The chorus was like fingers playing my heart strings.
It was like a cool glass of something I forgot was my favorite.
It was like realizing I stood shoulder to shoulder with an old friend.
And it went something like this:
te doy gloria, gloria
te doy gloria, gloria
te doy gloria, gloria
a ti Jesus
I know what you’re thinking… “that’s it? that’s all it took?” And, yes. It was that simple. I was standing in the church service this morning with people from El Salvador and Mexico and Guatemala and the chorus came in like a wave on my soul’s shore.
I give you glory, glory
I give you glory, glory
I give you glory, glory
to you, Jesus
It is not a new truth – that the Lamb is worthy to receive glory – but it is a truth that feels weightier when felt the world over. This morning I sang it again in the language where I witnessed miracles, the language that made me desperate for miracles. And when I sing about giving Him glory, I do just that. I give Him the glory.
With each day, I’m tempted to write another chapter in Ecclesiastes and with each day God gives more reasons to be glorified. And so I sing. Sometimes the simplest phrases can best put all the tangled messes of daily toil into proper perspective. Sometimes the simplest chorus carries with it deep and complex theology about sovereignty and supremacy and hope. Yes. It’s that hope I pressed into as I sang with families in the chapel at the retreat center, because we are desperate to give glory to the only One worthy.
The bridge rings out a phrase weighty enough to follow all the glory giving:
con una corona de espinos
te hiciste Rey por siempre
That was it – one crown of thorns and it crowned the King of forever. So, today, I sang. I sang to give God the glory and I did just that.
I’m between jobs 1 and 2 and it’s shaking out to be a day of sifting. This Friday is being sifted until only the too-big pieces remain on top. And what is of most importance is becoming very, very clear.
It’s normally not so easy to see with an eternal kind of sight. There are coffees to buy and websites to navigate. There are attendance sheets to make and databases to conquer. There are hours to wile away and weekend plans to make. There is an errand to run and another book to add to the pile of those I should read. But, today there is sifting.
And after this Friday is shaken, the big pieces that remain have little to do with what I’ve gained or stored or clocked or typed. The big pieces are eternal things that I cannot manufacture – things that put all other things in beautiful, right perspective.
Today, I am praying that my life is about the main thing, that I don’t treasure my life more than the main thing, and that all other things will fall through my open hands so that I will cling to what remains. I am praying that I delight in Christ so much that I cannot imagine keeping this delight to myself. In my delight and revelry, in my worship and bust-at-the-seams joy, I am praying I live fully in the freedom His suffering allows so that He may be glorified as others hear the same call to freedom from my lips.
Because He is worthy to receive the reward of his suffering.
Darkness fell like a hush; the lights circled us as we circled the fire. The jumping glow splashed on our faces and warmed our autumn skin as we cupped black coffee in thankful hands. The sky speckled with stars and the creatures sang out their evening melodies.
And we sat in the front row in the glorious theater of God.
After reading Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, we had all carried around conversations that couldn’t happen over the phone and couldn’t happen half-hearted. This night was set apart to try to understand someone from the great cloud of witnesses – to look at the life of someone who treasured the Lord in such a way that he was ruined for anything else.
And we sat in the front row in the glorious theater of God, right there in the backyard of an Iowa farmhouse.
The candles glowed in mason jars to light the path from the woodshop, where we enjoyed a bountiful spread of German delights, and inside I was a mess of emotion. A weighty, good mess of gratitude and purpose and joy and hope and pain and fear and defeat and doubt and sorrow. When despair seems simpler and right, stories of hope read more like fiction. But not last night… not when we remembered people whose lives were anchored by one thing, driven by one thing, delighted by one thing … and not when I looked around at the firelit faces of my friends, whose struggles on stormy seas are anchored deep down by the same greatest treasure.
The struggle is not to stay upright, but to rejoice in the anchor which holds us. Bonhoeffer’s life was not about making the message of Jesus look good or better or more intellectual than whatever religion his peers and countrymen presented. He was not about being interesting or popular or approachable, at least in the end. Bonhoeffer purposed to be about truth. He set out to know God and to draw others into a knowledge of God as it is revealed in the Word of God. His culture said a lot of things, burned a lot of books, and printed a lot of promotional materials for massive political campaigns… but Bonhoeffer had eyes to shake off the surface storms and cling to the hope that anchored and the only hope that would reveal the evil that had usurped the hearts of his countrymen.
This. This is beautiful, I thought.
I love how David Hall describes John Calvin’s thoughts on our seats in the glorious theater.
Calvin described this world, moved by God’s providence, as theatrum gloriae. For him, every aspect of life from work to worship and from art to technology bears the potential to glorify God (Institutes,1.11.12). Creation is depicted as a platform for God’s glory (1.14.20) or a “dazzling theater” (1.5.8; 2.6.1), displaying God’s glorious works. Calvin viewed the first commandment as making it unlawful to steal “even a particle from this glory” (2.8.16). Such comments support Lloyd-Jones’ later claim that for Calvin “the great central and all-important truth was the sovereignty of God and God’s glory.” (“The Theater of God’s Glory” by David Hall at Ligonier Ministries)
I went away from the night knowing we hadn’t talked about everything, hadn’t appreciated history completely, hadn’t understood theology thoroughly… but oh so thankful that we showed up at the theater. I’m thankful I have others with whom I can behold the glory of God and I’m thankful for the support we give each other to be unapologetic about truth.
Today, I am still purposing to know God, find out what pleases Him, and delight to do those things. And today I am thankful for those I can share steps with along the way.
It’s a strange unsteady that catches me today – grieving the evil and glorying in the God who overcomes. I can’t see how anyone who puts thought to theological matters can be any less than always emotional – either deeply despairing or deeply delighting. It is both despair and delight at once that stretch me and today I read these words that remind me of the tension,
“In all your longing to love as Christ loved, you sometimes forget that true love for one thing will, or at least it should, produce a hatred for whatever stands against it.” (from Note to Self by Joe Thorn)
I do forget. I forget that loving as Christ means hating what stands in opposition. “Hate” sounds unpopular. It sounds… mean. But when I forget to develop a healthy hate for my sin, I make friends with destruction. When I forget to develop a healthy hate for the sin in others, I lead friends to destruction.
And in all this, I am finding what it means to cling.
In the strange unsteady that rocks my boat today, I am learning to cling like my life depends on my grip. My desperate hold is always rewarded by the unfaltering strong arms of my Redeemer, who reminds me my life depends on His strength.
O, Heart Bereaved and Lonely
Words by Fanny Crosby
1. O heart bereaved and lonely,
Whose brightest dreams have fled
Whose hopes like summer roses,
Are withered crushed and dead
Though link by link be broken,
And tears unseen may fall
Look up amid thy sorrow,
To Him who knows it all
2. O cling to thy Redeemer,
Thy Savior, Brother, Friend
Believe and trust His promise,
To keep you till the end
O watch and wait with patience,
And question all you will
His arms of love and mercy,
Are round about thee still
3. Look up, the clouds are breaking,
The storm will soon be o’er
And thou shall reach the haven,
Where sorrows are no more
Look up, be not discouraged;
Trust on, whate’er befall
Remember, O remember,
Thy Savior knows it all
We suffer the sale of cheap words, but we buy them still.
Every day their consequence cuts afresh the wound of our failure and exposes all the ways we fall short.
“The hill I’m walking up is gettin’ good and steep
but I’m still looking for a promise even I can’t keep.”
Brandi Carlile can sing. She can sing and boy! can she write. Her song, “A Promise to Keep” has been rolling around in my soul since she released a free EP on Noisetrade. When I listen to this song, my shoulders slump with sadness – a kind of resignation that wraps me in and weighs me down. The words are heavy bundles with long, painful sighs because the notes sing the melody of hurt.
Carlile sings hurt… maybe because she has suffered the sale of cheap words, but she buys them still. Maybe because she feels the consequence of fresh cut failure-wounds and is exposed to all the ways she falls short. It’s a humanity kind of failure – a shortsightedness that presumes another promise spoken, believed, and broken.
My shoulders fold in and my lip shakes a little and I hurt with her for the insufferable exchange – the buying and selling of promises.
I still talk to you in my sleep
I don’t say much cause the hurt runs too deep
I gave you the moon and the stars to keep
but you gave them back to me
The hill I’m walkin up is gettin good and steep
but I’m still looking for a promise even I can’t keep
I still lay on my side of the bed
I dance alone when the last bottle’s spent
memories like a river runnin through my head
I’ll have me an ocean before I’m dead
The hill I’m walkin up is gettin good and steep
but I’m still looking for a promise even I can’t keep
I still whisper sweet words to you
and when I’m busy, or have nothing to do
I pray to god, that my words ring true
and that your words might reach me too
The hill I’m walkin up is gettin good and steep
but I’m still looking for a promise even I can’t keep
I can’t keep it…
My hearts in pieces so please understand
I’ve tried to jump, but I’ve nowhere to land
so give me your heart and I’ll give you my hand
and I’ll try as goddamn hard as I can
The hill I’m walkin up is gettin good and steep
but I’m still looking for a promise even I can’t keep
She is desperate for an impossible promise and her grief is filling up oceans, recklessly hoping there is someone better than she. I get woven in to her grief like I’m knit right into the melody’s sweater. I croon it out my car windows and sing it to the silent roof.
Why can’t I find someone who keeps a promise these days?
Why can’t I keep a promise?
And with my heart freshly beaten, my soul cast down at our dreadfulness, I hear sweet words proclaimed from the pen of Paul.
For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
(2 Corinthians 1:19-22 ESV)
For the promises of God find their Yes in him (Christ).
Through Christ I can utter my beaten, battered, folded-in AMEN to God for his glorious promises kept to a suffering and obstinate people. Not one of us can sing Carlile’s song and not know her hurt. But, oh! that we might claim the AMEN in Christ – who was the fulfillment of God’s promises and evidence of God’s faithfulness.
God establishes us in Christ, anoints us, puts his seal on us, and gives us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
The hills we walk up will get good and steep and full of suffering. But, even as we sing of our despair in broken promises, let us glory in the God whose promises are all Yes! in Christ. Every promise, always yes. Every promise, always kept.
I met a woman today while I was running errands for work. We fell into small talk and she asked if I had anything “fun” planned today. I took the road most traveled with my bland reply, “Just work, I guess.”
I thought of all the stories I could weave about my complicated life and my unpredictable schedule… and then I heard her ask, “Where do you work?” I kept up with the North American charade and chose the job where I have an office, “I work at the E Free Church here in town.”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh! The one on 24th street?”
Our conversation turned a corner and I arrived again at a crossroads. Though technically I’m employed by a church right now as an administrative assistant, I am growing into a stronger conviction about the power of non-vocational ministry. When Jesus spoke the commission over the disciples in Matthew 28, his directive was to make disciples – baptizing them in the name of the Father and teaching them to obey all His commands.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
(Matthew 28:19-20 ESV)
What he did NOT say was this, “Go into all the world and find leaders that you can pay to be disciples and hopefully people will follow them.”
We are settling for a powerless Christianity when we rely on paid ministry workers to carry all the weight of the Body of Christ. We have an amateur complex – an idea that we aren’t qualified or capable of reading and understanding the Word of God unless it is unpacked by an “expert” of the faith. We have elevated individuals in the church because of their knowledge or charisma or firm Sunday handshake and, in the process, given ourselves a ready excuse in the face of spiritual failure. “Well, I know I messed up again… but I’m no Pastor John. I wonder if there’s, like, a program where someone would help me with my addiction.” We make excuses (and we accept others’ excuses) for skipping devotions, church responsibilities, and Bible studies because we’re not “in the ministry” and there’s a lot more than Bible going on in our lives.
What?
Again, when God gave the direction to go and make disciples he was talking about regular people living like Jesus and inviting other regular people to do the same.
Do you know that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52)? He grew into more knowledge of the Lord just like he grew into size 28 jeans (or robe). Every day he found out more about His Father and every day He obeyed with more joy and every day Jesus found more favor with God and man. This was his vocation. He was expert at loving the Lord, growing in knowledge of Him, and serving others.
No one is off the hook. Not a pastor? You’re qualified if you are born again. Don’t have a degree in women’s ministry? You are adequate in Christ. Not confident in your less-than-perfect Christian journey? Jesus wants you, too.
Here’s the catch (wink): you WANT to be on the hook. For all the squirming and protesting Christians do to get out of ministry and outreach and loving neighbors, they don’t realize that a worm on a hook is how you catch a fish. Jesus has qualified us to be His ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20). God is making His appeal through us to the world so that they might come to know the saving work of Christ.
WHOA.
No one is off the hook, but no true Christian should want to be anywhere else.
God has called, redeemed, and equipped regular people to take His message of redemption to the world in our everyday, regular encounters with regular people. So, why is it so much easier for people in vocational ministry to have conversations about the Lord?
We are all in ministry.
We are all on “staff.”
We are all called to make disciples.
I was doing arithmetic to the rhythm of the running path tonight…
And things were adding up like this:
3 weeks
1 summer camp
1 missions conference
4 states
5 jobs
5 different beds
1 parent meeting
3 days of family reunion
hundreds of smiles, sighs, and near-tears
_____________________________
Arithmetic is not my thing, so I shook the numbers out of my head and thought about Old Testament priests. I thought back to their days full to brimming with activity – with messy, bloody, smelly activity. A priest’s job was never done. He would never get home at night and know that any real progress had been made. He would always, always have work and it would always, always be blood-drenched.
The entire vocation of “priest” was set up (in grace) because of man’s sin revealed through the law given to Moses. The people in Nehemiah 8 wept as they understood how far they had fallen from right relationship with the Lord. The distance was so far that there was no hope of recovery. The people listened to the Book of Law and looked at the chasm created by their sin and they knew – there was no way to reach right relationship with the Lord again. So they wept … and the priests worked overtime with blood-soaked hands because the chasm was so great.
The system was intricate and difficult to maintain, but the priests returned to work every day after blood-filled day because it was the only way that sin would find atonement.
And then there was Jesus. Oh, I love my Jesus.
Jesus, the great High Priest, stepped into the chasm that couldn’t be filled for thousands of years to accomplish what could never be bought by thousands of sacrifices. All those trips to the temple – all those long voyages – came to an end when Christ set his face toward Jerusalem.
He was the sacrifice that ended all other sacrifices because His was sufficient.
The temple no longer needed to bustle with bloody activity and the work of the priests changed overnight… and Jesus sat down. Though Jesus is the great High Priest (a vocation that would mean work without end), He sat down at the right hand of the Father (Mark 16:19).
There is something about the Truth of what Christ accomplished on the cross that can be claimed when mornings look menacing and when minutes refuse to stretch a moment further.
Jesus accomplished what nothing else could to offer what nothing else can and there’s not a single shred of doubt about it. The weight of His confidence is measured in His sure, seated posture next to His Father.
And that is why all my numbers smashed in to all my days inside of weeks point to One blood-soaked sacrifice and all the peace of a seated King.
A weepy weariness hides inside my chest while my heart sings parallel a convincing and clear song. It is not a sadness that weeps, but a longing.
Jesus, I come.
I’m walking out of everything that lacks in this day and into all the abundance Christ provides. This morning feels like a desperate sprint out of distress and to jubilant song. Jesus, I come to Thee.
This week I’m speaking at a camp full of 10, 11, and 12-year-olds and my heart is almost sick with desire that they know the surpassing joy of Jesus – to reverence His power, imitate His love, and join with Him in suffering. Oh, how I love my Jesus. There is absolutely nothing sweeter. Last night, I left the counselors with the students to make meaning of my talk on suffering while I prayed with my mentor in a quiet room.
My talk last night was supposed to be on love. Because God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline (2 Tim. 1:7). As I was preparing and praying and enjoying the presence of the Lord (don’t let anyone ever kid you – preparing to speak is the gift of more time with Jesus), I thought about Paul writing the letter to Timothy from prison. I remembered that when God first invited Paul to be his child, he invited Paul to suffering (Acts 9). I remembered the orders Jesus received from the Father – to suffer because God so loved. And when Christ set his face toward Jerusalem and toward the ultimate suffering of the cross, it was for the joy set before Him.
I know I fumbled and mumbled with my wild gestures and crazy illustrations, but my whole heart hopes that this morning the campers have a notion that love and suffering cannot be separated… and that somehow God has woven a mystery of joy into the pair. As we become more like Christ, we can expect to suffer… and delight that we might know our great Redeemer more intimately.
And so today, I set my gaze opposite all other things because it is to Jesus I come. He is my supreme hope, delight, strength, and overwhelming joy.
Out of my bondage, sorrow and night,
Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come;
Into Thy freedom, gladness, and light,
Jesus, I come to Thee;
Out of my sickness, into Thy health,
Out of my want and into Thy wealth,
Out of my sin and into Thyself,
Jesus, I come to Thee.
Out of my shameful failure and loss,
Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come;
Into the glorious gain of Thy cross,
Jesus, I come to Thee;
Out of earth’s sorrows, into Thy balm,
Out of life’s storms and into Thy calm,
Out of distress to jubilant psalm,
Jesus, I come to Thee.
Out of unrest and arrogant pride,
Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come;
Into Thy blessed will to abide,
Jesus, I come to Thee;
Out of myself to dwell in Thy love,
Out of despair, into raptures above,
Upward for aye on wings like a dove,
Jesus, I come to Thee.
Out of the fear and dread of the tomb,
Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come;
Into the joy and light of Thy home,
Jesus, I come to Thee;
Out of the depths of ruin untold,
Into the peace of Thy sheltering fold,
Ever Thy glorious face to behold,
Jesus, I come to Thee.
On my 15 hour trip across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan, I finally had time to process Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo. The lyrics to the new Matthew Perryman Jones song, “O Theo” have accompanied many of my night runs, but I hadn’t realized they were so old. They date back to intimate correspondence between Van Gogh and his brother and one such letter inspired this especially earnest and confessional song.
There’s something magnetic about the words – something that pulls you in and makes you listen to what was painfully penned from a brother to a brother of a dreadful waywardness.
Under the silence of water,
Into a sky full of birds
Out from the land of our fathers,
I am falling on your words,
Oh…
Dark as the night of a preacher,
I made a bed out of hay
They paid me a handful of money,
I gave it all away…
All away…
And the righteous raised their stones
And the devil threw his arrow
That was longing for a home
With nowhere to go,
Oh, Theo…
In the half-life of the city,
She took off all of her clothes
I flew from the height of the mountains
Into a valley of dry bones
All alone
Then my heart was still unknown
I was drunk and full of sorrows
I was longing for a home
With nowhere to go,
Oh, Theo…
So, I set fires of starlight,
To burn up against the despair
I was caught in the tangles of midnight’s
Long, unanswered prayer:
‘Are you there?’
And the light of morning grows
On a field of fallen sparrows
I was longing for a home
With nowhere to go,
Oh, Theo…
Are you pulled in to Van Gogh’s plea for a home? Does something deep inside turn over when you read about his waywardness?
Van Gogh describes his desperate and failed attempts to cure himself of loneliness. He reaches out and lays all things bare, longing for a home.
In a phone conversation the other night, I heard the same longing – a beautiful soul captured by grace who longed for the security of “home” without the fear of abandonment. I heard her confession of sin and her fragile hope of new life. I heard fear drip from every excuse as she listed reasons why now is a hard time to turn from sin.
And right there we called spades “spades.” We agreed about her sin and the fear that made her cling to it. We agreed that her life looked like Jesus hadn’t accomplished anything on the cross – that He wasn’t capable of holding her up when her world crashed.
We agreed that Jesus wanted a complete turn from sin so that she could look Him fully in the face and hear the words, “Child, you are mine.”
I remember sitting on my friend’s porch a cool, August night in high school. I remember trying desperately to convince my friend that I had sin to deal with. I remember my friend saying, “That’s it?”
We all get desperate and blinded by sin. The only hope of redemption we have is to believe that Christ willingly stood in the place of that sin (because it is sin) and continually sits at the right hand of God interceding for us, not that we would continue in sin but that we would enjoy the freedom that comes through repentance.
And it is with this honest, repentant heart that we do find a home that is secure.
I was driving around today, overlapping errands with more errands while the next few weeks ran circles in my brain. The breeze picked up as I accelerated little Eddie down the road with the windows wide open. My arm reached out as Ellie Holcomb came over my radio and I had a moment there on George Washington Carver Ave. I started smiling to myself because I was strapped in and my brain couldn’t run away without my body. I was stuck in my car for a stretch of minutes – confined to enjoy the wind and the sun and the melodies in my speakers. I was stuck and I loved it.
With my hand out the window, I thought about those times in our lives where we feel we are holding on for dear life. I pictured my hands clenched around a vine with knuckles white. Then, the picture in my mind zoomed out and I knew the vine could take all my weight. I also realized I was not only holding on for dear life – I was enjoying the greatest rush as I swung over lakes and rivers and treetops in the jungle. “Holding on for dear life” might feel desperate, but it is also feels exciting and unafraid.
Today, I am praising the Lord and forgetting not His benefits.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The LORD works righteousness
and justice for all who are oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses,
his acts to the people of Israel.
The LORD is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.
For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children’s children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.
The LORD has established his throne in the heavens,
and his kingdom rules over all.
Bless the LORD, O you his angels,
you mighty ones who do his word,
obeying the voice of his word!
Bless the LORD, all his hosts,
his ministers, who do his will!
Bless the LORD, all his works,
in all places of his dominion.
Bless the LORD, O my soul!
(Psalm 103 ESV)
MUSINGS IN THE MIDST 