The Suffering Servant

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*Contains some graphic material

Many members of our team have already had their turns being sick or injured. We’ve got someone maybe coming down with strep throat, someone’s got painful blistered hives covering hands and feet, someone’s got a fractured foot, and all but one of us have run fever and had body aches. We try not to whine and to pick up and keep going. This kind of thing happens all the time overseas. But in the last couple of days we’ve had experiences that have put our small aches into perspective.

Today at a service we shared communion. As we all drank, we knew that we drank a cup of suffering. We heard a message about the Son sending out his followers from the upper room (Jn. 20:19-23). We cross-referenced a few stories to compare and expound, but the bulk of the message was on the idea that the Son’s words there are about incarnational ministry. We learned that he showed his followers the scars in his hands and side right before he said, “As my Father has sent me, so send I you.” He meant that they were to suffer as He had, perhaps even to the same extent. We heard that just as the Ark was YWH’s presence among his people, so was the Son in his turn and the Body of believers in ours. We are meant to suffer and to love, for it is only by that love that people will identify us for what we are. Only through that Love can they identify the Way, the Truth, and the Life that we have.

So while the suffering may not be comfortable, it is a way for us to show love. We do have stories worth suffering for. We should be glad to endure heat, sore throats, and nights of little sleep for the sake of sharing those stories. It demonstrates the Divine Presence we wish to be in our communities here, because only something that good would motivate and sustain us through whatever suffering comes our way.

The other experience that put our aches and pains into perspective was Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields. This was a very difficult experience and I am still dealing with it in my own heart and mind, so I apologize if my writing seems scattered. I do not want to shock you with my stories. I want to make you weep. Weep for humanity and corruption and violence and mercilessness. Cry out to our Father like Habakkuk. Seek healing and wash the blood from your own hands. This issue is not political or ideological; it is about sin and humanity. I want to prepare you for what you are about to read so that you are not shocked by the words you will see: Interrogation. Torture. Whip. Beat. Knife. Noose. Electric wire. Infanticide. Genocide. Mass grave. Bloodstain. Merciless. Kill. Do not focus on the traumatic impact of those words. Run through the images and associations brought to your mind before you move on. I want you to identify with the heart of this issue.

On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge invaded Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. People fled from the city and it was entirely empty twenty-four hours later. For four and a half years the country lived in fear and the constant threat from the Khmer Rouge as the unchallenged ruling power. Pol Pot and his communist Khmer Rouge party attempted a cultural revolution of sorts. The educated, the resistance, and the religiously affiliated were caught, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered, sometimes in the name of ethnic cleansing or genetic planning, sometimes in the name of totalitarianism. But these deaths were many and senseless. Some estimate 3,000,000 deaths in those years, and 20,000 mass graves have been found throughout the country to substantiate those claims.

Tuol Sleng was a high school before the takeover, but it was converted into a prison and torture facility. Only twelve of the thousands who passed through its gates survived. Captors photographed each new prisoner and well-documented deaths and torture from whips, poison, severed limbs and digits, broken facial bones, and dunking prisoners into filthy water as they hung upside down from their ankles. All who came through were tortured and interrogated to produce coerced confessions before the victims were killed. There are still bloodstains on the floor and walls. Torture instrument lie where they were left. An artist who was spared death because of his skills was forced to paint graphic pictures of the torture methods, which hang hauntingly throughout the buildings. But worst of all, hundreds of pictures of victims look straight out of wide, terrified eyes from the walls.

And the Killing Fields were even worse. Sunken pits cover the landscape, their sheer volume an indication of the number of bodies since exhumed from the mass graves. A towering, ten-level stupa houses only a fraction of the intact skulls from some of the thousands of exhumed victims. I walked past a tree where babies were held by their ankles and beat against the tree just like someone would beat out a dirty rug. One mass grave had been full of people who’d been beheaded. Another had held only women and children, most of whom had been naked at the time of their death. We walked past a shed where chemicals were kept to sprinkle on the graves to cut the stench and finish killing those buried alive. There was another painting of a child flung up into the air with a bayoneted gun primed to catch him as he fell. And even after careful excavations, bones still remained in the ground. They, along with victims clothes, wash to the surface after rain. I could not avoid stepping on pieces of bone and rags of clothes and was deeply chilled.

What should our response be to such senseless violence? How could our Father let this happen? How could we, as humans, have the capacity for such unadulterated evil? One of the signs at the Killing Fields was captioned: “In the End Justice was Found for the Cambodian People,” but how can that ever happen? How can millions of broken families be repaid? How can there be justice in the face of such extreme evil? When many of the officials remain alive today, some are even still involved in the government?

I cannot give an answer. Lost people sin like lost people. Demons and evil spirits will stop at nothing to cause and incite death and destruction, violence and chaos. Does the Evil One win this battle? We believe that YWH is more powerful. That even in the darkness he is a great light. Habakkuk asked many of the same questions, and he was given an answer that was not easy. The prophets tell us that we have blood on our hands—blood of orphans, widows, runaways, aliens, and fatherless. Our Love should compel us to reach out to them and to minister to them in their distress. We are to drink the cup of suffering with them and weep as they weep. The Son wept. As he looked over Jerusalem in Lk. 19 he pondered the corruption, violence, and lostness of the city; he was overcome with tears of compassion. But he did not stop at tears. He ventured on into the city and set about restoration and redemption. That is the work we should be about. But we should begin by weeping. We cannot hide ourselves from the hurting. And we cannot hope to make a difference in their lives if we do not cry with them. So weep with me. And lift up the lost in the darkness of the past and the present.

I have a few more scattered thoughts to leave you with, and I apologize again for my verbosity. As I walked through the museum at the Killing fields I saw an agricultural tool used for slitting throats. I was reminded of our promise that one day, swords will be beaten into plowshares, but until then, the plowshares will be beaten into swords. We live in an age in which we wait for the coming of peace. It has not yet come fully on the earth. And even as I pondered these things in my heart, I remember another who had been cruelly beaten and tortured. As I saw paintings of striped backs being burned with salt water, I remembered the back of One whose stripes healed me—who is the balm for the healing of the nations. And as I thought on Him I understood his words of comfort. “I have felt this pain too. And it was not senseless; I did it for your sake… and for theirs.” He did. He suffered as much as the faces covering the walls of Tuol Sleng. His suffering brought glory to the Father, as should ours. Suffering gives us a change to deliver up true praise. This kind of praise does not come from a place of happiness and contentment. Anyone can praise in those situations. True praise comes from a place of suffering, when you praise in spirit and in truth because our Father is sovereign—because you know that he has a wonderful, beautiful plan that maybe you don’t understand, but you know it will be for His glory. So, in the words of Habakkuk:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,

Though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,

Though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength;

He makes my feet like the feet of a deer,

He enables me to go on the heights.

A Culture of Stories

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Any of you who know me well know I love to tell stories. I study stories at college, and I’ve told them since I’ve been able to speak… some of them have been more true than others. 😉 I don’t necessarily feel called to minister in the culture I’m currently visiting long-term, but I do love it, because this culture loves stories. I’ve seen two Christmas pageants performed by children, and in each one, there was no director sitting on the front row. Each child knew his lines perfectly. They sang, they danced, they read, they recited, and they acted with much gusto. They loved the story itself, and they loved to help tell it. That is how any important story is told in this culture.

I recently saw The Hobbit (more than once), and one of my favorite lines was “All good stories deserve embellishment.” This is the philosophy of people here: a good story should be embellished with drama and singing and dancing to enhance and proclaim its value and truth. We western Christians could learn a lesson from them. Stories are important. They are the fabric of our daily lives, with plot lines and truths weaving us together. We have built our culture, our beliefs, and our understanding of society on the stories we have been told. Certainly our Bible stories should be given a place of honor.

Unfortunately, the people here honor the stories of their faith just as much as the believers here. My team and I recently visited a Buddhist temple. As someone trained to recognize stories in their various forms, I was completely overwhelmed by their numbers. The walls and ceiling of the temple were covered in beautiful murals depicting gods, goddesses, spirits and humans in divine narratives. The various Buddha statues in the center of the building stretching to the roof told stories of how their real-life counterparts had achieved enlightenment and been relieved of the burdens of this world. The small idols for sale at the back of the temple were images of various deities whose stories tell of how they are especially equipped to bring those who house them good luck, health, wealth, or happiness. And worst of all, evil spirits inhabit the statues, tiny spirit houses, and objects they are invited into. These spirits control the lives of the people with their perverted narratives. The worshippers truly believe the demons have the powers they claim as ‘gods.’ They truly believe that by appeasing the spirits with money, incense, fruits and other expensive offerings, that they can win their approval. Their narratives are riddled with lies, so the promised fulfillments never come. And the people are enslaved.

I am more grateful than words can express that I know of the True narratives. I know of a loving Father, and a redeeming Savior. I know of a God whose story is not limited to a time or place; a God who specializes in being the All in All; a God who says of himself not ‘I will come,’ but ‘I Am.’ My God has given me the stories of Life—stories that always satisfy. And He hears me when I pray. I do not need flags that wave or bells that ring or incense that rises. My God understands my voice even when I cannot bring it to form words, because I have an Intercessor Incarnate. And that makes all the difference. Join with me in lifting these people up to Father. Ask that they would begin to learn the stories that will free them from their bondage.

A Child’s Communion

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Most people have a candlelight service on Christmas Eve. Everyone celebrates the story of when Darkness had seen a Great Light by coming together as a body, sharing bread and fruit of the vine, and a single flame, multiplied to fill a room. Christmas is, after all, a community celebration. We celebrate one of our founding stories together—as the Body. We celebrate the coming of the Body that was broken for us. There is something beautiful in the cycle of the calendar and the movement of the seasons that reminds us: there is a time to celebrate the Birth, and there is a time to celebrate the Death—the single human cycle that changed movements of the world.

But that single human who changed everything came as a child. He did not have his Father. He was not living in the comforts of the home He had known since the beginning of time. Regardless of all of this, that small child had a communion, of sorts. The Body had not yet been broken, but there was a gathering to celebrate the gift of new life. Joseph and Mary were there. A ragamuffin band of shepherds even came to goggle at the birth of their redemption. In fact, the whole of the created order was present for this first restored communion. The animals in the stable witnessed the birth of this Second Adam, just as they had witnessed the birth of the First. The baby was even nestled into a bed of hay—part of the vegetation that played such a prominent part in the story of creation and was to provide for the needs of all humankind. All was brought together for one shining moment of perfect community in perfect communion. And as we are told, Mary treasured these things in her heart, just as many of us savor the taste of the bread and the grapes as we meditate over their meaning and history.

My Christmas experience this year reminded me of a few of these essential elements of the first Christmas. On Christmas Eve my team and I found ourselves in a little village in Southeast Asia. We arrived too late to find any food, and all but a few vendors with day-old bread had shut their stalls and gone home to bed. We found a room in the inn, but we shared a meditative meal of crusty bread and some liter bottles of water. Mosquitoes buzzed around our lights instead of visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads. We made due with what we had in a place with which we were not familiar. And we had our little communion. We met as members of the body and shared stories of triumphs and loss. After talking about our futures on or off the Field, we heard about the believers’ work here and glorified in their successes and ached for their disunity. We savored the taste of an already-but-not-yet redemption, given, but not yet brought to fullness.

I mulled my experience over in my head, read a bit of the Word, and went to sleep. We woke up on Christmas morning and traveled to a home for children—children missing parents or whose parents cannot take care of them at home anymore. My communion experience continued with them in a different way. I shared with them about a child born into a very similar situation long ago on this day we celebrate, missing instead a Heavenly Father and away from his home. I saw in their eyes the all-surpassing understanding of children. They too knew what it meant to be out-of-place but completely belonging. There were in a communion of the Saints, brought together by nothing except a shared grace. Their community was whole and beautiful, complete with the same already-but-not-yet redemption as in that lonely stable long ago.

Foundations of Stone

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I have heard people talk about ‘building a worldview,’ but before today I never knew that phrase was anything more than a metaphor. Today we visited Angkor Wat—one of the Seven Wonders of the World; the Khmer people’s most honored cultural site; and an all-around awe-inspiring place. Angkor was an ancient city, in fact, the capital of the Khmer empire at its peak. The city is built of stone, intricately carved into domes, archways, streets, wells, tunnels, and cisterns, to name a few. We visited the restored palace and a temple, as well as many of the ruins in the city. I was blown away by the amount of intricate detail and heavy grunt work that would have been necessary to build this city. In fact, this ambitious construction project contributed greatly to the empire’s downfall. The king and his government worked the common people so hard that they exhausted their resources and displeased their empire. Not long after it was built, the empire was taken over and the city lost to the encroaching jungle.

The city is, to all intents and purposes, the foundation and solid rock of the Khmer worldview. Angkor was originally devoted to Hinduism, but soon after it’s construction Buddhism was introduced and many converted. At some point Buddha statues were put into the complex, at which people still worship today. I think that Angkor Wat is a concrete representation of the Khmer worldview because of this superficial shift. The entire city is covered in carvings and statues of the Hindu gods and of Buddhas, just as the Khmer people today are ostentatious in their worship. The scrollwork, balustrades, and bas reliefs covered in intricate details are an example of how this culture’s religion surfaces in quite literally every aspect of life. The temples and the city represent this culture in full. The culture is based off of a Hindu-permeated society. The people worshipped a long list of gods and gave offerings to the spirits to appease them and bring health, good luck, or salvation. After the conversion to Buddhism, the culture picked up a love for stories (as told on the bas reliefs) and changed from worshipping many idols to just a few Buddhas. They still burn incense and leave offerings of money, flowers, fruit, other food, or any other gifts to their spirit houses in their front yard. The people here live in such darkness—the same darkness that caused the downfall of the great Khmer Empire.

Inside the temple and palace even today, people prostrate themselves on mats to pray. They burn incense, leave offerings, and follow the pilgrimage routes to appropriately revere the buddhas. They pay priests outrageous sums to protect their children with amulets or to send away spirits of bad health or bad luck. As Paul says, these people worship no-gods. There is no life in that stone, and certainly nothing that deserves adoration or the little money the Khmer have. But the evil spirits are at work too. The people think they are protected and safe, but in reality they have been pulled into a lie. They are literally selling themselves into bondage and working themselves into another fallen empire because of their devotion to spirits who answer their prayers with nothing but evil. These people need the stories we bring. They need to hear of the life they have been given—that the darkness has seen a great light.

Fires and the Comedy of Jesus’ Birth

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Our team has laughed a lot together. We laugh at ourselves and our mistakes and our language learning adventures. It helps us to not take ourselves too seriously and to fit into the culture. There are times when laughing is the only thing you can do. For instance, last night we lost our power because the electricity pole across the street sparked and caught fire. Over half our team slept right through it like babies while the hotel guests were filing out with their bags. Those of us awake waited it out and decided to wake the others if the fire spread. This morning we had a quite the source of laughter from teasing each other about panicking and sleeping through utter chaos. Sometimes we have to laugh so we don’t cry. And sometimes we just have to laugh at how ridiculous we must seem. I have known my savior far too long to not believe He has a sense of humor. He certainly has an appreciation for irony. Just as we are supposed to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, I believe we are supposed to laugh with those who laugh. I’m sure someone smarter than me could tell you about the health benefits of laughing—how it lowers blood pressure or releases endorphins—but they could also tell you that laughter is a psychological coping mechanism. When things are tense or difficult, sometimes our best defense as humans is to laugh.

The Khmer people have certainly been through more than their share of difficulties. Their history is riddled with persecution, prejudice, national disasters, hunger, and poverty. But they laugh. A lot. They laugh when they are uncomfortable, when people around them are uncomfortable, whenever someone is embarrassed, and just at life itself. But another reason they laugh is because they are able to do something most people can’t—they know how to find the comedy in everyday life, with all of its difficulties. How much more, then, do you think the Khmer who follow the Son laugh? They have true joy in life, despite their hardships. They know that in every situation, there is a true, giddy joy hidden below the surface, bubbling down deep. They have the Way, the Truth, and the Life. They are steadily moored no matter what comes into their lives, and they can laugh in the face of seemingly insurmountable troubles.

It should not have surprised me, then, when their telling of the Christmas story was riddled with laughter, radiant smiles, and a contagious joy that crossed all language barriers. The children put on a pageant of the story with costumes and everything. The wise men bent over their staffs and sported odd-looking Salvador Dali moustaches with attached beards. Herod was decked out in a yellow silk robe with a tiara on his head. The shepherds had their own herds of six-year-old boys crawling around on the floor in white button-up dress shirts. You see, they meant no disrespect to the story by staging and performing it this way. They didn’t mean for it to be a farce or something calling for derisive laughter. They valued this story so highly that they simply could not overlook its good tidings of great joy. Here is a story that, to them, meant the world; it meant that in their background of land mines, indigence, and the Khmer Rouge, there is a story of everlasting comfort to all people—a story of such joy that you can’t help but laugh at its brilliance and giddy delight. Unto us a savior is born! Unto us a son is given! And he means the redemption of the world. Who can help but laugh at such a wonderful gift of joy and salvation?

Christmas through the Eyes of a Wanderer

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I have heard the Christmas story more times than I can count. I have not told the story quite as many times, but I can almost quote the Luke 2 version in King James verbatim, and within the next month I will tell the story quite a few more times. But this year the story sounds different. You see, this is will be my first Christmas away from home.

One of the things I’ve learned about stories is that, as hard as we try, we still tell and interpret them based off of our own setting. I know that the Israelites wandered in the desert and I know it must have been awful for them, but having never been to a desert myself without air-conditioning, I can’t very easily understand what it must have felt like. The Christmas story is the same way. We are used to hearing it from a cushy pew or curled up at home in Christmas pajamas, maybe sipping hot cocoa or picking up scattered bits of wrapping paper. I have always heard the story in the context of home—with people and places I know, traditions, predictability, and familiarity.

But nothing was familiar about the first Christmas, and nothing was homely. All of the characters would have been traveling, scared, and not anywhere close to home. Mary and Joseph were barely married, and they had been ordered to travel to a village they had never been to before. Mary was pregnant, uncomfortable, and in pain, yet she had to walk or ride on a donkey for long stretches at a time. Joseph would have had no idea where he was going—they didn’t pick out a hospital beforehand where Jesus would be born. And when they finally got to Bethlehem, Mary didn’t know she would birth her savior in a stable with animals and dung-ridden hay. She didn’t have a midwife or any of her relatives to attend her first birth. Nothing would have been as she expected.

And what about the shepherds? And the Magi? The Magi weren’t at Jesus’ birth but they arrived at the small family’s house after what could have been months of traveling through the desert on sweaty, smelly camels. And the shepherds were outside at night. Maybe it was cold. Maybe they were hungry. Whatever the case, they weren’t huddled with their family in front of a fireplace sipping cider.

The truth is, no one was home for the first Christmas. Maybe it was 23 hours on a plane headed to a country with a language and culture I’m not familiar to make me realize that truth. But now I understand that no one was comfortable; no one knew what was going on; and no one was around the familiar. The Christmas story, then, is not necessarily for people who are home. It is for people who wander—for people who are lost. And that is who I am going to share this beautiful story with. Please lift me up to the Father. That, more than anything else helps my team and me to have these kinds of opportunities.

Update: We all arrived safely with no missing baggage or delayed flights. They were long flights, but we were well taken care of. We’ll sleep tonight and wake up in the morning and head to the village. This will be a lot of language and culture learning for us so that we are sensitive to the people and how best to share our stories with them. We will be visiting churches and connections that we know, but we will have many opportunities to story. I’ll be telling the Christmas story to kids with candy canes, and we’ll have plenty of opportunities to share the One Story of our Book and our own personal stories of our relationship to Father.

Waiting in the Wings

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Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.

David wrote those words in the midst of a cry to God about how the wicked succeeded all around him. He was agonizingly frustrated because, even though he had the desire to do good, he seemed to fail more often than those who worked wicked deeds. His godly desires did not match up with reality—yet. This passage comes from Psalm 37, which is one of my favorites because I can identify with David. I have prayed that scripture many times before, because the more time I spend with the Lord, the more I grow closer to him, and my desires conform to his. As my desires have changed, my heart has grown to seek God’s glory among the nations. Yet I am continually frustrated in my works of righteousness. As much as I desire to be overseas, God has planted me here, in the States. David wrote these words after learning from experience that, in time, godly desires will prosper. The thing is, God fulfills those promises because they glorify him, not because they are my desires. He cares about me, yes, but he wants me to be content in him and with his timing. In the end he will let my righteousness shine like the dawn, and the justice of my cause will be undeniable to all those who care to look because of his Name’s sake.

I know analogies from the theater are often overused and abused, but sometimes they are the clearest way to communicate a point, so here goes. Most of my theater experience came from musical theater productions in grade school. I know it’s difficult to imagine, but I was a very dramatic child. 😉 I always loved the part of the play when I was on stage. I got to perform and play my part to help tell a story. I was always anxious when my cue was near because I had to wait in the wings, paying close attention and waiting for my moment to shine. If I did the waiting and listening part right, I would walk in on cue and everything went off smoothly. I am beginning to realize that there are times in my life when it’s my lot to wait in the wings. I am called to pay attention to what’s going on around me and to be prepared for the action after my cue. I am learning that, in fact, without the waiting in the wings, I might usher myself on too early and mess things up. I might come onstage ill-prepared.

In my times in the wings as a child I sometimes got frustrated with the long wait. I remember wondering if I would have time to leave and come back or to begin a conversation with a friend waiting alongside me. I think I do this in my walk too. As strong as my desire to serve and love overseas is, sometimes I get frustrated with the in between times when I feel unused and not a part of God’s global work. And instead of waiting on the Lord to see what he has planned for my waiting periods, I try to leave and forget about my calling. Instead of following the lamp for my feet and the light for my path that is God’s Word, I try to stumble around in the dark, bumping into things in my blind rush to find something else to do.

In times like these I find myself identifying with Jeremiah, my favorite prophet. After continual frustration about his reception, Jeremiah tries to shut up God’s Words inside of him and not let them out. He tries to move on from what he perceived as a lost cause:

But if I say, “I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. 

Jeremiah simply could not leave his calling. He couldn’t forget about it. He couldn’t hold it in. He couldn’t refuse his life’s calling without feeling the pain of his unfinished mission. Like Jeremiah, I too have tried to keep it in and go on with my life. But by God’s mercy, I was chivvied onstage for a minor scene again before I exited once more to await my next cue in the wings.

Like Jeremiah, too, I have also tried ignoring my calling. After being deeply wounded by the sins of his people and feeling unbearable pain because he knew of their judgment and coming destruction, he could not keep quiet. He knew of the disaster coming, and he spoke of it in spite of the agony it caused him. Just as Jeremiah, I cannot escape the reality of my calling because I am sometimes crushed with the weight of God’s grief for the condemnation of his people.

Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the agony of my heart! My heart pounds within me, I cannot keep silent. For I have heard the sound of the trumpet; I have heard the battle cry. 

I’m coming to realize that I am part of the story even while I’m waiting in the wings—a part God is using and preparing. He wrote the play, and he knows every little thing that will happen before he draws the curtain. He knows when each actor comes and goes, and he know just how long it should be before each character walks onstage to shine like the noonday sun to play their part in telling HIS story. So for now, I am content to wait in the wings. I can watch the story close by and prepare myself to fully understand the part I will play when I hear my cue.

My Old Attic

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I have something like an attic in my soul. It’s full of dusty old memories, and sometimes I well up when I take them out and look through them. I find worn out regrets and neglected dreams and a few warm, fuzzy sentimentalities I’d forgotten about. Experiences in real life—life outside my private attic—recall those ghostly wished-fors that hover around up there. Those can be the most painful. When I venture back up the rickety attic ladder to pick them up to turn them slowly over in my hands, they poke at me in all the old sores. The painfully stiff scar tissue covers up things I’ve been told I’m good at; things I actually believe I’m good at; things I can do well; things I enjoy doing; things I love; and things I miss doing. They remind me of aching could’ve-beens like still playing the French horn, or singing in a choir, or pursing acting. Things that might have happened… but didn’t. After a while of reminiscing and thinking about the what-ifs, I usually muster the strength to leave my attic to itself and pensively inch back down the ladder.

The reality of the matter is that the things in my attic are meant to be there. My life only has so much room, and I can’t pull down everything from the attic to decorate it with. If I were to do that, I would run the risk of clutter. I’d obscure, cover, or even possibly completely hide the things that I currently keep downstairs—the important things. The pieces of furniture from the life I’ve chosen downstairs remind me that I have made choices. I chose what to keep and what to toss. I chose a way of life. And life paths have ways of being mutually exclusive. But, it’s not so bad. As I look around, I realize that the things around me—the ones not in my attic—are not too shabby. I’ve gotten to keep out more than I ever thought I would, and passions and dreams I once thought to be irreconcilable have become magically reconciled. They complement each other quite nicely as they sit together in my living room, in fact.

On occasion I chance to look at my ceiling and imagine the attic with its lonely wishes. They have a sense of necessity about them. I can’t have the life that I have downstairs without expecting to have an attic. The very inevitability of the thing eases the wistfulness into a pensive, smiling peace.

Friendly Poems, Sparkles, and C. S. Lewis

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I enjoy the feeling of being small. I don’t mean forced humiliation, when someone squashes me to feel better themselves, and I don’t mean humbling myself when I’d rather just have a big head, though those do have their places. I mean that I enjoy that tiptoeing, wholesome humility that shows up in my life at no effort of my own, but is welcomed in wholeheartedly. It’s that comforting sensation that I’m not in charge, that I’m only a small cog in the mechanism: that I am just a small insignificance surrounded by the beauty and majesty of a thing much bigger than I am. I am only an ‘ephemeral coruscation that pipes my short song and vanishes’ (C. S. Lewis’ great dance description in Perelandra). I am only a small thing, but I have my place. I have a sparkle.

These ruminations don’t happen often, and when they do, they catch me by surprise. I find them hidden away like a small, secreted stash in various spheres of God’s truth. Each one is precious, but dissolves at a touch. I learned a word for that once… I guess it is fitting that I cannot remember that perfect word for such a slippery connotation. It meant something like “perfect knowledge of the workings of the universe, esp. in a philosophical sense: ephemeral and vanishing.” These awarenesses come nearest to opaque substance when set down by great poets and authors, or captured in a painting, or caught in an air of music. So, I feel like I can best express them by alluding and quoting and referencing. One of the allusions that comes to mind is the last two stanzas of “A Lost Chord” by Adelaide Anne Procter:

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,

That one lost chord divine,

Which came from the soul of the Organ,

And entered into mine.

It may be that Death’s bright angel

Will speak in that chord again,

It may be that only in Heaven

I shall hear that grand Amen.

Today I had one of these moments; I felt my small place in the universe most intensely. It came through a poem and a connection with a dead man. I was reading some of George Herbert’s poetry and I felt the rise to his climax so intensely that it began to grow in my soul until it burst and filled my body. I predicted and expected the conclusion before he came to it and gradually gave whisper to the lines I was reading as they built to the glorious finale. Herbert and I met at that last line. We rested at the same, beautiful point of grace, and my breathing came quick and shallow as I felt the meeting of our souls for one sparkle of a moment before they slipped apart. We had become friends. Regardless of time, regardless of geography, regardless of culture. Regardless of any continuity whatsoever. C. S. Lewis once said:

Friendship arises… when two or more… discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste… which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I though I was the only one” (from The Four Loves).

Herbert and I came to the same, deeply personal conclusion, and the cores of Christianity in our hearts touched for a brief moment. I suppose all good poetry works that way, that it connects the author to the reader at some point. So, I know I am not special or unique in my friendship with Herbert, but maybe my experience was. Ultimately, we are both a small flicker in the span of time and the great dance, but we met each other in passing in this great, wide universe of ours. And I felt my sparkle.

One Month Past

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It’s been a little over a month since I last posted. I’ve had a month to process, a month to let America sink in, and a month to miss Romania. I’ve used many Romanian words, sung many Romanian songs, and even made a bit of Romanian food. I’ve spoken to my county’s WMU group, and I’ve given reports at different churches and told stories from my trip to anyone who has two ears attached to their head. I’ve read my Romanian Bible and prayed a couple of times in my choppy Romanian, but all of that has done nothing to bring back to me the people, the sights, the sounds, and the love that I saw in Romania. I am still more or less an emotional wreck, and if I find myself in just the right situation, I find it easy to weep or easy to laugh – all because of connections to events and people in Romania. If you’ve kept up with me, you know that I feel called to return one day, and you also know that I went by myself (with no Americans). Even though I expected my culture shock to be worse than I’ve experienced before, those two things combined to make it, at times, undeniably overwhelming.

I could bore you with stories about how hard it’s been to work inside a schedule. I could tell you how difficult it’s been for me to remember to say “Thank you” instead of “mulţumesc.” I could tell you about how many times I’ve just wanted to forget college and go back home so I can physically feel the hugs and kisses of family as often as I want without being looked at like a creeper. I could tell you lots of things, but that wouldn’t even come close to expressing the sadness and grief I feel at times. It’s not that I’m completely overwhelmed by those emotions; at times I am, but for the most part they crash and recede like waves.

I’ve told you before how much God taught me, not just spiritually, but physically as well, about the unity he desires for the Body of Christ here on earth – my brothers and sisters and me. Naturally, Satan attacked that when I returned home. I felt isolated physically (because people in the States don’t make a habit of kissing you on each cheek when they greet you), but also emotionally (because no one here shared my experiences and sorrows from Romania) and spiritually (because no one really understands what that Romanian communion felt like or the way that it thrilled my soul to sing a hymn in harmony in two different languages). I didn’t feel as surrounded by love in reality as I knew, at least mentally, that I was.

So many prayers for this tangible feeling of love have been answered. I cannot being to tell you the number of people who make and effort to hug me. The most amazing moment of answered prayer came, though, when I was reading an assignment for my British Literature class. We were reading Julian of Norwich, a mystic/anchoress who was given visions of Christ. While she sounds a bit crazy to some, her theology isn’t as wacky as it would seem at first glance. At one point she sees Jesus and observes

“that He is to us all thing that is good and comfortable to our help. He is our clothing that for love wrappeth us and windeth us, [envelopes and embraces] us and all becloses us, haangeth about us for tender love that He may never leave us.”

At the moment that I read this I almost broke down into tears. I know my Savior’s character. I have experienced Him enough to know that what Julian spoke was true. About a paragraph down from this observation, Julian imagines she holds all of the universe cupped her hand, no larger than a hazelnut. She says,

“I marvelled how it might last, for me thought it might suddenly have fallen to nought for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth and ever shall, for God loveth it; and so hath all thing being by the love of God.”

I was struck again by the love that is in and around us and that unavoidably holds us together. Without the love of God, none of the things I hold dear even have their being. Again, I knew this stuff mentally, but to see it so beautifully presented blew me away. That was my answer. I was embraced in the the arms of my dear Savior, and enveloped as far as I could see by His love. “And in the arms of my dear Savior/ Oh there are/ ten thousand charms”

One more thing I’ve been struggling with, that God gave me beautiful resolution in, was my restless and overwhelmed heart. America hits a body hard, and when you’ve been away for a month, sometimes it’s easy to forget how hard things get to balance. After I came back my heart and mind were in Romania, not here, as I began to deal with a schedule and deadlines and homework and ministry and two jobs. I allowed the waves of busyness to separate me from my Abba God. This Thursday at Bible study our leader talked about being overwhelmed, and she read Psalm 107:23-32 to us:

“Others went out on the sea in ships;

they were merchants on the mighty waters.

They saw the works of the LORD,

his wonderful deeds in the deep.

For he spoke and stirred up a tempest

that lifted high the waves.

They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths;

in their peril their courage melted away.

They reeled and staggered like drunken men;

they were at their wits’ end.

Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble,

and he brought them out of their distress.

He stilled the storm to a whisper;

the waves of the sea were hushed.

They were glad when it grew calm,

and he guided them to their desired haven.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love

and his wonderful deeds for men.

Let them exalt him in the assembly of the people

and praise him in the council of the elders.”

When we read that passage, I began to weep. I wept for sheer joy. The storm inside of me was stilled to a whisper as my Savior stretched out his hands over the chaos and said, “Peace, be still.” Though I had been at my wits’ end, where I literally had no wisdom left, the fear was broken. I knew that I lay in the palm of the Lord of the raging sea’s hand. I felt that I could rest peacefully and unafraid in my Father’s love, because no amount of earthquaking or wave rolling or wind buffeting was going to move Him. I pray that I continue to seek his face as I work through adjusting, but I also pray that you, no matter where you are in the States, no matter how long you’ve been here, and no matter how desensitized you’ve grown to the buffeting wind of busyness, that you would also cry out to the One who saves the overwhelmed and the One who loves and the One who calms the storm and guides us safely home.