until you find yourself choosing to do things you hate doing. It stomps with heavy boots on your pride, and hurts more than anything else has the power to hurt. It's wearying and difficult and sore and will make you grow up if you can just stand it.

So, a God who is Love is not all gumdrops and roses. He is difficult. If we would reach out to him, or attempt to join him in loving, we will ache and weep in bewilderment. But let me say again that, in the end, he alone is enough.

Oh, if I could only draw back the curtain and let you see his vast beauty and his intricate order and his deep warmth... But you've seen snows and sunsets; ocean and sky; stars and dogs - and the eloquence of words must be laid aside when such speak.

Why This Waste?

I'm tired. Tired of waiting. Tired of hurting. Tired of leaving myself bare, tired of feeling foolish, tired of pushing down my wounded, squirming pride, tired of hurting for what seems like no reason, tired of waiting for God to replace my withered love with His strong one. I try to remember - well, half-remember, half-imagine - what it's like to love and hurt and still not need.

I sit outside a tightly closed door and wait. The door was once open to me, and I went in and out of it at will. I begin to forget, just now, precisely why I wait, but Love, that charming child, is somewhere about me, and for what seems like a long time, his presence has been enough.

Pride comes stalking about from time to time, making indignant thrusts and reminding me of the privilege from which I have fallen, and drawing my eyes to a plentitude of other doors open to me which I might more independently go in at. But Love rises up and silences his angry talk with a bold look.

Then Loneliness has a turn at me. He comes smoothly and coldly, laying with chill hands a thin blanket of melancholy about my shoulders as I wait. His pleading suggestion is a whine in the wind, but it matches the rising complaint in my cold heart: If you can't bear it, no need to stay. There are other doors open wide and warm. But again, Love arises in my defence and quells him with a word or two.

Last comes Reason, unsanctified. I hear the ordered measure of his footfall as he comes and it seems reassuring to my ear. He is neither angry nor pleading, but all matter-of-fact, and he seems not even to see me, but addresses Love directly: "Think carefully, my friend. Long have you sat outside this door, to what end? Are you not simply a bother to those inside? When they think of you at all, doesn't your stubborn waiting seem a burden rather than a gift? What can you give if the door is shut?" His unimpassioned charge is swift and strong, and even Love seems to stagger, his childlike trust suddenly made foolish.

Then softly, through the damp and gloom, comes One whose brow is wrapped in thorns, whose hands and feet are pierced and bleeding. He neither looks nor speaks harshly, but before him, Reason knows his place and becomes the humble penitent. Love runs to him as to a father and looks boldly out from amongst the soft, warm robes of the Man of Sorrows.

I, too, am compelled to take my place at his feet, and I remember why and for Whom I sit waiting. It is not for the ones on the other side of the door, but for Him who also waits with broken heart.

Like those frugal-minded souls who watched with only their eyes the glory of One for whom an alabaster box was broken and its ointment poured forth, I have questioned in my heart, "Why this waste?"

And then - a glimpse of Him before whom all is at once broken and made whole; Him before whom there is no waste, though I pour out the whole treasure of my deep heart on his dear feet; Him whose broken heart precedes every other breaking, and whose precious ointment lavished on me is the full of my own heart's store.

I am ashamed that I have forgotten for whom I wait and watch; that I have been deceived by that rogue trio into counting again the cost of the alabaster, into making measure of my precious ointment. Surely there can be no waste for the One whose own blood poured forth is of matchless worth.

Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof: and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. (Ecclesiastes 6:8)