WEEK 3: these three men
Sitting there with those two men, I felt something I haven’t felt in a long time. A little spark, a little hunger, a little thirst, the challenge of not having the answers to difficult questions; men of various backgrounds and different experiences and opinions, listening to one another without judgment, sharing our beliefs without having to be right. “Strong beliefs weakly held,” as one put it. This is what feels right — talking with others, rather than at them.
Was this what it was like to sit with Jesus? People like us, searching, seeking, doubting, struggling, but most importantly — hungry, thirsty, reaching out for that unnameable something we know exists and surrounds us.
And the relief of realizing, “It’s not my job to save anyone, to make them believe. If this truth I believe in really exists, then it speaks for itself.” All I can be is available. All I can do is listen, and when prompted, respond. The rest? It’s out of my hands. Who am I to label the journey, the slow, almost imperceptible process that God is working out in someone else’s heart? It’s His job, not mine, to reveal himself to someone. I can be His image, his likeness, but I am not Him. If only we’d just be available, letting Him do His work; how much more free and exciting for us, and better for others, yes? This is where I find life — in a room full of men without answers, searching for more.
And there, God is with us.
It’s challenging, uncomfortable, unnerving. To put it bluntly, it scares me. But can God handle it? Yes. Is God big enough? Yes. If He made the universe and everything in it, surely He can handle our questions. “I came to seek and to save the lost.” Am I not also just one of the lost among the lost, who simply knows he’s been found?
Don’t start by “inviting someone to church.” Go be Jesus in their world, in their lives, in their doubts, unbelief, pain and struggles, in their questions and searching and seeking. Live in the grit; get your hands dirty; embrace the messiness of the journey, the discomfort of difficult questions without pat answers.
Do it, like Jesus did, and just see what happens.
You do your part. And let God do His.
WEEK 2: living questions
I recently finished my first book by Wendell Berry, “Jayber Crow.” There’s a conversation that occurs between Jayber and one of his professors at the college he’s attending as a “pre-ministerial student.” He wants to leave; he no longer wants to be a preacher, bothered by too many contradictions and unanswered questions, unable to even pray. So, Jayber approaches the professor he is most afraid to go to: “You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out—perhaps a little at a time.”
“And how long is that going to take?”
“I don’t know. As long as you live perhaps.”
“That could be a long time.”
“I will tell you a further mystery,” he said. “It may take longer.” There’s a voice that keeps speaking: Theology, spirituality, faith, belief, cannot be detached from lived experience.
As the book moves along, Jayber slowly begins and continues to live out the answers to his questions. He receives spiritual revelation and insight through his lived experiences. He answers his professor from the very heart of these experiences:
I finally knew, I told him, why Christ’s prayer in the garden could not be granted…And I could see Dr. Ardmire looking straight at me with that distant, amused light in his eyes, and I could hear him say, “Well. And now what?” He concludes:
“If God loves the world, might that not be proved in my own love for it? I prayed to know in my heart His love for the world, and this was my most prideful, foolish, and dangerous prayer. It was my step into the abyss. As soon as I prayed it, I knew that I would die. I knew the old wrong and the death that lay in the world. Just as a good man would not coerce the love of his wife, God does not coerce the love of His human creatures, not for Himself or for the world or for one another. To allow that love to exist fully and freely, He must allow it not to exist at all. His love is suffering. It is our freedom and His sorrow. To love the world as much even as I could love it would be suffering also, for I would fail. And yet all the good I know is in this, that a man might so love the world that it would break his heart.”
WEEK 1
I don’t necessarily like new year’s resolutions; goals sound a little better. Are you setting any goals for yourself this year? I’m setting at least one. One recent night while trying to fall asleep, it came to me: Write one reflection every week for a year. If you don’t start right now, you never will. You will keep all of your words, heart and gifts in silence. And you will regret it.
And this is for you, too. You must do something with your tension. You must let it write words, make music (or create a painting, speak to an audience, start a business, audition for a part…) Tension without music is a silent instrument. Tension without voice is a wordless poem.
Take, for instance, guitar strings. If the strings on my guitar have no tension, then I cannot play music, and the instrument is useless.
Brennan Manning said: “When God introduces creative tension into our lives by calling us to break camp, abandon the security and comfort of the status quo, and embark in perilous freedom on a new exodus, our insecurity and procrastination may focus only on the darker implications of the challenge…Stubbornly to stand still when the Lord is clearly challenging us to grow is hard-heartedness, infidelity, and a dangerous lack of trust…” You and I have to trust the gifts inside of us - we have to believe they mean something, they’re worth something. We have to open them. We have to use them. How absurd is it to leave a perfectly fine gift unopened and unused?
So I’m going to try and write a short reflection every week of 2020, all 52 point something of them. It’s a little daunting, a little uncomfortable. But it’s my way of embracing tension. Practically speaking, it’s creating goals and following through to give them a voice.
I’m not a “writer.” I’m not a scholar, poet, or theologian. I just believe I have to say something. And this is my attempt to give a voice to tension, to let it speak.
How will you give a “voice” to your tension this year? How will you step in to what you’ve been afraid to begin? And what goals will you set to do so?
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I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get stuck in my own head.
Find a way to get out of it. Look at something bigger than yourself and remember that emotions don’t always tell the truth. Reality is so much more, so much better, than what you see and feel in the narrow confines of your experience.
There’s an amazing life to be lived; don’t miss out because your eyes are turned inward. Turn them outward so you don’t miss a second of this miracle. “pondering the inner voice upon a hill,
it’s louder than the rest...
but the earth has a louder voice, than my inner critic, if only i lean my ear to the dirt, and listen...”
