It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.
— 
To wrestle with God does not mean that we have lost faith, but that we are fighting for it.
— Sheila Walsh
all things new
This new year, I am struck by the idea of newness. That’s why we care about the holiday at all, right? Because there’s something heartcatching about a fresh slate or a blank page or an unbroken snowfall, regardless of whether New Year’s Eves find you in celebration or apathy.
A friend said to me a few weeks back that she felt like she was becoming a new person.
A new person.
And that reminded me that God is, of course, in the business of renewal. Not just fixing what was broken or bringing back what was lost, but making things new again.
In Ezekiel, God looks at his people’s brokenness and the trouble it has brought to them, and he offers them restoration. He promises them a new heart and a new spirit, that will move them to follow him. The Old Testament is sprinkled with promises of a new covenant, declarations of new songs of praise, and glimpses of a new heaven and a new earth.
And then, miracle of miracles, comes the Gospel. Good news. News that brings the new covenant to us, offers a new spirit to our wandering hearts, and inspires new praises.
I think that sometimes my greatest failing is letting myself go blind to the wonder of that—but then I get to see it fresh again. See, the wonder of the gospel is not just our forgiveness and salvation. It is the fact that we can be made new, here and now. In Christ we are given the chance at newness which we long for, from our hearts to our minds to, someday, our bodies. We can be free, and can trust in the knowledge that God’s not done with us yet. If we have joy now, how much more will we have when he has completed his work and our eyes are opened to all that he has done? If we mourn, how much more will we be comforted when he has torn down the walls in us that keep us from his comfort?
The gospel isn’t a ticket to an afterlife in heaven. It’s a loving hand that’s holding open the gates right now. Because heaven is coming here; it’s being made new too, and the gospel is a chance to be a part of that. How marvelous!
When I started to look into this idea of newness, I skimmed through more Old Testament references to the blessings of new wine and new grain than I cared to count. I wanted short, poetic quips with exclamation points and images of restoration. Then I made it to the gospels, where Jesus prepares his final Passover meal with his disciples. He serves them bread from grain and wine, and says, “this is my body…and this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”
My late-night brain doesn’t fully understand that. But what I do understand is that
this new covenant has been a long time in coming and in preparation, and it isn’t getting old. In just the same way that the men of the Old Testament rejoiced that God’s compassions are new each day, we can rejoice that his endless mercies and his infinitely great Mercy of the cross are forever new before our renewed eyes. We rejoice, too, that the Father’s kingdom is coming, and his kingdom is new. We can be assured of restoration here on earth because we have seen God’s promises fulfilled in the past, and because we, in our gloriously miraculous newness, can inhabit it now.
We get a glimpse of that fulfillment in the last chapters of the Bible, when John writes down what he sees about the new heaven and earth. The people are given new names, and all of the new, restored creation sings new songs to an endless, ageless, changeless, wonder-full Savior. And he looks out and says, “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away…I am making everything new!”
That is something worth giving up the comforts of the familiar old for.
I’m not entirely sure that any of these articulations make sense, but I’m standing in awe anew at something I’m always looking for new words for. I am rejoicing not just at victory over death, but at invitation into new life.
Happy New Year, friends.
I am certain that it would be better for Christians to stand in solidarity with compassionate atheists and agnostics, firmly resolved against injustice and cruelty, than to sing “Amazing Grace” with the heroic masses who cannot tell the difference between the cross and the flag.
— Charles Marsh
Like Glimpses of Eternity
For me, the change of seasons is something akin to living poetry. The first day of fall, of winter, of spring or of summer is pure magic to my soul. Walking outside into that feeling of familiar newness, of a completely fresh day that I have seen so many times and seasons before—for that I can think of no metaphor except waking up on your umpteenth anniversary, rolling over, and finding the fact that you are still in love as much a miracle as it always has been.
But that beautiful smell of the new season. That’s what gets me. I don’t mean apple pie in October or hot chocolate in winter. I mean the air itself. It changes, and taps you on the shoulder, and you turn and are beckoned to the next months. They don’t make enough good words to describe what it is to taste a hint of autumn in the August air, or a breath of summer in April. There’s the promise of what is to come, which is just what has always been, and yet is so full of what might be.
Changes in the weather are little hints of that. I think a part of us lives for the
consistent surprise that earth can turn itself upside down once in a while and give us something completely different. For the wonder that a sudden burst of rain can set our souls alight. And for the fact that it sets us waxing poetic late at night.
I’m suspicious it might be a bit like what our restored, married heaven and earth is like. We can feel in it something that we have always known, and yet we are overwhelmed with wonder at what is waiting inside of it for us. There are a thousand eternal promises in a single breath, and they are new each day.
Mostly, though, I’m secretly waiting for that first taste of fall.
This is love, she thought, isn’t it? When you notice someone’s absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?
— 
So I had a hilariously horrible day today. I spent the whole thing holding on by my fingernails to the message behind Psalm 30:5:
Weeping may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning.
I thought to myself, “OK, time to choose to get up out of my bed of self-pity and watch the sun rise on that.” I figured I’d be able to make a decent blog post out of that metaphor. I was searching for an image to go along with it, and this popped up. “Awesome, I can connect it to how the Bible resonates even with angsty teenage pop-art.” (Which, being on tumblr, I have seen on ten thousand million bajillion different occasions, and that was just when I stopped counting.)
Then I clicked on the link. It was, of course, on tumblr already. Not surprising, hipsters.
Surprising? It was posted with a link to Psalm 30:5.
Which says to me, don’t lose sight of the Scriptural truths just to make a cool blog post, girl. Keep those hipster-painted fingernails holding on and pointing up.
Brb, the sun is rising. I’ve got beautifully joyful colors to watch spread over the horizon.
(via eatpraylovee)
You can remove this mole; you can straighten this nose; you can set this hank of hair. But that is not to draw. I’ll tell you what you can do, what you had better do to the best of your ability. You can affirm what is there. Art is affirmation.
— 
Giving Up the Good for the Good
Every day, the list of companies and organizations that I want to work for grows. The one that I always answer with first is International Justice Mission, a kickbutt group that works against human trafficking, from busting down brothel doors to legal reform. I learned about IJM years ago, and was immediately attracted to it. Not only was I (and am I) very passionate about the issue of human trafficking, but I was so inspired by the very visible, tangible good that the organization does.
I’d still answer with IJM first. But there are so many other groups that do such tremendous work, either directly or indirectly. How about twentyonehundred, that uses videos and graphics to point students towards Christ? Or Unearthed, that “produces media to prompt people to act against human injustice?” Or…or…or…
…The point is, there are approximately 3,483,203.85 organizations out there that inspire me. Whose work I wholeheartedly agree with and want to support. Who work completely in light of and in line with God’s offer of an abundantly joyful life and his desire for all of us to be reconciled to him. And who just might be able to use a Professional Writing and Film and Video Studies dual degree graduate.
The reason I dream about working for organizations like these is because I want to be sure that I am working for God in all things. I want to be able to see tangible results of his work in others because of his work in my life.
And recently, I’m beginning to realize that it isn’t really OK.
Don’t get me wrong. I would still love for my career to be one where I can directly trace what I do to a clear change of someone’s life for the better. And I don’t believe that there is anything at all wrong with having that career. Quite the opposite, in fact.
But how open am I to trusting God to work through me using his invisible qualities, producing results that are invisible to me? How content would I be if he commanded—and he does command—that I give my life to him regardless of what I see as an outcome? That I trust him to use me for his purposes?
Maybe my surrender doesn’t look like this:
But my face probably does.
If I am justifying myself and my career because of the tangible good it produces, then I allow my work neither to glorify God nor to develop my trust in him. If I require certainty that my faith is accomplishing some good in the world, then it is not faith at all, but rather a homemade attempt to prove that my beliefs measure up to the world’s standards of morality. In that attempt, even if well-intentioned, to put my faith on a pedestal of good works so that other people can see that goodness is its foundation, I am forgetting that my beliefs go far beyond the world’s standard of “morality,” and that they are not founded in good works.
They are founded on the sheer goodness of a God who extends grace to the immoral like myself, and built upon that foundation is love that results in good works, not vice versa.
Like a lot of students I know, I don’t really have any clue what I want to do in life. But unlike most, I’m not concerned about it. Why? Because I know that God has a clue. Better still, he’s got a plan. I know that he has equipped me with a set of skills and desires that he will use perfectly in his timing to do something infinitely more perfect than I could think of. I trust in that, and by the grace of God within me, I don’t worry about it. I’m just excited.
Recently, though, God has told me to—how can I say this?—go. To places that are uncomfortable to me on my deepest level: relationally. To be uncomfortable and uncertain in reaching out to people from different backgrounds and cultures and beliefs and hairstyles. And to love where love does not come naturally to me, because love is the expression of his life within me. Maybe that going means staying, but stretching.
The question, then, is this: will I trust in God’s plan for his work through me if it is relational rather than tangible? If it means opening my heart up to change other people’s lives, rather than just opening my desk drawers? What if he puts me in a 9-5 job in a company that doesn’t need to have a mission statement other than it’s annual profit line, but he puts me in a cubicle surrounded by people who, despite years of hearing about Jesus on talk radio, have never had someone bother to show his love to them?
Because really, the fact is, that he wants both from me. He wants the fruits of my labor and the outpourings of my heart.
And even if graduation is two years away, he wants them now.
Maybe my dreams don’t have to change, but my attitude does. I fully believe that, for the Christian, it is vital for your full-time job to be working for God’s kingdom,
regardless of where your paycheck comes from. I fully believe that it is necessary for us as Christians to continue to act out as Christ’s ambassadors in tangible, loving ways, and I fully believe that God uses that to invite people who are skeptical of his goodness to explore his character. But I believe that our motivation behind these actions needs to be simply because he commands us to loose the chains of injustice, share our food with the hungry, and provide shelter for the wanderer. Because he commands us to love.
And, hallelujah for the impossible made possible, he also enables us to.
My work is to surrender so that God can work through me, now, tomorrow, and forever. That surrender means trusting that he will work through me.
To quote the self-recorded song of someone I barely know: Use me somewhere; I don’t care.
