A Fresh Word

I have a high school junior this year. This means that last week I toured two college campuses. It means I nag about studying for the PSAT, that I finally read those incessant emails from the high school College and Career Connections office, that I spend my free time googling things like "what do you do with a physics degree?" I don't feel ready for any of it, but when does that ever keep life from charging on?

A number of years ago, I heard Pomp and Circumstance playing while I was shopping at Sam's. I thought to myself, "Some day, that song's gonna bring me to my knees." That day is coming quick. But I don't want the song to take me down. I don't want to be leveled by the stress and emotion and finality of seeing my son finish up his time in high school and launch into the bigger world. These are exciting things! And I have never been one to want to keep my kids little. Every year they get older (which seems to happen a lot) is a year that I enjoy them more. I want to do this transitioning-my-kids-to-life-beyond-our-home thing well. I don't want to dread it, resist it, or allow it to make me crazy.

The book of Colossians is helping. Two years ago, I spent weeks poring over Colossians as part of my work. I studied Greek roots and cross-referenced dozens of verses. Passages about "putting off" and "putting on" ran through my head as I tried to sleep. By the end, I was done with Colossians. I thought it would be a good, long time before I returned to it again, and yet my reading plan has led me right back there this month.

TV preachers talk about getting a "fresh word," which makes me a little cynical. What does that even mean? God's Word is unchanging. The Colossians of two years ago is still the Colossians of today. What has changed, though, is me. I think that's at the core of a "fresh word." There are passages I'm reading now in Colossians that I didn't need two years ago--no matter how much I studied them then. But I sure need them now.

I need to heed the instruction to "set my heart on things above." I need to notice that it doesn't just say to set my heart there, but, in the very next verse, to set my mind there, too. Standardized tests and college tours are not "things above." They're important, for sure, but they're not eternal. In twenty years, they won't matter. A lot of the concerns on my mind today, the things Paul called "light and momentary troubles," won't even matter in a month. So why do I give them so much of my most precious commodity, my brain space? When my thoughts and emotions begin to work themselves into a dither, Colossians reminds me to set my heart and my mind on things above, things that will matter eternally.

And then there's Colossians 1:17. Its neighbors, verses 15 and 16, get all the attention. They contain some of the richest, most informative theology in all of Scripture, and I spent long hours studying them two years ago. How easy it was to overlook little verse 17: "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." The "he" and "him" here are Christ. He came first, existing even before time itself, and He holds everything together. Got it. But the verse takes on new meaning when I consider myself part of "everything." It starts to look like this: "Jesus came before you, Leura, and He holds you together." Of course that means my atoms, my heartbeat, keeping me glued to the earth through gravity. But it also means He holds me together mentally and emotionally when I feel like I'm unraveling. He keeps me grounded in truth. He reins in my wild thoughts and emotions. He settles me with His peace. I am held together by one much bigger than a sentimental graduation song or a FAFSA form.

My kids are all going to grow up and leave my house (we hope). My friends will move. My health will fail. Lord only knows what will happen in our nation. Constant change and periodic stress are guaranteed. But so is the fact that Jesus Christ, creator of everything, holds us together. Fix your mind on that today.

When Weight Is Good

Here's my cool discovery of the month that maybe the rest of you have always known. The Hebrew word for "glory" is kabod, which literally means heavy or weighty. I did not learn this from C.S. Lewis. The Weight of Glory is one of my favorites, but the significance of the title was lost on me. I learned it instead from Os Guinness in his new book Impossible People. Guinness is blowing my mind on several fronts, but it's this point, this month, that I think is worth pondering more deeply.

Drawing on the writings of a Polish sociologist, he posits the idea that our world has become more "liquid." He contrasts that with a solid, "something that has sufficient bonding to be able to hold its atoms together and therefore retain its shape. Fluids are ready to change their shape at any moment according to the space they occupy." Guinness believes that we have moved from a fixed, solid world, anchored in faith in God and strong institutions like marriage, family, and church, to the fluid world of modernity, "where everything always changes and nothing keeps its shape for very long."

Modern life offers no end of options (look no further than Facebook's "gender fluid" category), but, as Guinness says, "each one carries a sense of frailty, temporariness, and vulnerability. People and things are always becoming, but they never become anything for long. They are undefined, incomplete, indeterminate, and open to the new."

He describes the limitless options found in a liquid world and the highest priority, which is the freedom to choose: "The worst thing is to mortgage your future by a choice that is binding and allows you no freedom to change or move on. After all, there may be a better option tomorrow, a higher-paying job down the road, a more attractive husband, wife, or partner at the next party, or a more spacious and magnificent home elsewhere, or a more appealing identity and a more fashionable sexual orientation."

Os Guinness is a smart man who thinks in lofty concepts, big words, and long sentences. But I'm tracking with him. I feel what he's saying. I search for the substance in this world, and it's nearly impossible to find. The news (if you can even call it that) is delivered in soundbites. Snapchat users send each other messages that disappear after a few seconds. Strangers have sex and never see each other again. Relational fidelity is optional. There are people far more loyal to their sports team than to their employer or their spouse. We're only loosely committed to life itself. Suicide, abortion, lethal heroin use, and end-of-life "mercy killing" are among our endless options.

The "lightness" appears even in our churches. Our songs are light and airy. Sermons seem to be getting shorter and trendier. Our youth groups, at least some of them, seem shallow. Most noticeable of all, the Scriptures are up for interpretation. Take this passage and make what you want of it. Surely God didn't intend for us to have any absolutes. It's really just about love; none of that other stuff matters.

Enough with the liquid! I can live on smoothies for a while, but eventually I long for a pot roast. Give me something solid. Tether me to something big enough, strong enough, heavy enough to keep me from floating off into nothingness. I want real meaning, real truth, something timeless, eternal, lasting. Something with weight.

And then I discover the word kabod, the glory of God. Weightiness. Substance. True reality. When people resist this, Guinness writes, they "cut themselves off from the ultimate ground of reality, and in the end they do indeed become weightless, insubstantial, light as air, ephemeral, or, in the terms used by the prophets, 'weighed in the balances and found wanting' (Daniel 5:27, KJV)."

The counter to temporary everything, to meaninglessness and emptiness, is glory. God's glory. It's more than a song lyric. More than an abstract concept. More than even a manifestation of His awesome presence. It's what keeps us grounded, tied to the truth that's bigger than ourselves, bigger than the next big thing the world gets all excited about and then forgets just as quickly (Pokemon Go?).

Moses made an outrageously bold request of God. He asked to see God's glory. What I'm asking is to feel it. The Weight of Glory.