What Mere Mortals Can and Can't Do to Me

 It's an unfathomable dilemma for someone who's lived all 50 of her years in the United States, but I still try to imagine it. What would I do if I lived in a country facing imminent doom? Would I hunker down in my house, knowing that at any moment men could knock down my door and kill me? Or would I risk my life to try to make it to an airport and onto an unlikely last flight out, knowing that the airport could quite possibly serve as my final resting place in the likely event of another terrorist attack? I know myself. I never choose the scary, high-risk option. I would stay in my house and hide. 

As I've done so many times over the past two weeks, I was contemplating this scenario in my sleepless, pre-dawn hours today. Of course I was also wondering what I would make for dinner this week and how to help my 17-year-old boost her SAT score (legally), as well as a thousand other things, so I got out of bed and opened up J.I. Packer's Knowing God, which I've been reading this summer. The passage before me early this moring contained Scriptures like these:

"When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose words I praise; in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?" (Psalm 56:3-4)

"If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)

These are great, necessary verses. I know them by heart. I can quote them to people at just the right time. But would I really believe them if someone was pointing a gun at me?

Packer's words are helpful: "The translation 'who can be against us' is wrong and misses Paul's point: what he asks for is a realistic review of the opposition, human and demonic, not a romantic pretense that it does not exist. ... Such unrealism is no requirement of Christian discipleship, but is rather a mark of failure in it." 

OK, so I'm not supposed to say, "Enemy? What enemy? I deny that I even have an enemy!" The enemy standing before me is very real, whether it's ISIS or the Taliban or a mugger on my street or a virus in my community. We're not supposed to hide our heads in the sand and tell ourselves there's no threat because God would never let that happen. Sometimes, for reasons we usually don't understand, He does let those things happen.

So what do these verses tell me?

First, that God is "for" me. Packer tells me that this is the language of covenant relationship, the same kind of promise that God made to Abraham and that I have inherited as a follower of Christ: "What is being proclaimed here is God's undertaking to uphold and protect us when people and circumstances are threatening, to provide for us as long as our earthly pilgrimage lasts, and to lead us finally into the full enjoyment of himself. ... The simple statement 'God is for us' is in truth one of the richest and weightiest utterances that the Bible contains." 

So God is for me, and that's very good news. But what about the gun that's pointed at me? Or the grim medical diagnosis? Or my general aversion to anything that could hurt me?

Here Packer reminded me of a great truth. It's something I know deep down, but every day it gets muted by all the screaming evidence to the contrary. The most true, most real, most substantive part of my life is not my beating heart or my sentient mind. It's not my relationship with my family and friends or what I do for a living. It's not the experiences I've had in the past or the concerns I have for today or the hopes I have for the future. It's certainly not the schedule of events telling me what I need to get done today.

My real, true life is invisible. It's spiritual. It's eternal.

Mere mortals can kill me. They can stop my heart and put my body in a grave. So can viruses, cancer, brain aneurysms, poisonous snakes, mountain lions, crashing planes, and carbon monoxide. God doesn't promise that they won't. But nothing can kill my real life, "neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate [me] from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). 

If you are a follower of Jesus, nothing can take away your life. To live is Christ and to die is gain. I pray that will be the last thought of those in far-away countries who are martyred for their faith in Christ. I pray it will bring peace and courage to the Christian servicemen and women whose lives are at great risk as they help people evacuate today. And I pray it will keep the rest of us from being so afraid of the things that haunt us in the night.  

Burdens

Remember three weeks ago when all the country was talking about was whether Simone Biles was a wimp or a hero? Yeah, I know, COVID was in the news like it is every day, but Simone Biles was a really big deal. And now, as it so often does, the world has turned on a dime. We're watching dumbstruck as unbelievable events happen in Afghanistan. And Haiti. For a second, we could distract ourselves with the Olympics and debates over masks in schools, but the loud, ugly, horrible things in this world will not be ignored for long. 

My heart aches. My soul groans. "Enough!" I want to shout. "We can't carry any more burdens!"

Then, of course, I remember Jesus talking about burdens. You may know what He said, too, but it's worth writing out and reading again:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30). 

This morning as I was praying, I just had to ask: "Jesus, how can your burden possibly be light? I know only the tiniest fraction of what's going on in the world, and my load is so heavy that I'm about to collapse under it. You know it all. Every bit of it. And yet your yoke is easy and your burden is light?"

I'm not ever going to understand it. I just have to trust it and take Him up on His offer. He is so much greater, unfathomably greater, than I am that He can bear the heartbreaks of the entire world, across all generations, and still have plenty of capacity to bear mine. 

The God Who Is

"I just can't worship a God like that." 

It's the watchword of our day. (Watchword: a word or phrase expressing a person or group's core belief.)

Who is the group expressing this core belief? All of those who think they can go through the Diety Salad Bar and pick and choose their own god. The onions are not for me, but can I get more of those croutons? 

I'll take a heaping portion of the "love of God," but that "wrath of God" is not my thing. I just don't like it. A God who's judgmental, who tells me what I can and can't do? That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. A jealous God who says things like, "The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies" (Nahum 1:2-6)? No thanks. And who's Nahum anyway? I don't like him either. Why do I need to listen to him? (Nevermind that the phrase "wrath of God" appears dozens of times in both the Old and New Testaments.) No, I can't stomach the thought of a God who makes that big a deal about sin. Or who calls people "sinners" when God's supposed to be about love and acceptance. That's a God on the wrong side of history. I just can't worship a God like that. 

What we've become is a people who want to make God in our own image. 

It doesn't work that way. 

God is the Creator of the universe, the all-powerful, all-knowing Ruler of heaven and earth. His name is "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14), not "I am who you want me to be." 

We don't get to pick and choose who God is. We only get to choose how we will respond to the God Who Is. He's told us everything we need to know to make that decision. He has revealed who He is through the Scriptures and through the Son He sent to earth. It's up to us to learn who He says He is and then decide, "Will I follow Him or not?" That's the only "choosing" we get to do. 

I spend my days writing Bible studies, and I sometimes wish I could be God's PR agent. "Can we tone it down here a bit, God? Don't you think this sounds a little harsh?" "Couldn't we finesse this, you know, make you come across more loveable and less fierce?" "Let's find a way to make this a little more palatable; after all, we're trying to reach people, here." 

God doesn't need my attempts at good PR. God is who He is. His Word is His Word. He's not trying to win a popularity contest. He's about saving our souls. And so He tells us the truth, and that truth can be uncomfortable. 

True discipleship is getting to the point where we can say, "OK, God, I'm yours no matter what. I'm yours when the text is hard and I don't like it.  I'm yours when what you say roars against the cultural sentiments of my day. I'm yours when you call out my sin and tell me to stop. I choose your way over my own way."

This is surrender. This is what it means to call Jesus "Lord." 

I relate to Peter and the other disciples in John 6. Jesus was doing some amazing things, like feeding the 5,000. But He was also saying some pretty freaky things. Confusing stuff about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. This makes sense to us now as a preview of the Lord's Supper, but to the crowds listening to Him in real time, it just sounded weird. Many of the people who had been following Him said, "This is hard teaching. Who can accept it?" (John 6:60), and they walked away. Some of them probably walked away forever. 

Then Jesus asked the 12 disciples if they wanted to leave, too. Peter answered for the group: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God" (John 6:68). 

From the day I met Him 40 years ago, Jesus has captivated me. From the time I got serious about following Him 10 years after that, I've been all in. I believe He is the Son of God. I believe He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the only way I can be reconciled to God the Father. I believe that He lived a perfect life, was crucified for my sin, and through His resurrection has given me the hope of eternal life. He gets to tell me how to live, and I will do all I can to obey. 

But do I still struggle with the "hard teaching" in the Bible? Do I have a hard time wrapping my head around a God of love who's also a God of wrath? Yes. And yet like Peter I say, "Where else will I go? You alone, Lord, have the words of eternal life. I have come to believe." 

There is only one God. He is eternal and unchanging. He is who He is. Follow Him or don't, but don't ever think that you can cast Him in your own image. 

The Great In-Between

There's a pizza place in Colorado Springs that's as much local historical site as it is restaurant. It's been open since 1973. It seats 500 people. The staff wear costumes ("Victorian Western") from the 1800s. The player piano provides background music like "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain"--until Christmas, when the music changes to carols and synchronizes with the lights on the Christmas tree. My husband has been a regular at this place since he was a little boy. It was the first restaurant each of my four babies ever visited. Our kids practically grew up there, enjoying hundreds of flaky-crusted pizzas with extra small pepperonis and spending hundreds of their Grandpa's quarters in the game room. There was a good long season of our lives where we never left the place without a couple sticky whips and a handful of hard Tootsie Rolls from the vending machine. 

As it did with so many businesses, the pandemic took its toll on our pizza place. It stumbled through 2020 on takeout orders before closing indefinitely in December. 

And then the beginning of this month, it reopened, just in time for us to celebrate a family birthday last weekend. 

The building looks the same. The busy red carpet with all its stains and the dingy lace curtains were the same. The staff uniforms were mostly the same. But all the life was gone. The room was dark and the player piano was quiet. The pizza tasted weird. The service was terrible. It was all sort of the same but very different. 

It's a metaphor for all of life right now. 

We're sort of on the other side of COVID. Except people are still getting sick and dying, and the word "surge" is not going away. We're sort of free to roam about the country, except that gas is outrageously expensive and hotel rooms are hard to come by. Don't even think about trying to rent a car. 

People are starting to return to their office buildings, but it's not the same. Now you can work from home a couple days a week if you want to. Meetings that used to happen in conference rooms now happen over Zoom, even when participants are in the same building. 

At a basketball tournament in Dallas last week, we were crammed elbow-to-elbow in a gym, but permanent lettering on the doors say that masks are required. A few people here and there wear them, but most don't. Some wear them around their chins, which seems like an interesting choice. 

It feels like we're pretending to be "back to normal" when nothing really is. 

Will hotel housekeeping ever come make up the beds and deliver clean towels again?

Will the "free hot breakfast" offered at so many hotels ever be more than individually-packaged muffins and granola bars stuffed in a brown bag?

Will I ever sit inside a Chic-fil-A again?

Will I go back to getting out and helping the guy who brings me my online grocery order as he loads up my car?

Will restaurants and businesses ever have enough employees again?

Will the government ever stop sending us random checks in the mail?

Will we ever again be able to sneeze in public without getting uncomfortable looks?

Will there come a day when the answer to every "why" question is something besides, "Because of COVID"?

Will my kids go back to school with no fear of quarantine? Will they be able to handle going to five days of school a week, in person? 

Will we put disagreements over masks and vaccines behind us and try to get along? And then will we just find something else to fight about?

None of our new normal is a surprise to God. And He built adaptability into our DNA (some of you got more than others of us), so we get used to new things pretty quickly. This great in-between world in which we find ourselves is weird and we have no idea what tomorrow holds, but it's still true that we know who holds tomorrow. Because of that, I can endure the weirdness and keep adapting. But could my pizza just go back to normal? 

How, then, shall we live?

This past week, we honored my father-in-law with a celebration of life. We didn't have Father's Day in mind as we planned it, but it feels appropriate to have thoughts of that service lingering in my mind as we honor fathers today. In addition to being a great father himself, he also raised a couple boys who grew up to be great fathers, too. 

A few thoughts from this week of celebrating his life:

1. We've all heard that no one, at the end of their life, says, "I wish I would have worked more." More recently, in light of our culture today, I've heard it said, "No one says, 'I wish I had been more entertained.'" The list could go on and on. I wish I'd done more heavy drinking. I wish I'd fooled around on my spouse more. I wish I'd told more lies, criticized more people, bought more stuff I didn't need. No one says these things. 

I'm thinking about what I will say at the end of my life. What will have mattered most, and is that reflected in how I spent my time today? 

2. I'm probably not going to invent some technology that changes the world. I'm not going to cure cancer. When I die, the only pillar of my existence that I'll leave behind will be the impact I've made on other people. Will the people who are expected to speak at my funeral do so willingly and eagerly? Will they be able to say what they really thought of me, or will they have to be careful with their words to avoid "speaking ill of the dead"? We didn't have to censor our words about Grandpa J. We were proud to talk about him just as he was, and we were honored to get to share our stories of him. My youngest daughter said of her grandpa, "I didn't see my grandpa out sharing the gospel, but I saw it in the way he lived his life and how he treated the people around him." If I'm lucky enough to have grandkids someday, may they see the gospel that clearly in me. 

3. We know so little about people, even those closest to us. I knew my father-in-law for 27 years. I saw him once or twice a week during those years. But I didn't really get to know him until he passed away two months ago and I began writing his story. I learned that in third grade, he and his twin brother decided to stop dressing alike. That he was the captain of his high school basketball and football teams for two years. That he met his wife by asking her to do the cha-cha. He was baptized in the South China Sea and spent a year apart from his wife and baby girl when he was stationed in Thailand. He fell asleep with his glasses on and his open Bible on his chest. 

Why don't we ask more questions? Why don't we get to know more about the people we love while they're still with us? Why do we watch six years of a TV series and become completely involved in the lives of fictional strangers, and yet we know so little about our own loved ones? 

And finally, this. If people are going to have a celebration of life for me someday--if they're going to take off work, buy a new dress, wear a tie, and sit in a hot church on a summer day (oh, please, Lord, take me home in the summer and not in the winter)--I want to have lived a life truly worth celebrating. A life that makes my children proud. A life that demonstrates the saving grace of God. 

Grandpa J/Larry/Dad, you were a man who was always finding something to give to others, and I thank you for giving me this final gift: a clear picture of what it looks like to live well, finish well, and be remembered well. Enjoy your first Father's Day with your Eternal Father. I love imagining what that must be like. 

Let's Not Miss the Abundance

 "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." 

I used to misunderstand Jesus's words in John 10:10. I thought it meant something like "I came so that you can have a great life." But abundant isn't a synonym for great. It means full. One commentator described it as a rich fullness that nourishes the spiritual life. 

I'm not sure that you can have a full life until you've experienced death, up close and personal. 

In the past week, I've looked death eyeball to eyeball. My father-in-law, who has been hospitalized with COVID-related pneumonia for the past two months, came home last Monday. We weren't sure what to expect. Would being at home, which he longed for, aid to his recovery? Or were we bringing him home to die? Were we at the beginning of a long journey, or was this the end? We didn't know, but we knew we had to try it and see, even though "trying it" meant intense round-the-clock care by his wife and children. By Saturday, we had our answer. God had a different Home for Grandpa J. 

There is no greater way to realize the significance of life than to see how hard the body fights to stay alive. In one sense, death is natural, because it happens to all of us. But in another sense, it is totally unnatural. The body does not want to die. It won't give up without a fight. Life is a very strong force. 

While I did very little to serve him in his final week, I was there enough to remember what a holy space this is. In my estimation, there is nothing holier on earth. I know of nothing more sacred than the privilege of caring for someone in their final days. "Sacred" means to inspire awe or reverence. I was drenched in awe and reverence the past week. I've stood in some of the world's grandest cathedrals and felt nothing. I've stood in the bedrooms of the dying and felt the holy presence of God so powerfully that it's all I could do just to stand. Awe and reverence. Abundance of life. It was all there on Friday. 

Our modern world robs us of this abundant experience. The majority of people die in nursing homes and hospitals, tended by professional staff for whom death is just part of the job. Dying at home today is almost a luxury. It can only happen for the most well-resourced among us. My father-in-law was not a wealthy man, but he was rich with family, and that family was willing to sacrifice work, spouses, kids, sleep, and the natural desire to emotionally self-protect in order to care for him day and night. 

There is obvious blessing in Grandpa getting to die in his own house surrounded by the people he loves. But it's more than that. There is blessing like no other when we are elbow-deep in caring for someone at the end of life. There is a "rich fullness that nourishes the spiritual life" that can't be found anywhere else. We don't choose this; it chooses us. When it does, I don't want to hide physically, emotionally, or spiritually. I want to show up and say, "Meet me with your grace, Lord." And He does. So much grace, the kind of grace you can feel like a thick, soft blanket on a cold day.   

We don't want to miss this. We don't want to run from death. We want this life abundant, even when abundance in the moment looks more like suffering and less like joy. 

I looked at my youngest daughter and my nieces standing by the bedside with me--two of them young teenagers, one a young adult, and one a little girl with a mouth full of missing teeth--and I said something, maybe not as coherently as I wanted, like, "Death is not scary. It's part of living. Don't be scared of this. It's the beautiful process through which Grandpa is entering heaven." One of them said, "Tell Jesus hi for us, Grandpa." Yes, they get it! Death is not winning here. Death loses. Life wins. And it's beautiful, no matter how ugly it looks. 

Death comes to steal and kill and destroy. Jesus comes offering life in all its abundance. Eternal life for Grandpa and a richly nourished spiritual life for those of us who were with him at the end. Holy. Sacred. Not to be missed.  

"Where, O death, is your victory? 

Where, O death, is your sting?" 

(1 Corinthians 15:55)

Cheetah or Lamb?

 I recently read the latest memoir by a Christian writer whose books I've enjoyed in the past. Except in the four years since her last book, she's left her husband and married a woman. I knew this, which is the reason why I wanted to check out her new book. I wanted to hear what she would say about God.

My Kindle told me I only made it through about 60% of the book, but it was enough to answer my question. God didn't make much of an appearance, and seemed to go by a different name: "Knowing." Besides the usual hilarious parenting stories that this writer is known for, most of the book was about her new-found empowerment. Comparing herself to a [expletive] cheetah, she wrote about freeing herself from the limiting, misogynistic cultural expectations that had made her life small and disappointing. She's stopped putting everyone else before herself. She's stopped deferring. She's started doing whatever it takes to live the "truest, most beautiful" version of herself, not letting anyone else decide what that looks like for her. That includes the "religion" that she followed for years. 

I think about her message, so common in our world right now, in light of the cross, which is the focus of this weekend. I hear Jesus saying that whoever wants to be greatest must first be a servant to everyone. And telling me that if I want to live my best life, I should pick up my cross and follow Him. Because if I fight to live my life on my own terms, I'll lose it, but if I surrender it to Him, my life will be saved. 

I picture Jesus washing feet. And saying, "Not my will but Yours be done." I see Him choosing to live not as a cheetah or even the Lion of Judah that He had every right to be, but as a sacrificial lamb, "despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Is. 53:3). I envision Him being beaten, tortured, and humiliated, the suffering servant and the truest, most beautiful version of Himself. 

We all want to be free. We want to feel fully alive and empowered to be exactly who we're supposed to be. It goes against everything our culture tells us and even against our own intuition to believe that the way to do that is through humble self-surrender. To someone we've never met and can't see. Who asks us to die to ourselves, lean not on our own understanding, and love our neighbors every bit as much as we love ourselves. Not just in theory, but in practice, day in and day out. 

It's funny to me that this author and so many like her think that the way of Christ is the way of boring, restrictive conformity. That's not true at all. It's actually the most wild, radical, subversive lifestyle possible. 

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." (1 Cor. 1:18)