The Long Haul

Our pastor asked us in the congregation to submit a paragraph or a page on the theme of transformational communities--I suppose testimonies of how we’ve experienced transformation in our lives individually and corporately. I have no idea if this is the kind of thing he was looking for, but this is what I wrote.

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I’ve been a part of the community called City Church of East Nashville for just over five years now. From my medium-term perspective, I feel like I’ve seen as many things not change as change.

I’ve seen my own heart, calcified with bitterness and anger, be softened overnight--some miracle of God’s mercy that I certainly didn’t instigate.

I’ve seen a covenant community share life with a family in poverty, to some degree of mutuality, and the difference that can make in one girl’s life as she grows up in the church.

I’ve seen people (myself included, I hope) grow in knowing their sin and their Savior all the more. Grow in prayer and repentance as a community. Grow in love and service and interdependence. Grow as a Gospel community.

I’ve also seen the dividing boundaries of us and them persist.

And I’ve seen the racial diversity of the church more or less stay the same as when I first came, attracted as I was by the mission statement that I saw online about “reconciling the diversity of East Nashville.”

Marriages and divorces. Births and deaths. People coming in and moving on. Pretty much everything in Ecclesiastes 3.

I think we do well as a community in weeping with one another as well as rejoicing with one another. In pointing each other to look to Jesus in order to glorify the Savior together.

And while so many things look the same as they did five years ago, I don’t lament that terribly right now. So much heart change isn’t necessarily evident at first glance. Seeds planted that may not show yet. Some sow, others reap, and we enter into each other’s labors.

Sara Groves has a song called “The Long Defeat”:

I have joined the long defeat

that falling set in motion

and all my strength and energy

are raindrops in the ocean

I can't just fight when I think I'll win

that's the end of all belief

and nothing has provoked it more

than a possible defeat

and I pray for a vision

and a way I cannot see

it's too heavy to carry

and impossible to leave

I guess that’s part of what I feel about being in it for the long haul. Praying and laboring the unseen kingdom into the here and now of our daily lives.

In the meantime, in the waiting and in the working, as I wrestle with all the false gods and idols that maybe, just maybe, might fix my life this time (not true, thank God), I find myself in a community that reminds me that Jesus is real. He is my portion. He is the Lover that I long for. To Him be all glory, in this place and all places, forever and ever.

On Twilight

A few months ago I resolved to read the first Twilight book, to see for myself what all the fuss was about.

The first couple chapters were slow going (also, since I'm semi-resolved to only spend time reading it if I've done some devotions that day). The melodramatic inner life of an angsty teenager. But once elements of plot started to take shape, it made for somewhat easier reading.

I'm about 200 pages in now (out of about 500), and somewhere around the 150-page mark, I read a sentence that gave me a future post idea (Top Ten Worst Sentences...?):

"Desolation hit me with crippling strength." (page 145)

Every few pages there's a sentence that just makes me cringe for one reason or another. Sure, the writing style depends on lots of adjectives and adverbs. But more so it's the ideas that give me pause.

Before I started reading it, I was discussing some of these thoughts with a friend, and we had a difference of opinion as to whether this was actually a damaging influence on one's worldview or just a fun diversion. Certainly, there are things that I read for escapist fun.

But I still feel fairly strongly that there's a lot of untruth in the fantasy that the book provides. Mostly, the myth of salvation in the romantic Other. Edward has been described as "perfect" several times already, not to mention other flowery variations on that theme. Even more explicitly:

"I wanted nothing more than to be alone with my perpetual savior." (page 166)

Ugh. The book takes true things--being cared for and protected by a lover, for example--and turns them into false idols, packaged as something that we want and must have. To my eyes, Edward is a creepy, domineering stalker with no sense of boundaries. But Bella (and perhaps the reader, by proxy) gives herself over to him as her total fulfillment.

I think I rail against the myth so hard in my heart because it's a fantasy that I know I'm prone to myself. Daydreams and imaginary conversations. Idealized mates. But it's not real, and it's not something that I need to encourage in myself. People are people. Marriage can be great and true. But never a substitute for Jesus.

Anyway, I will probably finish the book at some point, at which point I might be willing to see the first movie. I do not plan on reading the rest of them.

Then I'll probably re-read Harry Potter VII to wash the taste out of my brain. Yes, it's an escapist page-turner, too. But throughout is love, sacrifice, friendship, family, loyalty, endurance through trials, a host of truth.

It's True

A friend shared a bit of their testimony with me recently.

Thinking about it now, my heart aches.

But I also see a picture of beauty rising from the ashes. A flower coming up for air from cinders and soot.

Jesus is real. He is actually risen from having been actually dead. I don't know how often I throw myself into that freakish mystery without some sense of reservation in my brain.

But my friend's story reminds me that it's true. It's True--new life, joy, redemption, wholeness. The darkness is not the end of the story. It's terrible and painful and can steal so much life away, and no one goes through life unscathed. But it's not the end.

Jesus is the light in the darkness.
Jesus is the healing balm.
Jesus is comfort and help in time of need.
Jesus is beauty and mercy and grace and perfect love.
Jesus is the lover we long for.

Jesus will usher in a new heavens and a new earth, tangible realities for our resurrected physical bodies to enjoy and explore for eternity. All the darkness that weighs down our minds and spirits and bodies these halfway days--all the hurts we've inflicted on others and all the hurts we've suffered ourselves--will be left behind and become untrue.

Following him doesn't mean that life right now will be sunshine and roses from here on out, or that the scars from the past necessarily disappear overnight. But he does promise never to forsake us, never to leave us. And he bore our injustices, our falsehoods and sins, on the cross of his sacrifice in order to free us from the darkness and its suffocating chains.

Only he is able.

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ, King of Endless Glory.

The New Performance Standard

I appreciate how my church eschews false gospels of new laws masquerading as Gospel truth: the subtle twists and pulls that ultimately leave you with "do more of this, be more of that, and God will love and bless and save you more."

The truth that the pastor preaches often is to look to Jesus all the more. But sometimes it feels like that message can become its own burden--to do that better, harder, more. Turning my eyes upon Jesus is a true thing that I need to hear and do. It's absolutely vital to my life as a believer to recalibrate my standards and my gaze off myself and the world around me, back to the source of all truth and goodness and faith, to the one who did everything that I would ever need to do. But sometimes that can be hard to do. And what I feel is missing sometimes is some loving encouragement in the way that message is spoken, at least for the particular frailties of my own heart.

I do a decent job of preaching the facts of the Gospel to myself, at least in my head. I recognize the importance of being able to do that. But I don't love myself well--I don't preach and believe God's great big beautiful, pursuing, unrelenting, unconditional love for me:

"I see you struggling. I see that it's hard for you to fall down at the cross right now, to fall upon Jesus' love, to repent and believe and be set free. We both know that's the truth you need. And I see that it's hard for you in this season of your life, and I love you anyway."

So it was a real refreshment several weeks ago when a friend down in Peru pointed me to some truth that I needed, while also simply loving me, no strings attached. Some others have been encouraging along the way in the quiet ways I need, letting me know I'm not alone.

Anyway, that's how I feel sometimes.

Finding Center

There are some specific lies of Satan that I tend give a lot of power to, ways that I have always been prone to losing my center and my identity in Christ, the seeds of which were planted long before I came to faith. Issues with self-image and pride and where I look to find validation of my worth. This year most of those issues have been pretty near the surface with everything going on, and I've gotten to see just how deeply they run.

As some of the difficult situations have started to find some sort of resolution and even redemption these last couple weeks, I'm realizing that I've had so much of my identity lately wrapped up in the trials of this year, and now I need to learn how to let go of that rightly and focus all the more on Jesus' beauty and the ridiculous love that God has for me--to see myself as he sees me.

But even with certain storms passing, I'm already frustrated to be picking up right where I left off in finding old ways to be the same old broken me. The names and faces may have changed, but I have not. Hopefully, that means new ways to repent and new ways to turn to Jesus as my truth and center again and again.

My friend has some thoughts on her blog that I find to be encouraging Gospel truth, and so I re-read them occasionally here and here.

I've also been finding some comfort recently in Psalms 142 and 143.

Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust.
Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.