Good for the Soul. . .

We've been lazy about posting and have let this blog fall to the wayside of our lives.  But we value what posting here provides us - a chance to process through things we're thinking, a venue for soliciting input from those we love and respect, the reminder that contemplation, meditation and sharing ideas are important.  So we'll try to do better, be more faithful to this little intellectual endeavor.  Try.

Beauty and the Beast

I started this post in my head a couple of weeks ago, intending it to focus on language.  I had a couple of paragraphs and a marvelously appropriate title rolling around in my head for two solid days; I just couldn’t seem to find the time to sit down and type.  Then Thursday morning arrived, and, in faculty devotions at the school where I work, we were asked to pray for a family whose children attended our school for many years.  The mother is dying of cancer.  She’s fought it for a long, long time, but it’s killing her, and it seems as if it won’t be long now.

I sat there in morning devotions, my mind full of those sentences I had composed about beauty and beasts, and this blog post took a different turn, a different tone.  Still, I couldn’t carve out enough time and clarity to write.  My own family’s struggles with health, though minor in comparison, and my commitments at work occupied all of my coherent hours, so the thoughts brewing away inside me never percolated onto the page.  

This morning, checking my email on an unexpected snow day respite, I learned that the middle school son of a former colleague was diagnosed this week with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.  There it was again - cancer, tearing into another family, taking what was healthy, full of life and hope, and turning it inside out with corruption.  So here I am, at my computer, desperate and determined in my quest for a bit of catharsis and purgation.  

Sickness and disease make me sad.  Cancer makes me angry. I hate it with a visceral, personal loathing that twists my stomach if I think about it too long.  I hate it because it took my grandfather and attacks my friends.  I hate it because, since cancer’s first intimate incursion into my heart, I can’t hear the word without thinking of it as a perfect microcosmic metaphor for sin.  Like sin, cancer takes what the Creator made beautifully and declared good and causes it to mutate in uncontrolled corruption.  Like our insufficient human responses to sin, cancer’s treatments are damaging and painful themselves, doing much harm alongside any good they accomplish.  Like sin, once cancer touches our lives, we seem always to be tainted by it - scarred, struggling to overcome, and mindful that cancer, too, prowls this earth like a lion looking for someone to devour.  I hate cancer because, like sin, it is a beast that destroys beauty.   And sometimes I hate cancer because it reminds me that I don’t hate sin enough.  

So, I pray for this mother, interviewing nannies for the children she will leave.  I pray for this young man, racing now into a battle for his health when he should be running down a basketball court.  I pray for my dear coworker, whose husband, after a decade-long fight with cancer, recently left this world for his Home.  I pray.  And I make myself sing the hope of the old hymn, “This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet,” even as my heart echos the words of a dear friend, who know worships before the Risen Lamb, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus, come quickly.”  Only then will Beauty finally overcome the beast.

Perfection

He’s coming for a Pure Bride. As I repeat this idea over and over in my head, it is both chilling and warming. Christus Victor is coming in search of a pure and holy bride, worthy of the eternal marriage between the heart of the Maker and the hearts of his creation.  I could not help but blog about this, just because I am so captivated with the idea. The love that brews and flames within me for this holy union breeds humility...that I, a sinner amongst sinners, will be joined with Love. There will be no death do us part, for He is eternal, and I am eternally His. As a teenage girl, the idea of a fantasy life with a perfect husband surrounds my environment. This idea of perfection on earth is lost to me, however. With the imperfection on earth, what is there to put my hope in?  Mere trinkets of this world? I don’t think so! With the acceptance of imperfection, I gain hope for ultimate perfection that I will delight in with my Father. I choose to put my hope in the unseen, the unmoved Mover, and ergo put my hope and trust in utter beauty and perfection. Am I perfect? Absolutely not. Will I one day be eternally bonded with the utmost perfection? Certainly. So what do I do in the meantime? In the time I spend awake during everyday? I live according to the scriptures, I delight in leisure, and in the beauty of work. I strive to feed my curiosity and hunger with what the Maker provides me to fill it with and nothing more. For how could there be more? Delighting in any other detracts and generates starvation. However, my God the Almighty overflows my cup, provides for me like no other source, shines light in the dark, and desires a pure bride so that when he returns to His earth, he may find His bride, damn the stains that darken her, and all shall be pure, without imperfection.   Blessings, Nora. 

The “s” Word: The uncomfortable truth about facing our faith in public

        Going to a private, christian school has been a great experience for me. I specifically enjoy the one-on-one relationship with my instructors, and the close environment with my peers. However, despite this close relationship, there are a few words one does not mention casually. One, Salvation. There are so many different perspectives on the matter, it has become controversial just to state your opinion. I see this tension gradually rising even in my own small environment. Everyone has heard the story of the little daughter or son on their first school bus ride....the parents tell friends of when their little child came home, telling them of what they had heard the “big kids” say on the bus-the “s” word! The parents are first stunned at the fact that their little darling has been exposed to such a “dirty” word, only later to find out that the word was not what they initially thought it to be, but merely the term “stupid”. Salvation, in my opinion, can be put in the place of the “s” word in the story, and the bus replaced by modern society. You are the parents. When you hear Salvation in the media, you are defensive and taken aback...you either disagree strongly with the idea being presented about Salvation, or you agree vehemently and proclaim this enthusiasm with violence. You then become angry, even if you agree with the idea being presented about Salvation because you just know there are others who disagree with you and you wish they would just understand! 

The root of the matter is, we do not truly understand Salvation. We think of Salvation as untouchable, that we can never understand. This frustrates most, so they give up. They tell themselves they are comfortable with the unknown, yet deep frustration is brewing beneath. Then, when someone mentions Salvation, we explode, our frustration guides our action and our words, and we become hostile towards our neighbors over a simple question or proposition. 

Sometimes, when I  find myself consumed with despair over my surroundings, the lack of Truth to be found in society, I think about a personal monastery I have engineered in my mind. It could be compared to a fantasy football team..I think about who would be in my monastery if it was real, and what would be going on inside the stone walls. That was a minor rabbit trail, but it leads me to my next hypothesis...in my ideal community, we are not taken aback by such conversations. It is beautiful to talk about Salvation, Truth, and our Father. It brings us closer to Him, not in wisdom, but in relationship. Our relationship with our Maker grows when we long to know Him, not long to know what He knows. Yes, we desire to be like Him and we are made in His image, but we are surely not made to be God. We are His people, His children, and His creation. Beauty in found in Him, and in relationship with our neighbors, also God’s creation. When we find delight in the beauty of conversation about the weather or theology, we are becoming closer to the Maker. 

The conclusion of my post is, that instead of being offended or frustrated with conversation over “closed-door” matters regarding faith, we should delight in the opportunity to converse...we bring joy to our Father this way. If any of you devoted readers have gotten this far through my post, I thank you for reading and would enjoy reading your comments. Blessings and Curses to all! -Nora B.

The Upcoming Winter Solstice

December 21st, the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, and fast becoming one of my favorite days.  Not only is December 21st the birthday of a dear friend, - cheers, Bonita! - it is a reminder to me of God’s marvelous, unexpected goodness to me at a time when I thought I would never be free of the pit in which I found myself. - Let me pause now to apologize to all of my daughter’s friends who are reading this; you will undoubtedly be at least a little creeped out by what I am about to write.  I can only say that I won’t dwell on it, so just cringe and read on. -  The wondrous precision of modern medicine tells me that my son, now 13 weeks old, was conceived last year on December 21st.  In the longest night of the year, God began a new life in my family.  

To really understand what that means to me, you have to know that the months leading up to last December were the darkest I have ever experienced, full of terrifying moments when I both doubted my faith and knew that my God was the only sure hold to which I could cling.  In the year or so prior to that long night, I learned loss and pain as both a spectator and a partaker, and I was undone and poured out so that I honestly thought there wasn’t anything left.  During my time in the pit, I came pretty close to just giving in to the chill of hopelessness, letting myself drift into the hypothermic sleep of the broken.  Only the prayers of those who love me and the mercy of God enabled me to look beyond what I felt so that I might be comforted by what and Whom I know.  As the days of last December were growing shorter, I was beginning to lift my eyes over the rim of the hole, but my brain was still doing a lot of convincing, often without success, to get my heart to entertain the idea that God had any new beauty waiting out there for me.  

I have never been more wrong.  In the days since that last longest night, the LORD has truly dealt exceedingly abundantly with me.  He has given me a son, a beautiful, smiling boy, and He has brought to fruition a dream I had all but given up on, doing so with absolute extravagance.  The beauty that God has brought into my life this year is all the more vivid to me because I view it against the dark backdrop of what came before, and I find myself savoring that goodness more deliberately and intensely.  My daily awareness of God’s presence in my joy has been intensified by His presence in my pain, by knowing that, after enduring the cross - the ultimate suffering - for my sake, my merciful Savior deigns to walk with me though my pain, inviting me to know Him as the Man of Sorrows and reminding me that He, too, is acquainted with grief.

Now, I don’t believe for a second that God causes suffering, even as a vehicle to know Him more deeply.  In fact, I hate that idea.  Sin causes suffering, and, though He may allow it for His glory, as in the case of Job, or use it to further His perfect plan, as with our Savior’s cross, I believe to my core that God hates suffering just about as much as He hates the sin that brought it into His Creation to begin with. What I love and what I believe beyond any doubt is that God graciously redeems suffering, that He finds a way to bring beauty to the most scattered brokenness, to bring light to the deepest holes and the longest, darkest nights.  I can’t help but marvel sometimes, particularly when I look at my son, that, when my life seemed darkest to me, God Almighty was busy sowing into it new life and new beauty and new confidence in His majestic sovereignty.  

So as I look toward this 21st of this December, the longest night of this year, I bear in mind the word of the LORD to Isaiah: “The LORD will march out like a champion, like a warrior he will stir up his zeal. . . ‘I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth’” (Is. 42:13 & 16).  And I am profoundly grateful that, to borrow a phrase from a speaker I once heard, there is no dark so dark that it overcomes the Light!