Sweet Compassion: VH 6

mind you, this is raw, and a bit intense. I've been praying for compassion.

These are the things with which I am struggling, currently.

ME

I do not really like myself. Up until this year, I think I’ve found myself to be pretty cool. I have interesting style, speak well, sing well, play guitar well, listen well, write well enough, have interesting and trendy hobbies (bike, hike, sail, woodwork, reading), I am a leader of sorts (RUF, Camp, various jobs/clubs), have many friends, have a sweet house at home and a sweet family in it, attend a sweet college and live in a cool house, do homework on a laptop listening to an ipod through a sound-system, drink tea from a mug and text friends on my cell phone. My build is moderate, my hair is thick and curly and people like it. I have some facial hair (though it remains incomplete). I’m good at dancing, and listening, and building, and photography. I have a sweet camera, a mandolin, and I made two wooden drums. I really like my family, and they love me well, and I really like my friends, and they love me well. I like almost all the things I have, and almost all the things I do, but I don't really like myself.

I should be cool, by all accounts. Maybe I am. But I'm afraid all of that means nothing to me, at this point. I don’t really find any of that to be important. Value does not come from any of it. I feel, with Paul, that all my best are nothing but dirty cloths.

And this is what I don’t like. I’m not sporty. I am not THAT good at guitar. I let my friends down, all the time. I let my family down. More than either, I let myself down, as my expectations for how I should love my friends and family are never met. I don’t have time enough, and the time I do have is not used as well as it could be (I suspect). And I doubt. I wrestle with doubt ALL THE TIME. More in the winter. Summer is usually better. I question the existence of God and the personhood of God, the trinitarian nature of God, the love of God, my position in relation to God, the role of someone in God's kingdom, the role of the church, the meaning of ministry, the meaning of love. Which is part of the reason that I have no idea what I’m doing next year (another thing I don't like). I have spent much of my life attempting to prove my relationship with God, to find security in his voice to me, or my ability to exercise the miraculous, to lead, to know scripture, and so I spend much of my time now wondering if I know Him at all. Sometimes I wonder if I want to. To know God is not a light burden, and yet it is. Death to self is a release of all weight, and yet it is the heaviest of all things.

No, not all of my pursuit of God was useless or wrong. Much of it has come out of excitement over understanding God, which is a good thing. I won’t repent of that, at least not now.

But I still was not pursuing him as a response to His love for me. And that is what I don’t like most of all. I don’t always believe God loves me. Sometimes I do, but other times I don’t think there’s a chance. Because I don’t like myself all that much.

GOD

Why would an omnibenevolent omnipotent sovereign God have hell? Free will gives an excuse, but it feels false. God created the world, and everything in it- even if he started billions of years ago, the placement of each atomic particle is largely what determines our presence today. We are but nature and nurture. But even our nurture is from nature’s many years, and influences. Nature vs nature more removed. And creation is the Lord’s.

I feel so desperately that I need a systematic theology to understand God. Yet, I know in Him there is freedom, o such sweet freedom. And in Him there is joy, o what joy! And peace, and true reconciliation. I believe it, even when the taste has faded from my tongue and when the twinkle has faded from my eyes. O, it is true. How can you, the God I know of love and strength, let those you love walk away from you?

Dear heavenly Father, my heart is broken for those I passed today on the highway, for those in New England and the the Bible Belt and Ukraine and North Korea and South Africa and China and France. Are you answering my prayer that my heart would break for what breaks Yours? Oh sovereign God, how does your heart break at all? And yet it does! oh Father it does, for your children, your rebel child Israel, your pharisaical church, your doubting children who squirm in their uncertainty instead of dance in Your love. For those you made, those whose hairs you have counted. Those whose smile you molded, just so. Oh dear God, how can this be? How can your heart break like this? How can mine?

Sweet compassion, from your eyes, raining on sinners and saints alike.

Compassion in my eyes too.

Monday, in Brief: VH 5

This was my Monday, the paragraphs borrowed from an email.

I got up, showered, prayed with the house. Then I sat in a chair in the library and read some Brennan Manning (Abba's Child), then sat and prayed/rested in God a bit. Prayed that prayer I wrote on my last post. I felt that that was a true prayer, that it defined my position and declared motion. It was very good, and encouraging. Then to homework.

It took way too long to prep for a presentation, so I didn't finish prepping. and I did not finish my reading for short fiction. I didn't get my online assignment done. I barely made it to class. I botched a convo with the professor afterward. Then, on to the next class, in which I had forgotten to revise my IRB application. And my presentation notes wouldn't open on the computer. So, after a brief consultation with the professor, I ran back to my car, flew back to the house (within the speed limit, of course), got upstairs, started to print the paper. While my computer loaded (takes forever) I ran downstairs to review the last chapter of the book that I hadn't read but seemed important. I immediately discovered, to my chagrin, that I had left the book (on which I was presenting) back in the classroom. No review, then. Finally, I collected the newly printed outline (not at all ready to present) and got back in my car.

That's when I noticed the smoke.

Now, following the rest of the day's events, the smoke would likely be coming from my car. But no, that was last week. Today the smoke was coming from down the road. So I headed off to campus, but towards the smoke, just to see what was up.

The house on the corner's yard was on fire. And the day was super dry and super windy- fire flying back and forth across the yard. I was the first one to stop, called 911 and watched as the big beautiful cedar trees were incinerated. The fire hopped the road twice, catching the edge of the woods and more grass on fire. The firemen eventually arrived and put it out before it really spread or reached our house, but not before I realized that, had I not been completely unprepared and not-in-control, I would not have been there to call the fire department. Who knows what would have caught. I mean, other cars pulled up after me, phones out and all, but man. Isn't it wild that even our weaknesses and inabilities can be used by God for really big things?

A Brief Narrative, and a Prayer: VH 4

Here, in a few words, is my answer to a question posed in an interview for a summer internship.
I thought you, the reader, may like to read it. It came out of my sharing of my testimony (narrative) with the house here and a subsequent conversation with Michael.
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When and how did you become a Christian?

I was raised within the Church, and followed Christ as instructed from childhood, as default. In 6^th grade, on a youth retreat, I first encountered God as an all-consuming reality. Specifically, it was there that I first became aware of the gravity behind the death of Jesus for my salvation. I saw my undeserving-ness, and his unexpected, underserved grace. There I started to follow him consciously, some out of guilt, some out of love, some out of wonder, some out of joy, some out of duty.

Really, sometimes I feel like I’m constantly becoming a Christian. I have been absorbed with pursuing God with reason, seeking to know Him but also to figure Him out, reading His word sometimes as a letter but often as an instruction manual (reading for information, not to know Him), attempting to validate my faith to myself and to others by my understanding. I have been infatuated with ministry, looking for the proper expression of a desire and love for God and others, but also seeking to define myself and know that I know God through my work for Him, counseling and leading, worship and practicing the spiritual gifts. I have been consumed by the desire to hear God’s voice, to know Him intimately, sometimes driven by love and joy, but often driven by guilt and fear, wondering if I know Him at all. Even now, I am seeing both how He has drawn me in, and how I have run towards (and sometimes past) Him, away from (and sometimes into) my own insecurity, guilt, and fear. I am seeking to know him now as Father, to know His love for me as his son. It is hard.

These are the movements of my life, and the ways in which my faith grows (and has grown), and the ways my insecurities are (and have been) revealed. If I look at it in this way, it makes more sense to say that God has been continually calling me to repent and follow, and I have been continually turning to do so, faltering and becoming frustrated, being called again and rejoicing.

In short, 6^th grade at a retreat. In long, every day by grace.

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A Prayer, on Valentines Day Morning

Jesus,
I think I need to trust you historically
so I can love you presently.
I need to say "what you have done is enough-
what you have done secures me-
what you have done, have done, have done
gives me joy, peace, rest, love.
You were, and so you are, and so you will be."
I pray for grace only to believe You,
to trust You,
to love You.
Let me look at you, Jesus, and rest.
2/14/2011