Undone
" To read His message in all the moments, in the
waiting moments, the dark moments, the moments before the blooming, I'll need
to read His passion on the page; wear the lens of the Word, to read His writing
in the world. Only the Word is the answer to rightly reading the world."
Ann Voskamp
Often it is in the moments of waiting, the moments of deep sadness, the times
before the mountains are moved, sometimes understanding that they may never be
moved-these moments- when I feel most like I am coming undone- when God is
able to speak most clearly to my heart. Perhaps its the fact that I am so undone
that I finally give up the striving, that illusion of being able and in control
of life, and it is in this place that I finally know that whatever heart change,
soul stirring and spirit waking that happens can only be the result of a
miracle, something other than myself, not the result of anything I've done. It
is here that I, mostly I think, understand Grace.
These are hit-the-floor
kind of moments where I am crying in a puddle of tears and acknowledge that I
am too weak, too tired, too scared or frustrated to walk this path I've been
given. It is here He reminds me "My grace is sufficient...My power is made
perfect in weakness".
In those moments when I don't understand why we keep hitting
brick walls when it comes to diagnoses and healing, family quarrels and heart
matters, those moments when I just want to throw my hands up and say, "I
am finished!!" Jesus reminds me that He said it first in those final moments
on the cross when His hands were nailed but it was really His passion that kept
him there. He didn't say these words in the way I mean them-in a selfish, fitful
moment of frustration-He said them with love, unselfish, true love, because He
is Love, and with a surrendering of all He is, to give Hope to all of me (even
the selfish, quitting me). He said, "It is finished" for us, this
whole broken world, because we are known by Him and also, so that we could know
Him.
I've heard
this Cross Truth for years, most of my life really, but it all becomes a bit
rehearsed until my heart comes undone. Just like if you say a word a hundred
times, really fast, all in a row, it suddenly doesn't make sense to your brain
and the meaning can become numb to your brain in the same way your tongue becomes
numb while swirling it out; the understanding of what is happening in the
Greatest Story ever told can kind of become commonplace, a little too familiar,
or maybe even foreign, something alien. It doesn't evoke emotion or a movement of the
heart. Well, at least for my world-hardened, sleepy heart.
I first
questioned how hard my heart was to His Word, to His Life Story, only after my
youngest (when she was about three? maybe four...) first heard of the
Crucifixion at Easter one year. The simple account brought her to tears, many
times, and we had conversations over many days about how Jesus died. I tried to remind her that Jesus
is ALIVE! He rose from the grave! But she would have none of the celebration
until she first mourned His death. It wasn't familiar to her, and her heart
broke. And when she was finally able to rejoice in His resurrection, her heart
was even more joyful than I could have imagined.
I do not
want to live hardened to the truth, the hard truths and the joyful truths, of
His Word. I am learning that C.S. Lewis hit it right on (of course he did) when
he said, "Relying on God has to begin all over again everyday as if
nothing had yet been done." And yet even as I begin again each morning, as
I lean close, rely on and trust in this God Who is so much more than I could
ever know or imagine, my heart is beginning to wake, to stir.
I am learning that the only way for me to "do the next
thing”, to get up off that floor after I have spent time grieving, to live the
life I've been gifted with, is to first be in His Word, to know it, to let my
heart be rent by the reality of His death and then to rejoice in the resurrected
victory of His life. To use His Word as a "lens" to see the rest of
the world around me, to see my life as whole instead of just wholly broken.
In the
world today, looking through this "lens", is often seen as nonsense,
an upside down kind of living. Lose your life to keep it? The meek will be
rich? Strength found in quietness and trust? Rejoice in trial? This isn't how
we are programmed to live today. It all seems a bit far-fetched, over the top,
too much. I want an answer that tells me how I can gain victory through something
I can do, some credit I deserve, and definitely not by losing anything, or by
being meek or sick or (and my hubby can corroborate this point) by being quiet.
But when I read the Truth that pours from the pages, when I
read it as it is, a love story between the Creator and His Creation, something within me stirs.
Matthew
Henry said,
" Whatever we are deprived of, we have our immortal
souls, those jewels of more worth than all the world, continued to us; even
those that kill the body cannot hurt them."
Yes. That
part of me, the "immortal soul" part of me, is stirred. The part that
is seeking something that is more than the riches that can be stolen or burned
or taxed. The part of me that is looking for love and approval that is
unconditional, when every human I've ever met has, rightly, had limitations and
conditions. The part of me that seeks health and wholeness. The part of me that
seeks lasting joy, pleasure and peace, when no place or thing in this world on
it's own gives me reason to believe that these things could ever be found apart
from the God of the Bible. The part of me that knows there is something more
than just this breath of a life, that just the fact that I can wonder about an
afterlife leads to the reasoning that there must be one.
Looking at
these hard things through the
"lens" of His Word does not diminish their pain or
disappointment, does not take away the heart-ache that often comes with them,
but it does offer a changed perspective. And so with this lens, the craziest
thing happens. These brick walls, they crumble, and suddenly I see these moments
not as only the hardest things, but also as the things that have kept me most
alive, which are growing me into my truest self, the things which have really
awakened my soul and stirred my heart. "Wearing the lens of the Word"
causes me to see the world around me, to see myself, to see these undoing
moments in a different light. In His Light. And it is only in His Light that
our souls, those "jewel(s) of more worth than all the world" can
rightly shine.
"Come, soul, wake up: thou are not now about to read
the newspaper; thou art not now perusing the pages of a human poet to be
dazzled by his flashing poetry; thou art coming very near to God, who sits in
the Word like a crowned monarch in his halls. Wake up, my glory; wake up all
that is within me. Though just now I may not be praising and glorifying God, I
am about to consider that which should lead me to do so, and therefore it is an
act of devotion. So be on the stir, my soul: be on the stir, and bow not
sleepily before the awful throne of the Eternal."
C. H. Spurgeon
To Stir your heart:
Psalm 18:28-Micah 7:8-Matthew 17:20-Matthew 26:39-2
Corinthians 12:9-10-John 19:30-Romans 5:6-John 18-John 19-John 20-Matthew
18:34-Matthew 10:39-Matthew 5:5-Isaiah 30:15
James 1:2-Matthew 6:19-24-John 3:16
