When your heart breaks for the broken

This morning I planned to write of God’s lavish generosity. Now I cannot. 

I passed too many broken people on the street on my way home. Two slouched against a wall, cardboard signs proclaiming fragments of their stories. An old man sprawled near the crosswalk, useless legs angled awkwardly beneath him. A stooped grandfather paced, weeping, pleading with passersby for just a few cents. Most did not raise their eyes from the pavement, spirits and bodies broken from years of neglect and abuse. 

"He defended the cause of the poor and needy . . . . Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 22:16)

How different, this, from our comfortable ideas of what it means to know God.  I cry out to know God, to hear his heartbeat. Today he shows up not with warm comfort but with a summons into lives and places I fear to go. His heart, which beats rest and peace and generosity, beats for all. It beats justice and love and hope and righteous anger and it beats that this homelessness and hopelessness is not how things were meant to be. Every person should know they are special. Every one should belong.

I cannot hear the heartbeat of God unless I am willing to go where it can be heard. He walks among the desperately needy. When I refuse to follow, fearing the disclosure of my own desperate poverty, his heartbeat fades into the distance. I long to know God, to hear his heartbeat and have mine beat in time with his. . . yet still I freeze when I walk past someone sitting on the scrap of pavement they call home.

Our worlds are so far apart. I don't know how to connect. What does it mean for me - an introvert who struggles with meeting new people no matter who they are, a person with a disability that prevents me standing for more than a few minutes, a resident of a large western city – what does it mean for me to defend the cause of the poor and needy?

I don’t know yet.

I do know that the enormity of the need is overwhelming. Thankfully, I am not asked to care for all. Hope comes through healing relationships, and I cannot befriend everyone.

God does not ask me to befriend everyone. But he does call me to see each person as one who bears his image, however tarnished it might be.  Every image bearer, whether a friend, a checkout clerk, or someone living rough, deserves certain simple courtesies: a smile, a kind response to their words, an acknowledgement of their presence. With time, maybe I can even learn to speak a gentle greeting first. And I can always whisper a prayer to the only One who can restore their health and freedom, to the only One able to heal the fear that keeps me from reaching out.

I can ask God to help me see them as he sees them, to see myself as he sees me. To help me remember how little difference there is between us.

I can refuse to shut out the pain. I can continue to listen for God’s heartbeat, allowing the longing for justice and hope to grow.  I can choose to follow the sound of his heartbeat, though I do not know where it will lead.

Today, that is all that He asks.

How to receive the gift of your life

Recently a statement in a secular magazine caught my eye.  It spoke of the importance of practicing acceptance and gratitude in living well with limitations. 

It made me think.  How does one practice gratitude if one does not believe that God gives all good gifts? Whom does one thank? And what does it look like to practice acceptance as a follower of Jesus Christ? 

I have intentionally practiced gratitude much more than acceptance.  I am a fighter. I do not give up easily. Acceptance can feel too much like resignation, an acknowledgement of defeat.  Or like fatalism – “this is the way it is and there’s nothing I can do about it so why try?”  How can I live in eager expectation of God's intervention while accepting the reality of what is? It's that word, “reality,” that helps me see. In the moments when I long to practice obstetrics again, it’s hard to keep reality in view. My mind wanders in its own little world, “Maybe if I just worked a couple of half days a week. . . maybe if there was a position that didn’t require night call or surgery. . . maybe. . .”

But the reality is that God is Truth. He works within and through the truth. He always starts from where we actually are, not from where we wish we were. Healthy, God-centered acceptance faces the facts – both the human limitations of our situation and the power of God’s grace to work all things together for good in ways we can't imagine.

Mere resignation to my illness would mean giving up hope. Acceptance, a stronger, truer act, is not passive, not merely giving up or giving in, but actively embracing reality in the hope of what God will do in the midst of it. Acceptance lives within my limits, not fighting them. It delights in the gift of space to listen to God’s heartbeat rather than resenting my inability to listen to babies’ heartbeats. Instead of feeling inadequate because I need help, acceptance frees me to receive and enjoy the community God provides. 

Acceptance is not merely “coming to terms with something” but is the “act of willingly taking a gift” or the “agreement to an invitation or offer.” (MS Word dictionary)  I have a choice. I can cling to dreams of an unreal life and miss the gift of the present. Or I can embrace the life held out to me, receiving with it the God of Truth who delights in working through weakness and bringing beauty out of brokenness.

If I spend all my energy hating the fence and wishing to return to the time when it did not surround me, I'll fail to see it as the perfect place to plant sunflowers.

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:18-19)

  

Acceptance is gratitude's sister. Being grateful for daily grace-gifts helps me see the beauty in the life offered to me now. It's hard to fight something when you see Love's fingerprints all over it. 

Care to join me in embracing whatever shape of life-gift God is holding out to you today?

“See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. . .  Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life.” 

(Deuteronomy 30:15, 19-20)

When you wonder if God is holding out on you

He hugs me tight, holding me close a second longer as though he wants to send his gentle strength with me. Before he speaks goodbye to me he speaks over me, speaks about me to Another, words of blessing, of love, of hope and trust. He has given me so much, this precious father of mine. But this is the greatest of all, this blessing in which he places me into the arms of another Father, this moment when earth and heaven merge and I hear the blessing that since creation has been spoken over humankind now spoken over me, spoken this time through the familiar voice of my father. Two fathers, both blessing, the one through the other.

Among the first words spoken when this world was new were words of blessing. The startling statement comes right after the repeated “Let there be”s, and before the commissions and command.

“God blessed them.” (Gen 1:28)

It is among the first things we learn about this Other. He is a blessing God, one who delights to give, to love, to embrace, to cherish.  How is it that I still fear complete surrender to these arms which long only to bless?  Why do I still hold back when he reminds me that he holds nothing back from me?

“He who did not withhold his own son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?” (Romans 8:32)

Have I been so awed by the power of the One whose words birthed us that I have failed to hear the gentle heartbeat of love that conceived us? Or perhaps I have focused on the commands and failed to see that they are an overflow of the blessing, an invitation to be so drawn into the center of the blessing that we become part of the blessing.

Or perhaps, along with the first humans (and every one since?) I have fallen for the lie that God is holding out on us, keeping back the best, holding us down instead of lifting us up. Of course, few of us would state it so bluntly. But is it not that subconscious fear that causes us to ask “why?” when we lose our health or career or someone we love? Is that not the reason behind our anxiety when life feels unpredictable and out of control? Why should I need to be in control if I am confident that I am safe in the arms of a Father who longs to bless?

How can I learn to live in the truth that God is a God who blesses, rather than continuing to live in the lie so ingrained in us since the fall? I can start by listening to the longing in the voice of the One who calls in a myriad of ways. Yesterday it was through a waiting elevator when I was running late, through a golden clouded love note written in the sky. Today He calls through Brian Doerksen’s “Song for the Bride”:

RETURN TO ME - SONG FOR THE BRIDE

(Isaiah 30:15) 

From the ancient days until today I have inspired prophets and poets And at the heart of every message Are these three words Return to me I am your Creator – Return to me I am your Redeemer; Your Father – return to me I am your husband – return to me

I have longed to hold you in my arms

And take all of your fear away

I will take your filthy rags and make them clean

If you receive my love, if you will receive my love

Return to Me            and hear my Spirit say

In repentance and rest            is            your            salvation

In quietness and trust            is            your            strength

Today may we each take our place with the rest of creation listening to the heartbeat of the One who waits and calls and pours out blessing upon blessing, longing for us to notice.

When the skies speak

The heavens proclaim the glory of God

The skies display his craftsmanship.

Day after day they continue to speak;

night after night they make him known.

They speak without a sound or word;

their voice is never heard.

Yet their message has gone throughout the earth,

and their words to all the world.

(Psalm 19:1-4, New Living Translation)

When you’re down on yourself

When we were children, if Dad caught one of us doing something we shouldn’t have been doing, he would often frown and say “grrrrowwwllll.” He spoke gently, never raising his voice, but we knew that we had better stop what we were doing.

Now sometimes I hear the Life-giving Lion gently growl at me through the pages of Scripture. His growl is a warning, but not a fearful one. It is a warning that moves me in the direction of Life, breathing love and peace and joy over me even as he growls. Today I hear the healing growl in Romans 8:33-34.

“Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus who died - more than that, who was raised to life - is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”

These verses picture God as the Judge and Jesus as the defense attorney. I am the defendant.

But far too often, I find myself stepping into the seat of the prosecutor. “That was so stupid. I can’t believe you did that!” “You’re so selfish. Lazy too. Maybe if you’d just try harder. . .” “Will you ever learn from your mistakes?” “Just look at yourself. How can God ever use someone like you?”

Not content to be the prosecutor, I even try to take the position of judge, declaring myself guilty and handing down a sentence.

Into this unruly crowd of one, the True Judge speaks, reminding me that there are enough prosecutors without taking that position myself. And there is only One qualified to judge.

The Lion’s gentle growl reminds me that the verses from Romans 8 speak not merely of the inability of others to charge or condemn me. They speak also to my tendency to step into the seat of prosecutor and judge. “Who do you think you are, to condemn yourself, when I have declared you righteous?” God alone has the right to make the final call. And, incredibly, it is God who justifies.

I could not have a better defense attorney. Since the time when he stepped down to serve the death sentence himself, he does not leave his place, a continual presence reminding the Judge, the prosecutors, and the defendant (should I care to hear), that the maximum sentence has already been served and the defendant can no longer be held liable.

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)

May you, too, know the freedom of being merely the defendant, and the joy of hearing the Defense Attorney and the Judge declare you no longer guilty.

How Grace speaks into places of woundedness

This week I am grieving the loss of colleagues. Some have been wounded before. This time they paid the ultimate price as they shared in Christ’s sufferings.

Many of my friends have suffered. One lives with constant noise from eardrums damaged in a blast. Another has worked through extreme emotional trauma. Still another finds the mind struggling to meet weekly expectations as it labors and slows under the too long, too heavy years. Even Spirit-filled people have bodies of dust. Minds, too, can only labor so long under extreme burdens without being affected.

I think of each of these colleagues. And I wonder how many bear not only the physical wounds but the heavier weight of shame and frustration.

I have felt it. The shame of weakness and inability to help with daily tasks. The frustration of needing to schedule daily naps and exercise rather than being able to spontaneously respond to the needs of others. Self-accusations of wimpiness, selfishness, laziness. “Maybe if I just tried harder. . .”

Into these places of shame Grace speaks. His wounds touch ours, connecting our pain, our weakness, the rejection and hurt and dis-ease that we have experienced with his. His hands honor us, lifting us up, reminding us that it is His marks that we bear in our bodies.

Today He reminds me through Paul. This man who was beaten and imprisoned, rejected and starved of food and sleep was not ashamed of his wounds. He wore his scars boldly as honorable battle wounds.

“Finally, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” (Galatians 6:17)

And so a word to my hurting colleagues: The weakness that haunts you, the wounds you continue to bear as a result of your service are not signs of failure. They are not shameful. They are honorable wounds, marks of courage and endurance and union with Christ in His death. By His grace, you have willingly followed Him to places where you have been injured.

Today may Grace speak freshly into the places of pain, enabling you to wear your scars confidently as marks of a fight well fought, a cross carried, a privileged participation in Christ’s sufferings for the sake of his body.

How to live freely

I feel their fingers again, fingers of resentment and tight-fistedness squeezing the life out of joy and generosity. Why do I feel I have to carefully guard every moment, every penny, every ounce of energy, when You, Abba, are such an Extravagant Giver? Do I fear that you will decide to stop being generous? All that I give  is such a small portion of what you have lavished on me. Do I think I have to hoard what You have given in case You don’t give again? But You are not fickle like my heart. It is Your very nature to give lavishly. Can I not trust You in this?

“He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, will He not also along with Him graciously give us all things?”

I think of the story a friend recently told me from Sleeping with Bread by Dennis Linn. People working with orphans in post World War II Germany found that even once these starved orphans were given new homes with plenty of food, they were unable to sleep, fearful that there would not be food for the following day. They could not sleep until they were given a piece of bread to hold onto while they slept. Then, reassured that there would be food for tomorrow, they slept soundly.

I am learning that giving thanks for the extravagant gifts helps me to rest in God’s character and know that He who is my Provider will not stop providing. He will not stop loving. I can rest, confident that the One who has provided so lavishly for today will provide for tomorrow as well.


A few of the many blessings:

long Sunday afternoon naps

the smell of frying onions

mushroom sandwiches

a bright red tank top in my size on the clearance rack

Taize songs

Regent bookstore sales

flute and violin duets

a multiethnic group of small children delightedly chasing pidgeons

a leisurely walk along the sea wall

being followed by a Canada goose

sunsets reflected in the water