Do Not Fear

Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The LORD, your God, is in Your midst. (Zephaniah 4.16-17)

Enflamed with Defiance

Last Friday I was on the phone with a San Diego colleague who'd been awakened in the wee hours by an earthquake. “It went on quite a while,” he said, “long enough to look out and see the water sloshing around in my pool.” I told him I lived in L.A. when the Whittier earthquake struck and knew how unsettling it is. “Then there’s the eerie period waiting for the aftershocks,” I observed, adding that I was so unnerved that, for the first time since relocating to the West Coast, I seriously considered moving back home. “In the Midwest, we have the advantage of knowing a tornado or blizzard is headed our way,” I said. “We have time to brace ourselves. Earthquakes don’t give you that.”

As we concluded our business, I kidded, “Here’s hoping nothing else rocks your world today!” To which he replied, “We’ll be fine.” No sooner had I hung up than Walt rushed into the study and turned on the television. There it was: 27 dead in elementary school shooting. The ground shook so hard I gripped the arms of my chair. The prior evening, at our church's annual holiday remembrance service, I recited the roll of nearly 150 young Chicagoans killed by firearms in 2012. We sang songs of solace and hope, heard Advent poems about light’s power to conquer darkness, and prayed God’s strength in our endeavors to vanquish gun violence in our city. And now this—the latest in an increasingly frequent series of moments when it feels as though there’s nowhere to hide from an onslaught of mad violence we can’t foresee or contain. A brutal flood of emotions poured through me, threatening to take all of Advent’s optimism with it. I felt stranded in a midnight world of menacing evil.

This weekend, as we gather in our communities of faith, we must adamantly reclaim Advent’s promises of peace and salvation. We must attend closely to the prophets’ assurances that God hasn’t left us. Our worship—the hymns we sing, the prayers we pray, and every word we speak—must be enflamed with defiance. We will not surrender hope. God is with us. Christ is coming to us. Darkness will not stand.

Out of the Ancient Mist

Sunday’s Old Testament reading (Zephaniah 3.14-20) steps out of the ancient mist to grab us by the collar, confronting issues that could be ripped from today’s headlines. The prophet addresses a nation gripped with religious and social malaise. He takes prophetic office during the reign of Josiah, Judah’s great reformer. Previous kings were lax in honoring God’s demands for faithfulness and justice. As a result, the nation founders on the hollow shoulders of idolatry and conspicuous consumption. Unlike other prophets, who seek to restore the faith of God’s people after long nights of foreign opposition, Zephaniah speaks to a country rotting from within. The gaps between rich and poor, powerful and powerless, are wider than ever. Violence, injustice, poverty, and despair have reached intolerable levels. Only those who profit from Judah’s indifference feel safe. An even slimmer minority realizes their nation has lost its way. The vast majority has grown woefully apathetic, presuming things have got so bad they can't be fixed. “Not so!” Zephaniah cries. With true reformist zeal, he proclaims the advent of better times—“the day of the Lord,” he calls it—when God’s righteousness and faithful presence will once again prevail. Does any of this sound familiar?

After he scorns the corruption of Judah’s officials and indicts the majority’s lethargy, Zechariah speaks to the relative few profoundly distressed with their nation’s descent into chaos and violence. Listen to the confidence—the unshakable defiance—with which he assures them their faith will be vindicated:

The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; God will rejoice over you with gladness, God will renew you in God’s love; God will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.

Then, speaking in God’s own voice, Zephaniah declares:

I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.

God’s Song

Tragedies like the one we’ve just seen in Newtown, Connecticut evoke natural reflexes we struggle to absorb: first the horror, next the grief, soon followed by reproach and recriminations for not having prevented them, the vast majority of us ultimately believing the lie such horrors are unpreventable. We are momentarily quaked out of our national slumber and wring weak hands, as if nothing can be done to brake our perilous slide into chaos, violence, and fear.

But the Word of God reaches us this weekend in the defiant voice of a reformer from long ago, urging us not to surrender hope. Do not fear, it says. Do not let your hands grow weak. God is in your midst. The day of the Lord draws near. God will renew us in love and exult over us in loud singing. In the crushing darkness of our anguish, confusion, and despair, we listen for the faraway strains of God’s song beckoning us to the light of God’s day. The darkness that presently engulfs us will not stand.

God is with us. Christ is coming to us. The crushing darkness of our anguish, confusion, and despair will not stand.

Zealous for Peace

The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. (Isaiah 32.17)

Yesterday our church gloried in the promise of peace. Our guest preacher, Rev. Dr. Edward Campbell—a highly regarded Bible translator and seminarian whose title belies his salt-of-the-earth pragmatism—said something that stuck with me. As we read Scripture, he said, we should remember it’s the story of people figuring out how the world is supposed to work. Thus, the tension that binds together 66 books written across centuries is manifest in a contest of wills: human will and its wantonness versus God’s will and all that God desires for, and from, us. Consequently, we’ve invented an alternate reality to accommodate weaknesses that, as Scripture persistently reminds us, bear no reflection of God’s vision. Nowhere is this discrepancy more magnified than in human proclivity to make war. The Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is rife with war zeal. Repeatedly, we watch Israel engage in military conflicts that lay ruin to its country and other nations. The extreme losses are plain to see. And while it’s true that God sometimes—though not always—intervenes on Israel’s behalf, no stretch of scriptural interpretation can be made to translate God’s role in human combat as a divine sanction of war. When God steps into military conflicts, miracles occur that restore peace. Peaceful cohabitation is how the world is supposed to work.  It is God’s will. Why can’t we figure that out?

I submit we have figured it out. What we’ve not yet resolved are the international, cross-cultural, and political conflicts that cause war. Proverbs 14.31-34 diagnoses our failure when it says: “Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor God. The wicked are overthrown by their evildoing, but the righteous find a refuge in their integrity. Wisdom is at home in the mind of one who has understanding, but it is not known in the heart of fools. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Emphasis added.) When we set our hearts to prove our superiority over other nations—when we advance policies and actions that promote poverty, violence, and suffering, whether abroad or at home—we forsake God’s call to righteousness. We will not live in peace. As we’ve recently experienced in a recession largely brought on by reckless war-making, the costs of militaristic bravado are enormous. Conflicts wrought of aggression inevitably exact a huge toll on the aggressors. And the prices aren’t just paid out of pocket: they’re deducted in human lives, bodies, minds, and emotions. War is not God’s will. Why can’t we figure that out?

Isaiah 32.17 says, “The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.” We are not so naïve to expect global righteousness and its peaceful effects will prevail in our present world. Yet, as Christians, we must also ponder how we can expend our resources to promote righteousness. That we need adequate defenses against malevolent powers is a given. The question is whether we permit our leaders to pursue unrighteous policies of aggression—to foster nationalistic, military bravado that is quick to pull triggers and create undue poverty, suffering, and loss of life. We must be zealous for peace at all costs, as the price of warfare is more than we can bear. We are regularly confronted with the harrowing realities of warfare, yet we cling to the myth that war can ever be just. Military aggression is the way of the world. But it’s not how God intended it to be. It’s time we figured that out.

Repost: Willing Spirits, Weak Bodies

Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matthew 26.41)

The Last Word

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” surely sits in the Top 10 Jesus quotes. It’s said so widely and often it’s been diluted into a sighing apology that usually means, “I want to say yes, but I’m too tired.” When we revisit the circumstances prompting Christ’s remark, we’re liable to be shocked and ashamed at how casually we toss it around. Jesus says it at a time and place that lends it poignant gravity. But while the situation removes all doubt about its profundity, it also shrouds the statement in ambiguity about whom Jesus is talking to. It initially sounds directed to the disciples. Yet as we read on, it’s quite possible Jesus is speaking to Himself. If we re-read the entire passage, it’s sensible to assume He addresses the disciples’ error and His internal turmoil simultaneously.

Matthew records this as the last word Jesus speaks exclusively to His disciples as a mortal. They’ve left the Last Supper to pray in Gethsemane. Over dinner, Jesus has told them He’ll soon leave them and when they arrive at the garden, He distances Himself to pray secretly. He falls facedown and agonizes with God about His imminent suffering, asking to be spared and then submitting to God’s will. He appears to reach a point of acceptance, because He returns to rejoin the disciples—who are supposed to be praying with Him—and finds them sleeping. He chides Peter for not keeping them awake. Then He says, “Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26.41) Knowing Peter will yield to temptation twice before the night ends, we automatically assume the Lord’s statement is aimed directly at him. But that may not be the whole of it. After Jesus says this, He turns back to pray a second time, repeating His first prayer: “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” (v42; NIV)

Weakness on Both Sides

The admonition to withstand temptation with vigilance and prayer—overcoming physical fear and frailty that hinder spiritual trust and resolve—bridges the disciples’ carelessness with Jesus’s wariness. It confesses human weakness on both sides. The disciples are exhausted in body and mind. It’s been an unusually grueling week and they’ve spent the past few hours grappling with ominous news. No doubt they have every intention of praying with Jesus. But it’s late, they’re not quite sure how they should pray, and their Master has left them alone. Without Jesus to lead them, fatigue trumps their faith. On the other hand, being privy to the torture awaiting Him, Jesus’s body quakes with dread, urging Him to plead for a stay of execution. His Spirit is willing to see this through, yet His body is weak and reluctant. We find our lesson in the contrast between the disciples’ response to Christ’s warning, what He does, and how He and Peter handle themselves as the evening progresses.

Following His second prayer, Jesus finds the disciples have fallen back to sleep. He doesn’t wake them again, but goes back to pray the same prayer a third time. After that, He rouses them as Judas and his co-conspirators approach. Jesus puts up no resistance to His arrest. He sees His enemies coming and having prayed three times without any indication His fate can be avoided, His Spirit’s willingness to obey takes precedence over His natural impulse to escape. Jesus faces His fears. Failing to discipline His physical compulsions, Peter’s caught off-guard. He attacks Christ’s enemies and, later, cowers in fear of being associated with Jesus. His body’s weakness undermines his spirit’s willingness.

Willing and Willful

Our spirits are willing. Our bodies are willful. One guides us to please our Maker. The other drives us to satisfy our urges. The spirit and body engage in constant conflict, the former leading us to do what’s best in the long run and the latter pressing for instant gratification. It’s like dieting. When an enticing yet fattening treat is placed before us, we’re presented with a choice: eat now and pay later or sacrifice now and profit later. Choosing between our spirits and bodies is no different. Each choice boils down to this question: whose example will we follow, Christ’s or Peter’s?

When we follow Jesus, we’re watchful against reacting angrily and fearfully when confronted. We stay prayerful, continuously in contact with our Father, Who strengthens our resolve. When we follow Peter, we’re taken by surprise. We’re not watching for temptations and praying for strength. We lose emotional and physical control. Our bodies’ willfulness to survive overwhelms our spirits’ willingness to sacrifice. Willfulness is weakness, while willingness exerts true strength. If we desire to defeat temptation, we must watch and pray. Sleep can wait. Self-gratification can be denied. Weakness can be overpowered. It’s in our spirits to will it so.

 We follow one of two examples when dealing with temptation: Christ’s or Peter’s.

Repost: Fasting

When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. (Matthew 6.16)

Gravity and Joy

“Saints, it’s time we turn our plates over, set our wants aside, and seek God,” the pastor would say and the church would answer, “Amen!” The room would fall into stillness as believers listened intently to the pastor’s instructions. Sometimes the fast lasted a week. At other times the minister called us to fast one day a week for the indefinite future. Sometimes it was called without protocol, leaving each person to decide what, when, and how long he/she would practice self-denial. Whatever the fast’s form, what I recall most from my youth was the galvanizing mix of gravity and joy it produced. We rigorously obeyed its command to make more room and time for God’s presence in our lives. Yet we entered the prescribed test with high hopes, knowing we’d be stronger, richer, and purer when we came out.

After my need for a more affirmative faith environment led me to a “mainstream” church, I found a very similar, if less demonstrative spirit arose as the people prepared for Lent. Prior to that, since my family’s tradition didn’t observe Lent, the little I gleaned about it from friends and colleagues jaundiced my perceptions. From what I heard, Lent was a 40-day obligation to “give up” something they could easily do without (chocolate, alcohol, red meat) or shouldn’t do at all (cursing, gossiping, fibbing)—more about self-discipline than self-denial. I didn’t realize my exposure was limited to Lent lamenters, however, people whose hearts weren’t in it and apparently understood it no better than I. Once I met believers who greeted the season with the same gravity and joy I associated with fasting, Lent came to life. It was a deeply personal, yet significantly collective experience, an intensely sacred testing period begun in hope and ending in renewed strength and fervor. What’s more, I learned this mainly by observation because, unlike Lent lamenters, authentic Lent fasters don’t wear their sacrifices on their sleeves.

A Curious Business

Fasting is a curious business. Its primary focus—clearing distractions to make way for prayerful contemplation—must be preceded by prayerful contemplation of what distracts us. The verb “to fast” is interesting and enlightening in itself, as it derives from the gothic German fastan, “to hold fast.” Thus, the benefits of fasting aren’t in what we’re rid of but what remains. That’s why sacrifice is secondary to experienced fasters. Their attention literally fastens on spiritual priorities. They go into fasts having already considered what they can and can’t do without, and they concentrate on the former by denying the latter. This transforms fasting from obligation into opportunity. It becomes a season of joy and growth rather than one of angst and deprivation.

Many misconstrue fasting as a means of honoring God by voluntarily refusing to indulge in things they love. They think fasting denotes commitment and piety, and approach it as a sort of holy drudgery. By no means is fasting easy, but neither is it intended to impress God with how tough it is to give up what we don’t truly need. That’s Jesus’s message in Matthew 6. “Don’t look somber as the hypocrites do,” He says. “For they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (v16-18) Jesus’s logic completely checks out with what fasting actually means. It’s a sifting time that gets us back to what really matters. The opinions of others don’t merit the effort to make a big deal of what we’re letting go. The reward comes when what we decide to hold fast in our hearts pleases our Maker.

Essentials from Non-Essentials

Lent gives us time to separate the essentials from non-essentials. What needs to go so what remains can resume prominence in our lives? If only it were as simple as surviving from Ash Wednesday to Easter without a candy bar or tasty morsels of gossip! To get the most from our fast entails much introspection. It asks us to undertake the trial fully aware of any weakness that loosens our grip on virtues and aspirations we hold dearest. And whatever that is (or they are), that’s what we must sacrifice. When we understand what fasting is really about, we realize Lent is sacred, not somber, joyful, not lamentable. It isn’t about giving up what we’d love to keep. It’s about holding on to what we'd hate to lose.

Fasting is a sifting time. We let go of what we can’t use to hold on to what we value most.

Postscript: Question 9

Is fasting a lost art?

A God Who Believes

God is faithful; by God you were called into the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1.9)

A Deep Breath

Movies bring out my cynical side. I take a jaundiced view of how 99/100 of them boil human emotion down to cheap glue that holds their slapdash stories together. So a morning like this one, following Hollywood’s “biggest night,” saddles me with a cynicism hangover. (Watching a coddled class congratulate itself and act like regular folk can be intoxicating—toxic being the operative word.) Like millions, I mist up when winners acknowledge parents, mentors, and colleagues who believed in them. But the cynic perched on my shoulder is also quick to remind me these are the same people who manufacture mist for a living. They’re the ones behind the violins that saw away while the coach tells the underdog to get in the game and the understudy to step into the spotlight—the ones who exploit our insecurities by stacking the odds against the hero and then raising someone who assures her/him, “I believe in you. You can do it!”

From our earliest endeavors until our dying day, we crave belief in our potential and abilities. How many times do we turn to those we trust and ask, “Do really think I can do this?” How often do we pray someone will come along to bolster our self-confidence? How quick are we to tell ourselves, “That only happens in the movies.” So when I opened today’s readings, 1 Corinthians 1.9 kicked me in the head. God is faithful, it said. God called you into the fellowship of Christ. I took a deep breath. Could it really mean what I think it means? Does God have faith in me? Can I say with confidence that my Creator honestly, truly, wholeheartedly believes in me? I pulled up the Greek translation, half-expecting to learn my hunch was off. Guess what? That’s exactly what it means.

In Black and White

The word Paul uses to describe how God regards us (pistós) is one we’d normally use for how we view God. “Faithful” is a broad translation to emit a number of nuances—loyalty, trustworthiness, constancy, etc.—that grow out of unshakable belief. The term’s etymology is rooted in the Greek word for “persuasion,” meaning God sees something in us that convinces God we’re worth believing in. Processing this idea requires us to stretch a bit, as our relationship with God is preponderantly focused on our belief. We’re so easily consumed by faith’s demands that we stay loyal, trusting, and true, of being fully persuaded God is worth believing in, that it never occurs to us: God believes in me. But we have it in black and white: God not only can and will, God does believe in us. And lest our cynical side press us to dismiss Paul’s statement as a linguistic anomaly, we see pistós repeatedly attributed to God in the apostles’ writings.

Without the slightest disruption to the writers’ thought, we can substitute “believes in you” for “faithful” in text after text. First Corinthians 10.13: “God believes in you, and will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing God will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” First Thessalonians 5.24: “The One Who calls you believes in you.” Second Timothy 2.13: “[Even] if we are faithless, Christ believes in us.” Hebrews 2.17: Jesus “had to become like His brothers and sisters in every respect, so that He might be a merciful and believing high priest in the service of God.” First Peter 4.19: “Let those suffering in accordance with God’s will entrust themselves to a believing Creator, while continuing to do good.” By now, you get the idea. But I beg your indulgence to do one more, since it’s a personal favorite: “If we confess our sins, God Who is just and believes in us will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1.9)

Seeing God’s belief in us plastered across the New Testament in bold letters, how is it we’ve turned faith into a one-sided love affair, where we do all the believing and God only gets to reward our loyalty and trust? Reducing God to a Being Who’s eternally grateful for our belief turns faith into a farce about our arrogance and God’s insecurities. Faith in a God Who believes in us dignifies the relationship. It intensifies our awareness of how loyal, trusting, and constant our God is.

Self-Doubt Contradicts God’s Belief

Faith in a God Who believes changes everything. It assures that God comes to us and wants us to come to God. Our mutual belief in one another cements our bond. It extinguishes any doubts that God remains faithful—that God wants access to our lives, that God is always there, looking beyond our failures, seeing what we can’t, or refuse to, see in us, placing confidence in us that we can’t muster on our own. And when we ponder this idea, it makes a whole lot of sense. Why would a God Who creates and loves us as we are not believe in us? To doubt us would require God to question God’s own judgment and handiwork. And who wants to believe in a god who’s unsure of his/her wisdom, power, and abilities? Thus, for our God to be all we say God is, we must accept and rejoice in the fact that God believes in us. What’s more, if we are to trust God’s judgment and power fully, we must believe in us, too, because self-doubt contradicts God’s belief. (Take a moment and let that sink in.)

One of the most magnificent aspects of Lent’s wilderness comes to fore in the enormous room it provides to break away from narrow perspectives of God and self. In the desert we find solitude to commune with faith’s realities, free from inner doubts and silly fears spawned by religious dogma and coercion. God’s love supersedes pity for our flawed condition. It’s driven by the persuasion we’re worth believing in—that our making speaks for itself and needs no alteration to merit God’s attention or acceptance. The desert puts much-needed space between us and those who are unconvinced we’re worth believing in. We know better—and we know God knows better. Because God believes in us, Paul says, God calls us into fellowship with Christ. When we enter Lent’s desert with our faith secure in a God Who believes in us, that’s what happens: we find fellowship with Christ.

Faith in a God Who doesn’t believe in us makes no sense.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/02/27/a-god-who-believes/.

Postscript: Question 5

How does faith in a God Who believes in us change what we believe?

Breaking Down

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51.17)

The Great Artist

An artist friend called me breathless with excitement. “I just leased this great loft near you and you’ve got to come see it right now!” As she’s normally a slow-and-steady type and few things are more disheartening than having no one to share your joy with, I instantly headed over. I walked into a massive raw space that looked as though its tenant had fled in the night. It was a mess. Apparently the previous renter was a potter of some sort, because my friend—who worked in a variety of media—had already swept up three piles of derelict projects and clay shards. I would have been furious that the landlord hadn’t cleaned up before renting it. But she couldn’t have been more thrilled. “Just look at all of this!” she said. “Think of what I can do with it!”

Frankly, I didn’t know what to think. It looked like useless junk to me. When I offered to help, she suggested, “Let’s get it all in one place so I can sort everything out and decide how I’m going to use it.” I picked up a half-finished piece and asked, “You don’t want to keep this kind of stuff, do you? You’re just talking about the smaller bits.” She replied, “Are you kidding? Drop it.” Huh? She repeated her order. I let the piece fall to the ground and shatter. Smiling wryly, she said, “That, my friend, is called ‘breaking down.’ Now I can use it.” A few months later, when she brought me a serving tray inlaid with a magnificent pattern made of its pieces, she asked, “Remember this?”

Unfortunately, I lost the platter (another story for another time). But the memory remains fresh and resurfaces whenever I read scriptures like Psalm 51.17: “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” And it especially comes to mind during this time of year, as I envision Lent’s metaphorical desert strewn with shattered pieces that we drop along the way. There they wait, seemingly forgotten and useless, until the Great Artist sweeps them up, sorts through them, and reorders them into something magnificently—serviceably—new.

A Shattering of Self

We tend to imagine broken-hearted people as sufferers. Something has disappointed them. Someone has wounded them. In other words, we see them as passive. Yet the Hebrew word Psalm 51’s poet uses (nisbarah) is neither definitively active nor passive. The breaking can result from another’s cruelty or arbitrary misfortune; but it can also be a sacrificial act—a shattering of self in pursuit of wholeness. We break down the contents of our hearts to inventory what we’ve stored in them—to examine their pieces and allow the Creator Who heals and restores to reassemble them in remarkable ways. We do this in response to God’s call in Joel 2.12-13: “Yet even now, says the LORD, return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.”

The poet Jan Richardson taps into this sensibility in her Ash Wednesday blessing, “Rend Your Hearts”:

Let your heart break

Let it crack open

Let it fall apart

so that you can see

its secret chambers,

the hidden spaces

where you have hesitated

to go.

She concludes:

And so let this be

a season for wandering

for trusting the breaking

for tracing the tear

that will return you

to the One who waits

who watches

who works within

the rending to make your heart

whole.

The loveliness of Richardson’s poetry raises gnarly questions, though. Once we’ve broken down our hearts, what are we looking at? Which of our pieces glimmer with radiance and beauty? Which of them are deeply scarred with dark doubts and unsightly faults? Which are ready-made for the Great Artist’s use? Which must be reworked to allow God’s vision to come forth in us? Which will fall into place? Which must be reshaped to fit into a new, magnificent, and serviceable whole?

Naming Parts

The process involves more than falling apart so God can reassemble us. After we do the breaking, it asks us to name our parts—to call the components of our hearts for what they are. This is by far the most challenging aspect of Lent’s work, because we are all exceptionally gifted at turning blind eyes to our weaknesses. When we speak their names, however, we force their recognition. Here are my misgivings. Here are my resentments. Here are my vanities. Here are my prejudices. Thankfully, there are other parts we’re honored to claim. Here are my certainties… my mercies… my humility… my openness.

When we look at our pieces, we don’t know what to make of them. Suddenly the beauty of breaking down rises before of us, because the making—actually, the remaking—of our broken hearts belongs to a God Who, by Self-admission, is gracious, merciful, patient, unfailing in love, and fiercely forgiving. Like my artist friend, our Maker surveys the heap of shards we’ve created and exclaims, “Just look at all of this! Think of what I can do with it!”

We do the breaking; God does the remaking.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/02/24/breaking-down/

Postscript: Question 3

Predictably, most commentators on Psalm 51.17 immediately link its brokenness and contrition with guilt for past sins. And, to be sure, harmful thoughts and actions produce shattering consequences in our lives. Yet, more appropriate to Lent’s purpose, I’d like us to think of broken-heartedness as a self-induced, sacrificial act. And this raises a huge question I believe we must ponder while we undertake the breaking: what is faith’s role in our sacrifice?

I’m not sure there’s a definitive answer to that. In fact, each of our responses may be very different. I’ve added my thoughts to the comments and invite you do the same. This breaking business isn’t easy by any stretch and sharing our perspectives will no doubt encourage all of us to rend our hearts.

Because You Are Precious

I have called you by My name, you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. Because you are precious in My sight, and honored, and I love you. (Isaiah 43.1-2,4)

Deep Trouble

Little Shop of Horrors—the 1960 sci-fi classic later remade as a musical—is the parable of a nerdy florist who stumbles on an exotic plant and decides to nurture it. Though he does everything he can to keep it healthy, it shrivels up and nearly dies. Because it’s not a plant. It’s an alien life form in leafy get-up. One day, the florist cuts his finger and a drop of blood instantly revives the plant. As it grows, its bottomless thirst bleeds the florist dry and he resorts to murder to keep it alive. He bargains with his conscience by limiting his victims to Skid Row regulars—banking on the twisted idea he’s doing society a favor while serving the plant’s needs. At first, we can’t figure out why he doesn’t toss the thing into the alley and forget it. But gradually we realize his compulsion to satisfy the plant’s cravings stems from his craving for acclaim. Discovering a new species will elevate him from mundane florist to botanist extraordinaire. And he's so sure that the plant holds his key to happiness he’s unaware it’s devouring him and his dream. Moral: When we allow our problems to control us, we’re in deep trouble.

That’s why we take all our burdens to God; we don’t know which of them will seek to control us. Every trial and temptation, whether agonizing or annoying, contains seeds of monstrous cravings. More sad stories than we can count open with, “It seemed like such a little thing at first…” So, if we must, we choose our poisons. But let us be warned: not one is sufficiently labeled, nor are we adequately qualified, to predict how we’ll react to it. Experience alone teaches what we can and can’t handle. And too often it’s a lesson learned too late.

How Can We?

When watching others bridle impulses and situations we can’t master, we dust off that golden oldie, “If They Can Do It, Why Can’t I”, forgetting the reason they can do it—whatever “it” may be—is because they’re strong where we’re weak. In other settings, the tables turn: we’re strong where they’re weak. It’s not a hard idea to grasp. But it can be very difficult to accept. I want to think my strengths give me an edge over yours. You want to believe my weaknesses make yours look like a day at the beach. Yet in the final analysis, all we can confidently say about one another is neither of us is so strong to escape struggle.

Since we’re all in the same boat, why bother God with our problems? After all, God helps those who help themselves. (There’s another oldie we need to pitch.) If we try hard enough, we should be able to handle it on our own. But how can we, if we can’t handle admitting what controls us has bled us dry, driven us to the unthinkable, and mocked us when we tried to justify our actions? How can we handle problems if they’re not what they seem? How long can we feed monsters that keep our pipe dreams alive, even as they devour our lives and dreams?

Once weakness grips us, handling it on our own is no longer feasible. We’re in deep trouble. We need God. And whether or not that business about God and self-help is true, this we know: God helps those who can’t help themselves. In Isaiah 43.2, God tells us when there’s no bridge we can cross, God will help us reach the other side. When we’re in over our heads, God will lift us. When we’re thrown into the fire, God will see we survive it unscathed. God doesn’t spare us from problems that seek to control us. God faces them with us to prove we can overcome weaknesses with God’s help.

Two Statements

This promise is first spoken to Israel. And though it sounds simplistic, it’s not wrong to summarize the Old Testament as the story of people who can’t break free of problems because they won’t confess their need for God. Over and over, Israel lets the same weaknesses drive it to the brink of ruin. What it lacks in vision it more than makes up in selective memory. As soon as they hit a dry patch in the desert, the Israelites groan with nostalgia for Egypt. When Babylon destroys Jerusalem and takes thousands hostage, they sit down beside the Tigris and sing about the good old days—never mind that they spent most of them fighting off enemies. When times are good, they persistently submit to self-destructive impulses. They feed monstrous cravings to keep their dreams of freedom and respect alive, never realizing that they’ve surrendered both to what controls them. Through it all, God keeps saying, “Let Me help you. You need Me.” But Israel is so sure of itself it puts God on hold until it’s overwhelmed. Then, like a disobedient toddler, it hands God its mess and says, “Please don’t be mad. We promise never to do it again.”

So why does God stick with Israel? Why does God stick with us? We’re no better at letting God help us than they. The answer rests in two statements that frame God’s promises to be with us through flood and fire. In verse 1, God says, “I have called you by My name. You are Mine,” while verse 4 declares, “Because you are precious in My sight, and honored, and I love you.” That’s the lever to pry us from problems and weaknesses that captivate us. They may grip us, but they’ll never hold us, because we belong to God. Although they try to diminish us, they’ll fail in the end, because we are precious to God. While they mock us, God honors us. While they abuse us, God loves us.

When we think of the cravings beneath our cravings—the weaknesses exploited by problems that control us—God speaks comfort to our souls. Why do we surrender to harmful obsessions? We want to be known. God says, “I have called you by My name.” We want to belong. God says, “You are Mine.” We want to matter. God says, “You are precious in My sight.” We want to be respected. God says, “You are honored.” And we crave love. God says, “I love you.” Problems that control us conjure crazy dreams that we chase but never catch. They’re merely distractions to prevent us from detecting the real nightmare of being eaten alive. Our God is a Creator, not a dream weaver—a Life Giver, not a bloodsucker. What God says is true, because God alone has the power to make it true. So we say to harms that seek our destruction, “Not this time, not ever again, because we know who we are and to Whom we belong. We are precious to God, honored, and God loves us.”

Awaken us, O God, from our oblivion. Quiet our spirits to hear You speak comfort to deep cravings that make us vulnerable to self-destructive obsessions. Forgive us of haughty delusions that ignore our need for You. You promise to be with us always. We ask You now to stay. Amen.

When we surrender control to problems and habits, we feed cravings that don’t satisfy and chase dreams we can’t catch. So we say to them, “Not this time. Not ever again.”

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/01/17/because-you-are-precious/