Field Notes On The Jesus Way

To everything there is a season…He has made everything beautiful in its time. Ecclesiastes 3:1,11

I get frustrated at long stop lights. I drum my fingers on the kitchen counter waiting for my soup to warm up in the microwave. I sent a package to a friend last week and he hasn’t said anything about yet, and it’s been four days!

When my sons were infants, I couldn’t wait until they were out of diapers. Then I couldn’t wait until they could get themselves out of their own car seat. Then I couldn’t wait for them to walk so that I wouldn’t have to carry them everywhere. Then I couldn’t’ wait for them to get their driver’s license so that I didn’t have to drive them everywhere. Then I couldn’t wait for them to move out of the house.

Now I am grateful when they call.

Patience has never been a virtuee of mine. I want to see immediate results. I am hell-bent in my desire to see the effect of my cause. I step on the bathroom scales and see that I need to lose weight so I go for a long walk and eat a light lunch and get back on the scales that evening and see no measurable change—I want to see results!

God has always dealt with me on His schedule, not mine. He works on me at His pace: S.l.o.w.l.y.

I want to have wisdom—quickly.

I want character—now.

I want integrity—at the end of this prayer.

I want virtue to govern my leadership—yesterday.

And yet it is true that God rarely gets in a hurry about anything.

Wendell Berry in an essay called A Country of Edges writes,

How the river works as a maker of the landscape, sculptor, and arm of creation will always remain to some degree unknown, for it works with immeasurable leisure and patience, and often it works in turmoil.

By what complex interaction of flowing water, of weather, of growth and decay was that cliff given its shape? Where did this house-sized boulder fall from, what manner of sledging and breaking did it do coming down, what effect has it had on the course of the stream? What is happening now in all the swirling rapids and falls and eddies and pools of the river in flood? We know the results. But because we have not a thousand years to sit and watch, because our perspective is not that of birds or fish or of the lichens on the cliff face but only of men, because the life of the Gorge has larger boundaries than the life of man, we know little of the process.

What a wonderful parable of how the topography of our lives might change. Imagine the river as the Holy Spirit, cutting, gouging, smoothing and bringing nutrients to our hidden parts. Imagine the rhythm of freezing/thawing and frost cracking open fissures of our character so that more Holy Water might seep and effect more erosion. Imagine the wind blowing the sand of—say a long traffic light or an incalcitrant child—across our lives to change us, to etch us, to deepen us.

What caused this house-sized tribulation to fall down the side-walls of my life? It has altered my life so that I am flowing a different way altogether.  From my vantage I see no change, but I have only the point of view of the moment, for I lack the geological arc of my story. That is the gift of perspective.

I think I know what is needed to change the topography of my soul:

A Stubborn Sculptor

I have an Artist that is relentless in His creative pursuits of my soul. He chips away at my arrogance, hones down my pride and infuses my sloth with divine energy. He is fierce in His determination to create something out of my life.

When I was a boy I offered him a kaleidoscope of colors and designs He might use to add depth, hue and tone to my heart, but the older I got the more monochromatic and flat my soul became. Narcissim and sin have a way of reducing life to gray scale. Nothing is as boring as a sinner bent on ignoring the Artist.

For we are His workmanship…”  Ephesians 2:10a

We have the fingerprints of God all over us. We not only have a stubborn artist we can offer a willing heart.

A semi-Soft Soul

The reason I say “semi” is because it has been my experience that His stubbornness is greater than mine. If I have just a little humility to offer Him and open my mind, emotions and will to His creativity, I have the opportunity to participate in the artistry of my life. His will is going to be done in my life with or without my cooperation. And every irritation, every conflict, every moment of joy or sadness are His invitation to join Him in the artistry of deep transformation.

In the Older Testament God spoke through his prophet to remind us of His commitment to us.

Look, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand…  Jeremiah 18:6b

You have heard folks say about a person who might be young, innocent or naive that they are impressionable. I would say that as a follower of Jesus we are all impressionable to one degree or another. To the extent I offer my “impressionability” up the Artist the more profound the art of my soul.

That being said I must also say that if God is as relentless as I suspect He is, then even my stiff soul is being formed by Him—for He is stubborn that way.

What can I influence in this change process? Not much, actually.  God is God and He has never needed or asked for my artistic input, thank you very much. He will fashion me to resemble His Son starting in this life and ending in eternity.  (It’s a full-time job)  So, I can’t influence God but I can cooperate with him and trust the process.  And that is as far as I can go.

For grace is like water, it always follows the path of least resistance. And it is that flow of grace that changes me into a something of splendor. Slow change. Imperceptibly so, but change none-the-less.

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.  The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you.  2 Peter 3:8-9 (NRSV)

Time is on His side. It is His ally in my transformation.  So, bring on the long traffic lights and slow microwaves; let’s see how God will use them to make me into something wonderful.  Because more important that the deepening lines around my eyes and the graying of my beard is the transformation of my soul.

He is heaven-bent on that.

Do you remember Humphrey Bogart’s line in Casablanca? “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.” I wonder if he stole that line from David in this story.

“Of all the caves, in all of En Gedi, in all of the Judean Desert, Saul walks into mine!”

What are the odds that Saul would pick the one cave in all of the Judean desert where David and his band are hiding out? Not very good. Unless, of course, God orchestrated this awkward reunion.

Eugene Peterson describes the scene:

On the run from King Saul, David and a few of his men hide in one of the caves overlooking the Dead Sea. The day is hot and the cave is cool. They are deep in the cave, resting. Then there is a shadow across the mouth of the cave. They are astonished to see that it is King Saul. They didn’t know that he was that close in his pursuit. Saul enters the cave but doesn’t see them: fresh from the hard glare of desert sun, his eyes haven’t adjusted to the darkness and don’t pick out the shadowy figures in the recesses of the cave. Besides, he isn’t looking for them at that moment; he has entered the cave to respond to a call of nature. He turns his back on them.

When David and his men see what is going on, they know that Saul, oblivious to their presence, is as good as dead. The men are ready to pounce, but David silently forbids them to kill him. Instead, he moves along the wall of the cave to where the king’s garment has been tossed, cuts off a piece of it, and then slips back with his men. In a short while King Saul pulls on his garment, straps on his sword, and leaves.

As Saul was outlined from the opening of the cave against the cobalt blue of the Dead Sea, with the red cliffs of Moab beyond, David saw something his companions didn’t see: David saw not an enemy but the magnificent, albeit flawed, king anointed by God. (adapted from A Leap Over the Wall)

Now, let’s listen to the rest of the story:

Afterward David was stricken to the heart because he had cut off a corner of Saul’s cloak. He said … See, my father, see the corner of your cloak in my hand…

Saul said, “Is this your voice, my son David?” Saul lifted up his voice and wept. He said to David, “You are more righteous than I…Now I know that you shall surely be king, and that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in your hand.

Swear to me therefore by the Lord that you will not cut off my descendants after me, and that you will not wipe out my name from my father’s house.” So David swore this to Saul. Then Saul went home; but David and his men went up to the stronghold.                                                          (1 Samuel 24:5ff)

Did you hear what David called Saul? “My father!” Do you hear the tenderness? “My father…I could have killed you. But I did not! I am guilty of no wrongdoing; no rebellion. God knows this is true. I am nothing for you to worry about!

And did you notice Saul’s response? “Is that your voice, David my son?” The voice I have known so well? The voice that offered to fight Goliath when no one else would? The voice that comforted me with songs in my times of depression? The voice that counseled me? The voice that spoke words of love to my daughter and words of friendship to my son? Is it that the voice I am hearing?”

We read this passionate exchange and say, “Wow, what a wonderful end to the story. David is merciful. Saul is sorry. They shake hands and leave as friends. The end.” Right? Not quite.

Two chapters later virtually the same thing occurs. Saul repents of his repentance. He’s chasing David again. Trying to kill him, again. And during the night, David sneaks into Saul’s camp and steals his spear. Perhaps the spear that Saul kept trying to use to turn David into shish kebab? David steals that spear, sneaks across the valley to the hill on the other side…and calls out to Saul. Again! He holds up Saul’s spear, mocks his bodyguards and repeats himself. “I could have killed you. Again! Look…here’s the proof. Your spear from right beside your bed. But I didn’t do it. Again! Because I am your loyal servant. So, please Saul, back off! Stop trying to kill me.”

And, again, Saul repents. Again, Saul is sorry. Again. But David never believes Saul. He never feels safe. And despite Saul’s words about David being the real king, until Saul dies by his own hand.

Troubled, twisted Saul.

Have you ever known someone who did bad stuff, said he was sorry, went out and did the same bad stuff again?

The husband who strikes his wife, apologizes tearfully, but does it again and …again. The woman who promises to stop drinking…and keeps drinking herself right into destruction. The child who promises to stop lying to her parents…but keeps right on lying. The dad who promises not to work so much…promises to make time for his wife and kids …and keeps right on working. The guy who promises God that he will stop looking at porn…and keeps looking.

Call it the “Saul Cycle.” Sin, sorrow, sin, sorrow…

If you love someone who is stuck in a Saul-cycle, sooner or later, you reach a broken-hearted point where you don’t believe them anymore. You don’t believe they will ever stop; that they will ever be better. Even if they promise to.

I don’t know what was going on with Saul. Perhaps he was mentally ill. The Bible says that God took HIS Spirit away from him…and sent an evil spirit upon him. That is a very troubling passage but the clear teaching is this: Saul reached a point of supreme, habitual wickedness where the Lord finally said, “Fine… you want to be that kind of person. I will let you be that kind of person. In fact, I will confirm it in you!”

I’ve known people locked in the Saul Cycle: Sin—Sorry, Sin—Sorry, Sin—Sorry. But, then one day it is: Sin—Sorry, Sin—sin, Sin—sin, Sin—sin…and they stopped being sorry.

Humble, merciful David.

I wonder if David considered doing what his men had urged him to do. Cut off more than a piece of cloth! I think David was tempted to really cut corners… not the corner of a robe… but to cut the corner on his journey to the throne.

When David cut the corner of the robe, it was a sign that he refused to cut the corners that mattered. There are a lot of things about David that are disturbing in these stories…lies, doubt, fear… but one of the places he shines through is right here: he will not, will not, will not lift his hand against the Lord’s anointed. He will not kill Saul so that he can hurry up what he believes even God wants to get done. If God wants to make him king, God will have to deal with the king who presently occupies the throne. Because David isn’t going to do it.

I preached my first sermon in 1978 and it was horrible. I was 22 years old. But I felt God had called me to preach and I have always struggled with impulse control issues and the discipline of delayed gratification. People were kind to me after hearing my first sermon, but I knew it was horrible. So, what did I do? I found a cassette tape of a preacher I admired and transcribed his sermon word for word, listened to it over and over and not only did I steal his words, stories, research, but even his delivery; plagiarized the tone and tenor of his voice, his rate of speech and volume. When he got loud, I got loud, when he whispered for effect, I whispered for effect.

When I preached that sermon the response was mind-boggling. There was no polite but stayed affirmations. I received full-throated accolades about me being the next Billy Graham. And then I became addicted to that affirmation that came my way about preaching. Iit was quite a while before I felt confident enough in my own abilities to write my own sermons. I rationalized what I was doing. I was advancing the Kingdom, people were coming to faith and the Church was growing. But it was all based on a lie.

I had cut corners.

Many years ago I made a promise to the Lord that I would wrestle with the Scripture and write my own sermons even if it meant that they were bad and my Church wouldn’t grow and folks stopped asking me to speak. I would not cut corners anymore. If lives were going to be changed or influenced, He would have to do it through the gifts I offered up on Sundays that came from my own hands.

Ready, willing you.

Can you think of one area in your life where you are tempted to cut corners? To speed things along? Maybe to cheat or fib or fudge a little bit to get what you want? To get what might even be good?

I wonder what David did with the corner of Saul’s robe. I’ll bet he kept it for the rest of his life…as a reminder that he was not going to cut corners to get to what God wanted.

 You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning;in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;in the evening it fades and withers.  Ps.  90:6 (NRSV)

If I’m ever going to live the life God wants me to live, it had better be now. One of the hard truths about getting older is that you have the ability to look back on life and see where you invested your life well and where you squandered opportunity.

I spent the first twenty years of my adult life obsessed with my ministry/career. From age 21 to 41 every moment I didn’t spend playing basketball in various city leagues and backpacking in the Colorado Rockies, I spent pursuing my career. I invested in my family during those years as well, but my wife will be the first to tell you that often while I sat in the stands at the little league ball park, my mind was in other places.

And virtually all my creative investment and energy went to the externals of my world. Knowledge, skills, strategies, networks, accomplishments, etc. I spent literally nothing on the internal world of my soul. I read Gordon MacDonald’s book, Ordering Your Private World and agreed with every word and then flipped the switch of denial and never invested in my private world at all. There is a huge difference in learning about something and experiencing it for yourself. Reading about a kiss and experiencing a kiss are not even close to the same.

Consequently when I needed interior strength, when I needed character that came from a deep place in my soul, when I needed artesian resources to withstand the pressures I had created in my external world—I went to that cupboard I found it bare.

What is the condition of your soul? Anything in that cupboard? Your soul and your life are inextricably connected together. What does it profit a man, Jesus said, if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?

If you are ever going to live the life God wants you to live, it had better be now.

One of my favorite authors is the late Lewis Smedes. I hungrily read his book Shame and Grace 15 years ago and it was instrumental in stocking my empty cupboard of a soul.

Read these thoughtful words:

I bought a brand new date book yesterday, the kind I use every year – spiral-bound, black imitation leather covers wrapped around pages and pages of blank squares. Every square has a number to tell me which day of the month I’m in at the moment. Every square is a frame for one episode of my life. Before I’m through with the book, I will fill the squares with classes I teach, people with whom I ate lunch, everlasting committee meetings I sit through, and these are only the things I cannot afford to forget.

I fill the squares too with things I do not write down for me to remember: thousands of cups of coffee, some lovemaking, some praying, and, I hope, gestures of help to my neighbors. Whatever I do, it has to fit inside one of those squares on my date book. I live one square at a time. The four lines that make up the square are the walls of time that organize my life. Everything I do has to fit into one square.

Each square has an invisible door that leads to the next square. As if by a silent stroke, the door opens and I am pulled through, as if by a magnet, sucked into the next square in line. There I will again fill the time frame that seals me – fill it with my business just as I did the square before. As I get older, the squares seem to get smaller. One day, I will walk into a square that has no door. There will be no mysterious opening and no walking into an adjoining square. One of the squares will be terminal. I do not know which square it will be. (I’ve lost the source for this quote, sorry)

A few years ago at 81 years old, while on a ladder putting Christmas lights up he fell, hit his head and went into a coma and died a few days later. He entered that final square.

You know one day you will enter that square and so will I. Between that day and this day, you have some squares to fill. Nobody knows how many, but you must choose: not your boss, not your corporation, not your spouse, not your kids, not your parents, not your peers, not your church.

Sit with this quote from Thoreau, “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

Do you understand what you’ve been given? You fill the squares of your life. Nobody else does that! You will decide how you are going to fill your square.

If you are ever going to live the life God wants you to live, it had better be now. Or as the country song says, “Live like you’re dying.”

Because you are— just like the grass.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence ~ Paul Simon

There are two terms you should know that the ancient Christian writers gave us: consolation and desolation.

Consolation is the felt presence of God. Consolation is that period in your Christian life when you’re on cloud nine. It’s kind of like when you first became a Christian, and everything seems new and everything seems fresh. Every time you read the Bible, you feel like God is speaking to you. Every time you pray you feel His love and presence, and every time you pray something happens. Every time you sing a song you weep. You sneeze and someone says, “God bless you,” and you say something like, “I am blessed indeed.”  (This is the most obnoxious time in your Christian life.)

Desolation is the felt absence of God. This is when you do not see God working in your heart. This is when you are praying and praying and praying…and no answers. This is when you’re reading and reading and reading…and getting nothing out of it. It is completely bone dry. These are desert times. These are winter times. This is when God is painfully absent.

Honestly, it is an arrogant belief in the minds of immature believers that consolation and desolation are up to me. It’s about what I’m doing. So if I’m experiencing consolation, the felt presence of God, I must be doing something right. I’m praying the right prayers, I’m singing the right songs, I’m reading the Bible in the right way, I’m going to the right church, I’m in the right programs. I must be doing something right.

Therefore conversely, if I’m experiencing desolation, the felt absence of God, I must be doing something wrong. I’m not praying enough, I’m not reading enough, I don’t have enough faith, and I’m making the wrong choices. God is punishing me.

The ancients said, “What if consolation and desolation aren’t so much about what you do and what you’re doing, but it’s more about what God is doing? What if consolation and desolation are both intentional moves of God in your life?”

Sunrise on the Sangre De Cristo Mountains, Colorado.

The writer Thomas Merton said, “God, who is everywhere, never leaves us, yet sometimes He seems to be present and sometimes absent, and if we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He’s absent than when He’s present.” Or to put it another way, God may be most powerfully present when he seems most conspicuously absent.

So, if you feel as if God is ten million light-years away remember—it is a feeling. And as a friend of mine says, “Feelings are damn liars.”

When God feels absent from you, just smile and say, “Hello darkness, my old friend. “