Category: Beauty

“The Wonder of It All”…

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A dear friend once gave me a card that said “Never lose your sense of wonder.” Coming from her, this encouragement carries great weight for me; it becomes an inspiration because it reflects a life grounded in both reality and wonder. Though nearing retirement and a veteran of more than her fair share of life’s challenges, she’s never lost her curiosity and amazement with life and the Lord. I came to know her as my mentor and friend when I moved to the town where I began my first long-term teaching job. She taught high school, and helped me learn to do the same. Her contagious vivacity and wit, as well as natural way of connecting and empathizing with youth, make people assume she’s twenty years younger than she actually is. She always downplays her own role in this, claiming that teaching keeps us young. Indeed, I have found this to be true, but most especially so when we as teachers are willing to be affected by all those we teach. She’s ever-willing, and because she is, her life in turn, has profoundly affected those of the students she taught.
Though we no longer teach together, I still consider her my mentor. As a teacher and a person, she is a force as awesome and resilient as nature herself. There are powerful influences in her life that have often attempted to determine and shape her reality, but she has staunchly refused to acquiesce.  Though at times her circumstances have seemed challenging, she faithfully cultivates joy one day at a time, continuously searches for reasons to laugh, walks determinedly in faith and not by sight, and pursues connections that pull her into spheres of positivity. I’ve known her almost ten years now, and in that time, she’s adopted me, welcoming me into her home and family as if I were a second daughter. When I became sick with a chronic illness, she cared for me. She has seen and understood me at the times where it seemed like few others could. She has refused to let me give up or give in to negativity, most effectively by her own example. Edith Wharton, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, once said something that seems to purposefully describe my friend: “One can remain alive  long past the usual date of expiration, if one is unafraid of change, happy in small ways, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, and interested in big things.” My wonderful friend has lived in such a way, and therefore, remains not just alive, but ALIVE.  In other words, my friend lives out God’s granting of another’s request: “I do not ask to know the reason for it all; I ask only, to know the wonder of it all” (Heschel, Abraham). May we all be continually captivated by the wonder of it all.

Irony of Christianity…

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In the movie Becoming Jane, the character of Jane Austen offers a wonderful definition of irony: “…the bringing together of two contradictory truths, but always done with a smile”. As an author, Austen is most praised for her astute observations and understanding of human character. The ability to understand the complexity of human nature must take irony into account. It is an incontestable component of life. We all have some  experience with navigating its paradoxes. Those of us who find happiness have learned to do it with a smile.

 
This definition of irony calls to mind many things for me, but foremost among them is Christianity. We are saved sinners; we’ve been made right with God, but live out our sanctification; God’s power is made perfect in our weakness (II Corinthians 12:9); we walk in faith, and yet by sight. The season of Advent is described as “the already, and the not yet”. Jesus, our Messiah, lived a life where He was fully human, yet fully divine. The apostle Paul described the irony of the Christian life in his second letter to the young Corinthian church: “…we are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but don’t despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed….having nothing, and yet, possessing everything” (II Corinthians 4:8-10). Paul cuts to the core of the irony of Christianity in that same letter: “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God, and not from us….Therefore we do not lose heart: Though outwards we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (II Corinthians 4:7, 16). The irony of Christianity is a God who continually offers Himself to fill the needs of humanity, through broken humanity itself.

Tenderness…

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 Anyone who listens to a music playlist of mine comments that I must be a “hopeless romantic”. Those who know me best would say that’s true, but in a different way than it might first appear. I never thought that mine would be a temperament satisfied with anything less than a tangible romantic love, but here I am, thirty-five and still single, and content. It’s only by the grace of God I can call myself a hopeFUL romantic. Since high school, I’ve prayed that God would turn all of the desires of that naturally hopeless romantic heart towards Him. He has answered my prayer, as He always does. When I hear a love song now, most often, my first thoughts are of Him. A great favorite is the song “Love Me, Tender”.

 

Though the word tenderness seems to have gone out of style with Elvis, it’s a wonderful word, and so perfect a description of the character of our Lord. Its synonyms include: kindness, kindliness, kindheartedness, tenderheartedness, compassion, care, concern, sympathy, humanity, warmth, fatherliness, motherliness, gentleness, benevolence, generosity. In Lamentations 3, the prophet Jeremiah states that the “tender mercies of the Lord” are new every morning. His is the only love that is merciful in every capacity, gentle in its every dealing, compassionate in its every gaze. The words of the song capture His unfailing love, the Love that can fulfill all our dreams, and take us into its heart, filling us with everlasting joy:

 

Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go,

You have made my life complete and I love you so.

Love me tender, love me sweet, all my dreams fulfilled,

For my darling, I love you and I always will.

Love me tender, love me long, take me to your heart.

For it’s there that I belong and we’ll never part.

Love me tender, love me sweet, all my dreams fulfilled,

For my darling, I love you and I always will.

Love me tender, love me dear, tell me you are mine,

I’ll be yours through all the years till the end of time.

Love me tender, love me sweet, all my dreams fulfilled,

For my darling, I love you and I always will.

The Gift of Presence…

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There’s a faithfulness in presence. On the other side of my Grandma Thelma’s kitchen, and the table she always seemed to have prepared, sat Grandpa Ray in his screened back porch. No matter when we’d arrive for a visit, there he’d be in his chair, calmly smoking his pipe, ever composed and even-keeled. He never seemed caught off guard: throughout each day until supper and sunset, there he remained sentinel, regardless of what moved around him. He wasn’t an excitable man, and despite having spent his life as a barber, he wasn’t a talkative one. Even as a child, I wondered why he held himself aloof, always a bit removed even from those he loved most. I still know relatively little about his life, beyond the fact that he married my grandma when my dad was in high school, after my dad’s biological father had passed away. Grandpa Ray was the only paternal grandfather I knew, and though he never said he word, I knew he adored us. He  died soon after Grandma passed, so in my mind and in that reality, he was always with her.
Though I never understood his cautious engagement with life and people, I think it was through him that I first learned that presence itself is a gift. Grandpa Ray was an observer of the quiet and beauty around him, enjoying his vantage point of the lane through the apple orchard and the bluff of southwestern Wisconsin. More than that, he regarded relationships and life with acceptance and wisdom. On the rare occasion where he would choose to comment, it was clear he’d been paying attention all along, and his voice was respected. “[His] good opinion [was] rarely bestowed, and therefore more worth the earning” (Austen, Jane. Pride & Prejudice). Though he was a man of few words, on the rare occasion he was out of the house, it felt rather empty without him. By the time I knew him, and perhaps before, he’d realized he could do little to control life, little he could understand of it. Still, he faithfully offered his attendance, and stood beside us all; his was the faithful gift of presence.

“Looking for An Answer to a Question I Can’t Name”

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I learned a long time ago to stop asking questions of others if I don’t want to hear their answers. At least that’s the case most of the time, with most people. It’s definitely a different story when it comes to God; despite my best efforts to predict and control my circumstances, He always seems to answer in the most unexpected ways. Sometimes His responses takes my breath away with how wondrous they are; others, they can stop me in my tracks with how much they seem to wound. He’s hard for us all to comprehend. Mostly, it seems my questions have to do with the problem of pain, essentially asking why I and others must suffer. Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias points out that only a Western worldview would allow this question. Isn’t it funny that we frequently question why we deserve to suffer, but rarely consider why a just God has freely given us so much love and grace and beauty?

 

Just maybe, I’m trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. Still, I can’t seem to stop wondering why things happen as they do. Why are we all living our lives as if we’re trying to tip the scales in our favor, when we have to know that’s not the way it works? Maybe, as Norah Jones sang, “I’m looking for an answer to a question I can’t name”. Author Marilynne Robinson reflects on this too:

 

“Things happen for reasons that are hidden from us, utterly hidden for as long as we think they must proceed from what has come before, our guilt or our deserving, rather than coming to us from a future that God in his freedom offers to us… My meaning here is that you really can’t account for what happens by what has happened in the past, as you understand it anyway, which may be very different from the past itself. If there is such a thing….Of course misfortunes have opened the way to blessings you would never have thought to hope for, that you would not have been ready to understand as blessings if they had come to you in your youth, when you were uninjured, innocent. The future always finds us changed. So then it is part of the providence of God, as I see it, that blessing or happiness can have very different meanings from one time to another. This is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognized for what it is. Sorrow is very real, and loss feels very final to us. Life on earth is difficult and grave, and marvelous. Our experience is fragmentary. Its parts don’t add up. They don’t even belong in the same calculation. Nothing makes sense until we understand that experience does not accumulate like money, or memory, or like years and frailties. Instead it is presented to us by a God who is not under any obligation to the past except in His eternal, freely given constancy. Because I don’t mean to suggest that experience is random or accidental, you see. When I say that much the greater part of our existence is unknowable by us because it rests with God, who is unknowable, I acknowledge His grace in allowing us to feel that we know any slightest part of it” (Lila, Farrar, Straus and Giroux; pp. 222-223).

 

Perhaps it’s natural I don’t understand God’s working, when there’s so much about Him that simply can’t be known yet, and so much of what we do know defies understanding. I’m a spectator in a parade, and He’s the grand marshal, looking at His creation from a view up above. As C.S. Lewis says of his character Aslan, and in so doing describes and untamable God: “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”  Who could worship a god that was at our level, that didn’t defy our logic? What can we do but stand in awe? As Chris Tomlin sings, it’s good He’s “Indescribable”:

“Indescribable, uncontainable,

You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.

You are amazing God

All powerful, untamable,

Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim

You are amazing God”.

Anchored in the His Harvest…

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A friend of mine was once  given a vision and a strong mental picture of harvesting. She saw a girl walking through a corn field, ripe for harvest. As the girl walked, the storm winds blew & endangered all that had grown. As she faced the storm, she carried a large anchor, & began to cast it against the wind, into the harvest field. Again & again, as the storms buffeted all that had been produced by hard labor & careful care, the girl made this choice. Again & again, she threw her anchor into the harvest.

 

It reminds me of Bebo Norman’s song entitled “All That I Have Sown”, which describes what ultimately comes of each of our lives:

 

And all that grows is our story told

As life unfolds here before

The peace we found in that broken ground

I can see them in the harvest…of all that I have sown

And when my life is done

I pray the kingdom come

And take me to Glory

It’s living inside me

It was planted like a seed

All to tell a story
It’s “all to tell a story”. The tasks given to each of us may require a hard, committed constant endeavor, and at times, can feel very lonely. We must encourage each other to take heart, and together, courageously cast out our anchors over and over again. Matthew tells us that Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Pray therefore that the Lord will send out workers into His harvest field.” Even prayer may feel like a long labor, and trusting the season of harvest awaits us may require immense faith; we are only capable of this great work as we are filled with God’s strength. As we anchor ourselves in a harvest that is most often unseen, truly, we anchor ourselves in Him. In Him is “all our hope & stay” (On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand).

“O Joy that Seekest Me Through Pain” (George Matheson)-

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One of my favorite sights in Barcelona is the artist Antoni Gaudi’s Parque Güell, where mosaic tiles cover the longest bench in the world. There’s something so beautiful about mosaics, isn’t there? They strike something within us not only for the picture they create with complementary colors, but also for the stunning revelation of patterns and colors one wouldn’t think of as naturally belonging together. They are all simply pieces of vessels and structures that have been broken and neglected, whose original purpose seemed to lie torn in worn-out pieces. They highlight the beauty of fractured things coming together to create something new, something unexpected. When this happen in my life, as in this present season of reinvention, the new and ultimate picture being made by God is often a mystery. C.S. Lewis spoke of God as being the master artist in our lives:

“Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can’t see it. So quietly submit to be painted—i.e., keep fulfilling all the obvious duties of your station (you really know quite well enough what they are!), asking forgiveness for each failure and then leaving it alone. You are in the right way. Walk—don’t keep on looking at it.”

When I do catch a glimpse of God’s vision for what seemed fragmented and lost, it often takes my breath away. Submitting to His artistry, and to this mystery, ultimately seems to bring a surprising joy that can’t be ignored. Pastor and hymn writer George Matheson spoke of this too:

“O joy that seekest me through pain,

I dare not close my heart to thee.

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

And know the promise is not vain,

That morn shall tearless be.”

The Apostle Paul’s encouragement in Romans 8:28 is so comforting: “And we know in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, of those who are called according to His purpose”. One day will see the grand design: “Then I will know, even as [we] are fully known” (I Corinthians 13:12). That day will not only hold the revealing of His artistic design, it will be the completion of all our joyous victories, manifested in all their fullness.

The Song of the Meadowlark & The Coming of Spring…

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In Colorado, it’s definitely hard to predict when spring has actually arrived. Skies are typically as consistently gray as ever are, and spring blizzards and dust storms frequent. It’s mid-April now, and for a couple weeks, I’ve been hearing the song of the meadowlark, my favorite of all birds. There’s something about this bird’s song in particular that signifies the arrival of spring here. Now the daffodils are blooming, and I’m sure that spring is on the way. Oh, how wondrous it always is. Sometimes in the fall, I almost welcome the shorter days and quieter season, bringing with them a chance to turn inward. Despite holding a definite appreciation for each season, however, it does seem winter always leaves its mark. The coming of spring is always so welcome. Margaret Manning, an author and speaker for Ravi Zacharias ministries, reflects on the arrival of spring and Easter:

Even as Christian mourning turns to joy with Easter resurrection celebrations, it is important to note that Jesus bore the wounds of violence and oppression in his body—even after his resurrection. When he appeared to his disciples, according to John’s gospel, Jesus showed them “both his hands and his side” as a means by which to identify himself to them. Indeed, the text tells us that once the disciples took in these visible wounds “they rejoiced when they saw the Lord” (John 20:20).

The resurrection body of Jesus contained the scars from nail and sword, and these scars identified Jesus to his followers. And yet, the wounds of Jesus took on new significance in light of his resurrection. While still reminders of the violence of crucifixion his wound-marked resurrection body demonstrates God’s power over evil and death.

But his wounds reveal something else. God’s work of resurrection—indeed of new creation—begins in our wounded world. His resurrection is not a disembodied spiritual reality for life after the grave; it bears the marks of his wounded life here and now, yet with new significance.

One of the best parts of spring and Easter, it seems, is the joy we find in the perspective we have in them…perspective that is often wrought from the suffering and scars gained in winter-likes seasons in our lives. Bess Streeter Aldrich, a fiction author who wrote primarily in the the 1920’s, has a novel called Spring Comes On Forever. It’s a beautifully told story, but it’s the title itself to which I’d like to call attention. The wonder of spring is that we can enter into it fully, in all its presence and glory, and yet simultaneously receive the promise that it is always still coming, still waiting. May we never lose our sense of wonder in both realities!

On Waiting…

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Though most of us live our lives “on the go”, and many of us will travel far, the place we’ll spend perhaps more time in than any other is  in life’s waiting room. Even Dr. Seuss recognizes this in his classic children’s story Oh, The Places You’ll Go: “Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plan to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.” It’s as if he’s pointing it out to both the child and the adult that waiting is a necessary component of any voyage.

 

Many of us feel we’ve spent a great deal of our lives waiting on God. Our petitions are many, our prayers may even be incessant, but God often seems slow to answer. One possible reason for this is God’s view of time, as the apostle Peter observes:

‘But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.’

This same passage points out that though God may require us to be patient, we are the true beneficiaries of patience. Through waiting and hoping, we learn not just to lay our requests before the Father, but also to converse with Him, learning to trust that He will always faithfully respond, and always answer in a way that yields “the best possible results, for the most possible people, at the best possible time” (Chip Ingram). Eugene Peterson once summarized, “Waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.”

Living in a House Called “Enough”…

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From the day of my birth until today, there isn’t one I have survived without grace. Despite my doubts and regrets, that grace has always been enough. My needs have been met, and often in ways I could never have envisioned. It’s as if someone saw my future, and stockpiled exactly the provisions I would need along the way. Someone did. As unchanging as I may be, God never wavers. Worry hasn’t changed one bit of His gracious provision. Considering the reality of His providence and provenance, why is it I spend most of life ruminating over thoughts full of worry? Will there be sufficient companionship, happiness, or strength, or time, or wisdom? Though His grace has always proved sufficient, it seems I’m always fretting He won’t be enough.
Often I think God is asking me about that very thing: Just when will all He’s given fill my bottomless well? Just when will I let Him be enough?  He’s never ever failed me. If fear, as someone said, is a result of imagining the future without God in it, then why, oh why, am I so afraid? I want to learn to dwell in a land called enough…to live in it and make my home there. I’m determined to learn to give to others from that place of enough, knowing in the depths of my soul there’s an inexhaustible supply. To find that place, I must choose to make it my destination, to gratefully acknowledge each grace, to constantly hear the voice that beckons over any calm or storm: “I am enough. I will be enough.” As Cheryl Strayed said, I too proclaim: “Fear to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I choose to tell myself a different story.”