Blog Posts - Lilies from Heaven

The Christmas Story

12/27/2018

Pastor Graham Higson spoke of God with us in church this month. We know God is with us and we take it for granted. He said that the idea of God with us should thrill us to our toes. It got me thinking about the Christmas story again. Here it is from the Angel's perspective...

To say that His birth was opposed is to touch the limits of mortal language. The mighty one has been hated since the pride of the bright one led many away. Your world war comes close, but even then, believe me, you have no idea.

We sang that night as we had never sung before. Those shepherds believed they were the primary audience. True, they were important — the Mighty One has always favored the lowly. But there was much going on that night. The other reason we sang in the fields was to hallow the ground where Rachel would weep over her sons. There the graves would be dug, the graves for the little boys of Bethlehem.

Herod’s rage soon stripped dozens of firstborns from the breasts of their mothers. Those so fresh from heaven, so quickly silenced. Slaughtered like animals. So much blood...

The town had no room for Mary, and Herod’s heart had no room for another king. He would not share his glory.

Although we do not exist in time, there are moments when the affairs of earth are hard to endure. Even Angels desire vengeance.

“Vengeance is Mine,” declared the Mighty One. “Justice is coming. I need you to sing.”

And so we sang. What the shepherds heard as an anthem the innocents would hear as a lullaby. We sang as we had never sang before. A song to bring Him safely into the world, a song to guide them safely from it, and a song to help Mary endure it:

Glory to God in the heavenly heights,
Fly, fly to the breast of the Father,
This wrong will be righted,
Jesus is here,
Peace to all men and women on earth
who please Him.
Rest, rest in the arms of the Father,
His fury remembers,
His love holds you dear.

Many do not sing of this horror at Christmas. That is understandable; it was an unspeakable deed. But I remind you that His birth was opposed. You have no idea.

(Adapted from Touching Wonder: Recapturing the Awe of Christmas by John Blasé)

On the Meaning of Advent and Christmas

12/13/2018

Happy Advent and Merry Christmas!

I came across this quote by G.K. Chesterton in blog post I was reading earlier this week.

A mass of legend and literature, which increase and will never end, has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox:

that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle.

Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded...

I mean that all the eyes of wonder and worship which had been turned outwards to the largest thing were no turned inward to the smallest...

It is true that the spiritual spiral henceforward works inwards instead of outwards, and in that sense is centripetal and not centrifugal.

The faith becomes, in more ways than one, a religion of little things.

- G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

We are about half through Advent and it really is a religion of small or little things. I think Chesterton should have added that it is about difficult things. It's about celebrating the difficult choices. God came down. Mary said yes. Joseph said yes. The shepherds went to find Him. The Wise Men went to find him. It is beauty in the midst of chaos. It's subversive.

There are Christmas lights shaped like a tree around Jochiwon train station. The squalor and dirt are there but so is this tree shape. This defiant shape stands in contrast to its surroundings. It's beautiful in the midst of Jochiwon traffic and the swarms of moving people.

I want to be like that tree. I want to be a light in a dark place. I want to be like Mary and Joseph who said yes to the difficult and miraculous thing put before them.

In a world where people choose self-centered lives, where ugly things happen, where sin seems to spread unchecked, where daily assaults take their toll, we need to be able to point to the defiant beauty of a selfless life. We need seek the kingdom of God first. We need to put others first. In this way, we can proclaim the transcendent truth of something great than ourselves.

We need to do more than just say Merry Christmas...

We need to say Merry Christmas and remember what the words actually mean. We’ve forgotten the weight that those words carry. We are saying we also unite with him in his death, his resurrection, and his call to make disciples.

If we really mean “Merry Christmas,” it will cost us something. It may cost us everything.

But am I really willing to make myself uncomfortable for the sake of the gospel?

I say “Merry Christmas,” yet I turn against Jesus again and again, forgetful and unrepentant, and twisted in my thinking. I lose my focus at Christmas. I spend more time with books than with Scripture. Don’t forgive like I should. Demand my own way. Stomp my feet. Get really bossy with God. Doubt.

Man, have I doubted Him.

Christmas is not a greeting at the store.

Christmas is not a political platform.

Christmas — real Christmas — is not a political party, a certain set of traditions, a tree, a pile of gifts.

It is not a happy little feeling for an hour at the church.

Christmas is all about Jesus. And it’s positively dangerous. in that we are owning the name associated with a holy God and His only Son. This alone should cause me to kneel — or fall flat on my face.

Here’s what Christmas really is:

Christmas is pick up your cross and follow,
and spend yourself on behalf of the hungry,
and act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.
It is The Way of the contrite and broken.
It is not my will, but Thine be done.
It is “blessed are the poor in spirit,”
and a rejoicing in our suffering.

It is salt and light and fruit of the Spirit.

It is "prepare him room!"

It’s a cup and broken bread.

It is the belief that Christ is our only hope, that heaven is our future home, and that we get to do His work right here, today, before we go there, someday.

Christmas is not a word for your greeting card, but a way to wrap your whole life around a cup and a cross.

It’s not an empty promise for prosperity, but investing our very lives in each other because of an empty tomb.

Merry Christmas is happily agreeing to “love your neighbor as yourself” — even when your neighbor looks an awful lot like your enemy, or someone who doesn’t believe the same things you do. Christmas also commands this: “Go and make disciples.”

It is a walk on water, hyssop on the lips, and a belief that Christ is the central figure of the most radical story to hit planet Earth.

Christmas believes that an enemy prowls, but that a King wins – that the battle isn’t over, but the war is already won.

I won’t deny it: Christmas People believe in crazy things. We believe that God’s Son descended from Heaven to Earth, not so we can have a party on December 25. But so He could die a horrific death and carry people’s sins away.

It’s scandalous, isn’t it?

Scripture whispers that scandalous truth that Jesus wants our ragged, rule-breaking hearts, these hearts that have spurned Him. There’s a word for it: grace. These are the foolish ways of the Christmas People. And so, then, I shall be a fool among them.

Today, I say to you with all the boldness I can muster: “Merry Christmas.”

And when those words cross my lips, I don’t even know the half of it.

I don’t really know how much it cost my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Someday, I will.

Until then, I’ll say it to you, and I’ll say it out loud for the sake of the gospel:
Merry Christmas.

The Light of the World stepped down into our darkness.

And that changed everything.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Gratefulness and God’s Glasses

11/21/2018

John Bucchino is a talented composer and lyricist whose songs I stumbled on several years ago. My favorite tune of his is one called “Grateful.” “I’ve got a heart that can hold love,” it says, “I’ve got a mind that can think.” It’s impossible to stay depressed, writes Bucchino, when he remembers how he’s blessed.

I get it. I am truly blessed and duly grateful, too. I’m grateful for any day of late that feels more like fall than summer. And for the birds outside my window that I love listening to most mornings. Grateful for the work that is waiting for me each day: good work that I enjoy; work that consistently puts gas in the car and groceries in the pantry and gives my heart and mind a workout in the process. Grateful for the friends whose questions keep me honest and whose prayers keep me close. For a husband and little boys that I adore. For parents who believed in me no matter what goofy thing I did. For big stuff like life and health and small stuff like raspberries available in spring and glory of autumn in October and November. For things hoped for and things unexpected.

Mostly, though, I’m grateful that my heart knows whom to thank for all the goodness that is mine. Sure, the list of things is gratifying, but it’s the Giver who really makes my heart sing. Any gift divorced from its giver is a lifeless thing; I’m grateful God “leaves the tags on” for me so I can see where all the best stuff comes from.

God has enabled me to see with what I'm calling his gratefulness glasses. It doesn't come easily for me. My mother only asked me to count my blessings once a year at thanksgiving so it wasn't a habit for me. I had to meet people who I thought were worse off but had great perspective.

I recently talked to a godly young man named Brian who suffered severe burns in an industrial accident more than a decade ago. He lost 90 percent of the skin on his body, lost his eyesight, and had two arms and a leg amputated. As I listened to him, I was astonished at his utter lack of self-pity; on the contrary, he expressed great thanks for how God used the injury to cement his faith. He has become a tower of strength, and as he described his relationship with his wife, I marveled at the obvious intimacy of their relationship on all levels, even in the face of such a debilitating injury.

I compared his Christlike, thankful spirit with my own whining when I suffered a common foot injury this past spring and had to take a few weeks off —and I just sighed. In a fallen world we can develop a radically unrealistic perspective. One severely disabled man said, “When you’re a quadriplegic, you look at a paraplegic and think, ‘Man, they’ve got it made!’ “ When we feel sorry for ourselves, we work against finding positive solutions. Brian can’t see his wife, and he’ll never be able to hug her, but he can talk to her, pray with her and for her, and comfort her with wise words of love, care, and concern. Through the Internet, he has even discovered ways to buy her presents without her knowing about it ahead of time.

Sometimes, in God’s providence, certain pleasures may be closed to us, as they have been to Brian. God says, in effect, “This is not for you, at least not now.” We have to trust him to provide alternate pleasures —perhaps of an entirely different sort —that will sustain us in our trials.

The bottom line is without gratitude we are wallowing in our selfishness. With gratitude we can see with our Godly glasses on.

Feelings of entitlement feed anger; feelings of thankfulness swell our souls and can make us tear up with overflowing gratitude.

Thanking God helps us recognize what pleasures we have while at the same time increasing our pleasure. Only when we become grateful for what we do have, or what we might work toward, do we find true joy.

When we look at life through these Godly glasses, we become lost in wonder and convinced of God’s astounding generosity, marvelous mercy, and gigantic grace. Sin causes us to look at life through the lens of entitlement —that we deserve salvation without repentance, wealth without work, accolades without self-denial, health without personal discipline, pleasure without sacrifice. Biblical truth reminds us that, in reality, we deserve hell.

Every small laugh, each tiny expression of joy, a simple meal —indeed, every single moment lived outside of the agony of hell —truly is an undeserved gift. When we add the assurance that the completed work of Christ guards our eternal destiny, our lives should radiate not merely joy but wonder and astonishment at how good God truly is.

What are you grateful for—and for whom? What satisfies your soul and makes your heart sing? Whose presence blesses you like crazy? What beauties threaten to take your breath away? You really should thank Someone, don’t you think?

Every generous act and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights; with Him there is no variation or shadow cast by turning. By His own choice, He gave us a new birth by the message of truth so that we would be the firstfruits of His creatures. JAMES 1:17-18 HCSB

On Waiting

10/31/2018

Waiting is definitely a theme in life. My children waited for that bug pictured above to move off the leaf. My husband is patiently waiting for me in the second shot. (“Why is my wife always taking pictures?” is in his thoughts.) Even the last shot of the burst of color on the trees is a testament to waiting for winter to come.

I am waiting for many things. I am waiting for the end of the semester. I am waiting for my Masters of Education program to start. I am enjoying fall but I am waiting for Christmas. I am also waiting to go back home to Canada. I am waiting.

There is a clever snippet from Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go! The waiting place . . . where everyone is just waiting.” Waiting rather quickly loses whatever romance it might have had early on, but even so, I know very few people who are not, at any given time, waiting for something. Test results. A loved one’s return. Someone to marry. A child to hold.

The Bible is a book full of waiters. Sarai. Elizabeth. Hannah. Moses. Job. David. Hosea. Jonah. What might we have heard if their voices had been recorded?

“It’s no use.”

“I’ll never have a child.”

“Why should I be stuck herding someone else’s sheep for the rest of my life?”

“I’ve lost everything. When will you turn this thing around, God?”

“Samuel must have been mistaken about that king thing. Saul will kill me before he lets me take the throne.”

Or maybe just, “Help, Lord!”

Some waiters wallowed in self-doubt and pity. For a while. But more often than not, these God followers learned to linger in their waiting places, seeing all that there was to see. And what there usually was to see was evidence of a great, patient, provident God at work—in the smallest of circumstances and in the hidden places of the human heart.

A wise friend once told me that we are never alone in the cold, dim cave of uncertainty. When our eyes adjust to the half-light, he said, we will see that there are tens, hundreds, thousands even, waiting with us. And maybe, he said, waiting for a word from us that injects hope or humor or sense into what makes no immediate sense at all.

Are you waiting? Me, too.

Here’s God’s word for us both:

The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. ISAIAH 40: 28-29

The Sights, Sounds, and Smells of Autumn and the Aroma of Christ

10/4/2018

It’s no secret that I am in love with this season. October in particular. The chill of the fall, with its shorter days and falling leaves. And the colors. The golds, crimsons, reds, browns of the falling leaves are a feast for the eyes. The trees in all this color-filled are reaching to heaven, another great sight.

The sounds are amazing too. Leaves crunching under my feet. The noise of harvest as the farmers around us bring in their crops. The change from t-shirts to sweaters and sweatshirts. From cool drinks to warm teas.

But the smells of autumn are the best. Smell is one of our most powerful senses, connected to our subconscious memory in a way that our other senses are not. The smells of pumpkin, apples, peaches, and other vegetables are a delightful aroma.

When Paul calls the Corinthian Christians “the fragrance of Christ,” (2 Corinthians 2: 15, NASB) I marvel at the metaphor. Although their relationships were difficult and their circumstances trying, he envisioned them as a victorious parade wafting the incense of grace wherever they went.

Maybe today you’re thinking that you would be the fragrance of Christ, except you’re heartbroken. Or you’re longing for something that isn’t and may never be. Or you’re sick. Or someone you love is. Or you’ve lost someone immeasurably precious to you. Or you’ve messed up. Big-time.

If that’s what you’re thinking, the gospel contains better news for you than you could ever imagine: through the triumph of Christ, our emptiness can become abundance; our helplessness can become hope; and our failures can be exchanged for forgiveness, time and time again.

Peter denied Jesus right after he boasted to his Master, “I would die for you.” What kind of God would accept such miserable failure? Our GOD! Through the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ, our failures become acceptable, and our shame survivable.

Like Peter, we can move from failure to forgiveness. Because we are the fragrance of Christ. Empty, helpless, ashamed . . . we are the fragrance of Christ. His presence is the divine alchemy that makes a beautiful aroma of our suffering and shame and spreads the sweet knowledge of him in every place.

Today, may his presence create an unforgettable fragrance in you.

Through us, he brings knowledge of Christ. Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is recognized by those on the way of salvation—an aroma redolent with life. 2 CORINTHIANS 2: 14-16, MSG

What aspects of autumn are you in love with?

On Anniversaries, Autumn, Advent, and Apple Trees

9/3/2018

Autumn is a very welcomed and refreshing time of the year, particularly here in South Korea where we just finished the hottest summer on record. I am welcoming the cool breezes in the evening and paint brush strokes of oranges, golds, yellows and browns. It's an added bonus that my husband and I just celebrated our 20th anniversary amidst the fall splendor.

September always brings reflection for me. It is like an early thanksgiving. Here are 10 things I am grateful for and/or looking forward to over the coming months.

1. Our 20th Wedding Anniversary.  It is a double anniversary because it always represents 20 years living in South Korea. I wouldn't have imagined 20 years when I first got here, but I have more than lived it now!

2. Hot mugs of beverage.  Tea. Hot chocolate. Hot Cider. Mulled wine. . . I could go on. These are best enjoyed, of course, with a book. . . on a porch on a fall afternoon.

3. New Books, of course! Book girl by Sarah Clarkson arrived just the other day. I am also interested in reading Anne Bogel’s charming and winsome I’d Rather Be Reading. Might I suggest either as an ideal read for an autumn day?

4. Back to school. It's a new semester for this English language professor. New beginnings, new students, new school supplies, new pages to be turned on brand new books. And I should mention that I love encouraging my students to pick a book and read it just for the pleasure. New beginnings, and new routines. LOVE it.

5. Autumn sweaters and sweatshirts. In fact, I was just thinking about pulling on a big, warm sweater and grabbing that warm beverage to sit outside this morning.

6. Long walks. Autumn walks without the heat and humidity give me time to clear my head, to ponder what I’m teaching or writing, and to enjoy the fresh air. Throw in crunchy leaves, and I’m especially thrilled. I loved this when the boys were little and I love it still now.

7. Apples, peaches, pumpkins, autumn harvest. This area we live in in South Korea is blessed with great apples, stunning peaches, and amazing pumpkins.  I love the fresh fruit, but this is the time to enjoy an apple, peach, or pumpkin pie. This, of course, should be done on a day when I am not teaching or writing. A creative baking day to get all my own creativity flowing.

I also love the fall displays. I love the way pumpkins appear on front stoops and entrances to store fronts. A hot drink, a warm sweater, a porch with pumpkins, and a book. Ahhh!

8. Early sunsets. This time of year, I love watching darkness crawl in earlier and earlier each evening, and likewise, I love the way the changing light makes these early sunsets more orange, somehow smokier. Darker evenings have always felt like prime reading time to me.

9. Manuscript finished! For those of you who have been cheering me on, I have finished an Advent Book that goes through the named trees in the Bible. I'm excited about finding some beta readers (message me or email me if you are interested) and working with my illustrator. I also took the advice of Hope Writers and will work on making this a printed book.

10. The Great Slowing. My way of being, on my best days, is slow and deliberate, and fall is a season of intention. I am slowing, reflecting, and enjoying.
Just writing this list gave me joy. I cannot wait for that first crack of air cool enough for me to turn back around and get my cozy sweater and sit outside with a book. Oh, autumn, I do love you.

Thanksgiving is always words fitly spoken.

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Proverbs 25:11(NRSV)

Are you interested in Hope Writers? Check this webinar out!

https://www.hopewriters.com/a/10210/L2GbuERH

Hope Writers has been a wealth of information and support while I have been teaching and writing. They only open the doors twice a year so you won’t have another chance to join until next year. If you’ve dreamed about writing a book, growing a blog, or just getting your words from out of your head and onto the screen, this is the member community for you.

Click here for general information:

https://www.hopewriters.com/a/10106/L2GbuERH

Click here to learn more and join today!

https://www.hopewriters.com/a/8310/L2GbuERH

Are you interested in an early Advent reflection from my book? Please sign up for the mailing list on this site and I will send it to you.

Grace and peace beautiful people!

To My 40-something Self on My Birthday

8/15/2018

Dear Mid-Life 40 something Birthday person (mainly me) but a few others including Wanda, Sumitra, Ann, Elizabeth, and others,

Happy Birthday! When you blow out your candles ponder over these things and whatever else your heart tells you to focus on.

40-something. You’re about half way through life, old BraveHeart. Half way.

So let’s live backwards from your 90th birthday cake. We should always Live backward from the end goal. Look at who’s in the room singing off tune on your 90th birthday — and who are you making room for right now?

I want to be the weathered woman of 9 decades, still excited about life and God and grace, hunched over her cake, looking around a room of babies slung on hips and grinning teenagers and the gathering of the generations. I hope they sing old hymns and new style praise songs. I want to sing Amazing Grace to this group and recite Psalm 23 by heart and count our blessings together and eat cake.

I envision a rising of accents and the richness of skin colours and a poverty of spirit that knows the luckiness of Jesus-grace, and I hear the raucous of a room of the gloriously rowdy and live your life backwards from that last birthday cake. (Ann Voskamp)

What are my priorities that will be celebrated at this 90th birthday party? These are the things I’m focusing on now. My principles for this 90 year life.

1. Keep young people around. Especially the little people. They see things you are bound to miss without them. Thank you Jordan for focusing on love, hugs, kisses, fun and sweetness. Making a small person one of your greatest priorities makes your life great.

2. Read! Read the Bible. Reread books that touched you when you were younger. Read things that show you how to be a more compassionate human being. Read up on a new interest area. Learn something new.

3. Stay in love. I’m holding on to this with all my life. Stay in touch, stay in truth and grace, and stay in the Story and, above all else: stay in love. Life is too short to move on to anything else. And mid-life is flat-out begging you: Risk it all. Risk large, risk now, risk your heart, risk for what ultimately matters.

Go back to school. Go reconcile. Go make it right. Invest in a dream that terrifies you. Do the hard thing that terrifies you. Start a business, a class, a soup kitchen, a friendship, a dinner club, a memoir, a church, a marathon, a family. Just start. Start over.

4. You life is art. Rake the risk and create! Risk is your friend who walks with you where you want to go. Risk is the friend who knows the way to where you want to go. Enjoy risk’s company.

5. Live into something bigger than you, that will require more than you, that will require faith and hope and miracles and God.Why waste your one life on any one’s small box?
Believe it:

6. Our God is a good God. Pray to Him. Make your life a prayer.Make your work your worship, make your days your doxology, make your life your liturgy, and make Christ your only King. Your work may burn up or cause you to burn out, but the prayers enfolded into the stacks of laundry, the stirred soup, the stairs swept — they will survive fire.

7. The cure to anxiety and an overwhelmed life begins with a daily overdose of Scripture. (Keep trying to memorize it)
Leave a Bible open to the Psalms by the sink, on the desk, at the table, eat His book every time you eat because the truth is: Stay in His Story to stay walking on waves.

What you focus on — is what you become like.
What you focus on — is what you become like.
Focus on good — and you’ll see more good everywhere to focus on.

8. Give more grace than advice.

9. You integrity is you only legacy. Hunger for integrity more than popularity, celebrity, or prosperity, — because your integrity is your only legacy.

10. Being broken is good. It keeps you soft and open and things can grow in soft and open spaces.

Let the rains come down into the soil of your heart, let whatever needs to rain simply come, and grow whatever He needs to grow, however He needs to grow it, because He reigns and knows what is best, and in our tender surrender, the glory of our God wins.

There may be another 40-something years left, there may only be another 16,425 days left.

And honestly? As many days, as moments, between here and 90, or as many remain?

At this 90-something party, I want to eat the cake of amazing grace. Pay attention to God. Pay attention to my family. Worship God in all that I do.
Be grateful, live given, show grit.

I am a part of that epic story just as you are a part of that epic story! Your life will be celebrated in glory because you were created and imagined by a loving, beautiful, glorious Savior who cares for you. (Psalm 139:23-24)

Have a piece of that amazing grace cake!

Broken Pieces

7/3/2018

Lately I've been confronted with broken things. A broken door. A broken clock. A broken coffee mug that shattered on the trip from the dishwasher to the cabinet.

The door stiill opens and closes, it only needs a new handle. The mug was a goner, but not an heirloom. But I can't quite escape the feeling that I'm in the vortex of some invisible wind that is swirling wildly around me. And breaking things apart...

"Things fall apart," Irish poet Yeats wrote, "the centre cannot hold." I feel his pain, but I challenge his conclusion. I believe the center can hold, and does. The center holds because The Beautiful Son is at the center of everything, holding all things together: "For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:16-17, NASB)

Circumstances at the edges are perilous, yes. Things are broken. They crash and fall and shatter. But the center is strong. The center holds. Or better, it is held.

The challenge is to celebrate the mending, not mourn the pieces. To be thankful for the repairs, and not lament (at least not for long) the breaking. The challenge is to believe--even before things are put right--that rightness is near and possible...that it will come. Broken things will be mended: one day even our own hearts' cracks and fault lines will be made flawlessly whole again , and stronger for it.

Because my God loves broken things. Even me. He redeems broken things! We are mosaics in Christ!

"And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach--" (Colossians 1:21-22, NASB)

The Power of Standing Still

6/13/2018

An interesting development has occurred with my feet this semester. Too much standing, exercising, mothering, and just plain, being on my feet has not been good. I have plantar fasciitis, where the heel of my right foot feels like a hot rock whenever I stand up. I am taking Ibuprofen and doing my best to stay off my feet as much as it is possible. I’m occasionally doing simple exercises thanks to a friend’s advice, but generally I’m not moving.

This means I have to be still a lot of the time. I'm learning the power of standing still. I’m not that good at it but I’m trying.

Things I once could do with ease are not so easy now...climbing, running, leaping...I can see the movement clear enough, but my body doesn't always do as it's told. So I surrender grudgingly to "still" and curse my weakness; never fully graceful in motion, I'm even less so now.

What's more, the stillness of growing older asks me to go go deeper than muscle and bone.

By now I'm expected to still my tongue and not let words fly fast and loose. To hush myself when I know just the phrase I wish to hurl, and where I'd like to aim it. I'm asked to hold my ground and not be swayed by whims or fads, or pushed beyond propriety or kindness. Sometimes I am able; sometimes I am not. But I have the power within me to be still. At my core there's a solid and steady center, fixed even when I flail and flash and fall.

A recent piece of sad news held a snippet of a poem I'd long forgotten: Robert Frost's lovely "The Master Speed." He wrote it for his daughter's wedding day, and it's most-oft quoted lines are the final ones:
That life is only life forever more
together wing to wing and oar to oar.

Those are lines full of sweeping motion. They're beautiful...but the ones that haunt my mind are these:
And you were given this swiftness not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will.
But in the rush of everything to waste
That you may have the power of standing still."

Father who knit my cells together and who keeps my heart beating in metronome steady time, let me grow to love the power, the glorious power, of standing still in and resting strong in You.

"Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." (Exodus 14:13-15)

Amen. I just need to be still.

The Beauty of Holiness

5/9/2018

"Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" Psalm 29:2 KJV

This is a provocative phrase that sets two nouns that do not ordinarily hang out together, beauty and holiness, in company with the verb worship. Worship, an energetic and all involving verb.

Beauty is splendor, grandeur, adornment. Life - core existence - spills over the containers of mere survival or utility.

Holiness. An interior fire, a passion for living in and for God. A capacity for exuberance in the presence of God. In His presence there are springs deep within and around us which we drink and sing God.

It's life really. Beauty is the outside and holiness the inside of what is essentially the same thing. It is life God created and God blessed, life here and now.

When we get glimpses of the intricate connections between everything we see and can't see, the usual metaphor is "heaven and earth". When we sense the pulse and surge of life within and around us, our spontaneous response is to worship.

Worship is the most soul-involving, reality-assimilating act available to human beings. We are most ourselves, our image-of-God selves, when we worship: "O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness."

_________

Of course, the issue is that both beauty and holiness are in short supply. Beauty is commonly trivialized in our culture, reduced to pretty or nice, or it is mere decoration.

But beauty isn't an add-on. It is not an extra. Its not what we pay attention to when we break from reality. Beauty is fundamental. It is evidence of inherent wholeness and goodness of things. It is life in excess of what we can manage or make on our own.

Beauty arrives through a sustained and adorational attentiveness to what is there: a rock, a flower, a bird, a face, a rustle in the trees, a storm crashing through the mountains.

When we are tired and our senses dull and our attention wavers, writers, singers, artists, all grab us and say, "Look, listen, feel! Embrace and respond to life within you and around you!" This is what the poet of Psalm 29 is doing.

"Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Mary Oliver wrote these words and it adequately captures verse two.

If the fate of beauty in culture is to be trivialized, the fate of holiness is to be reduced to blandness. Many sectarian groups reduce life to behaviors and cliches that can be certified as safe. Goodness in a straitjacket if you will, truth drained of mystery, beauty reduced to platitudes or knickknacks. Ellen Glasgow had a wonderful line in her autobiography where she described her father, a Presbyterian elder full of rectitude and rigid with duty: "He was entirely unselfish, and in his long life ... never committed a pleasure."

Holiness is in wild opposition to all this banality and blandness. We are introduced to it through the stories of the burning bush in Midian, the mountain on fire at Sinai, the smoke and angel filled temple in Jerusalem. We find ourselves in the presence of God alive, with life far in excess of anything we imagined. This God-life cannot be domesticated or used: it can only be entered into on its own terms. Moses and Isaiah walked out of those stories on fire themselves, energized for lifelong, life-giving vocations. Holiness did not make God smaller so they could use God in convenient and manageable projects. It made those men larger.

Frederick Buechner took on the task of re-imagining holiness. He put the fire, the smoke, and the angels back into holiness and holy living. Leo Bebb in The Book of Bebb and Godric and Brendan, and hen with Jacob in The Son of Laughter, Buechner immersed us in convincing, contagious stories of holiness that exude life, stories of life giving, life enhancing, life-deepening holiness.

Here is the catch. Life, which is characterized by its modifier holiness as God's life and God-derived life, lavish and exuberant, beyond domestication and inaccessible to control, is mediated to us in beauty. Beauty.

Beauty is our sensory access to holiness. God reveals himself in creation and in Christ, in ways we can see and hear and touch and taste, in place and person. Beauty is the term we use for these hints of more. Hints of transcendence that show us there is more going on than what we can account for.

We need to rub our noses in the stuff of this world, inhale its fragrance, press our hands in the clay, listen to songs and stories. God is our recruiting every writer, artist, musician, pastor, child, and parent he can find to help us do just that so we can worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness.

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The phrase "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" is embedded in the experience of wild, crashing thunderstorm. The storm is then turned into an extended metaphor in which the thunder is the voice of the Lord, qol-Yahweh. Seven great thunderclaps, seven times the Lord peals out:

The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over many waters. (verse 3, ESV)

For the Hebrews, the waters were chaos, the uncontrollable and uncontrolled, the home of Leviathan, anticreation if you will. But when the voice of the Lord thunders over the waters, chaos becomes subject to creation: life, an allusion to Genesis 1, our first glimpse of the beauty of holiness.

Storms are splendid, beautiful, awesome. God is on display performing the beauty of holiness, and we have a ringside seat.

The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf,
and Sirion like a young wild ox. (verse 5-6, ESV)

Now the imagination of this praying poet takes off: the voice of the Lord splits huge trees into kindling for bonfires and turns immense mountains into a carnival of dancing animals. Lebanon is a grand mountain range to the north of Israel, and Siren is its largest mountain, a nine-thousand-foot snow-covered peak. The cedars of Lebanon, like the sequoias of California, were renowned for their monumental majesty. We are witness to a world at play to the glory of God, in the beauty of holiness.

The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. (verse 7, ESV)

Lightning bolts stab the darkness in a magnificent light show, each lightning strike illuminating another detail in the beauty of holiness.

The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. (verse 8, ESV)

An earthquake now. The Lebanon mountains at play to the north are matched by the Kadesh wilderness in ecstasy in the south. Earthquakes are normally frightening, but in this context we imagine something more like children skipping or bouncing on a trampoline.

The voice of the Lord makes the oaks shake
and strips the forest bare,
and in his temple all cry, "Glory!" (verse 9, ESV)

Can you imagine trees whirling like partners in fast-paced dance, the voice of the Lord calling out the moves, leaves swirling from the trees like skirts and scarves of dancers, the rhythms and movements and exchanges beautiful in holiness.

Suddenly they are assembled in the temple. Oceans roaring, mountains playing, lightening flashing, wilderness skipping and tumbling, oak forest dancing.

Every time God speaks, there is more life. The energy and exuberance in place and people accumulate. And them we hear, "In his temple all cry, 'Glory'".

If we have been paying attention, we are here with them. We are at worship in the beauty of holiness.

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The Spirit of God has descended on this old world of ours. It could be a grace-revealing gesture, raindrops on the window, a friend's forgiveness, a miracle conversion, a truth-telling poem, a rose in bloom. The beauty of holiness. And we have ringside seats.

Henry James said that a writer is a person on whom nothing is ever lost. That sounds like a focused Christian identity to me: the men and women on whom nothing, at least thing that has to do with life - an everything does - is lost.

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. (verse 2, KJV)

Amen.