Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Mistakes I've Made

It sounds easy enough to learn from your mistakes. You blunder, shake your head and snigger sheepishly at your own stupidity, chalk it up to experience and move on – sadder but wiser. It’s a neat trick, and it works well enough when you’re just looking to lose the training wheels, build a birdhouse, or get a driver’s license.

But some mistakes aren’t that cut and dry. Sometimes, your mistakes aren’t just strike one - they’re game over. And there’s nothing to be learned really – no lesson to take home. Nothing to be done. Thanks for playing.

Those mistakes aren’t learning experiences. They’re iron gates around your heart, and, for the rest of your life, every good thing has to find a way around it to get in. They’re deep pits, padlocks – foxes that roam your vineyards, torches on their tails. You’re no better for these mistakes. Only more broken.

So. Here we are. I’ve got a pile of mistakes, and I don’t know what to do with them. And you, you probably have a few yourself. There’s no cashing these in for a better deal – no tokens to redeem for a second chance. There’s just the looking back, pinching the bridge of your nose between knuckles, and “if only.”

It’s the prayer that God doesn’t answer – the do-over. “You reap what you sow,” Jesus informed us, and I say those are terrible words. Because I’ve sown enough trouble in my time; when harvest season rolls around, it may not be an altogether pretty bounty.

But, this too, is God – God, who made things solid, and firm, and cut sharp corners on reality. Life is not stream-of-consciousness, or cyclical (whatever they may say.) There’s math at work – you reap what you sow. Sow desertion and reap abandonment. Sow jealousy and reap obsession. Sow trouble. Reap trouble. A river of blood and frogs falling from the skies. A tomb just shy of the Promised Land. Or David, in his tent, crying, “O Absalom! My son, my son!”

They are terrible words, but God is good to do this to us: to set up parameters around life, establish some rules, no matter how flimsy or how many exceptions. Mistakes don’t all bloom into daisies, not if you’re sowing thistles. God is good as His word. Maybe I spoke wrong at first – there is always something to be learned from mistakes, even if it’s just this:

Though every man be found a liar, still you would be found true.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Give It Away

I said, once, that love was God giving us something back.

As in, “everything else leaves in life and nothing really lasts, but when you love someone – that's God giving you something to hold onto, saying – benevolently – ‘I know everything leaves you, but this is the thing you want most of all, and it’s yours forever.’”

Now, I said it to a girl that I wanted to like me, so I was being a little melodramatic (I am usually being a little melodramatic. This post, believe it or not, is a little melodramatic. You’ve been warned.) But, I did believe it. Love is God giving us something back.

I know a very little better now. “Love is God giving us something back” is one of those things that sounds true. It’s a sweet thing for lovers to whisper to each other, and it works nicely on a note (dotted with hearts.) But God, He only gives us sacrifices. Only gives us what we can give back to Him.

He gives you a gift in one hand and a match in the other – “Will you burn this also, for my sake?” And, mark my words – as you love your life - burn it on the spot. Better to burn it yourself then to have God show up one day and take it by force.

You could have had a sacrifice to the Almighty. Now you have nothing at all.

See the story of Abraham and Isaac (I don’t understand a word of this story. Not a word.) God gave Abraham the only thing he’d ever wanted, a bouncing baby boy, and then commanded him to strap his son down on top of a mountain and split his neck with a knife. Abraham obeyed and, what do you know, God called it at the last second. “Whew!” we all say, wiping our collective brows. “Playing it pretty close the chest there, God!” And Abraham…what did he think, then? Untying his son, chuckling nervously, avoiding his son’s saucer-wide eyes.

We are not told what would have happened had Abraham refused God this request. We just don’t know.

Monstrous, maybe. But what else could God do? What is our love, or what are we, really, except beings who can’t love anything without destroying it too? Our love gets confused with possession, obsession, and need. Our love gets confused with a roll in the hay. Our love gets confused with fear. Our love gets confused with hate.

We love with our emotions. We love with our tongues. We love with slip-shod bodies, jittering feelings, and buzzing brains. We wield love like fire hoses, like axes. We love with bladed arms and time bomb hearts. We love without mercy. We love without knowing how. We love, and love, and love and the whole world has paid a terrible price for our loving so fiercely.

And God sees what we call love, and He knows what will happen if we don’t let go. He’s seen the horrors done for love of man, love of country, love of His own self. So, he gathers all your love together in one place, sets the kindling, strikes the match. And you wake up and see yourself burning alive, muscles melting and tendons snapping, while He stands over you. And you scream “No, no, no! All that I ever loved! Stop! Stop it!”

But it won’t stop. He won’t stop. “Narrow is the road,” Jesus says about Heaven, and that’s true. It’s a narrow road with a narrow door, and if you’re going to fit – then everything else is going to burn away. He’ll strip you down to yourself.

Love’s a destructive force – we all know that. We use it wrong, we end up destroying what we love most (there are no exceptions, really.) Only God can destroy the rest.

So, something different now: If you love something, give it away.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

the earth is the Lord's

I have one thing left.


There used to be a lot more. God took it all, as is His prerogative. “The earth is the Lord’s,” the Psalmist says, “and all that is in it.” Terrifying thought, that. If the earth is the Lord’s, there’s not much left for us. I suppose, if it’s all His in the first place, then He can take any of it back without asking permission. I’ve seen Him do it, many times.

We’re fond of talking about letting Jesus into your heart. It’s a great line for kids – cute little picture. What we don’t tell them is Jesus’ size. How he is so big and so real and your heart is so small that there is simply no room for him unless he guts you first. And whenever you ask him to scoot over so that you can move something else in, He rips it out of your hands and chucks it into his Father’s furnace that burns and burns and burns.

A year ago, Jesus had me, I suppose, right where he wanted me. I didn’t have a dime. I didn’t have a home. I didn’t really have a job. I didn’t have any future ambitions, or goals, or plans. God had stripped me naked, and He may have been very well pleased with my state (maybe not though. I don’t really know beans about God.)

All those things we talk about giving to Jesus, I had given away. I was a man without a thing. I lived in a church in Chicago. I existed on the kindness of friends. I was angry. I didn’t have much to offer, and I had nothing to own. And then…I got one thing.

One Thing. And, as soon as it looked like it might be mine, I walled it up and kicked God out. Here was something that He would not be invading.

No, no, no, God – not this time. I’ve seen what you do with my stuff. Knowing you, you’ll want this too, and I’m telling you – this time, it’s mine. Mine, mine, mine! Do you know the meaning of that word?! Or do you, in your infinite and boundless greed, see nothing here but one more thing to add to your horde?!

I did everything I could to keep Him out. Anything I could think of. Even going so far as to paying lip service to Him really governing it (I knew better. I know better.) and I tried to earn it. Tried to make it mine, to prove that God is Heaven is not the only one who can make something beautiful. And I thought, perhaps, if God could learn to occupy His proper place in my life – as a sort of pet that I could indulge and look after and who would in turn keep me company and get me friends – then, perhaps, all would be well. I carved a line down the middle of my heart. You, God, are on that side. I am on this side. Please, don’t touch anything else.

Please, please, God – I’m begging you. Don’t touch anything. I know what you want, and I know that you say you make all things new but I don’t want you in this one. Just, please. Leave me alone this time. I’ve given you so much. I’ve sacrificed a lot. Give me one thing – it isn’t asking so much. Just one thing, and I swear, the rest is yours. Just give me space. Leave me be for a while. This…I love this more than I’ve ever loved anything and I’m worried that you’ll take it because that’s what you do you take the things I love most and I understand that it’s because you love me but you understand, don’t you, that I just want for once in my life to love something without having to drop it into your hands and I do love this so much so please. Please. Don’t. Touch. Anything.

But the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.

And God, being Who He Is, didn’t listen.

Because our hearts are small, and there is no room for “God and…” He’ll have His cake and eat it too, and then He’ll have seconds. He wants to love of all of you, and to do that He has to possess all of you. He wants to save all of you, and to do that He has to own all of you. And He’ll pin you down like Isaac on the alter and scoop out every ounce of your flesh, peeling layer after layer after layer after layer after layer after layer after layer after layer after layer after layer after layer until you’re looking up at Him, swollen and skinless – without a thing in the world to call your own. And you turn to Him, because what else can you possibly do?

And He’s crying too, because He loves you so very much, and He hates to hurt the things He loves but if He doesn’t how could He save them? And they don’t know how important it is, to give it all up so He has to take them away, pry their hands off and toss the things into His Father’s furnace (that burns and burns.) And then He holds them. Then He holds you. Then He holds me.

And, impossibly, I’m new.

-

I have one thing left. I can’t really explain what it is, or why it means anything to me – it’d be worthless to anyone else. If you saw it, you’d throw it away without a thought. Someday, maybe, I will too. But, right now, it’s all I have.

And God, I fear, is coming for it next.


“I am God’s servant. Let it be done to me as you have said.” – Mary, mother of God.

Enough

Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!” Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham.” Luke 19:8-9

So you become a Christian. Simple process. Pray to Jesus, accept him into your heart, open the floodgates, your cup runneth over, etc, etc… There’s that initial little prayer that you hurl out to get the whole thing started. And, just like that, you’re a Christian. Found the Lord, or whatever.

Then what?

You start by ridding your life of the trash. Toss out your smokes, your porn, maybe your booze – cut ties with some friends who’d drag you down. Replace them with a Bible, a pastor, The Purpose Driven Life. Maybe you try to pray.

Not enough.

Then you start cutting out old habits. Friday night binge drinking turns into Wednesday night prayer group. No more sleeping in on Sunday – not when there’s church to be had. No more behind-the-back chitchat about the boss. No more peeking down the waitress’s shirt. Toss out some music.

Still not enough.

So you volunteer at church. You start financially supporting missions and African children. You paint a school. You witness to your neighbors. You plant trees, memorize verses, pray five times a day, and try to muster up some sort of emotion, some sort of feeling, any sense that this is perfect and that life right now is the best of any possible world and that things are better now than they’ve ever been.

But you’re running out decisions to make, and you know that it’s not enough.

You’re angry now. Because you had sort of hoped that you’d give your life to Jesus, let him clean it, and he’d just give it back. Shiny and new, trouble-free, and under your control.

Then you come across the story of Zacchaeus, the wee little man who – after one dinner with Jesus – couldn’t get rid of his money fast enough. Jesus tells him that “salvation has come.” And he wonders.

And then you wonder if that’s what it takes – if it just takes throwing off everything you have and are and want to be and burning every penny for the sake of Jesus Christ. And you remember hearing, in the beginning, that being a Christian meant giving your heart to Jesus – and you find out now, only now, that it’s True.