p

p

p

p

p

p

p

p

p

p

p

p

p

“Where do I go from here?

Alas, I am stuck in the land of fear.

Wondering as I wait, one minute closer draws near

p

How do I study for this next test

And allow myself to rise above the rest

Where do I lay my pencil to read the best 

p

Oh, how I am disenlightened right now

Oh, the warm embrace of my bed and how

No, I must not give in or soon I might lose my vow

p

Though, sleeping in does sound great

If I soon awake so late, then maybe I will be irate

What then if I walk in, mate

p

Should I sit with the best?

Write with the worst?

or else, perhaps I should let the test triumph over me

p

No, I do not think this way

as only I can obey

My will and that of my great father

that of which I do to him pray

p

To believe in something better when I’m lost

and still, to not falter when I’m tossed

To be still living does not exhaust

as soon I will triumph over and be the boss

p

So, midterms midterms come my way

and I will show you the power of who I am today

But only shall I be backed as long as my great father keeps me on track!”

[C.A.S.H 10/10/11]

This week has flown by! It’s amazing how fast it went by me. I have been very busy this week. Everyday seems to be a rerun I cannot get out of. However, I don’t mind…

As I have already stated, I have been very busy this week. I am exhausted and stressed. I try to smile, nonetheless. As I came home more and more exhausted each day it became harder for me to read my Bible. I read in Korean, which takes more concentration than the English version…the Korean Bible uses old Korean, with difficult language. Thus, my sleep often overcame my will to read.

This made me feel awful. I felt like I was being a hypocrite every time I asked God for help. I went to church Wednesday and I realized something as I read Isaiah. It said that God understands all things. God understands that I am tired. He always understood. God also loves me. Isaiah also says You are precious and I love you. I really felt and know God was speaking to me through the Bible. He loves me and this realization was the best thing that happened to me this week.

8/17/2007, 4th block

Intersperced throughout my time at home this summer have been walks down memory lane, or glances over writings from the past. I will share some occasionally, mostly because they are usually entertaining and always embarrassing, often indicate that some things never change, are a welcome relief that one has grown and matured some over time and perhaps, provide a humbling sensation to type something up verbatim and wince at the errors.

This particular excerpt comes not from my daily journal (in which I have written since age 6–who knows what I might find there), but from my band folder. Each week we had a prompt we responded to for at least one page (it was part of the schoolwide writing curriculum–my band director was not happy and judging by the grand total of two entries in the folder, I’m guessing that it was one of those things that faded out of existence as the semester progressed. I’m suspicious that anyone ever read my two entries save myself.). The prompt was “The Best Thing that Happened to Me This Week.”

If the best thing that happened to me that week four years ago was re-realizing that God sees my heart and loves me flaws and all, perhaps the best thing this week is also realizing that God is not confined to my “free time.” That I can fellowship with him all the time, even after the time that I set aside to spend exclusively with him.

For the Bible says,

Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. -Ps. 37:4-5

This isn’t about God giving us what we want, or justifying what we do for ourselves since God “sees our heart.” It’s about aligning our deepest desires with God. Delighting in the Lord is not locking oneself away from the world–it begins with rejoicing in the kingdom of heaven and the restoration project that began when Jesus resurrected from the tomb. It’s not about your, my, our plan or agenda–but when it’s about God’s, it’s about all of us.

What’s the best thing that happened to you this week?

But then again, you’re right. It’s only Tuesday.

“Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart”

–Unknown

Of late, I’ve been (trying) to keep up with a discourse on the voluntary/involuntary nature of faith.There has been an intellectual interplay of arguments, thoughts, and propositions, all aimed to answer whether faith is voluntary or involuntary. I suppose one could accuse me of taking a cop out and choosing to evade the question, though I wonder if the question is the correct question to ask in the first place.

A couple days ago, I tried to clear through some boxes filled with snippets of high school. During my shuffles down memory lane, I came across a sheet of paper from summer 2008. On such a page, there was a quote that particularly struck a chord with me. It relates love to playing the piano (I remember getting the guys who were piano minors at camp that year to agree to have this cheesy quote on our shirts–see above for quote).

In light of the ruminations that take place in one’s time of solitude, such as the summer, I think it’s worth applying this quotation to our faith. In many ways, playing the piano does demand playing by the rules; the correct notes, the correct rhythm, the correct balance, the correct tempo, endless hours of practice, memorization, performance, repetition, and, all too often, it takes only a couple of careless lapses of time for the finesse to slacken. Yet, it is within the confines of these “rules,” that the performer reaches a place to truly flourish and play music. Oddly enough, the rules enable the freedom.

Similarly, rigorously engaging with one’s beliefs is important. Reading the Bible is important. Standing on solid theology is important. Thinking about how to live one’s life as a “light and salt” is important. In a similar, but different way, facts are important, and reason has its place in the world. However, I have noticed within myself a wearing. I can only take certain abstract and often verbose thought trains for so long, before I grow simply exhausted.

Because the truth is, the rules will never get you there. Only Christ will get you there. This may sound even more abstract, but I think that’s the beauty of the Christian faith. There is so precious little that we as humans are capable of before our Creator.

There is a passage in Mark that often resonates with me:

And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

-Mark 9:24 (KJV)

Personally, I feel that asking whether faith is voluntary or involuntary seriously misses the point. The question itself implies a non-existence of God; that is, it implies that God is not involved in the faith of a man. I see the question as peripheral, because the answer to the question provides only minimal advancement, and serious detour. If faith is voluntary, it seems to follow that man is in perfect control, whereas very few ever feel completely in control of anything. If faith is involuntary, it seems that something else exercises control over, and I struggle to answer what this “something else” could be. I consider it a detour, because I feel that it strays from the root of the issue: that is, “Does God exist?” After all, what is the fundamental difference between voluntary/involuntary belief? If belief is voluntary, well, voluntary belief is based on something, since belief is very rarely based on nothing. If this belief is involuntary, this “involuntary belief” is still the result of something, namely that which might be the influences in one’s life. Which also comes down to be a sort of voluntary belief, since such influences and their reliability is questionable and inconsistent at best, and at some point there is a leap of faith (not in the religious sense, but even in a practical sense. e.g. a lot of things can go wrong when I choose to sit on a chair that looks sturdy. It may be a mirage, it may be rotten, it may be broken, it may be a number of things–but at some point, I will probably just choose to get over my thoughts and sit in it. One could say that my belief that most chairs that appear to be sturdy are sturdy is “involuntary,” but it seems to me that it is oddly voluntary, just as “voluntary” belief is oddly involuntary) …and the cycle seems to go ’round and ’round…

Returning to the passage from Mark, Charles Spurgeon has interesting insight into this passage:
“What was his discovery? Why his discovery was  that he did not believe—and that is where the real difficulty lay. When did the man make this discovery? When he began to believe! Is it not a very singular thing that as soon as ever he had a little faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, he discovered the great abyss of his unbelief? “Lord,” he said, “I believe, but, oh, I do also disbelieve so much that my unbelief seems to swallow up my belief!” Until a man receives faith, he may think that he has it—but when he has real faith in Jesus Christ, then he shudders as he thinks how long he has lived in unbelief—and realizes how much of unbelief is still mixed with his belief! …While men have no faith—I repeat what I said just now—while men have no faith, they are unconscious of their unbelief, but as soon as they get a little faith, then they begin to be conscious of the greatness of their unbelief! When the blind man gets a little light into his eyes, he perceives something of the blackness of the darkness in which he has been living—and so you must be able to say from your heart, “Lord, I believe,” or else you will never be able to pray, as this man did, “help my unbelief.” Even a small measure of faith is necessary to discover the great measure of the unbelief.”

So at the end of the day, sometimes I have to forget the rules and tune out the arguments. I have to humble myself and come before the Lord. And ask…and believe. And I can do this, not because I’m actually “forgetting the rules” or “choosing to forego reason, logic, and intellect,” but because all of those faculties that God has given me frees me to come before him and just believe.

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

-Exodus 20:12 (KJV)

Instead of blogging about the fifth commandment, I should probably be apologizing to my mother. Maybe you’re in the same rut: instead of reading my blog about the fifth commandment, perhaps you also should be apologizing to your parents. This commandment, of the ten, in my opinion, rises to the top (among some others) when it comes to being widely interpreted or faded into memory. It is one where many are familiar, but few act accordingly. Even with God’s promise.

By widely interpreted, I do not suggest that the standard varies widely; simply that, many tweak such standards for their own family (e.g. My family is different. This is a different situation.). Some of these tweaks may be warranted, but I thought it might be worthwhile to delve into the original, the Hebrew, of this term. The Hebrew word for “honor” is kabad, which has one of the most diverse of meanings of any word used in the Old Testament text. It is used 114 times, ranging: “all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him” (Psalms 22:23), “day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought” (Psalms 32:4), “make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see” (Isaiah 29:13), “people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honorme, but have removed their heart far” (Isaiah 29:13), etc… and many more examples of surprising variety.

Literally, kabad means “of great weight.”

Of how much “weight” do your parents have in your life? I think if there is anything on which our society more-or-less agrees, it is the idea of what is judged to be the “proper” way to treat one’s parents. While not meeting this ideal is often excused and blamed on irreconcilable generational, cultural, and educational differences, a busy lifestyle, and geographic inconveniences, I don’t think that the biblical ideal, nor the societal ideal, simply calls for obedience. (By this measuring stick, I may have nothing for which to apologize to my mum).

“Honoring one’s parents,” or, having our relationship with our parents be characterized by “great weight,” I think, challenges us to look beyond ourselves. It challenges us to confer importance outside of us, a weighty importance, not on our own terms and timetable, but theirs. It begins with one’s attitude when seeking permission, opinion, or even just a conversation. It marks flippant remarks and cursory hellos. It underlies even the busiest moments. These are the people who, (in most cases), love us the most, are the most understanding, the most accepting, and often, the weight is inaccurately weighed. To use a hackneyed phrase, we “take them for granted.”

Our treatment of our parents (with their, yes, imperfections. Yet, let us not forget our own, of which they are very familiar…), inevitably spills over into our spiritual walk and our relationship with God. In Christ, the parent is a tangible reflection of who God the Father is to us, someone who knows the best and worst of us, yet loves us, someone who sacrificially provides for our well-being, someone who rejoices in our successes, someone who comforts us, someone who disciplines us, someone who has more wisdom and insight than we give credit for…

My purpose in writing is not to merely promote obeying one’s parents. In fact, I think the sheer variety of families and parents ensures that parents are not always right, and obeying them all the time is not the wisest maxim. Furthermore, I cringe when I think about those who may have unbelieving parents, abusive parents, neglectful parents…

Please take this moment to consider what weight, or importance your parents have in your life.
They are still your parents, and God has a purpose in putting them in your life.
Please take this moment to forgive your parents… even if they have not apologized. Even if they still feel they are in the right.
Ask the Lord for the strength to forgive and let go.
Lastly, please take this moment to engage in prayer for them… they may be parents, but they are still God’s creation, children. And even the best of them need our prayers.

…

Now I’m going to go apologize to my mom for the frustrated look I gave her earlier.

“[Love for God] has sometimes been taken to obliterate the neighbor—all those people, other than God, whom we are commanded to love.  After all, if God alone satisfies the heart’s longing, we may be hard pressed to explain why a heart that rests in God should have need of any other to love…Would a Christian whose love for God was gradually growing toward perfection have, concomitantly, increasingly less need to rest any of the heart’s longing in other human beings?…C. S. Lewis writes of ‘the ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self which is the mark of Hell.’  If Augustine is right, it is this assertion of self, not a longing for God, that finally obliterates the other.  None of us is permitted veto power over the happiness of others in heaven, for in the presence of God there must be fullness of joy.  But Augustine can believe this without supposing that the presence of others is unimportant or adds nothing to one’s joy.  Each shares his own vision of God with others, thereby enriching the vision of all; for, as Augustine writes in the Confessions, ‘when many people rejoice together, the joy of each individual is all the richer, since each one inflames the other and the warmth spreads throughout them all’ (8.4).  Moreover, the God who draws us to himself and who is alone our sufficiency is never a tyrant who seeks to obliterate all other objects of our love.  To turn in love toward that God is to turn toward One in whom we are given others to love.  But they are—always and only—loved ‘in God’; for, apart from that location they can never truly be themselves.” (Gilbert Meilaender, The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life, pp. 36-45)

Today, I am going to share a moment with you that didn’t occur too long ago.  I figure that my first poem that I allow the world to see should be fairly universal, so I chose a poem about my brother, Jeff.  Read through it once and I’ll explain how it relates to all of us:

a

a

a

a

a

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“We are on opposing sides of the same coin

Two faces stemming from the same heritage,

but facing two different directions

a

I am the side of the coin always facing up

when flipped

He is the weighted side of the coin and is always

facing down

His inhibitions hold him back from being

what he could be

a

He never strays far from whence he came

the table upon which he rests

He just looks down in negative fashion,

and his prospects are so grim

The darkness seals off his hope

and consumes his being

I have tried to pull him up

If only I shall stand on my side

and help him half-way up

a

It may cost me the stars,

but he is my brother and

I cannot leave him behind

a

The heaviness that is his

weighted side

Taxes my consciousness

and my time,

But he ain’t heavy,

he is my brother

a

I will have to keep trying,

but I cannot say what will be

as I do not know this myself

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I do know however that I will

keep trying

Until the light that shines from

above

Touches both sides of the coin

that is our existence

a

Yeah, I would like that

I will succeed

And help him find his way”

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[01/13/2011]

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Quite often in life, we are faced with the decision to help a loved one.  My brother, Jeff, is a nice guy, but he sometimes loses focus on what is important in his life as well as the values in the lives of the people around him.  My brother Jeff is a student teacher, and frequently he runs out of gas money to get to the school in which he works.  I wrote this poem shortly after my brother realized he didn’t have enough money to get to school on the date above; of course, in a panic he made our mother feel guilty about not having enough money to pay for his car’s much needed gasoline.  I offered up my last money in my bank account to get him to school on time.  The last money in my bank account was my money to go to the movies with some old friends.  As I was pumping the gas for him, I noticed that someone had dropped a quarter by the gas pump.  I picked it up and thought that’s the relationship I have with my brother.  We are two sides of the same coin that was minted in the currency of our mother.  The responsibility therefore lies on both of us to balance ourselves so that the other can be blessed with the rays from God above as in the poem.

Sometimes we sacrifice ourselves or our time in order to make someone’s life just a little more comfortable.  All too often though, it is easy to say that maybe Jeff or another person should have a job while going to college to pay for his or her expenses.  Maybe one could argue that he was wrong to put emotional stress on our mother.  None of that matters now because I am not the one to pass judgement on him.  As the Bible states in regards to a group of sinners surrounding an adulteress, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (John 8:7)  Only God has the power to do that because only he knows the situation in which my brother is experiencing.

As frustrating as these road bumps in life can be, I don’t give up on my brother.  I know God put me on this earth to help him refocus and find his way.  I will help him find the light that is clarity even if it means that I may be a little inconvenienced.  I don’t do this because I have some moral complex or I am altruistic, but I know in my heart that helping others in their hour of need is the right thing to do.  I didn’t give into selfishness even though I could have easily went to the cinema that night, but God gave me the power to reason and help me serve a greater purpose.  If my brother ten years from now effects just one student’s life, then I will have accomplished my goal.

I finally realized that this movie was not about a sinking ship but a woman.

I write this article in nostalgic memory of our last issue: women. I think the director/writer of Titanic portrayed a woman’s heart really well, and I think there are some Christian themes that we can draw from the movie.

It struck me how Titanic unfolds from the romantic recollections of a 100+ year-old woman, Rose, who shares some invaluable insights into a woman’s heart with Titanic researchers looking for riches. As she shares the story about her romance with Jack Dawson on the Titanic, the audience soon realizes that the Titanic is really not about the ship and its supposedly hidden wealth, but about this woman, and the hidden treasures in her heart. In one of the recollections, Rose confesses that no one knew about Jack Dawson until now. She says, “A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets.” I like to add that a womans’s heart is a deep ocean of treasures. All these years, she had kept Jack Dawson in her heart and the precious heart-shaped diamond necklace in secret.  After she finishes telling her story, she casts the necklace into the ocean, likewise letting her secret remain in the depths of her heart. She stores in her heart memories that do not rust or wither.

Why does Rose love Jack Dawson, a poor artist who can offer her nothing but his heart? He comes out of nowhere and shakes up the very root of her upbringing and dares her to be free and courageous. By choosing Jack, Rose will lose everything, wealth, class, and comfort, but gain everything, herself. Rose’s romance with Jack Dawson is revolutionary and life-changing, and it reminded me of our relationship with God, how we find our true identity in forsaking the world and accepting Christ into our hearts. How everything we used to value and the world values seems to be meager and meaningless in comparison to the love we know and have received. Jack Dawson shows her that he loves her and Rose is emboldened to be true to herself. I will not state the obvious, but I wonder, how many Christians are truly free in the love of Christ? How many of us are daring to love Christ on a radical level in response to the love He had first shown us?

The second to the last scene shows the elderly Rose sleeping in her bedroom. She is sleeping peacefully, with almost a smile on her face. The next scene is her dream, and she is once again the breathtakingly beautiful Rose entering a gloriously lit room. Everyone on the Titanic is standing to the side, smiling and admiring as she passes by them. She climbs the stairs and meets her prince, her love, Jack Dawson. He stretches out his hand for her, and they kiss to the wild applause and hollering of joyful bystanders. And so the story ends where it begins, in a woman’s heart, in her dreams.

I did not cry as much when the Titanic sank, but the last scene evoked a well of emotions that freely flowed down my cheeks. There is something so beautiful about a woman’s heart, so tragic, so youthful, so passionate. She is caged by expected propriety, physical beauty, normalcy, and by everything that subdues and belies her true beauty and her freedom. Yet, she longs for the love that frees her, that desires and prizes her heart more than the physical manifestation of her womanhood. God put the longing in us, to desire and seek enduring, unconditional love that frees us.

How many women are insecure about their beauty? How do Christian men view women? Do we realize that so many women have been pulled from their thrones of royalty by careless and cruel judgment, by the violence of disregarding God’s will?

We wait for His love that liberates us. We are courted and pursued by God, the unfailing and saving Love. He is our dashing Jack Dawson times infinity, and we women feel Him and long for Him acutely. Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of our relationship with God is that we are beautiful and precious to His eyes, and He knows and loves our hearts, our souls.

Many who watched the Titanic might have responded the way I did when I first watched the movie. I wondered why Rose throws away the valuable diamond necklace into the ocean. I wondered why the elderly woman still dreams about love that is long past. I wondered why she tells the story of Jack Dawson to begin with. But I know now, that if you look into the heart of a woman, beyond all that she seems to the eye, there is a glimpse of timeless and mysterious eternity, deeper than the ocean.

1. A place that worships God in spirit and Truth. They should be focused on God in their songs, their prayers, and their preaching on important topics like heaven and hell. Ideally, they should have the spirit of God as seen by their love. Jesus tells us in John 13:35, ”By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” At the same time, Buddhists are pretty nice people, too. You should look at churches that are sound doctrinally (tips on how to make sure of this will be coming in later posts).

2. A place that will feed you spiritually and meet your needs. You’ll have a variety of needs throughout your spiritual walk. To list just a few:

"Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." Make sure that you are getting your soul food! Seriously, it's delicious.

a. Good, Biblically-based preaching – to feed you the Word and challenge you
b. A peer Bible study – as recommended by Anne
c. An older mentor who can give you wiser advice (than your peer group)
d. A program to serve the poor (although you need not necessarily be active through the church if you get involved in other programs like PBHA, it is important that the church focus on helping those in need).
e. A frequent challenge to evangelize and love the lost

These things are all very important for your personal relationship with God to make sure that you don’t lose sight of the truth, that you don’t feel lonely, that you don’t get bogged down by immaturity, that you don’t become selfish or lukewarm in your faith. You want a congregation that will strengthen your walk with God. Granted, Paul says in Philippians 2:12 to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” A congregation cannot do the walk for you. Yet they should be helping your journey and not hindering your steps, edifying your faith and not extinguishing your fire.

3. A place where you can contribute to meet the spiritual needs of others. Figure out what your spiritual gifts are and how you can use them to benefit the church. Maybe you are good at organizing things and could help run a food drive. Maybe you can play an instrument in the band. Maybe you know how to run AV systems. Maybe you are great with kids. Maybe you have some extra time and could help fill the communion cups. Maybe you are friendly and could greet visitors. Your gifts don’t have to be big for you to help serve. You don’t have to have a lot of time to serve, even a spare 30 minutes before a service can be a great help to a congregation. Remember that as a Christian, you are fundamentally called to be a servant. As Paul puts it in Philippians 2:3-7,

“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

As you think about these things, recall what the church should look like as a whole. A good guideline is the church after Pentecost in Acts 2:42-47:

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles…”

A congregation should be devoted to the teachings of the Bible, to each other, to communion, and to prayer. A congregation should be filled with awe at the glory of God.

“…And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need…”

The members of a congregation should be generous and open their homes to other members. (The early church often met in the disciples’ houses.) They should care about serving the poor and helping the needy.

“…And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

A congregation should meet often and be thankful for what God has given them. They should be evangelistic (though not necessarily evangelical) and growing. These are the sorts of things to look for in a healthy branch of the church. Stay tuned for some more tips on how to find out if a congregation is strong in these areas.

I think I never feel as lonely as when I see a beautiful thing, when I read a beautiful turn of phrase, when I feel for the first time the first snow, and I turn, and there is no one besides me to exclaim it to. Because in that moment my whole heart is exclamation – filled to the brim with those eternal questions – Do you see it too? Do you feel it? Can you hear this sudden flurry of wings, this earthed lightning? Do you hear what I hear, do you see what I see? And it is tragic, for no reason can close the gulf between two men – and perhaps, it is even more disappointing if the person besides you does not see, does not hear – or that you turn, and all you’re faced with is a stubborn blindness.

image source by chonquesha

I feel sometimes the entire essence of love is to spend one’s whole life turning and saying – look – here is the thing, the very thing, temporarily incarnated, temporarily dwelling as if at the centre of the universe – this one melody, this one angelic line, this one streak of white cut across the sky. And it is bodily felt, it shudders through you to the very bone, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh – and this is what it is to be one, or to yearn to be one with it. And in moments of grace I feel it, and the One I turn to is no other. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh – you, who are my own, my very own, who have loved me from the inception of my soul, from the conception of my flesh, from the first flicker that fanned into the flame of me. And you are so ravishing, it is you that I see, in the sun and its water, in the trees and their skies – and every breath I draw is a miracle when I see you, for you are all I see.

And I need not turn to another, there is no one continually missing at my side, for I am not alone; you are beside me, drinking in all praise and all beauty, and I, radically decentred from my universe, in some nameless ecstasy – for you looked upon the earth once, and said, it is good, so very good – and this is all it is that is good and perfect and held completely in the thing of you! And you are my one hope, my one vision, my one passion, and my one sorrow, it is you I feel and long for, and it is to you that my thought tends, like a plant towards the sun. And nothing, nothing takes that place, that secret place that was ordained for you.

You are all beauty, and you are all light, and I am in awe of you. I do not know what you did to love me – to lure me, to seduce me with the utter otherness that is you. You are utterly and utterly you – I cannot but say it, for you are the utmost and I have no words to describe the thing that is, the thing that surely all the world is of – that huge thing beyond the thought of man, beyond my grasp, beyond my comprehension. You are that great foundation, that great back turned like a whale upon the waters, holding up the entire universe. I wish that you would be like this to me, that your absoluteness will always be before me, for I am always a creature between two gasps, gulping for air between lungfuls of grace. And I cannot make you You – O, only you choose to appear and disappear before my eyes, although my mind knows you are everywhere.

It is only in you that I am free – only you, only you, and I’m enthralled, enraptured, and I do not want to leave – I am captured and I would not be anywhere but here, because I know I’ll wander, Lord, I know it – for though you may show me your face, I walk away and in a minute it has left no trace. I want to bottle up this radiance, so I will always remember, because truly, there is nothing, nothing worthy except in you, and it was this that I was made to do.

What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

Psalm 8:4

What is man, that he should be clean? And he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity as water.

Job 15:14-16.

Search me, Lord – Search me, for you alone know my inward parts. You alone understand these things within me, these things that I am so ashamed of I hide them in the dark even from myself.

You and you alone I have loved, and you and you alone I have longed for. You, and you alone, have I known before I drew my first breath – it was you I knew in my mother’s womb. It was you who loved before I came to the world, and it is you whom I will find when I leave this earth.

Oh my God, I have looked far and wide and high and low in every last corner of the earth, and I am looking, and am still looking, and the thing I want to find was you. I have scoured the earth for knowledge, I have dug deep into thought, I have raged my way through the systems of my country to cross great oceans in search of wisdom and knowledge. And because you loved me and gave me many gifts, I looked and found everything else. My God, my God! My whole life I was longing for you, and instead I found everything else! And one by one by one, I made them my purpose, and one by one, you tore down my idols.

And I have wallowed in the mire of my own sin, and made myself queen of it, and thought myself a very fine specimen of a thing, and crowned myself the sovereign of a little kingdom, thinking it was the whole world.

Penitence, acrylic on bamboo plate. By Larry Poncho Brown.

And I have lusted after all the wrong things, each one finer and more delicate and more refined and more subtle than the last, and I have molded myself to them, in imitation of them. And I have torn with great violence the things I was given, ravaged from limb to limb your children you told me to guard, tossed carelessly to the pit the brothers and sisters you gave to love. And I have prostrated myself before the subtle altars of success, of art, of intelligence, of beauty, of romance, of respect, of regard, and thought all the while you were my God. And I have declared a twenty-year war against the Most High God, and charged again and again against your heart like a battering ram, insistent and fierce and relentless and mad, and you have said nothing, but bore it for the sake of your love for me, Lord. And I have poured scalding oil down the sides of my last defenses, all over your army, all over the servants you’ve sent to try reach me, I’ve attacked them with the very gifts you had bestowed me, and I have wounded countless, Lord – I’ve led your sheep astray, I’ve betrayed my own parents, I’ve disobeyed their teachings, I’ve abandoned my house where I was loved and gone wandering foolishly, spending the inheritance you had built up – the inheritance of absolute mercy, absolute love, not knowing the price of the thing that I spent.

And I don’t understand why you still hear my cries. I don’t understand why, finding myself at the same old groove in the same old circle around the same old millstone like some stubborn, dumb mule, you are still patient with me, still loving to me, still hopeful that I will make something of me. I don’t understand your enormous forgiveness; I don’t understand your judgment’s delay. I don’t understand how you can stand by while I rip, again and again, your heart in pieces. I don’t understand how you mutely accuse me while I hammer the nail straight into your palm. I don’t understand how, in all my wildness and pride, in my restless impatience, in my careless violence, you don’t give up on me, and say, it’s time to take that one home – look what she’s done with her mind, what she’s done with her body, look at the state of her ravaged soul.

I don’t understand how you stood by and watched as I lived in pride and lived by lies, when I lived in lust and sloth and greed, and how you allowed my life to blaspheme to high heaven, even while I wrote on my forehead, your Holy Name. I don’t understand why you didn’t bind me more tightly, why you didn’t take and seal my fluttering heart, when you saw once again I was following some idol, like a child in a supermarket following the wrong green dress home, all the while thinking I would get home to my God. And she turned, and I ran, in complete and utter horror, for her face was my face, and again I had turned my self into my god. Oh, my God! I don’t know the first thing about what I have done.

And I’ve been so unfaithful, it amazes me that when the scales are finally measured on that last day, you will count me as one of yours – for I’ve chased after every wind, been buffeted by every wave, been tossed right and left by every distraction, yielded to every last temptation without even a blink of a thought. And I try to keep my eye straight on you, my God, but I’m only a woman, and I cannot see what you see. I keep my eye on you, but cannot feel you walk beside me. I pray to imaginary audiences, I pray to imaginary lovers, and I do not pray to the loving, living God. I long to see your face, but all I see is what I see. And I have for my life the living God as my companion, and yet I live functionally like an atheist, a materialist, and refuse to take the small gifts that you offer me daily, like some relentless lover.

And too often it fixates on what is just another human being, or the works of my own hands, and I am so, so willing to make him or her or it into a god. And I long for things that are lesser than you, good things, but I know that I am still too susceptible, am still a serial idolater, liar, adulterer, and that if given the chance I will abandon my God. And I know that until I have so trained my eyes on the beautiful thing that I do not see, I will always superimpose another image, another icon, and fall in love there instead. And I know that you are more beautiful than everything on earth, on the earth, in the sky, or beneath the earth, and I know that my whole heart will not be still until I see.

And I just beg you to let me see, because for me, all this is desert, a long and lonely desert even with all my dear friends, and I don’t understand why you allow me to be weak. If you are indeed sufficient, if you are indeed strong, then demonstrate now your great strength – I challenge you, I throw down the gauntlet to the living God. I’d wrestle you, my Lord and my God – I’d wrestle you fiercely and refuse to let go. No, I’d never let go until I have had your blessing. I’ll never let go til you walk past the corpses of animals lined up on either side, and vow to me, to me! that you will never, ever leave. I’ll never let go til you put my small hands up to the bleeding side of you, and whisper to me that I’d pierced that old wound, that I’d made it bleed, again and again, but that you love me. Do not leave me, Lord, for I’m afraid of the pit, that yawns open beneath me each time I try to pray. Don’t leave me, don’t take your spirit away from me, don’t leave me don’t leave me, don’t leave me.

And my God, I cannot do this – I can’t do it alone. I try, and every time I try to play Jesus, I end up doing more harm than good. Why did I have to be born? There is so much pain here in the world, which I am sure you remember, for you walked this blighted earth once, yourself. There is so much that is broken, so much that cries out for rescue, and all I can do is the little that I do. And then I try too much, and then I try too hard, and just that little strain makes me an idol, to me, too, and worse, an idol to another. And oh, my God – how difficult it is to break idolatry! I don’t know why, I don’t know why you don’t come in and cut me down, how you think a gentle rebuke is enough! Oh, I long for your judgment, then shrink away from it. I long for your presence, then beg that you take it away, for it is too much, too much for me.

But your rod and your staff, they comfort me: -  how it smarts, the corrective smack! How it aches, the dull thud when I fall to the floor! How it chills, when I’m dunked into the cold sea the moment I look down to see how I’m doing it – pulling the world from out underneath my feet, I slip, and fall in love again. You cannot know how it feels like to be jerked around, to be made the fool of, again and again – except that you do, and you, too, prayed an agonized prayer for the cup to pass you by. And you, too, knew what it was like to have the world offered up to you on a silvered golden platter, if only you would bow down to the one who holds it in his grip. And you, too, know that anything worth it is not going to be easy, that the bread won’t taste sweet without the sweat to plow it. And you knew, too, the only way to save a thing was to let go.

How I hate the way before me! Two ways branch out, and both I loathe. I have two hearts, two minds, two natures: absolute Depravity, absolute Beauty – and in my heart and my mind and my body is an eternal War. And these two armies, they seem terribly balanced, my Lord, even though you tell me that in Eternity, one, the bright one, has already won. I am bewildered, for you have appointed an unlettered schoolgirl as queen of this land, and I don’t know what you want me to do with the rioting masses, the ones firebombing the gates of my palace right now. I don’t know why you don’t descend from the clouds right now, and instead leave me with this shaky sovereignty.

My track record alone would make you shudder to give me the reins; I’ve been a slave and a tyrant, too willing to give up power, too stubbornly in the grip of it; I dare not ask you for power, because of what I’ve done before with it. Sin has stripped me of all dignity – I am like an old king, strolling proudly on the roof of his palace, well pleased with what he has done with the land, and whom, in that moment of exultation, is cast down and made to eat the grass like a wild beast. Oh, I have given in to madness and envy, and what remains is bestial – I am a dumb beast, an intelligence  divorced somehow from my body, whose reason abdicates at the slightest sign of unrest.

Oh God, I am so very good at thinking, theorizing, making pretty diagrams in the safety of the walls of my head, but not at all at acting, at embodying Jesus Christ – the moment I try to be Him, I do the exact opposite, and again and again that old mare pride tosses her head and once again I am beguiled. I don’t understand this business of being human – the spirit I understand; the body I cannot govern. It riots against me each time I try to guide it; its hungers and appetites I cannot even begin to know to control. Why you decided to make me the way you did I do not know, but I do know I am utterly depraved without you. And if you do not put your name upon me, if you do not divorce me from this sin, if you do not make a claim on me on your own honor, swear by your own name, I cannot love, I cannot love at all. For nothing I say or do, nothing I bind or loose, nothing I promise to you or any of your children is of any worth, for I am as changeable as the evening sea, whose bright colours are seeped out into storms and darkness, and which must wait through the night for the sun again. No, nothing, nothing I do is worth your love, and without your love, I am bereft, for I am worse than nothing without you.