Deus Ex Machina

In ancient Greek literature, 'Deus Ex Machina' is the name for the plot device in which a miraculous and unconnected solution arrives for an otherwise unanswerable problem. It's criticized for it's contrived nature. A solution, many believe, must come from within the plot. You cannot be saved by a bolt of lightning on a sunny day. An uneducated peasant cannot be momentarily endowed with the gift of speech to rouse the troops for battle. Solution from within- no easy outs.

Getting ready for the oyster roast on Friday, things started going wrong. Didn't have a top to the cooking pot. Couldn't get the propane tank off the cooker. Looked like we were going to have too many folks, too few oysters. Would people bring drinks? Would there be enough food? I was stressing out big time. And I knew, I knew that I should pray about it.

But 1) I felt selfish asking for help with an oyster roast when I hadn't really asked Him about it in the first place, and
2) I wanted to fix this myself. I dug the hole, so I'll dig out.

So, for a little while, I didn't pray. I smoldered (not a Tangled, hey-good-looking smolder, just an internal anxious melting).

But, some days I'm quicker to repentance. After a few minutes of that I waded through my reluctance and grumpily prayed, "Ok God, I know you can make this all better. I put tonight in your hands. I don't know if it was the perfect idea or not, and I know I could have planned better and had all this figured out already. But I didn't, and you know it, and I'm asking for grace. Please fix it."

And He did. Great night, enough of everything, great conversation, enormous marshmallows and tasty, tasty oysters. It was fine. He took my anxiety out, and blessed us with a lot of relaxing fun.

We all want to solve our own problems. And really, we can't. We need a God who drops solutions by crane, a God who opens the trapdoor at our feet and raises us out of the mud and mire that we ourselves have made. We need a God who does not require internal solutions to our prideful plotting. We need a Deus Ex Machina.

But then again, this is his story, after all. We shouldn't be surprised. From the very beginning, a savior has been promised. When we follow his narrative instead of ours, it's not a contrived plot twist at all. It's a plan. A miraculous rescue, that's been waiting there all along.

Experiential Discipleship

This article is beautifully written, from the title to the author's min-bio a the bottom. Worth every second of the read.

http://www.gospelcentereddiscipleship.com/experiential-discipleship/

I pray for the grace to live this.

Job 33:14

Imagine, for a moment, that we are sitting in an enormous, ancient symphony hall. Imagine we sit in lined chairs, in deep darkness and concentration, waiting to hear the first, clear, rising note of the flute. The symphony is muted with our longing, our expectation. The flute will surely come.

We shall hear, we are quite sure, the most magnificent of parts. We cannot say what it will resemble, or call to mind, for we cannot be sure if we have ever heard it at all. But the desperation we feel in waiting assures us of its wonder. We deeply long for it. We are anxious with waiting. Starving with waiting. Straining to hear anything. We have come, from far and wide, for the music. Oh, for such music to waken our ears! To quicken our souls, to move us to tears. Music to loose us, gasping for the breath we've held at arms length for fear we might disturb the very atmosphere which could at any moment carry a trickle of flute to our ears.

There! A flute? I thought, for a moment. It sounded much like a violin, but was so brief we cannot be sure. You are holding your breath again, as am I. Did we hear something, echoing through the chamber? We grasp and cling to every slight reverberation like sailors to the last of the water on a sinking, sinking, drowning ship.

Did we hear the flute? We can't be sure. Sometimes we think we hear it. It is beautiful, beautiful for a moment. But far away, as though it travels over rivers and marshes, rolling under the bridges and through the streets to reach us. We are confident, if it is the flute, it must be coming from the stage. Yet, when the sound drifts into our ears, and out again, it reminds us more of a wave than a transmission, the way it comes rolling over and back and around.

We are straining. We are doubting our ears. It must have begun by now. We grow more anxious still. When, when shall we hear the flute, rising, rising, over all we fear and dream, over that for which we long?

When, when shall we hear it and know that the music does play?



And the symphony continues, all but forgotten. Perhaps even forgotten, now, for the flute. Yes, the composer wrote for the clarinet as well. And the violin. But the flute, I must hear it and know. He wrote for the trumpet, and for the french horn, and for the tuba, of course he did. But I cannot hear the flute. Why does it not play louder? Why was his piece not written with more boldness, more clarity. Let it stand alone, pure, and clean. I can hardly tell if it does speak, so intermingled are the voices of the other instruments.

I cannot dance until I know I have heard the flute. What if I should step out of it's rhythm? Or bend too far from its tone? How will I know how to dance if I cannot hear it over the symphony??

I will wait.

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The necessity of the flute is quite real, but it cannot exist alone. Perhaps, to to hear the flute, we first must admit the reality of the symphony in which it plays. Perhaps we must begin to dance to the clarinet or the trumpet, trusting that the flute will not contradict them in rhythm or melody.

Miller Time

So his brothers said to him, "Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world." For not even his brothers believed in him.

Jesus said to them, "My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come." John 7:3-8

I know that my motives to pray for healing often include a desire to be assured of the advancement of the Kingdom and of my good standing with the Healer. Compassion is in there as well, but sometimes in lesser proportions. I will continue to pray for healing, but I'm begging God to change my motives from self-assurance-seeking to true, compassionate love, pickled in a confidence in the loving, living God. I cannot change my motives myself, but I will submit them to the Father, who gives us the Spirit to will and to do. And I think He is changing them already.

In the end, their mis-motivations do not stop Jesus from going up to the feast and teaching on the coming of the Holy Spirit ('streams of living water'). Their sinful hearts did not change His plans, nor his heart, at all. He was simply working in His time and not theirs. Still He came, and still He brought the heat.

You can have my impatience, my plans, my fears. It's your time. Bring it, Lord.

Keep My Eyes

A new song, for starters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV_6X0wlZvU

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I have seen that I often want to pray for healing because I know I should, and because I fear NOT doing it, fear the Lord's displeasure, fear losing my standing with Him. I know that is wrong. But I'm still fearful, both to pray for the sick and not too. A friend told me this morning to begin asking God for His heart towards the sick when I see them, and let that drive me. Sounds good. I pray for faith.

Here's the problem. I think, deep down, I should pray for nearly every sick person I come across. But I'm dreadfully afraid they won't be healed, because in my experience they haven't always been healed. I don't know how to do it well. Do I press in, praying again and again until they get out of the chair? Because God does not desire sickness, there won't be any in heaven, in His kingdom. Or do I pray once, offer it to God as a child, and then, like a child, say, well, you know best and I trust you? Both seem wonderful, in their own ways. I prefer the second, because it has less to do with me being on the line. But I'm not sure. I know people with powerful healing prayer ministries who have prayed for folks who have not gotten up. I have prayed for people and seen small things healed, and prayed for others and seen nothing at all. And it leaves me afraid.

I have seen that in leading worship, I often struggle to focus on Jesus because I'm analyzing the night, checking and watching for 'the spirit', looking for what's going on, what'll happen next, what to pray/who to pray for. In some ways that is worship, but in a very different way. I'm not reveling in the supreme nature of God, in His love or his grace or his glory. I'm not even always reveling in the complete work of the cross. Often I'm reveling in His present interaction with folks, in His immediate applicability to our days, emotions, fears, exhaustion, confusion. Which is great. But here's another problem. When I don't see God's present interaction or applicability, I struggle to worship. When I'm stressed or distracted, I look for Him to DO something.

In scripture, often the call is to remember God's work. On the Sabbath, particularly, look to what God has done. Manna doesn't fall on the Sabbath; it falls the day before. He has already provided, and it's a day set aside to know that. To remember.

And our memories of God's faithfulness often drive us into worship again. They free us from our introspection and our fears and let us worship loosely, to pray with expectation and to surrender. I don't know how to pray for the sick perfectly, and I don't know how to lead worship perfectly. I honestly don't know how to practice remembering well either. But I think that's something to start with. Starting with what He has done, first and primarily in Jesus. It is sure, it is true. Even When I don't feel a connection to it, when I don't feel overwhelmed by its glory or joy or freedom, it must be my source. Love casts out fear, and Love has come. I have to remember that. Keep my eyes on it.

The snake was lifted up in the wilderness, that the Israelites might look on it and be healed. So too was the Son of Man lifted up. God, give us the grace to keep our eyes on the love become sin, that heals us.

In the Write.

People tell me to write. Last summer, I was told that I had a book in me. This year I took short fiction and LOVED it. [I'd love to share a story or two if you'd like to see them.] Last night, a guy at yearteam read a post of mine and really liked it. Called me a writer. Today, chatting in the park, a friend told me to write. Journal or blog or something, he said. Write.

But all I have, really, are beginnings. I have thoughts that peter into dreams, hopes that trickle into sighs. I have short stories that become paragraphs, novels that become essays. Songs become poems, and poems become stanzas left to season on my external hard drive. I call its overarching file 'The Mind', because it's as wildly jumbled and unfinished as its namesake.

I want to write. I want to lead. I want to disciple young boys into adulthood. I want to teach them what it means to 'only do what we see the father doing', what it means to 'lose our life for the gospel, and so save it'. I want to know what it means. I want to teach them how to love your roommates, how to build community, how to find the lost and the broken. I want to teach them how to work hard, for Jesus, even when brewing a carafe of House Blend.

I want to walk into the courtyard, approach a table of young men, and say, come, follow me. And I want them to say, yep, I'll have what he's having. Then I want the humility and the wisdom to lead them to Christ. I want to know Christ, the power of his resurrection, the depth of his love, the depth of his suffering. I want to be as confident as Jesus was, to pray for healing- to command it.

But this is all I have. Beginnings, desires, seekings. Maybe, with the Holy Spirit, that's all you need to lead. Apparently, it's all you need to write.

I pray for opportunities to minister. I pray for more desire to pray. I pray for a deeper intimacy, a deeper faith. And I pray for the capacity to lead, to express thoughts in ways that draw others along.

And I begin, with naught but beginnings and seekings and desires, failures and longings and perhaps a little more. But my communities say I'm ready, so I'm pressing on and waiting, day to day, for young men to lead and things to write. I fully understand that in all my dreams, striving, pushing, I may be confused, in the wrong. Tell me, if you ever suspect it.

But in the meantime, I'm going to trust that Christ, by His Spirit, has put me in the write.