“You’re gonna suffer… but you’re gonna be happy about it…”

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I intended to write a blog a month into my life here in Uganda to tell you how things are, and what the lay of the land is. But I only realized I was a month in a few days after the mark, and there wasn’t time to write until a week and a half later. If that doesn’t sum up life here, I don’t know what does. Africa sets its own time and pace; woe to those who try to fight against it!

There are so many things I could tell you—from my misadventures to meeting some new heroes in the faith out in the refugee camps, from how many times I’ve gotten lost in my tiny town to the whirl of impressions, colors, and accents this new life has been for me.

But instead I’m going to tell you about suffering. It’s not that my first month here hasn’t been amazing. There are certainly tough bits to life here, but overall it has been filled with amazing people, sights, and experiences. Through it all though, suffering has been a theme.

I’ve heard incredible stories of faith in the face of persecution from my believing brothers and sisters who’ve fled here from Sudan. I’ve heard testimonies of believers on my team who have been through deep, dark valleys in their walks with God. I’ve been through a week-long trauma healing training (see my previous post) to help prepare me for my work in the refugee camps. I’ve heard stories of terrible evil, hopeless brokenness, and blinding sorrow. We have also rejoiced at God’s hand in the suffering, but that doesn’t lessen the weight of it all.

In the midst of this focus on suffering, I’ve sometimes laughed, sometimes grumbled at the tiny ‘sufferings’ in my life. Why does the water go out just when I want to take a shower? How should I respond when there isn’t frequent enough electricity for my fridge to keep cool? How do I handle only eating foods I can buy and prepare in the same day because the ants or the lack of refrigeration keep me from doing anything else? I’m not sick often, but how do I glorify God in my irritating half-sicknesses from anti-malaria medication or mystery illnesses that come with adjusting to life here? How do I view them in light of my friends’ actual suffering, or greater still, in view of the cross?

I tend not to be a complainer. I’ll buckle up under inconveniences and ride them out or try to bear through difficult things one day at a time. So when I contrast the greater suffering of those around me to my little… inconveniences… I tend to write them off and pretend they don’t exist or don’t bother me. How can I complain about my defunct shower when brothers and sisters in the refugee camps have to wait in line for hours just to get a jug full of water just for their family to drink from?

The Lord answered this confusion with a passage in Colossians that Africa has given me new eyes to see. “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church…”

Paul wrote to the believers in Colossae that he was joyful in his sufferings because they served a greater purpose—they were part of his work as a minister of the gospel. They were a gift he could give his people to build them up. And in the verse above, 1:24, he explains that his sufferings are no small gift.

The pain he felt in his body actually made Jesus’ sufferings for them complete. Paul isn’t saying that Jesus’ death on the cross wasn’t perfect or wasn’t enough. He was saying that Jesus’ suffering alone didn’t finish the job of building up believers around the world into the Body of the Church. As chapter 1 goes on, Paul explains that his ministry allows him to show how wonderful God’s salvation is to people who do not yet believe. That, he says, is worth suffering for, and he’s joyful to give all his toil, all his struggle, all his energy for that purpose—to build up the Church into Christ’s body here on earth.

That’s kind of revolutionary to me. I’ve never heard teaching on this passages that explained how our daily toil and hard work is useful or honoring to God. Think about it! My sufferings get to finish off a work Jesus started, a work Paul participated in. If I suffer sleeplessness or uncomfortable temperatures or questionable food in the line of the work God has called me to, my suffering is a gift of sacrifice I can share to help build up God’s people. And this goes for everyone’s work.

You moms that are tired of washing the same exploded diaper contents out of the same baby clothes, you church members who are exhausted from giving your effort and energy to church events, you grad school students wishing that just once you could get a full night’s sleep, you receptionists who faithfully deal with grumpy people—all of your suffering gives you a chance to show that you act like Jesus in tough situations because he’s worth it to you.

We have all been called to our own type of ministry, in whatever line of work we’re in. Ministering to the people around us means that the little inconveniences that build up can be a holy blessing and sacrifice to them. Your thankless work as a therapist, your suffering in that unpaid or not-paid-enough church internship, your dedication to your school work, your endurance in a difficult job, your kindness to unkind people, all those are sacrifices that build up the people around you. They give you a chance to show that you’re joyful in your hard work and that you choose to take your sufferings as an opportunity to build people up and to draw them to Christ.

So the next time I’m frustrated because I have no electricity to power my fan, and the next time you are ready to throw in the towel because your daily endurance and hard work seem pointless, let’s remember that our suffering can minister to others. Like Paul, in our very own bodies we can fill up what’s left to do in Christ’s work of building up the church. If we choose to see it that way, our suffering can be a very important gift to the people around us.

Lament

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O Lord over my brokenness,

Long have you carried me in my past.

Through many sufferings you have been faithful.

In my sins and my struggles you have loved me and provided for my needs.

But in the war and famine and death of the righteous,

Where are you, Lord?

When your faithful ones weep and mourn,

When the ones whom you love face darkness so deep it threatens to overcome them,

Why are you absent?

Why do you seem so far?

Why do you keep silent?

My own suffering is a small thing.

But the pain of multitudes is great.

When your followers starve

When they are hunted because you are their Lord

When their children die along the roadside,

How do you honor their faith

Or reward their obedience?

Send your peace to the land, oh Lord.

Bind up the broken-hearted.

Rescue those of your heart who have not created this war.

Lord over our brokenness,

We see your provision in new family and friends.

We understand you weep with us.

We know you send help and comfort to the ones your heart loves.

Lord over our brokenness,

In these black days of our sorrow

We will praise you.

When we cannot rise from our beds

When we have no tears left to cry

When we do not understand your plan and your ways,

We will trust you as Lord.

We will seek you in our brokenness.

 

*** This lament was written as part of a trauma healing training, according to the structure of laments from the Psalms, in response to and prayer about the current war in South Sudan.

A New Hope

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Are there times in your life when you’ve been so overwhelmed by a situation that you just did nothing? Maybe it was something big like renovations or house repair. Maybe it was something deep like confessing an old sin to an old friend and asking forgiveness. Maybe the size of the task of sharing your faith with all the people around you who don’t know Jesus overwhelmed you. Or maybe it was something as little as a homework assignment, paperwork for your job, or cleaning an out-of-control kitchen mess. We’ve all been there. I’m there often these days as I adjust to my new home, new community, new friends, new language, new market, new… you get the picture.

Those everyday moments of life are when we need hope the most—not just some floaty type of hope for the hereafter, but a real, everyday hope with dirt between its toes and scars to prove its strength and usefulness.

I’ll be perfectly honest when I tell you that I’ve always had a harder time understanding when the New Testament explains about hope. I sort of get what it’s saying, and there are sometimes days that are so hard I have to hold on to my hope in heaven and remember that, no matter what’s going on, it’ll all work out in the wash and I’ll get an eternity with Jesus to praise him for somehow turning those impossibly hard things around into something good.

But, honestly, it’s been some of my favorite stories that have helped me understand the everyday type of hope and, in the end, they have made our New Testament hope feel incredibly real and near. So… strap yourself in, because I’m about to go full nerd on you.

“Is everything sad going to come untrue?” — Samwise Gamgee

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings stories have always been really hopeful ones for me, which is odd, because those stories tell about a lot of death, a lot of grief and loss, and a lot of change, not entirely for the better. But somehow the brave hobbits and wise wizard and shrewd king-to-be find hope to carry on in the midst of overwhelming odds. That kind of hope is inspiring in more ways than one. It plods on when “you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy… when so much bad had happened?”

Tolkien was undoubtedly a believer. He knew of our eternal hope. But unlike his friend C. S. Lewis, Tolkien didn’t write his stories to take place in our world, where the Bible is true and Jesus has come to re-write history. Tolkien’s stories were inspired by a worldview of faith, but totally devoid of faith by that name.

What Tolkien wrote about can be called “pagan hope.” It’s in a lot of stories (like Harry Potter, or Star Wars, but we’ll get there in a second), and it’s a hope totally without substance. I don’t mean that it’s useless, but that it isn’t based in eternal reality. It’s pure, beautiful, fiction.

This kind of hope refuses to give in to despair even when there is no chance things will turn out well—when the odds are too great that the common, garden-variety “hero” with no training will get caught by the bad guys, or fail his mission, or when the villain is too impossibly wicked to be redeemed.

This kind of hope looks like the suicide mission in Star Wars to steal weapon plans so hopefully someone will pick up a transmission and maybe, just maybe, use them to save the galaxy. It’s not a hope that says not to worry about the flag of evil flying overhead because “It’s not a problem if you don’t look up.” It’s a faith in some possibility of a brighter day purely because “Rebellions are built on hope.” It’s a faith that answers, “Do you think anyone’s listening?” with, “I do. Someone’s out there.”

This kind of hope looks like “All our hopes now lie with two little hobbits, somewhere in the wilderness.” It looks like a final suicide march into enemy territory with, “certainty of death, small chance of success? What are we waiting for?!” It’s the kind of hope that sees the mission through with no rations for the return journey, relying blindly on others to carry things through to the end of the war.

This hope is powerful. It puts fire in your veins and helps your trials seem like small momentary afflictions. It’s a hope that says without any real reason to believe it, “in the end, this Shadow was only a small and passing thing.”

But the wonderful, beautiful, redeeming quality about this hope is that it feels imperfect. Incomplete. Unreliable. It just about fills us up, but leaves us craving more. It points us to a real hope. A solid one. One that is robust and whole, unchangeable and steadier than the rising sun.

It points us to our God.

The pagan hope in these stories leaves us itching for something half as good, and in the end points us to a hope far beyond all we could ever ask or imagine (Eph 3:20). When we read in stories how a fictional hope looks in everyday life, how “it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay,” we learn just a small fraction of what our real hope looks like in action.

These stories haven’t taught me that Obi-Wan Kenobi is my only hope. They’ve pointed me to the truth that without my hope in Christ, I should be pitied above all men. They haven’t convinced me that repeating “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me” is enough motivation to pass through a hail of bullets to complete the mission. They’ve taught me that on the rock of our confession of Christ as Lord, God has built his Church and nothing will prevail against it. Those stories haven’t moved me to stagger across a volcanic wasteland to do my part to destroy evil, even if no one ever knows what I’ve done or if it makes no difference in the end. They’ve convinced me, with all of my heart, that my real hope is worth sharing, toiling over, even giving my life—even if there are consequences, even if no one remembers my name, even if the mission isn’t completed for me to see in my lifetime. Pagan hope reveals to me the complete sufficiency of my hope in God that will not be disappointed and will not put me to shame.

So in my moments of everyday desperation, frustration, loss of hope—when I may not have hit rock bottom but I am only one step away, at apathetic inaction—I know now. People in these stories were holding on to something. But what are we holding on to?

Hope.

We hope in a savior who bears our burdens. We hope in a redeemer who lives. We hope in a God who lifts our faces, who turns our mourning into laughter. We hope in a God who invites us to boldly come before his throne. He was and is and is to come. He rescues us from our brokenness and slavery to our disobedience. He came to earth to live as one of us, to take on his own suicide mission to pay the price of our abundant life with his death.

That, my friends, is the hope we have. It can carry us from the smallest inconveniences through the darkest days of our lives. It’s a hope that propels us out to make disciples as we were discipled, to leave no place or people untouched on our march of hope. It is our sacred hope, and it comes with an unwavering, sweet promise: “I am with you. Always.”

 

 

 

Post Script:

Yes. I did write this after a Star Wars marathon. Deal with it. 😉 Am I slightly ashamed of how many of those quotes and references I knew by heart? Not remotely. I also wrote this on notebook paper, the old fashioned way, because I’ve had no power for the last 4 days and all my electronics besides my flashlight were dead. I even squished a couple of ants, that have become my thorn in the flesh, as they skittered across my pages. But from these super annoying inconveniences to the sobering reality of the many truly hopeless refugees around me daily, this hope I wrote about has been getting its exercise, flexing its muscles. And I can assure you that it is up to the job.

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A Voice

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“Voice” is a hot-button issue in our culture today. Everyone wants a voice. They want not just to speak, but to be heard, to be listened to. We even have a hit TV show, “The Voice,” that lets us live through the contestants who get to sing on a national stage and compete for a chance for their voice to be heard. But what does the Bible say about voice? What does our culture crave so much and how does Scripture answer that craving?

The Bible has a lot to say on the topic, actually. More than you might think on the surface. Themes run all throughout Scripture that remind followers of God to care for the poor and oppressed, the orphans and widows and refugees, the sorts of people who don’t actually have the ability to stand up and speak for themselves or who wouldn’t be heard if they did.

Waaaayyyyy back in the Old Testament a man named Job begged God for someone to listen to him and hear his cry for help. Go read Job chapter 19, 9, or 16 and you’ll see that what he asks for, is a voice. Everyone around him won’t listen, won’t help, won’t encourage him. He begs God for someone to testify on his behalf, to be his witness in heaven. He wants an arbiter to stand up for him and be his voice in a heavenly court he has no access to.

The book of Esther deals with voice too. The young woman the book was named after had no choice in losing her parents, she had no power to resist people who kept her away from her homeland and forced her into the King’s harem. So when the Lord gave her the place of queen, she used her voice in the royal court to speak for those who couldn’t. Even if speaking up would cost her life, Esther spoke to the king to beg him to save her people. She knew what it was like not to have a voice, so she used hers to speak for others who couldn’t.

If you were to sit down with me I could talk with you for days about Abigail in 1 Samuel 25, or Hannah in 1 Samuel 1 and 2, or Mary, or Elizabeth. I could talk to you about how God’s heart as revealed in Scripture truly does bless the meek—those who do not have strength or set aside their strength to do the right thing.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” Jesus taught. And Philippians 2:5-11 tell us that Jesus himself became meek as an example to us, and set aside his divine power in many ways on earth so that he could be a humble servant rather than a proud king. He set aside his privilege only to inherit the earth as his kingdom at the end of all things. But while he was here on earth, he became meek for a very important reason…

Jesus became a voice for the meek.

While he could have claimed any power or honor or treatment he wanted, he used his influence often to speak for those with no voice.

In John 4, Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well. She was an outcast in every sense of the word. No one in her community listened to her or respected her. She even went to the well during the hottest part of the day to avoid people. But Jesus came to her. And he told her to give him a drink. Not surprised by an order from a man, but confused that a good Jewish man would even speak to her, she asked him why he would accept water from her, a Samaritan outcast. But he flipped the script. Instead of demanding or demeaning, he offered her something. He offered her a gift of eternal abundant life. After their conversation, she believed he was truly the Son of God. She ran into town to bring everyone to Jesus to hear the good news that he had come.

Every person in her town listened to her story. They believed her. And they came to Jesus. Because of her testimony, they believed. No longer would they remember her as the woman who’d had five husbands. They would remember her as the one who brought them to the Lord. Jesus changed her life and gave her a voice and value in her town as a daughter of God. How often do we give our women voices like that? How often do they get to share their stories with us in a safe space in our church without fear of being shunned or treated differently, when what they really have to say is a testimony of how the Lord has worked mightily in their lives?

Jesus did the same thing again for a women with no voice in Luke 7:36-50. Everyone called her a ‘sinful woman,’ and she says not a single word in her own story. She comes to worship Jesus, weeping over him, offering up what must have been her most precious possession to anoint him, washing his feet as an act of service and love, and drying them with her hair. The self-righteous at the table begin mumbling that Jesus can’t be a prophet, or he would know who she was and wouldn’t let her touch him in public. She may have been a prostitute in her past, or she may just have been an unmarried woman people whispered about as she went about her day on her own. We don’t know. But the story tells us that a man named Simon, who was certainly whispering at the table, had her story already fixed in his head. He doesn’t care to know more about her, much less to admire her act of worship.

But Jesus tells a different story, and speaks for the woman. He tells Simon a parable, about a man who was forgiven much and a man who was forgiven little. Jesus compares the woman to the men in his story, and explains to Simon that her great love and her act of worship should be an example to him. Jesus spoke for her and told her story in a way that humanized her and honored her act of worship rather than demeaned her. In the Mark 14 and Matthew 26 accounts of the story, we even learn that Jesus made a promise that people will share her story around the world wherever the gospel is preached in memory of her. Talk about giving her a voice!

The bleeding woman story in Luke 8 is also a favorite of mine. She is the picture of a voiceless woman. Sick and shamed for much of her life, she pushed through a crowd to get her one shot at reaching Jesus. She must not have expected him to talk to her or even acknowledge her because she approached him from behind and just touched the edge of his garment. She was immediately healed. Mission accomplished. But not for Jesus. He wouldn’t let her slink away out of the crowd like she was used to. He asked who touched him, and she tried to hide but saw that she couldn’t. She came forward trembling, afraid, falling down in front of him.

But Jesus prompted her to speak. So she told her testimony, of her sickness, her desire to get to Jesus, and her miraculous healing. Jesus gave her his spotlight to share her story and praise him with it. And after she finishes, he calls her daughter.

Daughter.

Can you imagine the other names this woman must have been called? She was shunned. Poor. Broken. Unclean. Weak. Sick. But Jesus called her daughter, and in a place where all could hear. He loved her. He speaks his peace over her, commends her faith, and sends her off to a new and healed life. He gave her a voice and a new beginning. She was heard, accepted, and healed.

And isn’t that what we really mean when we say we want a voice? We want someone to listen. We want someone to accept us with our good and our bad. We want to be healed. Only Jesus can truly give that to us. Only he can truly heal. But we should also follow his example to lift up the people around us who can’t tell their own stories, who aren’t listened to, who are broken or silent or ignored or dismissed. They may not have a voice, but we have one we can share.

We all have our circles of influence—our friends, small groups, classes, co-workers. Some may care to listen to what we have to say more than others. But we all have our small spotlights that we live in with some who respect us and love us.

Think about who isn’t allowed in those circles, or who would feel like an outcast there. Can you find ways to speak up for them? Help them tell their story like Jesus did for the woman who anointed him. Let them tell their own story by your invitation, like Jesus did for the bleeding woman. Lead them to Jesus and give them a platform to share their testimony like Jesus did for the woman at the well. Think about your church interactions especially. Do people with different education levels, ethnic backgrounds, or income brackets all have a place to be heard and to grow in your church? How many of them are on staff? How many get to share with the church on a regular basis? Are there ways they aren’t made to feel comfortable in sharing their struggles? How can you be Jesus to them and share your influence on their behalf?

One of my new favorite Martin Luther King Jr. quotes goes like this:

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

He was talking about voice for the powerless and abused, the voice of those who suffer injustice. Use your power like Jesus did to give a voice to others. Become meek like he did and use what strength you have to stand up for others. When we give our voice away, when we are truly meek, we inherit the Kingdom together.

 

Time after Time

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Time is funny.

Einstein told us time was relative, that it depended on fixed points, speeds, and movements for time to have any sort of meaning. I have certainly felt its relativity these days. Life is on the move. I’m in transition. A few days here, a few weeks there, Christmas back with family, and then Africa. Until I move into my house in Uganda, I won’t be in any one place long enough to collect dust.

That move still doesn’t quite feel real to me. I am excited for it. I’m praying about it. I’m trying to learn and prepare as much as I can before I go. But I’m in limbo. I’m not settled in Africa yet, but I already feel out of place in Oklahoma. And the time…

Time doesn’t come for me in seconds, minutes, days, or weeks anymore. It seems to move very differently, in different intervals. The units of measurement for time aren’t hollow seconds, but meaningful rhythms and patterns. How long has it been since I saw North Carolina friends? Well, as long as those daisies sitting in my vase have lasted. How long until I move? Only so many more hugs from Dad, or heart-to-hearts with Jacob, or episodes of a favorite TV show with Mom. How many hours have I driven to see friends and family? That’s measured in the number of audio books I’ve listened through. How long until I leave for training? That’s counted in how many churches I’ve gotten to visit and share with.

Time has a way of telescoping for me recently—of stretching out and shrinking up in the most unreliable ways. The few short minutes it takes to drink in exactly the way the mist hangs over damp Oklahoma oaks in a purple dusk will stretch to years in my memory until time brings me back to Oklahoma and gives me the chance to see it again. Time totally stops when I pull up the car just to take in the exact way the bronzy Oklahoma twilight reflects in still puddles across a gravel backroad. And yet whole days vanish as I try to pack and sort and check off items on a very long to-do list.

Time right now feels less like a certain quantity of days until I move and more like a certain number of brilliant starry nights with a fresh Fall wind and the Milky way overhead, a certain number of those signature Oklahoma sunsets that stretch and stretch over the fields for miles just until they break and the fiery sky snaps into dusk, a certain number of last hugs with friends, last tears at parting, last goodbyes.

And all the time, Africa is calling.

As I pack up my life here and bring things to conclusion before I leave, I find my mind increasingly often faced towards Africa, contemplating the new life there, the new favorite sights, sounds, faces, hugs. Between all my lasts and my unreliable measurements of time, Africa looms larger and larger, rushing the days past me, but stretching them out with tasks of conclusion and preparation.

Paul wrote to his Ephesian brothers and sisters, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of time, because the days are evil.”

There’s quite a bit in that to calm and comfort me during this transition. If I face these days wisely, counting them in whatever ways I can, making the best use of my times however short or long, I will walk as a child of the Light, in goodness and truth, and I will please my Lord. That’s what Paul says in Ephesians 5. And he says that the days can be evil—can rush on by without anyone the better off for them unless…

Unless I redeem my time, soak in all the rest, the preparation, the fellowship, the experiences of the Lord’s faithfulness.

Moses was somewhat of an authority on time himself, having lived through a lot more of it than we will, and experiencing quite a few transitions himself. In psalm 90 he muses on what he had learned. Our days can be like grasses, he says, fresh in the morning and withered by evening. “We bring our years to an end like a sigh,” he says.

Wow. What a picture. How many of my days end like a sigh? That sounds like such a tragedy in light of the joy we can have in our Lord and the pleasure we can have in the days he has given us. “So,” Moses says, “teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom… Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”

If we want to redeem our time, we must count our days, make them count, fill them with joy in the Lord’s presence, squeezing all the good we can out of our days instead of letting them rush on and end like a sigh. That, Paul and Moses say, is a wise way to live.

So as these crazy days come to a close, as my transition comes nearer, I hope you will find me, dear friends, counting my days, redeeming my time, and making the best use of them. With the Lord and his wisdom, my days may be full and joyful, not a bit wasted or sighed away.

Pearl of Great Price

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“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

-Jesus

Talk about sold out.

These short parables about the kingdom of heaven have one purpose: to teach just how priceless the Kingdom really is.

Jesus taught that this Kingdom is so valuable it’s worth selling everything for. Uprooting your life. Liquidating your possessions. Selling out. Being a part of Kingdom work is worth more than you can ever earn in your life. In fact, it’s worth your very life itself.

Do you value the Kingdom of heaven like that?

And what even is the Kingdom of heaven? Hold that thought and I’ll circle back around to it.

I’m moving to Uganda soon. I’m packing up just about everything I own worth taking, hopping on a plane, and starting a new life in an African country I’ve only set foot in recently, for less than two weeks. Sounds kind of crazy. I never count myself as an authority on what’s crazy and what’s not anymore, but I’ve heard many of you say that… “Is it safe?” “How can you live like that?” “You’re my hero!” “I couldn’t do what you do.” And the list goes on.

And I’ll admit, yes, there are some moments when I question my sanity. They come when I’m making packing lists or sitting on a plane by myself. But then I remember that there is nothing I love more than looking into a pair of eager eyes while doing the hard work of discipleship. Never do I feel more fulfilled than when I pace a dirt floor and tell a Bible story. Squatting by a fire, drinking tea together, struggling against a foreign language to communicate truth. Those are the things light a fire in my heart.

That, my friends, is the Kingdom of heaven. Being in the presence of our Lord, going about his work, and pleasing him with our offerings of faith and sacrificial work—those are worth every minute of your life you can give. Loving our Lord and sharing his task of discipling the whole world to bring them to the feet of our Father is not so crazy after all. It’s a pearl of great price, a hidden treasure of great value, something you would happily be sold out to pursue.

So, going to Uganda isn’t so crazy after all. And I’m not a super Christian. I’m not any more faithful or any more committed or sacrificial than the rest of you.

I love speaking at churches. I love sharing my heart for the Lord and his work overseas. I really do. But I always cringe at those comments above that mark me as special. The ones that put me in a different category, border on reverence, and are a little too heavy with well-meaning but ignorant adoration. I’m not a supermissionary. I’m not even an overly mature Christian. Just because searching for my ‘treasure hidden in the field’ takes me overseas, that doesn’t mean that I follow the Lord any more closely than those of you who search for your ‘pearl of great value’ here in the States.

Jim Elliot was a missionary who was certainly sold out when it came to offering all he had in service of his Lord and the Good News about Him. This is one of his quotes you might have heard before:

“Wherever you are, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”

The kingdom of heaven is worth seeking out wherever we find ourselves and in whatever phase of life. Live to the hilt. Be all buried in the opportunities you have to mentor or disciple, to make a difference in the lives around you for the sake of the kingdom and its King.

I recently visited a string of friends and was struck by how faithful they were in their various lives. I didn’t feel at all superior to the friends who are redeeming the time by fostering a child whose life they may eternally impact. I am no more holy than the friend working toward a job to advocate for immigrants and to faithfully live out Christlike character in her corner of the world. I am certainly no more sanctified than the friend who has just begun the years-long work of raising a family to follow after Jesus. I am not seeking out the kingdom of heaven any harder than the friends who are in school to better train for a lifetime of service that will point huge networks of people to the feet of our Heavenly Father, one interaction at a time. Those friends are my heroes, and I certainly could not live their lives or do what they do.

But that’s the way of the kingdom of heaven. Some of us work the ground to find it. Some of us sell what we have to find it. Some of us buy fields. Some of us are merchants. Some of us move overseas. Some of us make disciples in the same town we grew up in. It takes all of us to make disciples to the ends of the earth. It takes all of us being sold out.

What are some ways you can daily build your life to reflect the priceless treasure you have in your Lord Jesus, and what are some actions you can take to be about kingdom work?

 

Faith Without Works is Like a Song You Can’t Sing

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screen-door-on-a-submarine

James was written in the Hebrew tradition of mashal, or wisdom literature. Mashal is a word for a parable, but it can mean much more than that: a proverb, ethical wisdom, a story that teaches wisdom, or poetry that works as a memory aid for bits of wisdom. You can read a mashal anywhere in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, or in lots of Jesus’ preaching and teaching.

Because Jesus taught with these ‘wisdom stories,’ they would have been a familiar teaching technique to his brother, James. James uses this teaching style in his short letter so well that many people who read it are reminded of one of Jesus’ most famous teachings—the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5-7.

The wisdom that James taught with the mashal in his letter was the practical and applied nature of our faith. I’ve been taught in the past that the letter deals with faith and works, answering questions about how true faith correlates to obedience in our daily lives. These works don’t save us, I’ve been taught, but they’re more of an ‘indicator light’ like you’d find on your car dashboard; if you have a good, solid faith, your works light up alongside it to mark it. Whatever the ‘works’ were was left as some fuzzy category of vague obedience, in my mind.

But James is anything but fuzzy. He tells us we can’t just listen to the Word, or Scripture, but that we have to obey it too, and that if we don’t we’re unwise and foolish. He caps off chapter 1 by saying that real faith produces works. The two don’t just accompany other, but grow from each other. His final words on that topic are familiar: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” Real faith, or religion, IS works, and most specifically it’s the work of caring for people who need it most. James tells us our faith is caring for the marginalized, the oppressed, the poor, and the lonely, and doing so with a holy heart not swayed by the things of this world that would distract us.

What are those things that distract us from the poor and distressed? What keeps us from them? In my personal experience, it is pride, power, position, wealth, and privilege. When I love these things too much to look a beggar in the eyes or offer him some food, James says my religion is worthless. When I listen politely and nod along as someone grieves and laments, my religion is worthless. When I have the opportunity to listen to the voice of someone different than me, someone often neglected and unheard just like James’ widows and orphans, and I dismiss that opportunity, my religion is useless. It is dead, and deceptive.

That may seem harsh to us, or maybe overstated, but you don’t have to take my word for it.

James goes on in chapter 2 to say the very same thing. He tells the story of a rich man who comes to a gathering of believers and is treated with honor, while the poor man is welcomed to sit on the floor, or not even offered a seat. James warns us against favoritism towards those with privilege, power, or wealth. Partiality is a sin. It’s a work that shows our faith is not mature. It’s easy to hear Jesus’ words echoed here, from the end of Matthew 5, “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?”

James goes on to remind us that God has chosen the poor to inherit the kingdom (which should remind us again of Jesus’ “blessed are the poor in spirit…” beatitudes), and he tells us that breaking the law about loving your neighbor as yourself is a sin just the same as adultery or murder.

Soak that in for a second. James compares favoritism with adultery and murder. This is serious.

What good is our faith if it has not action to go with it, James asks us in 2:14? Is it even real faith? Can it save? If one of our brothers and sisters has no clothes or food and we tell them, “I hope things get better,” or “my thoughts and prayers are with you,” or “Go in peace, I hope you’re warm and full,” our faith is dead. James points out here what is called a sin of omission. It’s a sin that you commit by not doing something you’re supposed to do. For example, Moses taught us to honor our mother and father. When we don’t do that, we sin. It’s the same here. When we don’t value our brothers and sisters equally in Christ, we sin. We sin just as deeply as if we’d murdered.

That is massive. If our churches don’t listen to the voice of the poor man, the one with shabby clothes, the one we tell to stand in the corner, the old, the young, the foreign, the minority, the women, the ethnically different, James says we sin and our faith is dead without these deeds. When I don’t actively show my brother or sister with a different skin tone or eye shape that I value them, maybe I have functionally murdered them by taking away their voice and their seat in the room with me. In James 2:17-19 he compares such inaction to the ‘faith’ of the demons, who also believe in God but refuse to follow him in obedience.

James rounds off chapter 2 by explaining that true faith isn’t just correlated with works, but that it compels us irresistibly toward works. Our faith should lead to radical sacrifice of what is dear to us, like Abraham giving up his only son Isaac. Is our comfort zone so dear to us that we can’t give it up to have awkward conversations with people who feel excluded or voiceless in our churches? James also says that that kind of Abrahamic faith-to-works should cut across stereotypes like the faith the prostitute Rahab showed through caring for people who had no claim on her. If you read James and don’t want to be like Rahab, you’re doing it wrong.

James preaches what many today would call a social gospel. And many who would call it that shudder and squirm. Faith is about saving our souls, they say. Faith is about redeeming our minds and our wills. Faith is about heaven and eternal salvation.

But James won’t accept that answer, at least not as a whole answer. Faith is about action, in our real world, to care for real people, who may not deserve our attention, but whom God declared deserve grace under the new covenant just as much as we do. Perhaps they deserve it even more, given God’s repeated emphasis on the poor in spirit and broken-hearted. James closes chapter 2 by saying our faith must be accompanied by social action or we aren’t really talking about real faith or the whole gospel. “As the body without the spirit is dead,” he says, “so faith without deeds is dead.” Just like you can’t have a body or soul without the other, our faith is dead if it’s just about our soul. It must care for the body too.

One of my favorite childhood songs was by Rich Mullins. It has the line, “faith without works is like a song you can’t sing—it’s about as useless as a screen door on a submarine.” This message from James is rough. It’s convicting. And it makes me consider many different aspects of my interactions and care for people. But it has beauty too. A song you can’t sing is depressing, a hollow promise. But when we get this right and evaluate and make changes to listen and include better, our faith can sing. It can be welcoming and warm, truly showing love to everyone. Is your faith the kind that falls silent in the throat, or is it the kind that sings?

Summer Symphony

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Free Matinee tickets

We listen from black vinyl bucket seats

Atop a puttering tractor.

 

Standing hay sighs slowly in the breeze.

Grasshoppers flick in the dry stems.

 

Hidden crickets raise an alarm

And grind into a higher gear

To match the tractor’s engine.

 

Cicadas in their perches

Count the rising temperature

With anxious screeches.

 

Gravel groans beneath hooves, tires, feet

And the cow’s tail swipes and slaps at gnats.

 

Oaks creak and stretch in the wind,

Their scorched leaves lazily clap.

Mind the Gap

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How long ago was it that you last read a book written by a woman? How about one written by someone with a different skin tone than you? What about one written by someone whose native language is different from yours?

As widely-read as you may be, natural biases and supply and demand often combine to make your reading list an echo chamber—you only hear variations on your own voice. My seminary booklist for the semester of my writing is quite extensive, but every one of my books is written by a white man. I found two authors whose native languages differ from my own, but they were still educated under the same systems in the States.

Do we not miss a richness when we choose to learn only from those within our own culture, who already share our ideas?

I sometimes feel starved for the perspective of a female professor, or the lively teaching style of an African American brother. I can’t help but wonder if I would understand a Bible story better if it were taught by a Middle-Easterner, or if my concept of Christian suffering would have more staying power if it were informed by refugee.

Theology in particular is one discipline which suffers much at the hands of this diversity drought. Seven or eight years ago I sat in a college classroom learning about theology from a professor I still respect very much. He taught us about systematic theology—the study of all Christian doctrines and beliefs and how they harmonize into one unified, biblical system. For all his strengths, my professor did not teach me that culture and society radically shape each individual’s theology. He taught me that the theology I was learning was all there was—the creeds, the councils, the theologians like Augustine and Aquinas, all of them fed into one stream I shared, sitting in that college classroom with squeaky desks. And I did share in that stream, that culture of resources and thinking, but little did I know the other streams I could access.

My understanding of the uniformity of theology began to crack a little when I lived in Bulgaria and worked with the Roma people. All of the sudden, the Five Points of Calvinism were far less important than what the ‘baptism of the Spirit’ meant, and whether or not it was biblical. My friends were outside of the traditions of Western Christianity, and their spiritual landscape was vastly different than my own and the teaching I had encountered. They had questions I couldn’t even begin to answer. My white theology wasn’t good enough. And I slowly began to realize that what I had been taught was systematic theology was really just my white Christian heritage. There was nothing wrong with it as an individual perspective, but it certainly wasn’t the only perspective to be had.

Since that time, I have sought out teaching on cultural theology. All of us Christians come to the Word of God from a starting point. Whether we come as women or men, poor or rich, single or married, or whatever our color, we bring ourselves to the table just as we are. We can’t help but see the world of the Bible through our own eyes, because what other eyes do we have? If we’re wealthy and well-situated we identify with Abraham, Nicodemus, or Paul. Women are drawn to the stories of the Woman at the Well, Esther, and Ruth. Minorities see how God cares for the oppressed and demands social justice. And slowly but surely, the stories we are drawn to shape our understanding of who God is and how he interacts with us. Little nuances in culture, character, and past shape how we understand God.

Now, notice that I didn’t say my culture shapes who God is. Our differences do not give us license to fashion a God suitable for us, because God is exactly who the Bible says he is. Period. But our differences do explain how a black brother or sister might understand God’s zeal for freedom better, how a woman could understand God’s care for the voiceless better, or how a persecuted brother or sister may better understand what Jesus meant when said to count the cost. Our experiences mean that certain stories are more precious to us as individuals or because of our cultural identities. Certain Scriptures resonate with our emotions because our experiences help us see ourselves in stories someone else might struggle to identify with.

These cultural differences lead to differences in belief and practice that emphasize certain traits of God over others. These theologies even have labels, but they’re whispered in the corners or condemned from behind a lectern as ‘different’ or ‘distortions.’ Liberation theology. Black theology. And the F-word of good, Southern Baptists: feminist theology. All of these variations and more have some redeeming and praiseworthy qualities. They have valid perspectives on real biblical content. But any of these theologies alone, even white orthodox theology, can spin into disproportion when taken without balance from other cultural views. We need our brothers and sisters who are different than us to help us balance what we understand about God from the Scritpures.

We must dialogue between our theological perspectives. When we pad our rooms and our discussions with people like us, we miss the gift of diverse cultural perspectives God gives us. If our divisions of culture and sex are reflections the image of God, we each form an integral part of His Body here in the Church.

I asked before if we missed richness by cloistering together in like groups. I believe it’s more than that. We miss wholeness. When God created male and female, he created them both in his image, both as a unique representation of his qualities and character. When redeemed, our cultural differences are like that too. Our cultures and their resulting theologies uniquely reflect aspects of God’s character, and when we cut ourselves off from ideas outside the ‘mainstream’ we consign ourselves to a small corner of a masterpiece, never to see the whole painting by the Master.

So what do we do, brothers and sisters?

We have to mind the gap. Intentionally seek what you’re missing out on. Read a book by someone whose name you can’t pronounce. Listen to sermons, podcasts, or blogs from someone with a different skin tone or eye shape than yours. Learn from voices with richer and more colorful tones than your own. Make the most of opportunities to widen perspectives and voice the unsaid.

Try this sermon for starters, dear brothers and sisters. Don’t be defensive, but listen. Really listen. And try to put yourselves in the shoes of someone who has had to walk twice as far as you to be heard.

Charlie Dates: Overcoming Divisions

Mind the gap.

Ezekiel: Scandalous Shame or Answering Hope?

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Ezekiel is no joke. It can be a difficult book to read and certainly is difficult to understand. It often gets skipped over in Bible studies and sermons, and there are quite a few reasons for that. The book is arguably the most graphic in the Bible in terms of sexual and violent content. As literature in the apocalyptic genre, it measures high on the bizarre-o-meter with symbols, prophecy, and motifs that have no tether in our modern experience.

I always forget how graphic the book is. I don’t know Hebrew, but I get the feeling our translations of “member” for penis and “issue” for semen and “bosom” for nipples and “whoring” for sex are sanitized—words the prophet meant to be raw and irritating to us we gloss over with a euphemism. So why did he use them? What was the point? Certainly sexuality has a good and holy place in the lives of believers, but if that was Ezekiel’s point we’d have another Song of Songs instead of the graphic descriptions of lust, an affair, and acts of prostitution that Ezekiel writes.

To say nothing of the graphic depictions of violence including evisceration, rape, and rivers of blood, the sexuality in Ezekiel chapters 16 and 23 goes far beyond acceptable dinner conversation. But the prophet might not have known much about table manners. He was the one, after all, who ate food cooked over a poop fire for more than a year. I find it most likely Ezekiel is avoided in polite church conversation for this reason—he spoke about and did shameful things that make our skin crawl, make us want to take a bath. The shock of his writings often provokes physical responses like sweating, blushing, racing heart, tears, or shaking. We avoid the book because it’s uncomfortable. It makes us cringe.

But that’s the point of the book. One of its themes is shame, and not just any shame, the particular shame we feel when exposed at our dirtiest, most disgusting moments of sin. It’s the quality of shame we would feel if our deepest and darkest sins were found out. Ezekiel wrote and acted with shock to wake God’s people up to their sin, to convict them, and to call them out of it.

Have you ever asked yourself why the Old Testament so often uses sex and adultery as a picture for sin and falling away from God? Why that metaphor, and why so often? What does it have to teach us? Maybe we should ask why we don’t describe our sin that way today. Why is it more common to hear “food, work, busyness, etc. is becoming an idol in my life” than “I’m cheating on God with my binge eating” or ‘I’m having an affair with my schedule”? Granted, those don’t roll off the tongue as well, but why do we describe our sin differently than God does?

We often describe things as idols in our lives without any real reference to what idolatry meant to the Israelite people, or to real idol worship today. We misinterpret and overuse the idea of idolatry, which was exchanging God for another and totally betraying him. To the Israelites, idolatry was leaving one covenant and seeking another, totally depending on another god to provide for needs God had already promised to provide. We sanitize that word, idolatry, make it metaphorical, and use it to refer to the way we let the score of the sports game control our emotions, or our overeating, or the fact that we find too much security in our bank account. We call it idolatry because we don’t have firsthand experience with idols. We don’t connect our cutesy, pre-packaged words for sin with slaughtering our children in total devotion to idols like Ezekiel talks about.

Through the Lord’s inspiration, Ezekiel knew that perverted sexual appetite was a much better analogy for our sin habits we won’t kick. I believe we leave out the topic of sex from or conversations far too much anyway, but I also think Ezekiel’s graphic depiction of nymphomania and lust-crazed infidelity is actually a better picture of what we so quaintly call idolatry. Do you worship that football game you watch on Sundays? Or would it be more accurate to say you lust over it, fantasize about it, spend all your spare moments imagining how it might play out? Do you sacrifice your children for your gluttony, or do you fantasize about that meal or dessert you want to eat, count the time until you can consume it, imagine what it will taste like, dwell on it? Is your bank account an idol, or is it the secretive little thought that comes to you in spare moments to soothe you or make you discontented? Is idol worship more your pace of sin habits, or is it lust—wild-eyed, insatiable, ever-present sinfulness, an appetite that consumes and controls you at the expense of whatever else deserves your attention more?

We all know what lust feels like, a burning thought or desire you can’t quite put away, that leaves you feeling dirty but aroused, alive. With lust, we mentally throw caution to the wind because it’s hidden, and no amount of conversation or probing lets it out unless we allow it. Are your sin habits more like that? I know mine are. So pick your poison. Idolatry, or lust? Idolatry replaces God in an act of finality and betrayal. An idolater has at least made up his mind. Someone consumed by lust though, thinks she can have the goodness she desires as well as the goodness she already has. If your sin is better described by lust, you want to fill your appetite with other things the world has to offer in secret, but still enjoy your ‘righteous fidelity’ to God. Sounds like a pretty good description of me.

But Ezekiel doesn’t stop there, at calling out our sin and shaming us for it. He wrote to Israelites who were already in exile, already experiencing the punishment for their sin and slowly learning to reform their ways. Ezekiel gives hope and promise to answer the shame. The gospel is so beautifully present in Ezekiel, and we can see through the bars in the narrative to God’s enormous care for the lost nations of the world. God didn’t just care about Ezekiel and the Israelites. He led the prophet to call out the sin of the surrounding nations, but also to weep and lament for them. He called them to repent, just like he has called us as believers to himself. There are whole chapters in the middle of Ezekiel remembering the good qualities of the nations, and praising the unique gifts and abilities the Lord gave them in his mercy. The laments are heartbreaking because they describe the self-destructive sin of these nations and the inevitable consequences of their unrighteousness that they now must face.

After fully expounding on the shame of a lustful people who turn away from God and fill their appetites elsewhere, Ezekiel mentions the idea one more time: “describe to the house of Israel the temple, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities… and if they are ashamed of all that they have done, make known to them the designs of the temple…” What follows is a blueprint for the temple in Jerusalem in surprising detail. What is even more surprising is that this temple didn’t exist. Never has been built and most likely never will be. Ezekiel closes his book with chapters about a non-existent temple—what might have seemed a hollow promise to the exiled people, away from their homeland with no place to properly worship God.

Why would God shame his people with descriptions of a perfect temple they would never see, even after they returned from exile? This temple description would have been the reason people wept at the end of Ezra 3 when the new temple was finished. It was nothing like Ezekiel’s description. God meant for the people to be ashamed of their sin. He meant them to know fully and finally that they could never be perfect, never build a temple and carry out its practices as a perfect, pure, holy people whose hearts were fully devoted to God.

Hearing Ezekiel’s words in exile they must have experienced the sobering proof daily that they could not escape their own sin. As a consequence to their sin they were scattered among the nations. Their language, culture, faith, and even national and genetic identity as Israelites were precariously close to annihilation. As a people, they could be lost forever, blended in among other exiles in a foreign kingdom. They had fallen far short of the perfection of Ezekiel’s temple. It would have seemed unobtainable. And it would have brought them great shame.

But the theme Ezekiel had introduced in snapshots earlier in the book—the theme of a new covenant of God’s mercy and full and final restoration as a people—is an answering hope here fully developed in the context of the temple description. Apocalyptic literature like Ezekiel is meant to alert people to the cosmic realities of sin and its consequences, but also to bring hope to a people devoted to God. The temple he describes isn’t just an object of shame, it is also a symbol of hope. Ezekiel describes a prince who rules justly and leads his people in honoring God. He describes a nation at home in their land, righteous in their ways and prospering in their obedience. Ezekiel describes a new and restored Israel that gathers in its reborn capital city to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth. Perhaps the woman at the well asked Jesus about this very passage.

What Ezekiel describes as a sustaining hope to those repentant of their lustful sin is a restored nation: a pure and rescued people whose language, celebrations, and culture flourish. After fully recognizing the extent of their sin and wickedness, God tells them that one day his presence would be among them again and a perfect reality beyond their wildest imaginings would come true.

Jesus heralded this coming kingdom reality, but it is John’s description of the heavenly temple in Revelation that matches up precisely with Ezekiel’s vision. Ezekiel describes twelve gates for the twelve tribes, and John describes the same twelve also representing the twelve apostles. Both describe a river flowing from the temple, healing the land. Ezekiel promises a day when the Israelites who truly follow the Lord will be with him in his perfect city, and he winks at a coming reality the rest of the world couldn’t even begin to imagine at the time of his writing. He mentions a place for sojourners among the people of Israel, foreigners who are to be treated as natural-born citizens and given a share in the inheritance of the land and the perfect city and temple. He mentions us. We, too, are God-followers invited into the kingdom through God’s gracious mercy exhibited in Jesus. Just as Ezekiel described God’s presence coming down to earth once more and filing the temple, Jesus came down to earth and lived and walked with us in our imperfection, inviting us to share in the hope of a world restored from the ravages of sin.

This harsh prophetic book to exiled people opens with terrifying images of God roaming the earth in giant wheels. This same God spoke through a prophet to convict his present and future people of their shameful, disgusting sins, but he ends his message to the prophet and his audience with a perfect picture of a city and a temple where his presence dwells. The Lord who roamed the earth could be found even by a broken people far away from his temple, but he also showed them that he would soon choose to heal and perfect them, and live among them. The book closes not with God roaming above a broken earth, but with the new name of his perfect city to come, “The Lord is There.”