The God Who Sees Me

Hagar was an Egyptian slave.  Her owner, Sarai, struggled with infertility, and as was the custom in that place at that time, Sarai offered her slave to her husband to bear her children.  The children would be treated as Sarai's even though she did not bear them.

When Hagar got pregnant, there was a not-so-subtle shift in power.  Now Hagar had something over her owner, and she started to look down on Sarai.  Sarai immediately fought to preserve her power over Hagar by complaining to Abram about Hagar's behavior and abusing her.  So Hagar ran away.

She ran to the desert, found a spring of water, and sat down.  What must she have been thinking and feeling in that moment?  The injustice of her life must have left a bitter taste in her mouth.  She'd run this far, but where was she to go next, as a runaway slave?  How would she care for herself and her baby?

It was there that an angel of the Lord found her and blessed her and promised that she would have a son because God heard her misery.  And she named God the God Who Sees Me.

Human suffering can be so isolating, particularly in a culture so bent on comfort that any mention of a hurt is met with attempts to problem solve or an immediate aversion to further conversation.  No one wants to reflect on suffering or to think it might happen to them.  It's a rare person who can simply sit with one who is suffering and empathize.  So those who are suffering are often left without community to walk with them through it.  We often feel alone and forgotten. 

Leaving aside for a moment the questions of why (like why does God allow suffering at all, or why did he provide relief for Hagar but not for me [my friend, my relative]?),  I find great comfort in this story.  It says something about the character of God, the infinite God who at this time was focused mostly on a guy named Abram to achieve his redemptive purpose for the entire world.  Still, he saw and cared for an Egyptian slave in the midst of her mistreatment.  He saw and ministered to her at a personal level.  Although he didn't fix her situation, indeed, he sent her back to the place she would be mistreated and told her that her son would have a hard time with his siblings, he demonstrated that he was with her even in that difficult place.

God is still the same today.  Even though there are all kinds of human calamities.  Even where there are millions of people suffering at any given time.  Even while God still has a redemptive purpose that is bigger than any one person.  When there is nothing else to hold on to, God is still the God Who Sees Me.

Untitled

60 AD

Euodia stood under the cypress tree, hugging her traveling cloak to her body.  Still she shivered—neither the heat of the summer night nor that of the raging fire could reach her.    But the sound of the blaze insulated her from the gathering crowd.  She saw nothing but the fire, watching almost against her will as the flames danced up the side of her home, consuming everything.   Everyone.

 Atticus.  Jace.   Jace.

It could have been seconds she watched, or hours.  And then she crumbled to the ground and let out a single, piercing shriek.  It was there, huddled on the ground and silent, that Syntyche found her.  



*****

 Several years ago, after my 27 year-old brother had been diagnosed with lymphoma and gone through 9 long months of treatment, my sister-in-law asked me to write about suffering.  It was a super-hard time for my family, bringing my parents home from overseas for a time.  All of us were asking who and where God was and how something like this could happen to someone so young.

Years later, I find myself sitting in a place of a deeper and more sustained type of suffering.  One of my long-term housemates has been struggling with chronic, debilitating nerve pain and brain damage since a lightening strike 6 years ago.  Both of us have lost our fathers to tragic accidents in the intervening years, and daily I face evil and brokenness as I represent criminal clients.

Juxtaposed with all this distress, I find exhortation from Scripture to "embrace suffering" and to look on it as a gift.   In a culture that seeks comfort above almost all else, this Kingdom value is difficult to even get my mind around.  

So it's from this place that I am embarking on this new writing project, as yet untitled.  It's meant to be a novel, with the dual purpose of exploring issues related to suffering and providing background to the book of Philippians for readers who are unlikely to study the biblical back story before trying to understand and apply it to their lives.

In many ways, this project overlaps with what I have been writing about for the past few years.  The question of suffering and evil existing in a world where God is supposed to be good and all-powerful is a question that people ask at an emotional level.  Many seek to have that question answered before they can begin to trust Christ.  For me, and probably for them, the clipped answers of things like "God is in control" or "God is good" simply don't answer the issues of the heart.  And many of my questions are more about what sustainable faith looks like in the midst of suffering - like what does it look like day by day?  And how do you go on trusting and walking with Christ when you're facing down 30-50 years of the same type of suffering with no real possibility of relief aside from miraculous intervention? 

So I don't know what this is going to look like or how often I'll be able to post meaningfully.  I don't know how much of the fiction writing I'll share as compared to the wrestling with the idea and theology of suffering.  But I'm going to aim for the once-a-week posts that I've been doing for the last couple of years.  And I'm going to experiment with involving you as much as I can as the book develops.   

So if you're up for the ride, I'd love to know what you think of the opening scene.  What questions do you have about the characters?  What do you want to hear about next--where Euodia and Syntyche came from, or what they're going through now?

Free stuff :)

In lieu of actual thoughts for the week, I thought I'd take the chance to share 2 resources that are free to download tonight and tomorrow all day on Amazon.com.

Second Story
     Alex Cunningham's recent motorcycle accident changed his life - now he sees every day as a mission to share the good news of the gospel. But his long-time girlfriend, Annie Russo, just doesn't understand. And if that isn't enough, every time Alex opens his mouth to say something about God at work, everything backfires: his co-manager Drew rarely even looks at him now. But help comes in the form of Sara Locke, an ex-missionary widow with wisdom to spare. Together, Alex, Annie, and Sara discover how to see people's unspoken emotional barriers to faith in God. Along the way, Alex and Annie explore how to engage those barriers in natural and nonjudgmental ways as they begin to talk about their Christian faith with their friends. But one of them has more success than the other, and the stress on their relationship might just be too much. A blend of fiction and evangelism training, author Anna Rapa uses narrative storytelling to communicate key truths about evangelism in today's postmodern world. Dive in to the story of Alex and Annie, and let this story show you how to reach people in today's culture with God's transforming story of rescue.

Encounter Jesus
    Have you ever wondered what it was like to meet Jesus? This book is a set of imaginative stories based on seven important dialogues Jesus had with people in the gospels. Written in first-person, they invite you to experience Jesus as these people did. There are also discussion questions and questions for reflection if you want to discuss the stories with others.

These resources were created out of my own experiences walking beside people for the last 10 years or so.  They're based on things I've learned and observed and felt like I would've wanted when I was first starting to analyze what it looks like and means to live a life of faith in front of people who may or may not have any interest in that type of thing.  Hope they're helpful!  If you want more information about the resources, there's some good stuff at Da[w]bar House--the publisher's website.

The long view

I often wonder what it is that brings a person to finally surrender their life to Christ and begin to follow him.  Especially when I have been praying for a person for a year--or years--and I don't see any discernible effect.

And sometimes when I hear people talking about evangelism and transformation, they equate it with convincing someone to come to church with them.  Somehow, we have the idea that if we can just get someone inside the doors of the church, something magical will happen.  And many times, if we ask a friend or neighbor to church and they say no, we drop it forever.

When Jesus talked to Nicodemus about people entering the kingdom of God, he talked about how those who will find the kingdom of God must be born again.  And he described the Spirit of God as the one who brings this about.  So as I pray for my friends, I often pray that God will awaken the spirit of the person I am praying for--so that he is able to hear the voice of God and see God's interaction, so that the words of Scripture will come alive, so that the person will find that he is hungry to know the God who created him.  Sometimes I even pray this song, that calls out for people to awaken to God's activity and presence.

As I've done a lot of reading about the conversion process, I've also noticed the pattern that there is almost always a person of faith who is part of that process.  In the last book I read, Prof. Rambo called that person of faith the "Advocate," and explained that it's a dynamic and unpredictable process where information is shared and a person is invited into a new way of thinking and believing.  The advocate plays the role of an ambassador, illustrating what a life of faith looks like and being there to answer questions about how and why and what is going on.  So as I'm waiting and praying, I'm also trying to be that person of faith who is that ambassador or advocate.

For example, I do my best to live my life according to kingdom values.  This raises a lot of questions, like why I'm driving that old white mini van that I got for free instead of something a little more like what a lawyer would normally drive.  And when people ask, I am prayerfully prepared to answer and explain how God's example of selfless love motivates me to give a lot of time and money away.  This may ultimately lead to more conversations and more opportunities, or it may just be a visual example day by day.

Bottom line--it takes a long time to see someone come to follow Jesus.  The process is complicated and mysterious.  And yet, Jesus invites us to be involved.  He invites us to pray for the Spirit to transform lives--may his kingdom come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  But he also invites us to get involved, to be there sharing live with those who are not yet followers.

What about you?  What kinds of prayers do you pray for your friends?  Do you see yourself as an ambassador or an advocate?  How do you persevere even when you don't see immediate signs of interest in spiritual things?

Before the Conversation...

When I read stories like the one we talked about on Sunday--Philip walking up to the Ethiopian guy and being able to just jump right in and say all the right things so that he was immediately ready to follow Jesus--well, it feels a little bit intimidating.  Of course someone who walked and talked with Jesus, who ate with him and watched him talking to thousands of people, who could ask him all the questions that I always have rolling around in my head--of course Philip would know what to say.  But faith feels so different when it's not based on that kind of tangible interaction.

But over the years that I've been hanging out with people who are not yet following Jesus, I have learned that there are a whole lot of things I can do to prepare for the opportunities I might have.  In fact, if I'm really paying attention to what my friends are doing and what they're experiencing, I can often prepare ahead of time for conversations that may come up.

For example, I think that there are certain times in a person's life when he or she might become more spiritually sensitive--like the birth of a child or a marriage or a death.  If I see that coming on the horizon, I can begin praying weeks and even months ahead of time (1) that the Spirit would be working in that time to draw the person to Jesus, (2) that the Spirit will show me the questions of the heart that my friend might be asking, and (3) that the Spirit would show me what stories from Scripture or from my own life might connect to those questions my friend might have.  So when I get to the actual conversation, I've been thinking and praying for weeks and months about what I might say.

So much of evangelism, at a practical level, is about being watchful and prayerful.  It's about looking for what God is already doing in the hearts of the people around you.  It's about being willing to say something when the time is right.  It's about praying for wisdom and God's leading so that you say something that will help rather than hurt.

Here's a link to a page of questions that you can prayerfully think through as it relates the friend or friends that you're praying for right now.  I hope you'll take some time this week to begin the process of preparing to be there, at the right place and the right time with the right heart.

More than words

Charles Kraft wrote some 30 years ago that "God himself is the message [of the gospel], and we respond to a person."  He then argues that "if the message is life, only life is an adequate vehicle for its transmission."   Charles Kraft, Communication Theory for Christian Witness, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press 1983), 59.

 I've been kind of chewing on this idea for the last week.  A lot of times I think we feel like the most important thing is to introduce people to the vast narrative of Scripture--to be able to tell the whole story in a nice little elevator-sized speech.  We feel a lot of pressure to say the right things at the right time or to have all the right words.

But God himself is the message of the gospel.  When we invite people into faith, we are inviting them into relationship with a living Being who happens to be the creator and sustainor of all life.   So he is the message.  Relationship with God is the theme.  And relationship with God is something that permeates the whole of life.  Therefore, the message is too big for words.  It's too big for explanation.  It's not simply an idea.  The message of the gospel actually requires a person's whole life to communicate and demonstrate and illustrate what it looks like.

I think this is a freeing idea.  It frees me up to genuinely seek relationship with God, day by day.  It frees me up to chase after God's heart and try to hear his voice and try to build that relationship the same way I would any other relationship in life.  And while I'm doing that, I am illustrating and demonstrating and communicating to everyone I come into contact with the message of the gospel.  My life is a picture of what transformation and surrender looks like.

That's not to say I don't explain with words.  I think that's an important part.  But it is only part of the gospel message.  My life is the rest of that message.

What is your life saying to others about who God is and what he invites us to?  What has he transformed and renewed in you that demonstrates or illustrates what the gospel is like?

quilting connection

I spent the weekend working on piecing together a quilt.  It's got 900 pieces and 2 borders.  And no matter how I try, I can't sew a single piece on straight.  But I like quilting because first you cut up pieces of fabric, and then you put them together to make something even more beautiful than you started with.  In a life full of criminal law and other craziness, I need tangible beauty as a part of my everyday life.  And quilting speaks to me of the kind of restoration and reconciliation God is doing in the very broken world around me.

But my friend Mary can think of nothing worse than quilting.  We were actually sitting around a table a couple of weeks ago, talking about how we're connecting with people around us to be light in the world and share our relationships with Jesus, and she actually said something like, "thankfully, I don't have to do something like quilting!"  Instead, she has a monthly book club with some people in her neighborhood where she's intentionally and prayerfully building relationships with people around her.

What struck me in that moment again is how God has created us to be who we are on purpose.  Mary hates quilting, but she loves books, so she uses her love of books to reach out to those around her.  I connect with other women over quilts.  And both of us have opportunities to minister to those around us as we're pursuing the things that we love to do.

That's not to say, of course, that God couldn't (or doesn't) ask us to go beyond who we are.  Sometimes he does.  He asked Moses to speak for a whole nation.  He asked Jonah to go to Ninevah.  But even when you don't have a clear calling from God to do something outrageous, he wants to use you right where you are, right who you are, to reach the people that you're naturally going to want to be around anyway.

What are your interests or hobbies?  Who is in your life who shares these interests that you might be able to hang out with while doing what you love?  How can you pursue a relationship with that person through the activity that you both enjoy?