We're a Total Mess

So - I was at church this morning. It was the end of the service and we were singing songs. I looked around and was really amazed for a moment that all of these people were believing in Jesus with me. That we were all singing to him in thanks for everything he did and continues to do. I was so grateful.

And my mind started to wonder...how did we all get here? All of these different people with different backgrounds and stories. Different parents and childhoods. Different scars and victories. The diversity is amazing.

But then - I started to think of the people who were not  here. So many people not attending any sort of Christ-centered gathering this week. It made me sad.

The thing is I know that there are many people more virtuous than us in homes nearby, within earshot of our jumbled and off-key voices. And so many of them don't know this Jesus. And they need him. Because though they are more virtuous than me, I'm not the standard - Christ is. And the stakes are high.

Mostly I just wish that all of those people would understand who we are and come to join us, because here's the big secret:

We're a total mess.

I know these people. I've been walking with this church family for over four years and I love them dearly. But I'm not kidding, we do not have life figured out. We wake up every day with struggles. I see these two people who are in bitter relational disagreement, striving to mend the relationship with grace. I see this guy going through a divorce. I see this guy struggling with pornography. I see these guys playing six hours of video games a day when I know God built them for so much more. There is insecurity and doubt. There is emotional disconnection with God and with the church family.

Don't get me wrong. God is certainly here. And things are most assuredly better than they would be without his Spirit helping us all to think differently and act differently in response. God changes lives. He restores people and helps us to prefer Himself over our sin. Christians are to be growing more and more like the Christ our religion is named after, the his Spirit does that by changing us from the inside out.

But we are not all put together. There are churches like that. Where people are religious and pretend to have everything all buttoned up into a neat little package. Maybe the people there really are way better at life than me. Either way - I don't fit in there. I'm part of this mess.

All I'm saying is that I wish you were there. I hope that you know that church is not for the people who have it all together, but for us - who are living in reality. It's a place for us to be taught by people who have been around the block a few more times, who know God's design for life a little bit better. It's a place to receive God's Spirit to help us in our time of need. It's a place for us to be honest about how life is really going - good or bad.

MORE THAN ANYTHING, it's the place where we can come to celebrate the spiritual transaction that took place of that single Roman cross 2000 years ago. Where Christ took upon himself all the junk that separates us from God, and gave us his perfection. So that even though we're a total mess - we understand that by faith in Christ, "God has made perfect those who are being made holy."

Those who are being made holy.

We're not there yet - but by God's grace we are striving for it. Won't you join us?

Thanks for reading.

"I honestly thought I was going to die..."

I've never claimed, I don't think, to be sane all of the time, but I'm much more often coldly logical than I am anything else. Sunday, however, I had quite a bout of irrationality. And yet - I was thinking more clearly than ever.

To paint you a story, I've been working overnights, and Friday night after work (at 8am) I spent a few hours outside. When I got home I immediately started suffering from the worst allergy symptoms I've ever had. I got very little sleep that day because of them, worked again that night, and was up until 3:22pm (i'll explain) the following day.

I was still feeling terrible and had just taken some Benadryl* to go with the Allegra I had taken that morning. I was not doing well physically or emotionally. As I laid down to sleep for what I was hoping would be a good 10 hours, my throat constricted just a little bit (a little swollen and sore) and I had a sudden fear that it would close completely during my drug-induced coma and I would suffocate and die while I was sleeping. And that no one would think to check on me due to my abnormal sleep schedule.

Now, this wasn't just your run of the mill, random, crazy thought - I honestly thought I was going to die. My mind started racing through the people in my life, and how they would be affected. When was the last time I called my Mom? What about that friend living out of town whose phone call from last week I hadn't yet returned? What about my fiance of only four days? Could I calculate her devastation? My mind whirred and spun.

What was my life about? Last year when I started calculating the days since my birth at 10,000 - would this Sunday, my 10,359th day, be my final one? The unseen counter that was not counting up from birth but down till my future death - was that really at a mere 359 that day I started counting up from 10,000?

And I was scared. I was scared to die. And that surprised me because I know in whom I have believed and where my true citizenship lies.

I was being irrational, but I also saw things so clearly. I saw what was truly important in life. How do you really know what you would think about if you were dying - unless you really thought you were dying? What a strange blessing. What a significant revelation.

And what did it turn out was important to me in those moments? Relationships. People.

And I saw with clarity just how tragic life really is. It was all very startling. I even wrote an "if you wake up" note on my whiteboard, with a time signature: 3:22pm. I wrote it to try to remind myself that Christ deserved every moment of my life if I woke up, because he would be the ultimate and only reason I would be graced with more days to live. And I wrote it to communicate what I knew so clearly at that moment to whoever would go through my things and read if after I died.

I did sleep for 14 hours. . . but I woke up.
Praise God, I woke up.

Unfortunately I'm back to my usual self. I don't have that clear picture of what's important. My time and mental energy are being used to make sure my food is tasty, my mind is entertained, and my life is comfortable. My urgency in relationships is gone. Ultimately, I'm wishing that I could be irrational once again so that I could once again think clearly about the important things - the things that will endure forever.

Thanks for reading.


*It was actually a double dose of Children's Benadryl, but who's keeping track.

The Strange Glory of Ordinary Things

Three of ten resolutions by an American author and English professor named Clyde Kilby (1902-1986). 

"He would have said that Christ purchased new eyes for us as well as new hearts. His plea was that we stop being unamazed by the strange glory of ordinary things."

RESOLVED: I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.

RESOLVED: I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.

RESOLVED: Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.


Thanks for reading.

Underneath everything in your life there's that...

Louis C.K. appeared on Conan O'Brien a couple nights ago and talked some about why he won't allow his daughters to have smart phones...He totally nailed it.

I appreciate a lot about what he says, not the least of which is his understanding of the necessity to just STOP - just stop. And think about life. He appears to be an atheist, and he holds that view very consistently, something many atheists don't do. I like that.

What I mean is that C.K. understands that, as he puts it, "underneath everything in your life there's that thing - that empty...forever empty. . . That knowledge that it's all for nothing and you're alone." When he says it, it's oddly hilarious, because it's something true that we can all relate to.

It's all for nothing and you're alone.

A consistent atheist must come to that conclusion. And that conclusion is bleak, hopeless, and depressing. But that's why I like C.K. and why I appreciate this video. He really gets that part of it. He even diagnoses our desires for constant entertainment, pornography, and gratuitous food consumption as mechanisms for us to escape the tragic reality we face without God.

I also like this video because it gives me a platform to talk about Christianity not as a religious impracticality, meant only for the moral or gullible, but as the answer to very real and practical questions about life. Faith in Christ's heaven as our future hope is the only way to erase the sadness talked about here in a deeply enduring way. All of our other coping mechanisms, including C.K.'s own as described in the video, are shallow and  temporary physiological fixes. They always leave us wanting.

So I agree with Louis C.K. here. Meet the sadness. "Let it hit you like a truck." But don't then make the mistake of constantly injecting your psyche with some figurative morphine to dull the pain. Pain is protection. And this sadness is like that. It's an alarm bell ringing in your soul. It's telling you that something is wrong. You need treatment to take away the pain at it's source. Otherwise you will go through life "kind of satisfied with your products, then you die." Alone.

If we die in our original state, we really will be alone, in outer darkness pounding on a door that no one will ever answer. But - if we believe the good news about Christ - we are united with Him and will not be alone. We will be with Him and all the other sinners he saved by his grace through his blood - forever.

Thanks for reading.