I recently shared this story with a friend of mine, who had never heard it before. She didn’t believe me, that is, she didn’t believe that the events I described actually took place. So I revisited it and was struck anew–not at the craziness of the thing, though it is that–I was struck by how blessed I am, how truly blessed. I was only 8 years old when I was diagnosed with a disease that would either “cripple” me or end my life. God entrusted so much to me so early, and he delivered me through every trial, every terror, every loss, most of the time, in spite of my counter-efforts. My overwhelming conclusion (and I’m getting ahead of the story a little bit) is, in the words of H. Thielicke:
“all who suffer for Jesus’ sake are given a share in the sufferings of their Lord. Indeed, we may…
“The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself or less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less..” Timothy Keller
The gospel changes everything. I’ve been studying the life of Peter over the last few weeks, and am struck anew at his transformation. The gospel is the only thing that could turn a man like Peter–an impulsive, reckless show-off, into a rock; Peter, once the striving, autonomous, ego-inflated moralist, not the humble, compassionate shepherd. How does this happen ?
There are two almost identical instances in the bible of the disciples going fishing. One is in Luke 5 and the other in John 21. In both instances the disciples are in a boat, in both instances they don’t catch any fish, in both instances Jesus comes along and says, “throw your net in one more time, and in both instances they come up with a staggering crush of fish. In both stories we have the same setting, the same dilemma, same intervention, same outcome, but a totally different reaction from Peter. In Luke 5, Peter takes one look at the fish throng splitting his nets, and falls to knees saying, “Depart from me Lord, I am a sinner!” Get away from me, you reveal just how impotent, silly, and inadequate I am. There can be no illusions with you about my own strength and skill, wisdom and righteousness. I am undone, shown for who I actually am, vulnerable and weak.
But in John 21, we have quite a different Peter. This Peter takes one look at the fish, ties his outer garment around his waist, dives headfirst into the sea, and does not stop crashing through the waves, until he his the shore and is face to face with Jesus. What changed? The last time this occurred he wanted to get as far away from Jesus as possible, now he wants to be glued to his side. What has happened to Peter?
In a word, the gospel. The gospel happened to Peter. The gospel changes everything. A real encounter with Christ does not leave a person inspired, or happy, or vaguely curious. It wrecks them. That self-image that I’ve taken such care to craft and sacrificed so much to cultivate and refine, is little more than dirt. It is worthless. For anytime that self-image comes up against moral, cerebral, or relational disintegration, the response to God, to the people I’ve let down, and even to myself will be to run or strike a defensive posture: “Depart from me!” Only when we understand the gospel, when our self-image is built on Christ’s past, not our own, his perfect record, not ours, will we draw near to Him. Only then will the defeating knowledge of my shortcomings, sins, and humiliating defeats make the sight of Jesus irresistible. Not detestable, irresistible.
There is no shame, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1)—why would I run from the one who takes my filthy rags and gives me gleaming garments of praise? Why would I lash out and yell “depart” at the one who trades my ashes for garlands of beauty (Isaiah 61)? When my self-image is built on the gospel knowledge that though I am a sinner, I am safe; though I am dust and ashes, for me the King of Glory died, then my go-to is no longer “depart from me, Lord,” but “wait for me, Jesus, I’m coming!”
But how did he take Peter from following Jesus to intimacy with him? Peter thought he’d be the greatest leader the church would ever know because he could outperform all the other disciples. And he did outperform them, in his spectacular betrayal. All the disciples fled, but he is the only one who denied him openly..multiple times.
Thankfully for Peter, the story doesn’t end there. It actually begins there. For it is in his abandonment of Jesus that Peter comes other end of himself. Only then is he able to answer the question, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” (John21) Jesus takes him down the road to greatness, but it is not how he imagined. He says I will make you great, but first you must admit something. The path to greatness lies with repentance. He who has been forgiven much, loves much. I will expand your heart to love more than you ever thought capable, because you’ve been forgiven more than you ever dreamed possible. Now do you see Peter, that you never really loved me. The Jesus you were following the past 3 years, wasn’t me.
Jesus was just a tool, a means to an end, a way of making Peter feel good about his own innate leadership abilities and charisma. Jesus brought out the best in him, made him look good, set him apart as a chosen one, a member of the inner circle. He thought he loved Jesus, but what did he love? He loved morality. He loved religion. He loved the heroic tone of his own voice when he said, “Even if all these forsake you, I will never!” But he never loved Jesus. How could he? He didn’t know him. When Peter is confronted by Jesus in John 21 with, “Do you love me Peter, more than these?” and he doesn’t say, “Of course, I love you more,” he is acknowledging his own lackluster commitment, and for the first time, his need for God’s grace. I love you, but not as I should Lord…you know all things. And that is the beginning for Peter. He will not go back to fishing, he will not return to hiding; he is utterly changed once and for all by the grace he thought he could earn with passion and effort, but in the end found he could only receive with humility and joy. May we be so bold. In reality it take far more boldness to say, “I wronged you, I do not have what it takes, will you forgive me?” than “I am ready to go and die with him.” Repentance is radical. It is revolutionary, and it is the only path to greatness. Without a life of radical repentance and dependance, we might as well return to our boats and hang signs on our doors that read, gone fishing.
We celebrated my friend Annette’s 50th birthday last night. Happy-go-lucky Annette had been temporarily brought to a stand still over the magnitude of her years…She kept saying “half a century” in disbelief. Her husband Ryan pointed out that she was going from 49 to 50, not 25 to 50…but that’s not how she felt. She felt the whole eternal weight of her life pressing down on her, and not, it seems as I would feel it. Not what have I done with these first 50 years? Have I wasted them? Squandered them? Have I anything to show for them? More like, death is nearer to me now than it was last year; I am living on borrowed time; my days are numbered; death, he cometh. She seemed to be finding the whole experience a sobering, though not entirely grievous affair. Arrested by the echo of death’s faint footfalls, the irony of the human response was not lost on her, or any of us. While she is pondering the weight of her life and the inevitability of death, her friends are plying her with gifts of alcohol. We can put it down to a maxim, in the face of death, our spirited resolve melts into resignation. We wave our white flags, and join the ranks of Solomon’s downtrodden workers or hedonistic pleasure seekers, uniting under the rallying cry: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” (Eccl 8)
But there is another way open to us. Death may not be the dread foe we suppose him. Death in fact, may turn out to be little more than repose for the child of God.
“And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” (Mark 5:39)
The hired mourners and professional wailers were already bestirring the skies with their shrieks when Jesus came upon Jairus’ home. His little daughter was dead; what more could be done? What more could be said? But with a word, Jesus dismisses the mourners and dissolves the dim shape of death into a calm and serene form.
“Sleep is rest, and bears in itself the pledge of waking. So Christ has changed the ‘shadow feared of man’ into beauty, and in the strength of His great word we can meet the last enemy with ‘Welcome! friend.’… He was not denying that she was what men call ‘dead,’ but He was, in the triumphant consciousness of His own power, and in the clear vision of the realities of spiritual being, of which bodily states are but shadows, denying that what men call death deserves the name. ‘Death’ is the state of the soul separated from God, whether united to the body or no,–not the separation of body and soul, which is only a visible symbol of the more dread reality.” (A. Maclaren)
Death is separation from Him who forged and fashioned my soul, who contrived and crafted my being, who, the psalmist says, saw my “unformed substance”…“made in secret…woven together in the depths of the earth,” who in his book penned “every day ordained for me before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139). Death is not a bodily reality, but a soul reality.
To live cut off from the One for whom my soul was made is little more than living death. The body can act as a temple or a sepulcher for the spirit within. Like Ezekiel’s experience in the valley of dry bones, one can prophesy to bones bleached and hollowed out by years of exposure. One can dress them up with tendon and flesh, animate them with the provoking breath of the four winds, and cause them to stand, unflinching in the hot sun, but the answer to the question, “Son of Man, can these bones live?” remains to be seen. For the recently appareled bones themselves testify, “‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished; we are cut off’” (Ez 37:11).
Can we live if our bones are dried up, our hope perished and we are cut off?
“‘O Lord God, Thou knowest!”
To our despair and fear, he answers: “‘O My people, I will open your graves and bring you up from them…..I will put My Spirit in you and you will live” (Ez 37:13-14).
“Talitha Cumi”…..(Little girl, rise up)
Jesus has the final word over death. Whether physical or spiritual. He stands by the bedside of his sleeping daughters and sons, and speaks with unabashed tenderness and authority: “Rise! Wake up!” Not because death is nearer to us with every passing year and we need to make the most of the time we have left. Not because we must begin entering in earnest into the strenuous training regimen of marathoners if we have any hope of giving this foul phantom a run for his money. Rather, as it says in Romans 13:
“The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is at hand. So let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.…”
We rise up, not because the day is fading and our life is slipping away, but because our life is at hand. Salvation is nearer. Such a mysterious phrase-how can salvation be nearer than it was on the day I first believed?
There is a famous anecdote involving Bishop Westcott, and a young Salvation Army girl that sheds some light on this question. The curious girl saunters up to the distinguished looking bishop in all his finery and asks him, “Excuse me, sir: is you saved?” And the bishop responded, “Young lady, do you mean have I been saved, am I being saved, or will I be saved?”
The answer is, of course, yes, yes, and hallelujah, yes! A careful reading of the Bible reveals three tenses to salvation. In Christ I have been saved from sin’s penalty. It is also equally true to say that I am being saved from sin’s power, and more magnificent still is the last truth, one day I will be saved from sin’s presence.
“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor 15:55-56)
In the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis illustrates this extraordinary principle: in a fallen world, there is no “real” life without death. Aslan, the great Lion, rescues all of Narnia and defeats the White Witch, not in battle, but through his sacrificial death at the Stone Table. Aslan willingly gives up his life for one who has betrayed the community and, in so doing, frees Narnia from the power of death. For Lewis, death does not represent the end but more of a passage or a door to something greater. And what could be greater than a resurrection?
What if we actually lived life as if there was a resurrection?As if death was really not the end? What If we lived as though this life really was just the prologue, as C. S. Lewis writes in the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia?
“And as he spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
So it is said: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:14)
“The great work of the gospel is to communicate divine life….We know more than Ezekiel did as to the way by which that Spirit is given to men, and as to the kind of life which it imparts… It is a diviner voice than Ezekiel’s which speaks to us in the name of God, and says to us with deeper meaning than the prophet of the Exile dreamed of, ‘I will put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live.’” (A. Maclaren)
Why do we always pray to be healed, delivered, set free from uncomfortable or painful afflictions? Why do we always assume these visitors are evil or meant for our harm? Why not instead pray that God would heal if it will glorify his name, but if not, to use our infirmities, our weaknesses, and persecutions to advance his kingdom? Is he not worthy of a little discomfort? Have we not learned that He is more than sufficient to the trial?
A sizable tumor was recently discovered on my tongue. It was biopsied and came back benign, but after three weeks of a nystatin rinse, it had doubled in size. It was interfering with eating and talking, and the dramatic growth in such a short period of time, alarmed my ENT doctor, so I was scheduled for surgery. The fancy term for the procedure was “glossectomy.” I liked the way that sounded; what I didn’t like was the word “cancer,” which was suddenly back on the table.
So we prayed. We prayed for healing. We prayed that when I went in for the procedure, there would be no tumor at all, nothing to cut away. The vile growth would just have mysteriously vanished, leaving my “glossa” smooth and pink as an amazon river dolphin.
But that is not what happened. The tumor was present and accounted for on the day of surgery, and as it turned out, it was cancer. So goodbye, smooth sleek tongue. Hello, pain and swelling and sputtering speech. Hello hematoma, arterial leakage, and burst artery one week after the surgery. It’s a long and bloody story, the details of which I’ll spare you. Just know that in the course of 20 min, I lost close to a liter of blood, and on the way to the emergency room, head hanging over a rapidly filling bucket, the bleeding just stopped.
I thought this was normal. Like I had obviously popped a blood clot or torn some stitches or something, but the angry vessel had clotted once more, and I was in the clear. So my husband and I did what any reasonable couple of traumatized and exhausted human beings would have done. We went home and went to bed.
Only the next day at my post-op did I learn that I had been in real danger of bleeding out; that there is an artery in your tongue—the lingual artery. The doctor was flummoxed and could offer no explanations, nor could he find any evidence anywhere in my mouth of any bleeding episodes. In the end, I’m sure he fell back on the necessity of our exaggerating the amount of blood, the possibility that we imagined the entire thing, or that we were just liars, or practical jokers, pulling his leg. Why was he so flummoxed? The thing clotted. All is well that ends well, right.
No. He was flummoxed because ARTERIES DON’T STOP BLEEDING ON THEIR OWN. Two different nurses told me this later, so don’t quote me. I have my first aid certification, I can splint your arm or finger, and do the Heimlich like a champ, but that is the extent of my medical training.
The doctor mentioned the need to cauterize the artery in a bleeding event, and that I should have gone to the ER and not gone home to sleep, obviously. But there I was, in the chair, totally healthy and feeling better than I’d felt in 7 days. Because that’s the other strange, but amazing fact. I awoke the next day with no pain. My tongue felt half the size it had been, and I could eat! My throat had been so sore and my tongue so swollen, it had been really hard to eat anything. And my tongue, which had been black along the incision, which I assumed was normal, due to cauterizing blood vessels and the like, was now pink.
So, explanation? Jesus.
Jesus cauterized my artery. Jesus saved my life. I probably would have bled out on the way to the hospital if he hadn’t stopped the bleeding.
This is quite dramatic, and gory, and kind of out there, I realize. But it’s not like, our God hasn’t done similar things before. I mean, the “woman with the issue of blood” bled for 12 YEARS, and Jesus stopped her bleeding. By comparison, mine was really a much smaller ordeal; I mean I’d only been dealing with “the issue of blood” for 20 min.
I’ve never been on the receiving end of a “scientific miracle,” and it got me to thinking, about “healing” in a new way. We hadn’t been praying for healing that night on the way to the hospital, although our son had mobilized a small army of people to pray when he heard. But we had prayed for healing at the onset of this whole tumor journey, and God had not seen fit to answer that prayer. I couldn’t help but rejoice over that unanswered prayer now. When Jesus was standing before Lazarus’ tomb and asked them to roll away the stone, he said to Martha, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” (John 11:40)
If God had healed me so that when the doctor went in to remove the tumor there was nothing to remove, there would have been no testimony of his peace in the midst of uncertainty, no late night miracle on the way to the emergency room, no mass texting with reminders of God’s faithfulness and mercy.
It is not that I enjoy pain and suffering. It is not some sadism emerging out of twisted, repressed childhood traumas. Rather, it is the realization that as much as I want to be well and healthy and comfortable, there is something else I want more. I want to know him, to really know Christ, my brother, my friend, my Savior. “I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death” (Phil 3:10)
To know him in the depths of my soul, and to hold him so surely, so certainly that my grip can never be loosed, because it would be like letting go of my own hand. I want to be so entwined with my Lord that there is no longer any differentiation between him and me.
And why do I want to know him? Again, not because I have some morbid fantasy about dying. Just the opposite! I want to live! And He is life—abundant life! Now that I’ve tasted that life, no other food will satisfy. This half-life I have been living up until now cannot compete with the joy and peace and wonder of being in His presence. It’s the reason I leap out of bed every morning at 4:40 am. I can’t wait to talk to him, to hear from Him, to just be with him without any other distractions. The second half of that verse in Philippians says it is in order “that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!” (phil 3:11) It’s always been about life. Resurrection life.
“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 16:25
I want to find my life. I don’t want to save it. Save it for what? I want to spend it, pour it out, make it count for something. So I do not pray, “Lord save me from this hour” for “It is for this hour that I’ve come.” Use my life Lord to glorify your name. I want more. I don’t want an easy deliverance that keeps me from experiential knowledge of his manifest presence. I don’t want to miss out on anything he has for me because I am too afraid to open my hands and take what he is offering.
Our Father, in heaven, you are holy and good and kind,
Bring your kingdom to earth, give us eyes to see your unfolding will,
and hearts brave enough to walk in it
Give us our daily bread, our living water
And forgive us our sin and our striving,
as we open our hearts in forgiveness to others
Lead us not into the enemy’s traps
Deliver us from evil
For yours is the wonder, the power, the love
in a kingdom that will go on forever and ever. Amen
My baby turned eleven today, and I finally got around to finishing her origin story. This may seem like a strange gift to give an eleven year old, but outside of a trip to the pet store, it’s all she asked for. I’ve written similar poems for her older brother and sister, and so maybe she was just feeling left out. They are written in the format of George Ella Lyon’s poem “I Am From,” which is well worth the read, if you haven’t already read it. It’s a fun exercise, even for the nominal poetry aficionado–we could all benefit from thinking about our roots, where we came from, who we came from, how those stories–those of our parents, uncles and aunts, cousins, and obscure relatives from pictures under our bed–become our stories. So here, in honor of Evie’s 11th bday is her “I Am From” poem.
I AM FROM for Evie Claire
I am from gasping doors and coins
of sunlight, swarms of minnows
and bevies of flight
I am from burrows
of softest dark– from nests of feather,
bone, and beak; from clots of fur and fist
under tables, and inside closets;
from doggy dance partners
and flipperty animals;
I am from:
“You get out of here!” and,
“She’s just a little shy.”
I am from peepers
and Woof Woof Cuties,
and sour-tufted bird babies.
I am from garter snake feet
and the sharp green tongues
of fresh cut grass; from mandarin
orange mornings
and nights throbbing
with fireflies and bug bites.
I am from sullen, wintry skies,
from golden frisbees
and big piles of black—and prayers
going up like smoke.
But I am also from beauty
for ashes—from wilderness ways
and streams in the desert;
from “Behold
I make all things new” and the “The Lord
Is my shepherd”—I am from warm
yellow fistfuls of life;
from Spring breaking
in like an eager archaeologist
with the light.
I am from snuggles and sisters and stacks,
from Big Small worlds and “Chauncy” & “The Juice”
from ash dragons and cotton crocodiles,
I am from exploding brothers
From “get out of my room!” and “really?”
I am from lyrical laughter and
generous natures sandwiched between shadows
I am from bruised shin bones and
eyes the color of coffee; from whistling wolf packs
We decided to tackle journalism this summer–keeping the people in our pocket of the world informed, aware, and “woke”–that’s our motto. Okay, not really. The kids are always making up little stories about the animals all around us, and creating alter-egos (Sully as “Shelissa–see page 5), so we decided to put it all in one place under an official banner. Hope you enjoy it. This is our first edition, more to come. Happy Summer everyone!
How does one celebrate a life? Will eloquent, stirring homilies do the trick? Will slide shows, floral arrangements, special music, or donations to our loved one’s favorite charities fill up the space that was once occupied by him? Our best efforts to commemorate and encapsulate the life of the person we loved collapses in on us like an accordion. Our own feeble words and meager acts are poor stand-ins. Words fail—how can they possibly support the warp and weft of a life so robust and full—a life as beloved and irreplaceable as our Father’s? How can they possibly imprison his laughter, ensnare his mannerisms, stow his vast intellect, compress his passion, or contain the love that we all felt in his presence? The task is beyond me—I am but a faltering pilgrim, driven deeper and deeper into exile with every good-bye. My father-in-law and I shared a common refuge—we both turned to books for solace and instruction, succor and light. But books make poor lanterns; they cannot illuminate the road when it is swallowed by darkness; they cannot take your hand and lead you out, or give you back what you have lost along the way.
This sorrow weighs on us; it sings in the footnotes of our lives, threatening to fill up the page—pushing the story to the margins.
This feels like a tragedy. We didn’t have enough time. We weren’t ready; there were still so many things we wanted to tell him, so many questions left slumbering at the ends of our sentences. It’s not fair.
Who will tell him how proud we are of him now? We were the most amazing, gifted, intelligent, accomplished children ever to grace this undeserving planet. We were geniuses and artists, accomplished writers, singers and craftsmen; and his grandchildren were all prodigies—even the one eating out of the dog’s bowl and the one who keeps banging his head against a wall.
We were the chief source of his pride and joy, the beneficiaries of an ongoing tribute, that I will at least say for myself, we did very little to warrant. He was occasionally disappointed in himself; like most of us he struggled with feelings of insecurity and failure, but he was never disappointed in us. We could do no wrong, and he never missed an opportunity to tell us. Did we return the compliment? Does he know that his laughter, his childlike wonder at the most commonplace things, his genuine interest in even the most mundane details of our days, his defensive and caring posture, his profound insight and insatiable hunger to know God and to love people were also some of our greatest treasures?
Does he know that his life mattered—that God used him to bring light and joy to so many people?
I do not know the answer to this question, but I have a sneaking suspicion, that it does not matter. I am off topic, I am knee-deep in shadows; down in the depths, holding my sorrow like a smooth stone that I cannot bear (part with) to send skipping out over the waves. Our father does not share our regrets, our fears, our longing. He is not concerned about his legacy, or his impact, or anything related to himself any longer. He is embarking on a new adventure, a glorious calling, the one for which he was fitted since the dawn of time.
One thing the two of us shared in common was a love for C.S. Lewis books. He loved the idea of sitting across from him in a plushy armchair: He with his coffee, and Lewis with his tea, and, in Lewis’ words “talking nonsense, poetry, theology, and metaphysics over beer, tea, and pipes.” (he never smoked, he just found the idea a romantic one when connected with Lewis). So the idea that he is now experiencing the last act of the “Chronicles of Narnia” series in which the kids realize that the span of their lives–all they experienced, dreamt, loved, and lost was merely the beginning of the real story, is incredibly heartening. Lewis writes
“All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before it.” ” The Last Battle”
These words from an author he loved and celebrated are not too different from his own—we stumbled upon a file of Dad’s sermons this week, and I was struck by these words from a talk he gave on suffering:
“Why doesn’t the prospect of heaven serve to motivate Christians more than it seems to? I believe the answer is we have no way of really coming to terms with how wonderful Heaven will be. Yes, we have imagery—streets of gold, crystal sea—but that imagery does not appeal to us as much as it did to the culture in which it was written…Rather, Heaven will be a place where the Christian will experience in the fullest dimension, all of the deepest longings that the human heart has ever had” in the presence of God, the One who created our hearts to find their perfect joy in Him…If you stop and consider that for a moment, that’s something to look forward to!”
One of the last conversations I had with my Father in law was about this very thing. He was somewhat confounded by the extravagant love of God. He said something to the effect of: “If we really believed what we said we believed, about how much God loves us, about all that he has in store for us—wretched and unfaithful as we are—our hearts would be so full and our joy so riotous, we would outshine the sun.” His face was beaming as he talked about God’s love for him. It was as though he spent his whole life making plain the mysteries and the profound truths of the gospel for others, (which he did as a pastor for years) but the secret itself had just been revealed to him. The secret that being Christ’s disciple is not a matter of sacrificial living, good deeds, and making yourself more worthy of his gift. The great secret of being Christ’s disciple is in fact not found in doing anything for him, but rather in being a perfect delight to Him. It comes from this simple but easily overlooked truth:
I am his and He is mine.
The Psalmists sings,
“Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.”
(psalm 73:25)
As the hymn writer, George Wade Robinson, echoes:
Heav’n and earth may fade and flee,
firstborn light in gloom decline;
But while God and I shall be,
I am His, and He is mine.
“Loved with Everlasting love”
This profound reality reminded me of a moment from a play I was in in High School. In Act III of our town, the character Emily, who has come back from the dead to revisit Grover’s Corners, looks around wildly and cries out to the Stage Manager,
“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute??”
Very few of us live our lives in a state of perpetual wonder. The love of God is just another of those things we take for granted—of course God loves me, the Bible tells me so. Steve had a bit of Emily’s intensity that day as we dug deeper into the mysteries of what it meant to be God’s child and his disciple. He had concluded that God did not have a precise plan for our lives. Our lives are about so much more than aiming and hitting the various targets:
Become a Christian – check
Get baptized – check
Memorize a bible verse a week – check
Introduce someone to Christ – check
Start a bible study, go on a mission trip, go to seminary, enter into full time ministry. Check, check, check. So that at the end of the day you are left with a series of checked boxes and one burning question: did I do enough Lord?
The goal, the mark, the thing we are straining toward, is little more than an episode along the way—these things were never meant to define or appraise us. We were made for so much more than climbing ladders or checking boxes.
God is not working toward my spectacular finish; rather He is drawing me toward His. What he desires for us is that we see Him
—calming the raging storm; we see Him–giving sight to the blind man; we see him–walking on the sea toward us with his hand outstretched.
He is not calling us to turn toward the shore and launch a “walk on water” ministry, or a “living water” outreach. He is calling us quite simply to keep our eyes on Him. When our eyes are on Him, the wildest tantrums staged by nature and man break in submissive waves around the helm of our ship; the billows of sorrow and the winds of regret, cannot overtake us, because He walks upon them and makes them his humble ministers. The storms of our lives may roar and seethe, but a deeper voice calms the waves.
How awesome would it be if, just as Steve was gripped by the love of God, we too –”may have power, together with all the saints, to comprehend the length and width and height and depth of the love of Christ and to know the love that surpasses all knowledge.” Ephesians 3:18-19
What a gift for Steve if by his death, he may spur on in our hearts the love that he sought his whole life. If he could impress upon us that it is not a matter of our goodness or intellect, our compelling talents or potential, but our poverty. It is not what we bring to God that makes us lovely and useful to Him. What makes us an inestimable treasure to God is what He gives to us—and what does He give to us? He gives us His Son. Paul did not say in his letter to the Galatians that God set him “apart before (he) was born” to show what an eloquent orator and exceptional evangelist He could make of him. He says God
“set me apart…and called me by his grace…to reveal his Son in me.” (Gal 1:15-16)
The marvel of the redemptive reality of Christ is not that we become better people as we follow in His footsteps, but rather that the “worst and vilest among us can never get to the bottom of his love. The power of the gospel is not found in people who are so holy they have no need of a Savior. It is found in a God who “demonstrates his love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
I don’t know much about walking with God, but I know it is possible—because I have seen it. My father in law Steve was wise and accomplished in the world of academia; he was fluent in Greek and Hebrew; he was a gifted teacher and counselor but his talents and his accomplishments are not what set him apart. His achievements are not what we remember or celebrate—
It’s his laugh, his stories, his compassionate love, his modest, unassuming wisdom, and his friendship that we treasure.
And it is the fact that he walked with God that inspires us and encourages us now in our faltering journeys. Steve walked with God, though he was in irreconcilable sinner; He walked with God, though sometimes he stumbled, and at times even crawled; He walked with him and he talked with Him until our beloved father, brother, and friend, had the pleasure of hearing God call him “My own.”
“For I am certain that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor principalities, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Rom 8:38-39
In Loving memory of Stephen Homer Johnson April 6, 1946 – February 14, 2017
Birthdays are going to be the death of me…I went a little overboard this year. Maybe it was because I was turning 40 and for months I’ve been getting these notices and invitations in the mail to join retirement communities, schedule in-home “angel” care, and pre-order my coffin. Apparently, the white rabbit was not the only one who felt that time was running out! Maybe some part of me felt that I had missed my date with the queen, arrived too late to the tea party, and missed my childhood entirely…Maybe it just fit with how I’ve been living my life, running around half cocked, chasing rabbits, or any creature at all, that dares to move, taking on more projects and responsibilities than sanity permits. Whatever the reason, or perhaps due to its absence, we ended up here:
–taking tea with the mad hatter,
keeping time with tyrannical rabbits,
throttling poor little hedgehogs on the croquet field,
and unraveling the knots of truth
behind the cheshire cat’s smile.
Whoever said “less is more” needs to take a seat at my table:
The party was late…or the guests were early (I had threatened to chop their heads off if they were late…). So I was still in the midst of making all the food when everyone showed up! As it turns out, I thought the invitation said 4:30, but it clearly and emphatically, decreed 4:00 as the start time. So I was running late from the beginning, sweating like the duchess’ pig baby (from the book), and covered in frosting and pickle juice. Somehow, we got the thing off and running with only one casualty (poor Anna burning her finger on the hot glue gun…I left Sully in charge, what can I say?)
Two and a half hours later we hadn’t even opened presents or gotten to the cake and candles!! It was an Unbirthday party in the truest sense. Even now–almost three weeks later–I am still reeling from the aftershock. Birthdays are so steeped in significance for me–I cannot separate the anniversary from the event they commemorate. The births of my children were magical events, rare and inexplicable moments of grace and beauty standing out against a faded, gloomy backdrop. Okay, that’s a little bleak, even for me. It’s just poetic license–life’s joys and pleasures fall prostrate and broken before the miraculous birth of a child, like Dagon, god of the philistines, before the ark of the covenant (1 Sam 5:4) I long to recapture a fragment of that wonder and share it with the world…Perhaps that is why I stay up late hot gluing felt top hats to head bands, and red roses to old chandeliers–for the wonder.
Or maybe I’m just mad…
…if that’s the case, I’m in good company.
I wrote my little wonderland junkie a poem for her 12th birthday–she and her sister share their birthday every year since they are only a couple of weeks apart…I wrote Evie a poem too, but her’s I’ll put in a later post. The poem took me almost as long to write as the party planning, but it was far more important. I tried to capture her essence. She used to tell me she was looking for her “destiny.” Maybe my destiny lies far away in the mountains where I will learn to talk to wolves…Maybe it is my destiny to eat a strictly sugar diet….Perhaps it is my destiny to not make new friends…Her destiny has become a source of angst as she has entered adolescence. It has created a breach in her tranquility, interrupted her dreams, and squelched her fire. It is a painful thing for a parent to watch, but she has had some help along the way. She is learning that she needs others–her parents, her friends, even her brother and sister, which for a fiercely independent child is a beautiful thing. She is also learning on whom she can count in times of tumult and uncertainty. She has found that Jesus can do more than quiet the wind and calm the waves in nature–he also commands the storms in her heart to fold and pleat in peace.
“All this earth—could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come up from this ground?” – Gungor, Beautiful Things-
Last spring my middle child decided that, while artist, writer, philologist, cinematographer, and computer software designer still had some value, what she really wanted to be was an entomologist. She took to the fields and began honing her skills. Her bedroom slowly metamorphosed into her laboratory as the familiar comforts of bed, stuffed animals, and pillows were supplanted by kill jars, butterfly nets, field guides, test tubes and pinning boards. I couldn’t help but fan the flames of her enthusiasm, overjoyed that my 11 year old would rather obsess over the beautiful, pearlescent jar-shaped eggs of the common stink bug than boys and make-up and whether her friends “liked” her latest selfie on instagram.
We ordered luna moth eggs, and polyphemous and cecropia cocoons from the secret, underground community of leipodopterists. We went on monarch caterpillar hunts and checked the leaves of milkweed plants for eggs. We collected close to a dozen praying mantis egg cases and nurtured one particularly feisty live one, whom we named ‘Zoro.’ We planted butterfly bushes, flowers and herbs to attract and feed our pollinating friends. We fed monarch caterpillars mandarin oranges in the mornings before school and released them for their Mexican migration in the fall. We watched in mingled panic and awe as hundreds of luna moth caterpillars hatched from their eggs and stripped leaves off the branches of their host plant faster than we could gather them. In short, we reveled in the wonders of nature. For one exultant season, we attempted to hollow out our own Eden by plundering her pearls, keening and wild-eyed in our pursuit of her veiled mysteries and hidden delights.
But in our hasty wonder, we failed to take into account the dark side of the prim-rose path. We came up against something rough and unholy. For every newly hatched chick, there is a storm of fiery ants waiting to swarm the nest and eat them, bite by pitiless bite. For the living, every time a breath is drawn, there is loss.
Inhale. The kids’ favorite patio toad flattened in the driveway.
Exhale. A hawk snatches a fledging robin out of the air.
Inhale. A dozen flickering fireflies are crushed by a car,
a ladybird beetle starves,
a human being dies of hunger. Exhale.
This is nothing new. It’s an old story. Ashes, Ashes all fall down. How could we have forgotten? We are all members of Elisha’s company of prophets, living in the midst of famine, we hold out our soup bowls in dire hunger, only to find there’s “death in the pot.” (2 Kings 4:40). Death seems to catch you by the tail; you never see it from a distance and plan accordingly. One day you are picking gourds in the forest, the next you are sitting down to a steaming bowl of death. How many breaths until death catches me?
All that summer and into the fall, we ate from death’s pot. It began with Skyleaf, Ferntail and Moonlooper: the names my girls gave their first three luna caterpillars to come through metamorphosis. They emerged from their silken tombs like pale green leaves bursting from their buds. Born without mouthparts, they existed for one purpose only—and it wasn’t to experience the wind beneath their swallow-tailed fairy wings. Up close they resembled fuzzy white poodles with still, black eyes covering their heads like aviator caps. They seemed to prefer perching to flying, like chicks about to fledge, they’d cling to our fingers as to the last remnants of a fading dream. Alas, they did not cling for long, for their sole purpose in life was to muster all their animal vigor, find a mate and breed like there’s no tomorrow…because there might not be.
The last act is neither bloody nor beautiful, but it is thorough. Some luna moths have been known to mate for over 36 hours straight—they hold the record in the kingdom animalia. However extraordinary, their joie de vivre is a fleeting snapshot in time. Some male luna moths only live 3 days; the females are given a little more time, to lay their eggs. These frail, delicate ghosts are snuffed out almost as quickly as they ignite, leaving behind them only the faintest tracing on the underside of a leaf. The future hatches in bold green and rapacious hunger. It does not mourn the dead, or pause to offer silent praise for those who’ve gone before. The future is starving and it is driven—driven forward, by some unseen force toward its own inevitable death.
By the end of summer our garden was littered with gravemarkers for all our fallen friends. My daughters mourned the deaths of their “pets”, lamented their fates, and railed against the system that pressed its creatures into vanity, wretched cruelty and waste. It’s eat or be eaten out there; there is no room for the steady diet of mercy and grace these girls had been downing since the day they could hold a sippy cup.
Creation is full of beauty, and grace is there for the catching, if you are lucky enough to be there when it falls. But it is far from perfect. It strayed from fulfilling its noblest, truest purpose long ago. Sin has degraded its pursuit and it now stalks an unworthy end. The bible says that,
“creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope…”
Futility–what else would you call death? What is the point of the luna moth anyway? All that eating, all those instars (for my non-insect loving friends: when a caterpillar sheds his skin), followed by weeks or months of pupation.
Quick aside, for the uninitiated, pupation is that time in a young caterpillar’s life when he is dissolved into a kind of soup by the sudden, violent releaseof enzymes. Well, not soup exactly, the larva hangs onto a few of his organs, it’s just the non-essentials, like muscles and mouthparts and larval memories that break down. These clumps of cells are then re-used to make antennae, legs, wings, and eyes like a Lego sculpture in the hands of a master builder.
And so, I ask you again dear reader, why pray tell, does he go through all this trouble? Why? So he can emerge from his chamber, show off his scant lace-like wings, flit about a bit, and succumb to death on a pile of dung?
Futility must be the answer. Or better yet, there is none. Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless sings the teacher from Ecclesiastes. The luna is under the same law as every other living thing in creation. It knows not why or wherefore, it just surrenders itself to the vanity with which it is smitten, in obedience to that inexorable power fusing its destiny with man’s.
Thankfully, this is not the end of the story. There is some power at play between chrysalis and grave. That mysterious power is hope. Hope is the thing that tempers the sting of death. Hope is the thing that keeps the whole horrific show from grinding to a halt. Hope is why the songbird sings and the firefly ignites, despite the gruesome deaths awaiting them over the curb. Creation groans. It travails. (Romans 8:23) It does not exult in its impoverishment and degradation. Instead it waits, eagerly, for “what is mortal to be swallowed up by life.” (I Cor 15:51) Isn’t this, in unscientific terms at least, what happens when the caterpillar goes into his chrysalis? What is mortal, his earth-bound, grub-like body, is swallowed up by the hope of heaven. He is reborn a citizen of the skies, he is no longer bound to the earth like a worm. He is free to fly, to soar and split the sky with unimpeachable light. Hope is what holds all of creation in suspense, watching for the promise of a new day when, as the second half of the verse in Romans says:
“creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” Romans 8:21
We are close to the earth, connected to it, united in bondage, bound by the same hope, waiting for the same deliverer. We are not the aristocrats of creation, subduing our subjects from a seat of dominion high above the circle of the earth. The flesh is frail, the blood unruly, the nature beastly the world over. It is only fitting then that when God sought to mend the damage caused by man’s rebellion, he sent his son down into the miry clay of this world. He could have sent his son to extract us from this cracked vessel; salvation could have been the heroic story of a swift and sudden rescue operation. Instead salvation is the epic love story of a God who never lets go, who travails with his creatures, who descends to their level not to admonish them to rise above their primitive instincts and attain spiritual enlightenment. Rather, this God descends to share their suffering, to carry their burdens, to show them a better way. He gives his creatures bread and fish when they are hungry, he gives the blind among them sight, he straightens what is crooked, sanctifies the unclean, heals the sick, mends the broken, and reestablishes the bonds snapped by death.
God is deeply troubled by the perversion he sees at work in his once perfect creation. He grieves at the gravesides of the desolate and shattered. The original beauty, glory, and felicity of all created things have been exchanged for vanity and wretchedness in a multiplicity of forms. As one commentator says:
“the inanimate creatures are forced into man’s rebellion; the luminaries of the heaven give him light by which to work wickedness; the fruits of the earth are sacrificed to his luxury, intemperance, and ostentation; its bowels are ransacked for metals, from which arms are forged, for public and private murder and revenge; or to gratify his avarice, and excite him to fraud, oppression, and war. The animal tribes are subject to pain and death through man’s sin, and their sufferings are exceedingly increased by his cruelty, who, instead of a kind master, is become their inhuman butcher and tyrant. So that every thing is in an unnatural state: the good creatures of God appear evil, through man’s abuse of them; and even the enjoyment originally to be found in them is turned into vexation, bitterness, and disappointment, by his idolatrous love of them, and expectation from them.” — Scott
The news is bleak, I know. I am often told I can be a bit of a “downer” in these musings. But stay with me, the darkness is greatest just before the dawn. One has to wonder with the state of things, why God doesn’t whisk us off to Heaven as soon as we are converted. It seems a bit reckless really—leaving us here to grow like wheat in a weed-ridden field. For during the night, the dark figure comes, entering God’s furrows, sowing seeds of negation and destruction right alongside the tender shoots of the gospel. (Matt 13) For Jesus came sowing love, and up sprang prisons and death camps to house love’s martyrs. He came sowing peace, but the fields are littered with invalids and corpses. The dreadful Mene Mene Tekel hangs over our world like an eerie, silent gallows. How is faith to survive?
“…but where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more.” (Romans 5:20)
Faith survives not in spite of the evil, but incredibly, because of it. The sinister nightwalker sows his seeds, only to find wheat coming up in their place at harvest time. The world’s best efforts to wipe Christianity off the face of the earth, have led to some of the greatest revivals in the history of mankind. Cruelty seems to rule the hour, reining unchallenged in every realm of life, but somehow little shards of light slip through the cracks, like shattered glass, slicing the darkness to bits.
How is it that in this world where only the strong and swift, the grasping and cunning, survive–beauty has managed to evolve? Again, we return to the luna moth—why does the luna exist and why do we care? For, as my entomologist friend was only too keen to point out, they do not have the corner on metamorphosis. In fact, 85% of known insect species undergo “miraculous” transformation, including beetles, wasps, ants, flies, and fleas. It doesn’t take a scientist, or an entomologist, to tell you why we don’t care about the transformation of the common house fly, while we are awed by the same act in butterflies and moths. Beauty. A fly is gross, and maggots are the stuff of nightmares, a monarch is a symbol of hope and freedom.
By evolutionary standards, beauty is wasteful, an unnecessary expense, profligate and foolish as the kindling of a star. But then, why does my heart leap and my soul ignite like a fuse at its arrival? There is something about the frailty, the impossibility of it that captures the heart and imagination. It should not exist, and yet here it is–against all odds, flying in the face of every dark fiend and hidden specter. Beauty shines through, despite the rivers of tears, the appalling abuses, the bonds of love that have been painfully severed—there is still a glint of something, some small glimmer breaking through the cracked and bloodied surface of this world like a solitary flower in the desert. Hope springs up; Grace abounds; Hallelujah.
“Heir steche ich, ich Kahn nicht anders. Gott helfe mir!”
Here I stand, I cannot do differently. God help me!
–Martin Luther
Here we stand, hard pressed on every side, as the apostle Paul says, but not crushed. We do not have an easy time of it down here, even the most affluent among us has fear and guilt and pain of a more hidden variety to contend with. For trouble is one of the only things Christ promised we would have in this world. That and one other thing:
“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
Overcoming victory. If we stick with him we will witness him overcome despair, and defeat, poverty and hopelessness, heartache and even, death by giving its victims new life. He will not erase the evils the world reigns down at will, he will not resurrect dead moths and toads and geese; but he will give us grace upon grace in the aftermath. Beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, strength upon strength for weakness, garments of praise for shame, undying love for heartache.
“He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation.” Psalm 149:4
“He will make all things beautiful in their time.” Ecc 3:11
The new day we have been promised will come. This world with all its sorrows and horrors will pass away like a bad dream. Humanity’s song is this mixed cup of dust and beauty, wheat and weeds, savory stew and noxious death. The earth groans beneath our feet according to Romans 8, and we echo its lament…until the time when faith is sight, sorrow is banished and joy unravels, enfolds and floods our souls with new life.
“God is always there…his help is supplied with an almost incredible punctuality. We learn how he sends some person to help us up again; how he allows us to catch some word to which we cling; how he brings money into the house and bread to our table; and how in the our greatest hour of sorrow he may perhaps send the laughter of a little child. He who dares to live in this way will see the glory of God…For God is always positive. He makes all things new. And the lighted windows of the Father’s house shine brightest in the far country where all our “blessings” have been lost.” -Helmut Thielicke
“This is the story of a very brave knight named Joel–
Joel the baby knight?
Yes, but he is also Joel the very brave knight who was being chased by a dragon called cancer–
Where does the dragon live?
Ummm…In a forest–
Is the dragon big?
Very big.
Does the dragon breathe fire?
So much fire you guys….So brave Sir joel armed with his sword and his shield and his spear and his super jumping ability and his other super power, grace, was being chased by the dragon cancer…”
—That Dragon, Cancer–
Cancer. There are few words that strike more fear in our hearts. Chances are, you or someone you love, has been touched, wounded, scarred, erased by this dark specter. Depicting cancer as a “Dragon” is an attempt to cloak something terrifying and mysterious in a metaphor that children can wrap their minds around and throw their spears at. Dressing cancer up in fire and scales is fine for kids and bedtime stories, but how do the adults cope with the real actual threat of losing a child to terminal illness? Ryan and Amy Green faced this very real dragon with their baby son Joel. When confronted with chemotherapy treatments, long days and nights in the hospital, surgeries, bad news, and lucky breaks, dashed hopes, they took all those experiences and did something that defies reason with them. They created a “game.” Losing a child to terminal cancer is something so painful even in the abstract, my first thought was what kind of a person would ever want to play such a game. My answer came immediately on the heels of that apparently ridiculous question: my children! So, my kids heard about this “game” on Radiolab, (a show NPR puts out, like ‘this American life’ but with more science) and wanted to buy it and play it. At first I was kind of horrified and tried to dissuade them. Then I watched the trailer, and listened to the podcast,
and fell in love. It’s not a story about our frailty, terror, and weakness in the face of impossible monsters. The game is more like a moving painting, engulfing its viewers in colorful memories, inviting them to share their heartache, and discover the overwhelming hope that can be found in the shadow of death.
In this little boy’s journey with his family, we witness one of life’s last wonder’s, a miracle unlike any other. And like Elijah’s brush with God on Mount Carmel, this miracle was not in the earthquake, it was not in the wind, or in the fire. It comes to us in the form of a gentle whisper, or a baby’s giggle…so small, so insignificant, that if we weren’t listening, we would miss it. And this is just it: the fact that hope and joy and light don’t gutter out in the shadows, but thrive and dance and spread. Down in the depths, under the threat of impending night, and the sulfuric breath of an unquenchable dragon, hope rises up and not even death can defeat it. As Corrie Ten Boom, who survived Hitler’s concentration camps and the death of her dearest family members, never tired of saying:
“There is no pit so deep that Christ’s love is not deeper still.”
It’s a love story. A parent’s love letter to their pancake eating, puppy loving, bubble popping son. But more than that, it’s a love song from the Savior of Joel Green and Ryan and Amy Green, and Jenna Johnson, and Maggie Ross, and Lia, and Lori and Terry, and Riley and Shannon and Greg, and Soren and Sandy and Joyce and Missy and Tom and every last one of us. A blessed assurance that,
“In all our afflictions he is afflicted,
and the angel of his presence saves us;
in his love and pity he redeems us;
he lifts us up and carries us all our days. (Isaiah 63:9)
And another thing, one day, that dragon is going down:
“He seized the dragon, the ancient serpent – who is the devil and bound him for a thousand years. And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more”
I am a daughter of God, a mother of 15 (12 of which are not my own, but I have the privilege of raising), a worshipper, a singer, faithful journaller, and no-so-faithful blogger.
Growing up without a father, and with a mother who was absent at best, and depressed and high the rest of the time, I came to view God as either cosmic sadist, delighting in my torment, or unreliable father, distant and indifferent. How else could I account for his strange provision of the “stones” of poverty, humiliation, bondage, hunger, abandonment, depression and death when I was asking for bread? With time, and no small amount of grace, God has revealed his brilliant economy of reversals. The true nature of those things I referred to as "stones" are in reality some of God’s greatest gifts because they brought something else along with them: Jesus. I learned that where pain and suffering increase, so does God's grace; and while sorrow enlarges the heart to feel pain, it also enlarges the heart's capacity to LOVE. The world and its dangers cannot hold me captive as it once did, because I have experienced the depths of darkness and despair and found that there was no pit so dark and deep that Christ's love was not deeper still. His love transformed the pit into a den of comfort and joy. "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it." John 1:5
![](https://stonesforbread.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/scan1.jpeg "Me, my sister and "Wham's greatest hits"--what more does a girl require?")
I recently shared this story with a friend of mine, who had never heard it before. She didn’t believe me, that is, she didn’t believe that the events I described actually took place. So I revisited it and was struck anew–not at the craziness of the thing, though it is that–I was struck by how blessed I am, how truly blessed. I was only 8 years old when I was diagnosed with a disease that would either “cripple” me or end my life. God entrusted so much to me so early, and he delivered me through every trial, every terror, every loss, most of the time, in spite of my counter-efforts. My overwhelming conclusion (and I’m getting ahead of the story a little bit) is, in the words of H. Thielicke:
I am a daughter of God, a mother of 15 (12 of which are not my own, but I have the privilege of raising), a worshipper, a singer, faithful journaller, and no-so-faithful blogger.
stonesforbread 