Baxter Kruger says, “there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who are full of crap and know it, and those who are full of crap and don’t know it.” Maybe that explains why my life has felt so messy these past few years. I think I’m somewhere along the journey of owning up to it.
The Father’s love just won’t allow me to live in denial.
You ought to see deacon Jones
When he rattles the bones,
Old parson Brown dancin’ ‘roun like a clown,
Aunt Jemima who is past eighty three,
Shoutin’ “I’m full o’ pep!
Watch yo’ step!, watch yo’ step!
One legged Joe danced aroun’ on his toe,
Threw away his crutch and hollered, “hey let ‘er go!”
Oh, honey, hail! hail! the gang’s all here
For an Alabama jubilee.
George Cobb:
Alabama Jubilee
Last Sunday evening we Presbyterians experienced an extraordinary time of worship. Having been prepped in the morning service, the people returned in the evening toting musical instruments and expecting “something a little different.”
For me it was a risk: setting up a worship experience where people would be absolutely free to follow their heart. We put a few Psalms on the screen, and read together passages about singing new songs, dancing, clapping and praising God with cymbals and harps. And somewhere along the line the great Maestro stepped into the our unfettered mess of musicality, tapped his baton, and conducted a delicious symphony of freedom like I’ve seldom seen: Young and old alike entered the steps and strains, accompanied by flutes and violins, djembes and shakers. It was a chorus of joy that couldn’t be explained apart from the living God.
I’m in awe that our God is a Trinity, a three-personed Godhead pulsing with relationship between Father, Son and Spirit. I love the rhythms of life that pour from His throne, the eternal inclusion, the harmony and agreement of being Three – and yet – One.
It all goes back to the Trinity, the fountainhead of harmony, the root of relationship, the cradle of creativity, and the origin of the dance. How lonely and flat the universe would be, how quiet the jubilee, were it any other way.
Hmm… Even though I really do believe in what I wrote yesterday, the judgmental, know-it-all attitude is downright ugly. Railing against skewed ideas with an attitude of pride and judgment is so unlike Jesus. Please forgive me, and feel free to remind me when I start sounding so pompous.
Christian bookstores – once a haven of rest for my thirsty soul – have begun to irritate me like a splinter in the eye. Here’s why:
Christian bookstores have become to me an awkward symbol of our artificially divided thinking:
It’s almost as if we live in two completely different worlds: The “Christian world”, and the actual world!
Which brings us to “Christian” bookstores: The ultimate expression of a divided world, where each book is sanctified, certified and bona fide. Our local stores in Florence offer Christianized teddy bears, scripturized school supplies, sanctified jewelry, religified trinkets, and ultra-sanitized fiction.
But here’s the honest truth: There is only one world. And there are only books. Some, written by believers, are rich with truth. Others, written by non-believers, contain rich truths as well. Sometimes believers get things wrong, and sometimes unbelievers get things right, because believers do not own the copyright on truth. Rather the Truth holds a copyright on us. And the Truth, (who is a person), is well able to teach us along the way. At this point I’m becoming convinced that the drivel in our Christian bookshops can be as spiritually damaging as the worst of Barnes and Nobel.
The answer is simple: strip away the arbitrary titles and embrace discernment. Drink deeply from books, art, and music which reflect the glory of God regardless of categories. The important question is not “Did a Christian write this, paint this, sing this, but rather does this thing reflect the glory of our beautiful God?
They tore the old church building down this week, bulldozed it into a heap of rubble while I watched. No one should have to endure such a sight. The building was only about twenty years old, but when Sam’s Club offered to purchase the land for a tidy sum, the congregation couldn’t refuse. So the old property was left to the ghosts of dear memories while we moved to a newer, (some would say “improved”), setting.
I decided to watch for awhile, thinking it might be a good opportunity for God to speak to me. Or maybe it would be therapeutic in some odd way. Tons of tender memories were resurrected by the sight: dear friends I met within those walls, or who surrendered to Jesus there. Others were married, or buried from the old Trinity building. And now, blow by blow, it was being reduced to scrap.
I reassured myself that the church itself is still standing solidly in the embrace of the Father, Son and Spirit. Only the building has returned to the dust from whence it came.
“Let us be thankful, then, because we receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Let us be grateful and worship God in a way that will please him, with reverence and awe; our God is like a consuming fire!” -Hebrews 12:28-29
Random observations from my first real week in America:
“As for me, I am poor and needy, (the Message says ‘I am a mess’), but the Lord is thinking of me right now.” Psalm 40:17 Hallelujah!
The ancient Celtic Christians, I’m told, would sometimes push their little boats into the chilly waters of the North Atlantic in faith that God would pull them along in His perfect will. Perhaps they’d drift quietly into a sylvan cove, or crash unceremoniously into a settlement of Vikings. Either way… the Spirit was leading them.
It’s a good picture of my arrival in the Bible Belt. I’m not sure what this is all about, but I know that God has tugged my little boat to this spot. And to be honest… I’m a bit scared: Scared of not fitting in. Scared of fitting in. Scared that Calypso may lure me like Odyssius and his crew into slumbering-oblivion on her Island.
Life in South Carolina just feels so stinking safe. Yesterday my friend Muhammed rang me up for help with his English: “Mr Don, what is… ‘frontier’?” “Well that’s a very good word, buddy. It’s a place at the edge of civilization where surroundings are wild and neighbors are few.” It made me homesick. Not that Sarajevo is uncivilized, (heck, there’s even an opera house), but it is a place where kingdom pilgrims face killer conditions and lean hard into one another for survival.
But here I am, docking my boat in a wonderfully civilized place. For those of you sharing my journey, please hold my feet to the fire. Don’t let me cave-in, blend-in, or give-in to the warm, inviting waters of Ogygia.
See what I mean? My generous friends John and Kathleen have opened this
little pool house /guest house as my home for the next six months.
For all practical purposes the Garden of the Gods was a lost memory, a curiously-named spot vaguely lodged in my childhood recollection. But driving into the park this past Thursday the memory tumbled forward into full consciousness, that very spot where my dad pulled over so we boys could scamper up the base of the magnificent stone pillars. It left me spellbound as a nine year old kid, and it’s just as awesome today. God’s glorious creation was just the right elixir to refresh my soul from so much travel and change. “Love beauty,” said Gabriella Mistrel, “it is the shadow of God on the universe.”
God’s glory, (His invisible character made visible), refreshes us wherever it’s found. It washes our hearts with wonder, and cures our weary souls. How kind of the Father to offer such a respite.
Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs
I went fourteen years once without crying. After the first decade of tearlessness it bothered me to the point that I began asking God to tenderize my heart.
Yesterday, after nine years in Sarajevo I said goodbye to dear friends, angels and rascals who became brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. I’m no longer tearless. Somewhere over the Atlantic I my put on my headphones, randomly chose a song by Rich Mullins, and found my heart dripping down my cheeks.
Now the plummer’s got a drip in his spigot
The mechanic’s got a clank in his car
And the preacher’s thinking thoughts that are wicked
And the lover’s got a lonely heart
My friends ain’t the way I wish they were
They are just the way they are.
And I will be my brother’s keeper
Not the one who judges him
I won’t despise him for his weakness
I won’t regard him for his strength
I won’t take away his freedom
I will help him learn to stand
And I will, I will be my brother’s keeper
I’m missing them today… children, now grown into men, and men who are now standing before Jesus; friends who stood, and some who fell. They’ve enriched my life in ways only my heart can understand. I wish I could tally what I’ve left behind in Bosnia. There’s only One who can do that. But I do know that Bosnia has left something deep and rich in me. My tears tell me so.
Some of my friends have been mentioning their anger towards God lately. It’s something I understand, having been through a few episodes myself. For me those moments have ultimately been healthy and instructive, giving way to a deeper, more endearing revelation of the Father of Jesus. It invariably turns out the “God” I was angry at wasn’t the True God at all, but rather a twisted, ill-informed version of Him shaped by past experiences, shoddy teaching, and rigid legalism.
Jesus said “…no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Matt. 11:27) And when Jesus chooses to reveal the Father to us, he does so by telling a story about an amazing Father and his delinquent son. The same Father who generously hands over the family inheritance and allows him to spend it at will is also the same Father who waits broken-hearted on the front porch for his son to return. And all in the hope of showering him once again with extravagant love. What’s a squandered inheritance worth compared to the treasure of a loving relationship between Father and son?
That’s not the sort of Father who invites my anger and fear. And when I find myself getting frustrated with “God” it’s a reminder that I need to step back and see if I’m not believing lies about who the true Father of Jesus is.
Dispatches from the Shadowlands 