Beauty.

What is blessing?  
The beauty of a sunset or a tree.  
The sound of a lovely tune, chords striking heart strings making us ache and rejoice at the same time.  
The savory, sour and sweet.  The satisfaction of a cheeseburger and milkshake.  The complexity of a fine wine. 
The vast expanse of stars pin pricked against the velvet of the night.  
The Order: the poetic nature of math and the order that exists in the very large swirling fiery galaxies down to the impossibly small un-observable particles that are dwarfed by atoms.  

These things are a blessing.  But they are a blessing that flows quite simply out of the nature of God.  It is simply who he is.  

The greater blessing for us is the ability to perceive these things.  Beauty would exist whether we knew it or not.  What does the worm know of these things?  In his great love, God has granted us the means by which to discover him, his nature, his goodness, his complexity.

My eyes behold impossible colors of the sunset.
My skin sighs with relief in the shade of a tree.
My ears marvel at the progression of a C chord to an A minor chord to a G chord and back to C, plucked by my own fingers.
To taste, oh to taste!
To drink in the sky!
To see symmetry, to see equations resolve, to look at the sun in all its rage and know that it is bound by the mind of God and the order he set forth at the beginning of time and all creation.

Lord, give us eyes to see and ears to hear.  
Jesus create in us a heart that can receive your greatest blessing: Your Love.

Matthew 13

“Though seeing, they do not see;

though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

14In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“ ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;

you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.

15For this people’s heart has become calloused;

they hardly hear with their ears,

and they have closed their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes,

hear with their ears,

understand with their hearts

and turn, and I would heal them.’^a

16But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

Psalm 51

Create in me a pure heart, O God,

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

11Do not cast me from your presence

or take your Holy Spirit from me.

12Restore to me the joy of your salvation

and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

Water.

Once a year or so, you see a story on The Dead Sea, usually on CBS Sunday Morning or something of the like.  Tourists go there for the novelty.  Some go for what they believe to be the healing waters, which strikes me as odd since it's call The Dead Sea.  Here are a couple things I know.  It's a wasteland.  Nothing can live there.  It's freakishly salty water (8 times saltier than the ocean) gives it a density that allows bathers extreme buoyancy.  They just float right there on the surface.  The Dead Sea is also the lowest elevation point on earth, nearly 1300 feet below sea level.  Water is amazing, a life-giver.  But here, the water just isn't able to be what it's supposed to be.  People go to The Dead Sea.  They go to find something or receive something.  But they cannot be submerged.  The water has lost it's life.  And what of the salt.  We, the Children of God are called the salt of the earth.  Salt is meant to preserve and also to give flavor.  But if it is surrounded by death it loses it's purpose.  

Matthew 5
13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

Water is such a beautiful metaphor for the Grace of God.  It is refreshing, cleansing, and life giving.  Water gives meaning, and is appropriately used as the symbol and vessel for re-birth in Baptism.

Last week, my wife, my 3 daughters and I went to the pool for the first time this summer.  It was an overcast day.  Rain felt possible at any moment.  It was warm though and not actually raining.  My wife in her wisdom urged us on and we went to the pool and took our chances.  It is a great pool with multiple playing areas: slides, lazy river, diving boards and a big lap pool.  The kids got in right away, despite the chill.  They shrieked at the cool water, but immediately were having fun.  My wife began the slow descent down a long pool entry ramp.  The ramp is for coming and going, but my wife is a painfully slow pool enterer.  Foot.  Ankle.  Mid-ankle.  Below knee-cap.  Near knee-cap.  Retreat to mid-ankle.  As for me, I decided that it was too overcast and I wasn't feeling like it.  The kids played and eventually my wife got in.  I just milled about.  Sitting on the deck loungers, but never getting comfortable.  I smiled, but was turned inward.  I started to think of all the things I'd rather be doing.  But then I would realize I was sulking and very dutifully I got up and edged near the pool to be some sort of presence as a father figure.  My wife was up to mid thigh and playing with our youngest, still on the ramp.  I thought about getting in a couple times, but couldn't get out of my own head.  Then a drizzle came, but not for long.  

The girls got out of the water and headed to the picnic tables for some lunch.  After lunch, our youngest was ready to get back in the water.  I was ready to go home.  I quietly tried to urge my family in the direction of the door.  The older girls and my wife didn't seem to want to get back in the water anyway.  But the youngest was tugging at me and anyone to get into the water.  I wandered over with her.  I tried to convince her to play on the shallow ramp area by herself.  But then, something changed. I just gave in, for lack of a better term.  I took off my shirt and jumped in.  Joy, Water, Splashing, Shouting.  I gathered my little girl in my arms, put her on my back and took off swimming.  She squirmed, giggled and shrieked with a combination of fear and delight.  I threw her.  She started swimming from the edge to me and back again and she didn't even realize she was learning to swim.  I was so caught up in delight and play that I didn't even consider my self.  I was all the way out of my head and all the way in love.  Our middle daughter joined in.  Giggle, shriek, delight.  Soon I looked up to see my wife and our oldest giggling pointing and laughing too.  My wife was so happy to see me so happy.  I was immersed.  I was absorbed by the water.  I was adorned by wriggling children.  I was submerged under the flood of God's goodness.

Why, why, why does it take me so long to jump in?  The story above is the story of my reaction to God's Grace.  He is offering me forgiveness and freedom if I will just believe that he is who he says he is.  All I have to do is get in.  His Grace is a vast body of inviting water, yet I sulk on the hard concrete edges unwilling to surrender myself to something that might be shocking or uncomfortable.  I am unable to give up my own control and my own assertions.  But God uses others to guide us to the water.  He leads us beside still waters, but it is still our choice to get in.  It is a display of my impulsive nature that I jump in.  My wife's slow entry is indicative of her nature, but we are each resistant to grace in our own way. 

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”  Flannery O'Connor

Jumping in is the only way I have ever entered the water.  And almost every time I've entered the water it is after waiting too long.  I waste time.  I forgo the joy of being in his Grace until I can't take it anymore.  And such is the nature of his Grace that even though I should regret the wasted time, I am just so happy.  I am so happy to be in.  I wasted so much time in my life and yet I am just so happy to belong to Christ that I don't suffer the grief.  And while I wasted much of that day sulking on the deck, all I can think of is my wife's smiling face as she gazed on at those moments of pool time joy.

John 4
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Sticks.

Sticks.

The King walks outside of the Garden,

Among the forest trees.

It’s different: damper, darker,

In the Garden, nothing is broken.

But The King has left the Garden.

Still, the forest echoes his own perfection,

His intended perfection.

He gathers up the broken sticks.

He holds them in his hand.

He rubs them, removing dirt, decay and broken bark.

He smoothens them.

He marvels at how far they have fallen.

He smiles knowingly at their weakness.

He looks up at the trees and takes in the beauty of his creation.

The contrast of the dark, fruitless, dead branches 

Against the vivid forest canopy above is beautiful to him.

Against.

Against is a reality.

The snake slithers away up ahead.

His Majesty smiles again knowingly.

But he aches.

He aches for the broken branches, 

They do not know where they came from.

They do not know what they are made of.

They do not know where they belong.

Still they lay there, comically defiant: 

A stick raging against the Universe.

He takes the broken, decaying branches,

He sears against the death lying within.

He burns at the destruction of his perfection.

He gathers the kindling for a final funeral pyre.

But he fashions a Cross instead.

A Cross is not a tree.

A Cross is not perfection, but a declaration

Among the broken branches.

A Cross is fashioned,

The broken branches held fast by the splintered man,

Iron driven into the extremities, spanning the Cross. 

The sky is broken.

Death is broken.

Wrath is satisfied.

The Cross is not a tree,

The Cross is for thee,

The Cross declares, God from the Garden:

“You belong to me!”

Waiting.

I wait here, thinking I'm patient.  I'm waiting on the Lord I tell myself.  Things will be better soon.  I list in my mind all of my worries and tell myself that they won't always be there.  I think of how the world needs to be in order to accommodate me.  These are sincere thoughts and desires and yet they seem so silly as I write them out now.  I know better don't I?  Do I?  Apparently not.

I wait.  But even in my waiting I stop short of the Glory of God.  Almost immediately after I feel God's work in my life, his presence and revelation, I start to think about what it means for me.  This isn't what I'm built for.  I'm not here to work on my career, my family, my rapier wit.  I'm here to work for, Love and be Loved by the Creator of the Universe.  In finding my true place, I find myself blessed beyond all measure.  That's just who God is: Good.

But still I wait.  And I think it a noble sort of waiting.  But here is what I realized today: I'm praying and waiting for God to reveal something about me.  The better portion would be to ask God to reveal TO me, something about himself.

"Hey Mozart, man did you compose some amazing music.  Instead of learning more about you, I'd like you to hear the three chord song I wrote on my guitar."

I have chosen the lesser portion.  I have chosen myself.  Jesus is infinitely more interesting than everything else in the Universe combined.  And yet I thought I had known all of him.  I was getting frustrated trying to apply his teachings without desiring to know him.  I was plucking away at the Turkish March hoping to impress Mozart.  But when you have an audience with Greatness, it is better to sit and learn.

When we wait on the Lord, we should expect more than learning an interesting tidbit about our spiritual development.  We should expect nothing less than the Great and Might King to overwhelm us and teach us about himself.

Mary chose the good portion.

Luke 10:38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one.[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Hands up: Surrender, Obedience and Worship.

Obedience, at its core, is simply a step in the right direction.  It needn't feel like you are required to move the mountain, pick and ax.  Instead, think of it like being buried alive and deciding to reach your hand out of the soil.  That is obedience, and it is God's good pleasure to lift you out.  But he cannot do so if you decide to remain in the dark, thinking yourself too bad or too good to make an effort.  Maybe you don't think enough of Him to hope that he will rescue you.  Faith is evident in the action.  Though efforts are not the same as believing, you can hardly express the simplest of beliefs without some sort of effort.  Belief stirs to action, even the beginning of belief.  A seed laying dormant pokes it's leaf out of the soil and to the light to grow.

Much like the Mustard Seed of Faith, it only takes a small amount for Christ to work.  In some cases, obedience is simply to stop moving in a direction that you know is leading you to destruction.  Let yourself be found!  Give him a chance to rescue you!  

You are being called, his Spirit is crying to you, into you, reverberating throughout your bones, rattling you from the inside.  His voice is calling you out of the darkness, raising you up to something greater.  There is an evil voice at work as well.  This condemning spirit of Satan bids you to stay put, to dig yourself deeper.  He tells you that you cannot be loved, you are not worthy or worse yet, telling you God is not Good.  

Which voice will you respond to?  It is not easy to take that first step out of darkness, out of comfort and seemingly out of control.  But in that moment which you realize you cannot do this alone, reach for him in hope and faith and you will not be disappointed.  Simply calling on the name of Jesus is enough.  An out-stretched hand will find the warmth of the Savior who has been there waiting for you all along.

James 2:15
Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

What if Sex...?

As participants and as parents, what if we treated Sex like it was a gift from God?  What if we handled it like the treasure that it is?  Instead of separating God from Sex, what if we told our kids that God gave us this joy because he loves us.  The way we have the scenario set up now, it leads our children to a choice: either God is good or Sex is.  Well, they may have some doubt about God, but they won't have any doubt about sex.  (Hint: sex is good.)  If all good things come from God, and sex is undeniably a good thing, then why not embrace it instead of setting up later contradictions.  We have set our children up for failure, by creating a false choice.  In short, we say Virginity and Abstinence make God happy.  This may very well be true, but as usual we tend to stop short of the bigger factors at work.  God is Good.  God wants the best for us.  The fact's are this:  Sex is better in the context of a loving relationship.  And though it feels like our hormones are telling us different, telling us to take as many chances as we get, the reality is that one man and one woman yields our greatest chance for security, happiness and love:  emotional and physical satisfaction.  Marriage is a great gift to the world.  Sex is the seal to that covenant, the physical and spiritual joining of two people.   


We can debate Marriage.  We can debate whether or not waiting for marriage is even a reasonable expectation.  What I hope that you might see is that God is not a cosmic killjoy, constantly depriving you and keeping you from joy.  He made you and knows what your heart and soul need.  Promiscuity, random casual sex does not lead to more pleasure, it instead leads to a depletion of the soul.  Pornography doesn't satiate, it inflames and leads to escalation.  These short term fixes are not the answer.  Sex was meant to seal the deal, not BE the deal.  

“Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.”  G.K. Chesterton

If we can start to believe that God is good and that he wants the best things for us, then we have a chance.  We might be able to stop abusing each other.  We might be able to stop using sex as currency, extortion and collateral.  We might be able to start enjoying it with God present in it, instead of always trying to hide something we can't seem to do without.  

What if waiting wasn't about will power, impossible pride or fear of disappointment, but instead it was about hoping in something more?  It's not about doing without, but increasing future Joy.  What if Father's told son's that waiting was honorable instead of encouraging conquests?  What if Mothers didn't threaten daughters and use fear tactics that are sure to fail and create rifts?  What if parents were honest about their own failures and regrets?  What if we Loved no matter what, just like our Father?  Jesus doesn't want or need our sacrifices.  He wants us to seek more pleasure and to stop settling for such short sighted gains.  You were made for more.  When you can finally see that, and finally believe that He is good...things change.

Matthew 9
12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’[a] For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Shalom

There it's no human effort that is free of the fall. There is no drug without a side effect. There is no warmth without a burn. There is no increase in yield that does not produce a greater pest. Shalom is the freedom from consequence. And that freedom comes when every decision we make, every thought is the same one that God would make. The possibility for this increases in our proximity to Jesus. Yet even in our best moments we can't quite get close. But someday He will be our only thought.