Memory as Hope

So on Sunday I was laying down, impatiently waiting for my back to heal, and I popped in the 3rd Lord of the Rings movie.  I'd recently seen the 2nd one when our symphony did a live performance of the music with the movie.  I was preparing to share with our church planting team about hope that evening, so I was watching the movie with thoughts of hope in mind.

I got to the part of the movie where Sam and Frodo are headed through the wilderness, finally abandoned by Gollum, and they are worn and ragged.  The journey has been long and difficult beyond belief.  They keep putting one foot in front of the other, but they struggle to do even that.  At one point, Frodo sort of collapses.  Sam stands there and looks at him, concerned, as always.  And then he starts to talk to Frodo, "Do you remember the Shire, Frodo?"  And he paints a picture of all the things that they left behind, all the things that they remember, all the things that they think are worth fighting for.

How powerful.

I thought of that in the context of the eternal story that we are living in the midst of.  We often think of hope as something to reach for that has no basis in reality, that has never happened before, that we can only just picture the possibility of.  But I think that we also have memory of something that's good and right and perfect that we still long for.  And the fact that it existed before actually can instill hope in us that we can find that again.

One of the most powerful aspects of the story of God is that there is hope for healing and restoration and re-creation.  We have a picture of what that was like - oh so briefly - in the first chapter of Genesis.  Where all relationships were right and good, where people and God walked together, and where work was not the toil it is today. 

When I'm physically suffering, attempting to counsel suicidal clients to get help, watching those around me physically or emotionally hurting, it's so easy to see just those things.  It's easy to see the problems and to be overwhelmed by them.  But the memory of the garden gives me hope that, through the power of Jesus and the work of the Spirit, re-creation is possible.  And not only is it possible, it will happen.  Someday.

The substance of hope

Last night we had the first advent conversation for the church plant I'm part of.  We talked about the first advent topic, which is the hope of things to come.  Although I would typically think of the beginning of the advent season as hope and expectation for the coming of the Messiah, the passages that we were looking at were all about hope for the 2nd coming of the Messiah.

So the question that I posed to the group is what is the nature of the hope that we have to offer ourselves and to the world?

In my daily life, brushing shoulders with all kinds of people in all kinds of places, there's a marked absence of hope.  There's a feeling that the world is not as it should be, and the imperfections of the world around us seem to take center stage in conversation.  Whether it's the economy (Michigan's is still really, really awful), the reality of an possibility of war, or the complete breakdown of our social relationships, people are living without hope.

In Isaiah 2, there's a really hopeful passage of Scripture where Isaiah talks about the end of time, when weapons will be given up for tools of peace.  Isaiah was speaking into a culture of instability and fear that is similar to where we are today, though the invasion of military forces was imminent for Judah.  But the hope that he mentioned was all in the future - the very distant future.  After reading, my question remained - what is the substance of hope that God offers today?  Is it just the hope of a future world where everything will be put right?

Because I'm not sure that hope actually really resonates with the people in my world.  The response I feel is the response of "so what?  How does that even remotely relate to my life right now and all of my current problems?  How does that put bread on the table or get me out of an abusive situation?"

As we talked about this as a community, I think we uncovered that there's a duality of hope that is offered.  Yes, there is hope for the future making-right-of-all things.  But there is also a way in which the body of Christ, the church, is to be an agent of hope and change in the world right now.  How do I know that the future restoration of all things is coming?  Because I am being restored - not just by personal healing, but by being a part of a transforming and transformative community.  

If I can say that I am being restored, recreated in God's image, being made a better person who makes better choices by the power of the Spirit in my life, then it's easier to hope for the ultimate restoration of all things.  If I'm part of a community that is transforming the culture around it, not in a damaging or disrespectful way, but in a way that reaches out and meets actual needs, perhaps it is easier to believe in the possibility of recreation.

Vulnerability is a good thing

So I injured my back this weekend and all of my lower back muscles have seized up.  I can barely move, so I'm laying here, flat on my back, trying not to move.  Besides preventing all activity (except reading and writing, I guess), this problem gives me the opportunity to think.

What I'm thinking about this morning is the importance of vulnerability in building relationships with other people.  One of the biggest problems that I see with the way I was taught to share faith in my childhood was that I was sharing from a position of power.  Maybe a better way to say this is that I was sharing with the belief that I had something to offer the world.  I was untouchable - all my problems had been solved, my life was perfect, and in order for people to have the same experience, they just had to believe the same way that I did.  I'm sure this wasn't the intention of the people who taught me, but it seems like the approaches I was taught lend themselves to that sort of attitude.  It's like you're expected to share from a platform or a soapbox.

But that's not really the real world.  Real people have problems.  The minute I portray that my life is perfect, I take myself and my faith out of the realm of the possible.  Not allowing myself to be vulnerable or need something from other people automatically limits the depth to which I can reach their hearts.

So something I've learned is to allow my needs and vulnerabilities to be an opportunity to invite people deeper into my life.  This isn't natural for me, given my life experience.  I am much more comfortable being self-sufficient.  But self-sufficiency is actually unattainable.  Having needs to be met by other people is part of the human condition and it's a really powerful way to build community with people.  And it's in that kind of community that I think conversations about faith are most impacting.

On the other side

I've only ever been prostelytzed to one time.  It wasn't religious, actually.  It was a hard-pitch sales job related to a book/philosophy that a family'd bought into.  I went to lunch with a friend and her mom.  They came armed with this book and a folder full of information.  It was weird.

We were going along, having nice conversation, when all of a sudden, the agenda came up.  In the context of this nice lunch, all of a sudden they were explaining to me why this approach to life was so wonderful and all the different things it could help solve.

They were careful not to pressure me.  They said it would be fine if I didn't want the book or the materials.  But they'd clearly bought into it and were now trying to pass it on.

I couldn't help but think right then about all the people Christians share with about the gospel.  I'm sure many times, we make people feel just that same way - a little awkward, maybe offended.  What was really weird was that I hadn't asked for this information.  I didn't see that I needed it.  My own approach to life was working just fine for me, thank you very much.

It felt so much different than it would have had I had a problem I couldn't solve and had asked for help.  It felt so much different than it would have if she'd just been telling me her story one day, or about something that had happened to her, and how this helped her.

I would like to say that I've never made anyone feel like that before.  But I'm sure that's not true.  I think it happens when I have an agenda, or when my message doesn't really relate to the context I'm in. 

I think there are a lot of different ways to talk about faith.  I have conversations about faith with my friends who don't have faith or have faith in different things.  I even challenge the pants off the people around me to live lives totally surrendered to God.  But the only time I've seen it bearing the kind of fruit I'm looking for (better communication between us, a deeper openness to God and his ways) is when it's within the context of relationship and actually relevant to what's going on and what's being talked about.

How do you walk with God?

So the question I was left with is how do you walk with God?  How do you know when he's leading you?

The reason this is a problem is because, although I'm probably a postmodern person, I grew up with modern parents who taught me to lead with my mind and allow my heart and spirit to follow.  The answer to my question in my home would be to read Gary Meador's book about knowing the will of God.  If I'm remembering correctly, the basic premise is that within the moral and ethical boundaries God has given in his word, I can choose to do anything I want to.  There is no "will of God" beyond that.  I saw my parents make decisions like this.  They would pray about things, they would use their rational minds to think about things, and then they would make the good/wise/right decisions within the boundaries of morality and ethics.

I don't know how this happened, but I actually believe that the Spirit also speaks into a person's life, if she is listening, and can specifically lead and guide.  I think there's biblical evidence that this at least happened in biblical times--even the apostle Paul speaks about being led by the Spirit when he's heading on his missionary journeys.  But my parents had great skepticism about this, mostly because of how immeasurable it is and how you can easily misinterpret your own experiences.

So anyway, most of my life I've lived in a way that I would call is "sensitive to the Spirit's leading", where I make choices about what to do and say based on how I believe the Spirit is specifically leading me.

But this year brought up that question for me again.  Because if I'm going to allow that God means to use people to meet needs in the world, and if I'm going to allow that I should only be doing the things that I'm led to, rather than trying to meet everyone's needs all the time, I have to figure this out, right?

So I was drawn again to the passage of John 15, about abiding in Christ.  And I remembered Galatians 5, which talks about walking in step with the spirit.  What I noticed is that there is very little explanation of what this means.  We're admonished to walk in step with the Spirit, to abide in Christ, but the passages don't really paint a picture besides those word pictures of being connected to the vine or walking in step with something.

So I'm left to interpret these passages in the light of the whole of Scripture.  So I think of Adam and Eve, walking with God in relationship in the garden.  I think of Noah, who somehow knew God and had enough faith in him to build a boat when he'd never seen any rain.  I think of Enoch, who walked with God at such a deep level that he never died.  And then I think of those 400 years of the silence of God when the Israelites were in captivity.  And I think of the 400 years between the last prophet and Jesus coming.  And then I think of how the Holy Spirit came to believers at Pentecost and is now living inside of us.

And what I have to conclude is that God doesn't just plop us here, wind us up like little wind-up toys, and let us go to do the moral and ethical things.  What I see from the overarching narrative of Scripture is that God does want a deeper connection with his people - a connection that acknowledges him and submits to him in all things.  I do believe, not just from Scripture but also from my own experience, that God does lead and guide and give specific direction sometimes.  I think I have to know him and abide with him to the extent that I'm able to recognize his voice in my life.

That does defy measurement.  It can lead me to pretty crazy places if I am not listening to the right things or am just confused.  But just because it's hard doesn't mean that we should get rid of the idea all together.  In the body of Christ, in Scripture, in the orthodox faith throughout history, I think we have some boundaries and some ways to measure what's truly from God.

So that's where I've landed on this issue.  I continue to struggle with the ideas.  But the bigger struggle is actually a heart struggle, and that's actually being willing to wake up every morning and ask the Spirit to lead and to guide, and then being willing to follow where he leads.

Walking thru darkness

I think I've talked before about what I know to be one of my biggest emotional barriers to faith and trust in God - that question of God's goodness and his provision in my life.

After about 10 years of avoiding the question, maybe 3 years ago I went away for a week of silence at this retreat center (for all you extroverts, I'm sure this seems extreme... even for me it was long).  After a couple of days there, I was actually willing to admit that those were my questions.  I think before that, I'd been afraid to verbalize them.  I know that God wasn't afraid of those feelings and questions, but for some reason, I hadn't been willing to own them. 

So anyway, this year has been one of the hardest of my life.  I saw some people who were very close to me suffering intensely, and it affected my life to such a point that I didn't see how it was ever going to get better.  I'd been living with the belief that I had to take care of them.  Going back to that question of whether God is good, whether he will meet needs.  I was not really believing that he would.  So I was trying to take care of everyone around me.  What would happen if I didn't?  How did I know that God really would take care of them?

I think I mentioned before my disillusionment with the belief that God will always meet all of our needs because that hasn't been my experience.  On the trip I mentioned, I allowed myself to ask those questions, and I even allowed the truth of the goodness of God to penetrate my mind.  But it didn't get all the way to my heart.  So when I hit on hard times this year, I couldn't allow the needs around me to go unmet.  So I was trying to meet them all.

I'm sure you can see what I couldn't - disaster waiting to happen, right?  There's no way I can do that.  There's no way that's possible.  I'm human, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), and I totally have limitations.

By this fall, I'd gotten myself to a point of total exhaustion.  I was barely able to pray beyond "God help me," and I couldn't see how I could keep going on that way.  That's because I couldn't.  With the help of a spiritual director, I was finally able to see what I'd been doing and why it wasn't working.

But then there was the question of what to do about it?  The question still remained - if God doesn't always meet everyone's needs supernaturally because he's expecting to use people, but sometimes his people aren't listening, then how can I sit there allowing peoples' needs to go unmet, knowing how devastating that can be?

The answer for me came from John 15 and the picture of abiding in Christ.  I can only control my own behavior and my own willingness to hear the call of God in my life.  I can't meet everyone's needs, not even all of one other person's needs.  So instead of trying to do that, I had to learn to just be faithful and obedient to what God was calling me to do.  I had to abide in him and his word in my life and be obedient to the things he was leading me to do. 

This brought up another question, which is how to know what God is calling you to do.  More on that tomorrow.

For now, I just want to say that I am so thankful that God walked through this with me.  I am so thankful that I'm beyond the darkness that this year brought.

Learning to speak

So I have a friend who's been telling me for a while that one of the most valuable roles we can play in another person's life is to be what she calls a "prophet."  When she says this, she doesn't mean the kind of prophet from the Old Testament, calling down judgment or blessing from the heavens or having a specific message handed to you for another person.

I think what she means is having the ability to recognize God's work in the world around and pointing it out and contextualizing it for people.  She is always saying that one of the difficulties in our culture right now is that we're driven by emotion, but often people don't really have the ability to put words around what they feel or what they need.  One of the most important things we can do for people is sit there and reflect things back to them - thoughts, feelings, and where we see God working.

That kind of role is really uncomfortable to me.  I'm a peace-loving person.  I like to be in harmony with everyone around me.  I'd rather be listening than talking, and I'm usually pretty slow to give other people my opinions about things.  So to actually take the step to say, "hey, here's something I'm seeing," or "have you considered this question?" is always a risk.

What I don't want to be is that arrogant kind of person who walks around bestowing her wisdom and thoughts on everyone around, regardless of where they're at or what kind of effect my words will have.  But I do desire to be available to help people to recognize the work of God in their own lives.

I've gotten more comfortable speaking into the lives of my friends.  My approach is still to ask questions, but I think they've become more pointed as the years have gone by.  Somehow, as I've become more familiar with my own spiritual barriers, I've been able to see those that my friends are running into too, and I can ask questions that invite people to think deeply about what's going on in their own hearts.

It's much harder to do that for people who are casual acquaintances.  To speak into someone's life who you just barely know seems like a bigger risk.  At least when you have a long history of friendship, there's enough of an investment in the relationship that if you say something wrong or hurt someone's feelings, they're likely to be willing to work through it with you.  But with someone you barely know, there's no investment.  And you don't know the person well enough to be able to predict how your words will be received.

I just had the opportunity or the invitation to do that with someone I just met.  I hesitated for a long time, because I didn't want to offend.  I wasn't really sure where the person was at spiritually, and I never want to create a barrier where one doesn't exist.  But after praying about it, it seemed like the right thing to do, so I took the plunge.  I think it ended up working out.  The jury's still out.

Anyway, the key for me is learning to be guided by the Holy Spirit.  It's amazing how the Spirit is working and guiding to meet the needs of his children.  And it's actually fun to be able to be a part of what he's doing there.  It's a matter of learning to see what's going on and accepting the invitation to participate, because when it does go right, it's really cool to see how God is able to use your words and actions.