Beauty as Evangelism

 

When we appreciate beauty because it is, we're nudged to appreciate God because He is. 

Beauty gives us pause because it derails our constant pursuit of the utilitarian. 

Beauty hijacks and ambushes. It bursts in and says, "There are planes, experiences, and values you know not."

As the Earth Brings Forth its Sprouts

I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has covered me with a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom puts on a turban, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 

For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will [most certainly] cause righteousness and justice and praise to spring up before all the nations [through the power of His word].

                                                                                                               ~~Isaiah 61:10-11 AMP 2015

For an Anniversary

 

It's been a long time

long and short

and both are good:

long for steadiness, permanence

short for amazement and joy. 

Back when we married, thought love was feelings only

didn't know who God was

couldn't fathom getting this old

we thought we had launched a beautiful path

not knowing it was the wide road.

But Jesus the Gate opened the narrow

and we took it;

praise God in heaven, we took it.

Love is feelings plus.

Plus respect, freedom, appreciation, forbearance

peace

the trust that each other is there for keeps

which, circling back, enriches the feelings.

Marriage, when it survives this broken world,

is a foretaste of walking the narrow road 

with one who doesn't leave or forsake. 

Of Faith and Doubt, Hearts and Heads

 

Photo by iolord on FreeImages

I was reading in Luke 5, where Peter is in his fishing boat and lets down his nets for a catch when Jesus tells him to. It hit me that this is a perfect demonstration of faith over doubt, and can be a huge help in exercising the first while not beating ourselves up over the second. Let me explain.

It's not uncommon for Christians to doubt we have enough faith; in fact, maybe that's the most common doubt we have. And we wonder if this is why our prayers aren't answered (when and how we want). Surprisingly often, born-again Christians with assurance of salvation will go through periods where they doubt they are even saved. Now, we do need to examine ourselves to be sure we are in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5). But when we're just feeling ho-hum, or when we're listening to the "It's because you don't have enough faith" accusers, it helps to realize something: We are doubting in our heads just then. And where does Jesus say not to doubt? Let's look at Mark 11:23. Jesus is speaking:

"I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him" (Mark 11:23 NIV, emphasis mine). Where should he not doubt? In his heart. His head might be going, "Whoa, baby, I dunno about this!" I'm not sure humans can escape this reaction, even mildly, if we're being honest. But if he believes in his heart--knows that God is faithful, His character is good and unchanging, He delights to do His will, He will stand by His word--then he can speak to any "mountain" that is not God's will for his life and know he has received its removal already. Because this is the mustard seed--at the very least, a mustard seed--of faith that God can work with. 

Let's return to Peter. Luke 5 tells us that Jesus was speaking to the crowd from Peter's boat, and when He had finished, He said, "Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch." Peter answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets."

What a perfect reply! "We've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything" is stating a fact and facing reality. In the natural, anyone would doubt that things would be any different with one more try. "All night" was a more than sufficient test. Peter is using his head here. Why doesn't that translate into a lack of faith, and why shouldn't we get down on ourselves when we make the same observations?  Because Peter doesn't stop there, and neither do we need to. Peter added, "But because you say so, I will let down the nets." This is more than teeth-gritted obedience. It's not said with an eyeroll. This is "My faith is in who You are and in the certainty of Your word." This is Peter's heart not wavering on his personal knowledge of and faith in Jesus. So he let down the nets and not only got a catch, but such a big catch that his nets started breaking. He believed in his heart, he spoke it aloud, it was in God's will, and boom. In overabundance, because that's God's way. 

Did Peter's "We fished all night and caught nothing" stand in the way? Not at all. If you've felt that way, even camped out there for a while, don't beat yourself up that you "don't have enough faith." Take the next step: "But Jesus, my faith is in You, not circumstances, and if this is Your will, I'm not going to stand in the way. Please bring it about." And that mountain, whatever form it takes, has already moved.  

Plant Morning Glories, Get...Catnip?

 

Look at this healthy plant. Springing up in the exact same place I planted "Heavenly Blue" morning glories last year. Now, morning glories are an annual, but everyone assured me they reseed and spring up year after year, becoming nearly impossible to get rid of after a while. So far I've not found this to be true, so when the familiar heart-shaped leaves began poking out of the ground this spring, right where they should, I was pleased.

But.

Morning glories have smooth-edged heart-shaped leaves. These saw-toothed edges quickly got my suspicions up. A certain story of "tares among wheat" came to mind, despite that there's (again) no "wheat" for them to be among. Why? I asked Google. "Animal activity," said Google. "Seeds long dormant in the soil, sprouting under exactly right conditions," said Google. 

"Yes, but Google," I asked, "why in the exact spot? Why another plant that happens to have heart-shaped leaves?" 

Google does not know. 

What the plant apps do know is this is catnip. I also recall last year's abundant crop of rabbits eating some of the morning glories, so there's your animal activity in the exact spot. But as I gaze at this disturbingly healthy plant that I'm not sure I want and not sure I don't, I wonder what God might have to say. What's with the plant switcheroo, and what should I see here?

Maybe it's that seeds sown long ago, that haven't germinated yet, are not a lost cause. 

Maybe it's that our fallen but beautiful planet teems with life even in minutiae, and the human gardener is indeed only the caretaker.

Maybe it's that, though we reap what we sow, we sometimes reap good things we haven't sown. 

Maybe God gave it to me to help repel aphids from the nearby rosebushes. 

Maybe God wanted to gift me pollinators while repelling mosquitoes. 

Maybe God was giving me rabbit-repellant help, because it turns out rabbits don't like catnip. 

And God knows I love cats.

And catnip does come back every year. 

So I'm going to receive this catnip from the Lord. Apparently it will give me fragrant flowers, too, and the Lord knows I love fragrant flowers. I'm going to celebrate my whole garden this year, volunteer catnip and all. 

I'm going to consider that planting morning glories and getting catnip has some relationship to praying for one thing and getting another--"another" answer that in the long run, and maybe the short run, is better. 

Hey, I'll probably even go out and give the thing some water. Someone plants, someone waters, but God gives the increase. 

Stretching and Isaiah 54:2

One of my granddaughters (this is not my actual granddaughter), who is unbelievably flexible, spends a great deal of time in this exact position. The other day we were talking about the tedium of long car rides, and she said, "You can't just sit there. Sometimes you gotta get out and do the splits or something!" On road trips, other people may need food, gas, bathroom, or walking-around breaks, but she takes "get out and stretch my legs" to a whole other level. 

I've been kind of stuck in Isaiah 54:2 lately, and just today (as I write this) I saw references to the verse in two other places. I always find this an exciting sign that God is trying to get my attention. So here's what the verse says in the NIV: "Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes." 

Often, I've heard this verse within the context of spiritual growth, accompanied by teachings that urge us to make room in our lives for all God is calling us to, become pliable to the Holy Spirit, step out in faith by "lengthening our cords" in anticipation of God giving new and bigger assignments, or be alert to any breaches in character that could allow the enemy to access us. And all of this is good. But let's look at the biblical context of the verse. 

Using the Amplified version will help with this. Here are verses 1-3:

"Shout for joy, O barren one, she who has not given birth; break forth into joyful shouting and rejoice, she who has not gone into labor [with child]! For the [spiritual] sons of the desolate one will be more numerous than the sons of the married woman," says the Lord. "Enlarge the site of your tent [to make room for more children]; stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, do not spare them; lengthen your tent ropes and make your pegs (stakes) firm [in the ground]. For you will spread out to the right and to the left; and your descendants will take possession of nations and will inhabit deserted cities."

The subtitle in my Bible for this section reads "The Fertility of Zion." This is prophecy about literal expansion of the nation itself, due not as much to natural births as to the Jews' return from exile in Babylon (prophesied by Isaiah and fulfilled some time later when Cyrus conquered Babylon and freed them). It's good to keep in mind that many if not all OT prophecies and practices have later and greater fulfillment in Christ, as well as the meanings contemporary to their day, so this is also speaking of the numerical increase in God's people that would and should follow the death and resurrection of the Messiah. Specifically, it's urging His people to make room for these who will come (new converts, "old" converts that we just hadn't met yet) and rejoice over them even more exceedingly than we might over natural children, because this is the family with whom we'll spend eternity with Christ. 

We in western culture have gotten to a place where we think about the individual to a degree unprecedented in human history. We read this verse and apply it to my destiny, my assignment, my relationship with Christ. But the Amplified gives us the denotations and connotations of the original language, and we see how community-minded, how big-picture, the viewpoint here really is. Let's not stretch ourselves just because God has more and better things for our singular lives. Let's stretch ourselves to invite more and more people into His tent--the shelter of His Fatherhood--for His glory, our joy, and their eternity.    

 

Art, Death, and Life

I love a good, immersive novel. I grew up reading and have never stopped, and I'm not sure what people who don't read do, actually. I mean, how do you then live? Anyway. After years in publishing, I understood that life mirrors art and art mirrors life and they're all mashed up together (in general culture, anyway; in Christian publishing this relationship can be artificial and prescriptive to the point of forced, which is why "Christian art" usually suffers by comparison, but I digress). That life and art mirror each other is useful information.

Several contemporary mainstream adult novels I've read lately have included death in the narrative. All of them portrayed the "results" of death in one of two ways: as annihilation; or as becoming a ghost, who, while not being perceived in the world of the living anymore, is perceived by other dead and doesn't have it too bad at all. They may miss people, and food, but hey, they can fit through a keyhole, and they can "move on" once they have mourned the life they knew and are ready to leave it behind. 

Not that these concepts of death are new to me, but it's instructive to keep tabs on the world's perceptions, assumptions, errors, and lies. The more people outside of the Lord read these things, the more apt they are to assume them, sometimes more subliminally than consciously, and the less apt they are to fear death. Which they should. Because it's only in Christ that we not only don't fear death, but welcome it in the way Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: "Death is the supreme festival on the road to freedom." I'm not Catholic, but I have a better understanding of feast days now. When you consider the Christian's entire existence, our death day is going to be the major pivot from the mortal to the unbelievably blessed immortal. 

It'll be a pivot for those without Christ, too, but in the opposite direction, from mortal life to the unspeakable horror of unending existence without love. And they don't know. And there are more of them than there are of us. Jesus said the road is narrow and [relatively] few find it, but that doesn't mean we don't wish for more of them to join us. God isn't willing that any should perish. 

Lots of more conservative Christians shun general-culture art. And I get it; I do. Some should simply not be consumed, we need to be mature and discerning, and when someone considers it sin it becomes sin for them (Romans 14). But when the Holy Spirit grants us freedom to peruse it, it can help us keep our finger on the pulse of the lost. It can keep them in front of our faces, eyes, and minds, which gathering into little Christian subcultural conclaves tends not to do. It can give us vocabulary to speak with them. It can direct our prayer. I'm going to accept the challenge to myself to let it do just that.

Two Roads Converged (in a Yellow Wood, sort of) (Disparate Things #5)

 

Robert Frost spoke of roads diverging, but I was doing some reading the other day that gave me a flash of insight as to why Christianity and patriotism have so often converged into a single path. It's not a new phenomenon in today's America; love of God and country have often been spoken of in the same sentence. Way, way back in the day when my mother ordered milk delivered to the house by the milkman, there was a saying on the wax carton that I never forgot (as a child, I read dictionaries, encyclopedias, cereal boxes, and milk cartons). That line said, "Love of God, country, and your fellow man precedes happiness!" (I thought "fellow man" meant the milkman. Well, it did, but I thought it meant specifically the milkman. I was young.)

As an(other) aside, when people ask, "What's wrong with the world today?" or say that someone's good or honest deed "restored their faith in humanity," I believe it's largely because society has been on diverging roads for so long that we've reached, as Timothy Keller writes in Making Sense of God, "...the vanishing point of the self alone." Self-actualization of the individual has all but taken over western life, dwarfing our collective sense of connection or responsibility. It really shouldn't be surprising that lack of trust in our neighbors follows; we know all too well that everyone is looking out for #1.

So why do love of God and nationalism often converge? First, let me say there are problems with this if the two aren't kept in proper order; nationalism can be idolatry. It can also be xenophobia, or result in putting a leader, party, or ideology on a pedestal. None of this is good. But I think it's understandable for this reason: serving God and serving one's country have both been seen throughout history as something worth dying for. Another reason is that the Christian life and duty to country are united in the concept of the soldier. We only need to think of such hymns as "Onward Christian Soldiers" or "Battle Hymn of the Republic" to see this. Ephesians urges us to put on "the full armor of God." In earlier times, and other cultures, dying a heroic or noble death was seen as the highest good, even furthering or completing a worthy life goal rather than cutting it short. But in our American present, when Everyman is an Island more than ever before, death is just a meaningless stoppage of our pursuits. That, or it's the Circle of Life, which is an example of another line I heard in childhood, one I rejected. "Death is a part of life," the adults intoned. Nonsense. It was never meant to be that way, and Little Me knew it. Adults forget what children instinctively know. 

In our minds, then, God and country often go together. Serving both is a grand pursuit that calls on our best talents, efforts, and may require the ultimate sacrifice--a level of meaning I would argue humans are hungry for. But we need to make no mistake: God is first, and it's His kingdom of which we are citizens. Country is temporal, of this world. Only Jesus can and has truly made death meaningful--as our gateway to eternity with Him. 

Prayer for June

 

Lord, how is it the sixth month already? Like fading lilacs and their fragrance--another measure of time--our earthly lives are here and gone. And the more days we've had, the faster and faster the ones remaining to us spin away.

Help us live so that the days we've had are remembered for both their goodness and their lessons, yet left behind. The old has gone; the new has come, with fresh mercies every morning. Today (and this month) is a new day (month) with no mistakes in it yet--words LM Montgomery put into the mouth of Anne of Green Gables. We exult in "no mistakes" but take caution in "yet"; perfection eludes us this side of eternity. Thank you that if anyone does sin, Jesus is our advocate with You, and if we confess our sins, You are faithful and just to forgive them and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

We ask that the speed of life not carry us away into careless speech, slapdash behavior, or the skipping of time spent with You. Help us not dismiss an entire summer before it even comes with the wave of a hand and the comment, "It all goes so fast." Help us spend it with You, our families, and others, intentionally. Help our growing season be a true growing season in ways that matter in both this world and for eternity. Help us value each day as a unique gift, a date we will never experience again in exactly the same way, and to realize the time will come when each season, holiday, month, or day will be the last of its kind we ever see. Help us not grow weary in doing well, and to make the most of our opportunities because the days are short.

For now, anoint us with the warm breezes, floral scents, birdsong, fresh fruits, and mackerel skies of June, and may we live each of its days with notice and appreciation. Amen.