The Narrow Gate

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Scribble.

My bible is a journal.  

When I was a kid, I remember the Family Bible.  Capital F, capital B.  This sucker was a good 10 pounds, 8.5" x 11" with gold leaf covering the edge of every page.  King James version, of course, and complete with "Airbrushed Jesus" affixed on the handcrafted leather front cover.

I never read the thing.  I was too afraid to.  God forbid I wrinkled, ripped or sneezed on one of those golden pages.  Later on in life, selfish, broken and short on cash, I may have considered what it would fetch at a pawn shop - especially in such pristine condition.

But as I got serious about following Jesus, the unhealthy value I placed on a bunch of paper and ink started to wane.  Spilling half a cup of High Octane on it definitely accelerates the process.

At any rate, as time has gone on, I've found myself making notes from sermons in my bible, jotting down thoughts, prayers or questions as I've studied on my own...even little flashes of wisdom from conversations overheard on the street.  And it's been pretty cool in a lot of ways looking back over the scribbles and getting rushed back into those moments; remembering where I was spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually in my faith.

I was reading through Mark this morning and found myself caught up in some old notes.  Timeless truths in fading ink.  

One of the notes said, "My picture of God determines everything else in my life."  Great reminder.

Another one was an old Jewish blessing, "May the dust of your rabbi fall upon you." I've used that one in a lot of conversations and sermons.

Next to Mark 1:3, I wrote "Make your heart ready for God so that you can be changed" and "remove the spiritual debris..."  I jotted down "The primal call of Jesus," where he says, "Follow me."

I've stopped worrying about keeping my bible neat and clean.  I'm cool with the dog-eared and dirty pages.  I don't care about different colored ink and wavy underlining.  

The gospel is messy.  So is my life.  

And my bible is starting to reflect that.  The dirtier it gets, the more beautiful it becomes to me.  

Looking through these pages this morning reminds me to stop trying so hard to keep things so neat and clean in my little world.  To stop faking holiness.  To stop pretending that I've attained some spiritual achievement.  A high price was paid to purchase us out of that kind of futile living - we should all take full advantage of that gift. 

Maybe there's some beauty in coloring outside the lines after all.  Redemption in the scribbles.  

So go on...get a fresh new bible and a set of good pens. And then get to work.  Scribble.  Write.  Question.  Pray.  Don't be afraid to get dirty and put pen to paper.  

Make it a minor act of rebellion against the religious hypocrisy that venerates pages over people. Make your book shout "freedom" every time you open it up at church.  

I promise you'll enjoy the mess.

"And then God answered: 'Write this.  Write what you see...'" - Habakkuk 2:2 

Stars.

It was in looking up that God cascaded down on me tonight.

We live in a sleepy little town in Connecticut...miles of tree-lined sidewalks drawing straight lines in front of quaint 100-year-old colonial houses.  All roads lead to the town center - paved in parts with actual cobblestone that looks like something out of a movie set after a post-dusk rain in the summer.  It's a pedestrian-friendly town where people are always within walking distance to wherever they need to go. It's Boulder without the patchouli.

There's not a lot happening here.  We're stuck in the urban purgatory between Boston and Manhattan and Hartford isn't really what you'd call a metropolis.  The lack of city lights is further snuffed out by the incredible amount of New England foliage.  The canopy of trees out here, even in the wintertime, muffles most of the embers glowing from an already dim region.

But the cool thing is that the lights in the darkness end up shining that much brighter.

And it was walking home tonight that I found myself staring up at the stars and just getting lost in God. 

I mean, really getting lost in him.

I was the only one outside tonight for most of my walk and as I saw this huge expanse of creation unravelling above me, I just felt this immense sense of love from God - which quickly turned into an immense sadness.

Love, because it was as if this night - that moment - all the sights, sounds, smells - were set in place just for me.  Just to make me feel God.  Just to draw me in.  It was absolutely beautiful. It was big.  It was art.

And then, my heart broke - because I wondered how many times I walked right through these created moments - these gifts from God - without even noticing.  

How many times have I kept my head down, watching nothing but my shuffling feet and thinking of nothing but myself?  How many times have I blown by a spectacular sunset trying to get home for a tipoff?  Or passed through the fresh, clean air of a new morning with zero acknowledgement of the miracle of daybreak?

And I wonder how God felt as I walked right past him in those moments.

I wonder if he waited with great anticipation - thinking about what my reaction might be...hoping I'll like what he made.  Excited to see my smile, or maybe just a deep breath, in response to his love communicated through creation.

I'm a terribly ungrateful kid sometimes.

Why am I like this?  I can't be the only one who does this stuff...

I think our problem is boxes.  

We live in them.  We work in them.  We die in them.

We wake up in one every morning, take one to work every day, sit in one until the sun goes down, take another one back home, park in one, eat in one and go to bed in one.  We do it again and again and again.  There have been days when I would be lucky to get 10 minutes of actual exposure to the world.

And without any outside exposure, we lose our wonder.  We stop seeing the beauty of creation.  We get bigger and God gets smaller...until he only exists in theory - if at all.

But the cool thing is that this numbness is broken once you just get outside and look at the stars. When you lift your eyes and look up.  When you stop rushing around from one thing to another in a box.  You start to see God and feel his love given through those moments he made just for you.

I felt that tonight.  And within that moment a funny thing happened.  The way I thought about everything started to change.  

All the stuff that sucked moments before all of a sudden became beautiful.

The whole concept of snow and ice became an incomprehensible miracle to me.  The temperature made me acknowledge more fully the sensory response by my body to the cold.  And feeling the frigid air sucked into my lungs made me consider the miracle that is the human body.  

Breathe deep.  Feel your heart beat.  Look at the moon.  

Now tell me there's no God...

So if you've got some clear skies tonight, take a minute...go outside...and look up at the stars. Soak it in, then close your eyes and let the cascade of God's love shower down all over and around you.

      

    

Grey.

Nobody really likes the color Grey.  Religious people especially despise it.

My wife and I spent last night with a beautiful friend going through an ugly divorce.  We poured some tea, ate some brownies and sifted through the rubble of life as pain drizzled down on us all.  And as she sat on our couch one legal decree and a gavel bang away from the end, some pretty powerful wisdom was spoken.

I'm always amazed at how much profound truth and spot-on perspective come from those wearily bearing the fresh scars of war.

So we're talking about relationships and restoration and forgiveness - and she's sharing how difficult it is to negotiate the conflict of divorce and destroyed relationships as they crash into the teachings of Jesus - when she says something to the effect of reconciliation not being primarily intended for people to people, but rather for people to God. 

Record scratch.

 

Lightening flash.

 

Wait, say that again...

 

Yeah, God wants us above all to have restored relationship with Him. His primary goal is to reconcile us to himself.  Not each other.  Oh yes, I think I read that somewhere once (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).

 

This truth hung on me - it haunted me, and stole my sleep.  I wondered then, if reconciliation among God's children - person to person - isn't a promise like we are sometimes overly quick to proclaim.  I thought that maybe reconciliation isn't always going to happen between us in our relationships with one another.  I started to see how sin can take hold and get in the way, preventing reconciliation between mother and daughter, father and son, brother and brother, husband and wife.

 

But inside of that frustrating thought came the truth that Jesus stands firm and always desires to reconcile us to himself.  He stands as the one eternally ready to forgive.  Always ready to wash us clean.  Always ready to redeem.  Always ready to pour out grace and mercy on the ones who truly seek it.

 

I wonder is we're sometimes deceived into thinking that as Christ-followers, we must continue to strive for reconciliation with each other at all costs.  Chasing it down so hard that it begins to destroy us, and pursuing it to the point of experiencing repeated emotional, spiritual and maybe even physical abuse, compromising the safety of ourselves and the people we love.

 

And I honestly wonder (cue the silly little bracelets), what would Jesus do?

 

I don't think he'd be a doormat.  And I don't believe we're called to absorb the powerful and dangerous body blows of relational discord in the name of reconciliation.

 

But I also believe that we're not called to completely walk away in bitterness and hatred.

 

I mean, Jesus calls us to be active in pursuing reconciliation against those to whom we've done wrong (Matt. 5:23-24), and he also calls us to forgive 490 times if we need to (Matt. 18:21-22).  But there's not a ton of discussion as to what he wants us to do when one person in a relationship wants reconciliation and the other one doesn't.  Yes, you forgive and release the anger, bitterness, frustration against that person to God, but how do you actively attempt to restore relationship with someone who doesn't want it?

 

You can't force reconciliation just like you can't force love.

 

You want my two cents?

 

I think you can imitate Jesus by actively standing ready to accept the repentant heart when it approaches.  All the while allowing God to plumb the depths of yours to continually root out the issues that get in the way of your relationship with Him.

 

I guess the fact is that in this broken world, some people will eventually end up truly asking for forgiveness and some won't. But just as God waits and hopes and dreams of the day that the wayward child comes home a changed person, so we must do the same.  We must stand ready and willing to fling open the doors of our hearts at the exact same moment the other person flings them open to us.

 

I wish there was an easier blueprint for how to deal with this.  A cleaner solution.  If there's something on WikiAnswers, please let me know.

 

But if not, we're rushed back into the hues of our least favorite color...and the problem with being a black and white person floating along in a sea of grey.  We want to tell the divorcee that God desires - no, demands - reconciliation of the marriage at all costs.  We reduce the complexity of the situation to a bumper sticker for our own convenience.  We quote a verse or two without having the guts to listen to the whole story. 

 

We offer the black and white response because we're uncomfortable staring too long into the piercing Grey eyes that have cried out all their tears.

 

But we need to see the bigger picture here.

 

The canvas covered in the broad strokes of sin and redemption and depravity.  The love story where God is the main character - not us.  The blurry photograph with a million shades of Grey crashing into one another with nothing making sense.

 

We cannot be afraid to sit in a room with all the Greys of life.  We cannot be afraid to engage this color, lock eyes with it no matter how hard it is - and allow it to ultimately lead us to the cross.

 

 

Seriously.

Does God hate the Cubs?

I can't take much more of this.  

After my run, and before the first pitch tonight, my heart rate was 62.  I strapped on the old heart rate monitor after the seven run, eight walk, what-the-heck-happened-to-Demp-and-the-bats mess of a game tonight and I was rocking upwards of 88 bpm.  

After Loney's grand slam, Sarah thought it best to put Lilly to bed.  After Manny's homer, Tory left the room.  And once Russell Martin went yard and my hat was chucked across the room in a true fit of rage, I was informed that my wife was "worried about what these games do to you, sweetie."

Classic.

I'll just say this...there is no worse sound in the world than that of all hope being collectively exhaled from Wrigley in October.

I hate that sound.  

But hope springs eternal with every new day at Addison and Clark.  Fall seven times, rise eight.  I still believe.  

Dude, I am so sick in the head...

Stuck.

I wonder if Abraham had this problem.

I wonder how long it took him to go when God called him to go.  I’m sure he had his doubts, hesitations and fears, but once those were resolved, I wonder if there was anything left he had to take care of before he could go.

A tent to sell? Contract commitments to honor? Debt to be paid off?

Probably not. He seemed too wise for that.

But it makes me wonder how often we become our own barriers to the freedom of following Christ.

I’ll just admit it. I’ve spent that last few decades totally worshiping at the altar of Western consumerism. I’ve quietly and unconsciously believed that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness meant having the freedom to purchase at will. Anything and everything. Houses, cars, dinners, clothes, et al. And over time, I have unwittingly allowed myself to become lashed to my possessions, circumstances and commitments. And I only realized that I was bound and gagged by these things when God eventually came calling - asking me to follow him and I couldn’t. I was stuck.

I wonder if God gets frustrated when we eventually kick and scream to him about this stuff, constantly asking him to rescue us from situations of our own making. No matter how much our hearts are committed to following God at all costs, our obedience is oftentimes compromised by ourselves.

Mother Theresa made a couple promises to God back in the day. One of them was that no matter what the request, if God called her to do something, the answer was “yes.” 

"Yes, Lord." 

You don’t even have to finish the question, the answer is “yes.”

The other covenant was that she would obey immediately. There would be no time of weighing options, or doing a SWOT analysis. She would commit to move and move immediately.

And that’s where my heart wants to be, but in reality, I’ve locked the only door out to the open road and thrown away the key.

Maybe that’s what Jesus wanted for us when he told us to travel lightly.

I now know, firsthand, the truth about possessions. See, we can buy that house, assign our time to a corporation, over-commit and overextend…but if we really think there’s freedom in all of that stuff, we are so wrong.

Freedom has nothing to do with being able to do anything you want. It’s being able to do anything God wants.

True freedom is being able to go right when God tells you to go.

True freedom is being able to respond immediately to his call.

It’s not having so much complexity and obligation in your life, that you have to tend to 72 other things before you can respond to God’s voice.

You can be a slave to your situation. Oppressed by obligation. But Jesus said that he came to release the prisoners and free the oppressed…so I know there’s hope. I know that God can and will break these chains and allow us to follow him. I just don’t know when.

And waiting is the hardest part. The days are always long in prison.

We can be so careless with our decisions. This is why we’ve got to give Jesus authority over every nook and cranny of our lives. Every moment, every decision. We need to be sensitive and allow the Spirit to guide us, even when the issue seems inconsequential at the time. Even when it’s seemingly irrelevant.

And it's in this moment, when Paul's words crash hard into me...

"You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat." 

Yes, I did. And now I’m stuck in a cage of my own design, wanting nothing more than to break out and respond to God’s call. But instead, I’m spinning in the middle of the biggest (and hardest) lesson God has ever taught me.

I pray that at least there can be a lesson for someone else in this.

Travel light. Simplify.  Be free.

Deluge.

I think my wife is a prophet.  She told me that today's run was going to be important.  But I don't think she had this in mind...  

It started pouring about a mile into my long run this evening.  

A deluge.

And there was a moment when I started getting absolutely soaked where I had to make a decision to either turn back and quit, or keep going for another eight miles, no matter what the conditions ended up being.

I kept going. 

And the thoughts that rattled around in my head for the next few miles were along the lines of "You don't know how to overcome adversity until you actually overcome adversity," and "No one else out here running in this stuff right now."  

I thought about a lot of things, especially the future that awaits us in Austin.  How many days like this will I face in ministry?  How often will it feel like I'm the one lonely soul running toward a goal that only I can see through the rain?  Will I have the guts to keep going despite the looks I keep getting from the sensible people in their cars and houses?  Going against conventional wisdom?  The prudent decisions?  In so many ways, I'm already running against those things.  In so many ways, those things are already raining down on my head.

But I kept running.

And after a few miles of meditating on these refrigerator mantras, God really broke though to my heart.  It was out of nowhere that  James 1 just slammed into my heart...

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of any kind...

And as the rain just poured out from under my bandanna and down my face, it hit me.  

This is why we thank God for trials.  

See, most people don't willingly seek out adversity - most of us don't wait until it really starts raining to go out for a run - but sometimes we find ourselves caught up in a storm.

And it's when those first few raindrops start falling that we make the decisions that end up defining who we really are.  Do we keep running, or do we stop, turn back and go inside?

God gives us opportunity through these fast-forming storms.  He gives us that free choice to stay or leave, trust or fall away, hope or give up.  He puts us in a place that we would normally not put ourselves...a place where we are forced to make those decisions.

So I found myself thanking God for the rain toward the end of the night.  I thanked him for giving me a chance to dig deeper and find something out about myself.  To choose against my desires to sit on a soft couch in dry clothes for the rest of the night.  Through the rain, God gave me the gift of finding myself and finishing a small silly race in less than ideal conditions.  But this night is going to mean so much more in the coming years.  I know it. So in that sense, it was amazing.

It was funny too, because I caught myself smiling like a total crazy man and splashing hard in big puddles as I finished up that last mile.  And these words from Hosea just came into my mind out of nowhere.

Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?

I know there is much more theologically to these words, but I felt a small sliver of it as I hit each puddle.  

Each splash soaked me to the bone, but it didn't do anything to me...I was already wet! Rainy night adversity...where is your victory?...where is your sting?  

Soaking wet freedom.

It was a beautiful night.  And I never want to forget it.

So go on.  

Get outside.  

Be brave.  

And pray for rain.

66º

I feel God at 66º.

There's something about that temperature, something about the thin breeze and perfect combination of his creation's warmth and chill intermingling at that place that just rushes me into his presence.

Skies are a deeper blue at 66º.  Grass is greener and looks freshly mowed at 66º.  The earth looks damp and rich at 66º.  God's creation rushes to life in front of my eyes at 66º.

It was 66º today and instead of going to the gym and spending yet another hour inside yet another gray, climate-controlled room, I walked outside.  

I spent some time just standing under a tree in Bushnell Park.  

I prayed.  

I made a serious effort to really contemplate the act of breathing for the first time in a long time.  

I expanded my horizons...for a moment my entire world moved beyond the things and issues 2 feet in front of me and suddenly and all at once I found myself in the wide open spaces of grace.  

I spent time with God in a garden this afternoon.  

It was awesome.

I think sometimes, you just need to get outside.  You just need to feel God.  You just need to let him paint a masterpiece of people and colors and light hitting landscapes in a way that will never again be replicated.  A moment in eternity as unique as a snowflake.  You need to let it hit you.

It's been said that consistency is the killer of miracles.  The sun consistently rises every day, therefore, the miracle of a sunrise is oftentimes lost.  Clouds pass in the sky, seasons change, life bursts forth and then dies...every day is the same, so we take it for granted.

But today, it just hit me that every day is not the same.  Every day is such a gift if you just take the time to experience it.  When you chill out for 2 seconds, turn off your cell phone and just sit still...you begin to see it.  Creation as a living, breathing work of art on the canvas of eternity that will never be painted with the same brushstrokes ever again.  The combination of people, colors, smells, feelings...all of these things played together to yield a picture right in front of me that was utterly one-of-a-kind and unique.  And it existed just for that fleeting moment...but free to anyone who wanted to take the time to experience it.

It was beautiful at 66º today.  It made me want more.  And it made me wonder how much of it I've missed over the years.  

More.

"There are so many other things Jesus did.  If they were all written down, each one of them, one by one, I can't imagine a world big enough to hold such a library of books." - John 21:25

I love the fact that there is so much about Jesus that we don't know.  

It's not that I get bored with studying the same passages and stories and miracles over and over again...quite the opposite actually.  It's amazing how fresh and new those words continue to be every time I re-read them.

But to think that there will come a time when we will get to have all the rest revealed to us...man, that is awesome to sit and chew on for a while.  So many more stories, so many more words, so many more encounters.  

God, thank you for being so big that even in your extravagant abundance, there's so much more.

Touch.

"So the other disciples told him, 'We have seen the Lord!' But he said to them, 'Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger into his side, I will not believe it.'" - John 20:25

Sometimes I think Thomas gets a bad rap too.

I mean, you've just seen the most brutal beat-down and death in history and now these fanciful stories about an empty tomb, hollow grave clothes and a risen, walking, talking Jesus start making their way back to you.  Sorry...but I can see Thomas needing a second to process that.

When I take a good hard look at myself...I think I'd doubt a little bit too.

It was too much to come back from.  Too big a defeat.  Too much blood.  Death came down too hard.

I'm not sure how these words were communicated but I have a feeling they were rooted in feelings of tremendous grief and love.   

The verses go on to say that it was a week later that Jesus showed up and beckoned Thomas to touch the wounds.  

A week.

I wonder what went on in Thomas' head during those next seven days.  

Grieving mingled with questions.  Emptiness dancing with possibility.  And questions.  Lots and lots of questions.

And then, Jesus shows up, looks Thomas in the eye and says, "Go ahead and touch...stop doubting and believe."  

How many times do we have to see God's hand moving in our world before we stop doubting?  How many times do we have to touch before we believe.  Doubt can be healthy if it forces us to ask questions of God that only he can answer.  But doubt can also be a constant wind spinning wildly and going nowhere if we never move off of it and make a decision.

So many people - myself included - have failed to make decision about following Jesus because they allowed doubt to control them.  They allowed doubt to keep them in the same eddy - spinning around and around.  And it's fascinating how we're cool with that spinning.  Life ends up never being lived because we're constantly waiting to be sure before we move on it.

I can think of several people who, even after seeing and touching Jesus, would still doubt.  We can always find a reason to explain away even what we see right in front of us.  So Thomas still took a leap of faith by finally believing.  A smaller leap, but a leap nonetheless.

It's time.  All of us have, in some area of our lives, come to the edge of a cliff.  It's time to stop doubting God's truth, largeness, sovereignty, grace, whatever...and start believing.  

We've asked our questions.  We've gotten answers.  

It's time to jump.

Father, give us grace to question the things we're unsure of, the wisdom to seek answers from you, and the courage to believe what you say.