Is He?

I was in a worship service last night when suddenly, up on the screen pop the lyrics to a song produced by the Passion band and sung publicly by Sean Curran. The church band who was playing it was, well, EXCELLENT. The singers harmonized beautifully. I was swept up.

The song, "Bigger Than I Thought," rent my heart into many pieces. I didn't try to sweep them up. I stood among the shards, singing along, tears flowing. "Oh, wait a minute," my anxious soul whispered. "This, this is what I've wanted to say."

The gist of the song is that I can spread all of my fears out before God and He is not going away, He is not going to vilify me for lack of faith, and He is, most importantly, not impressed by the size of the miracles I need. The refrain "you understand me" floated in my spirit on and on and on.

But what if, like the song says, God is so much "bigger than I thought" He was? What if His heart is so kind that He doesn't keep score? What if He really does love me in my brokenness, in my filth, my shame and my degradation? What if He is big enough to handle all of my fears, to fix all of my issues, to hear and answer all of my prayers, to put me back on my feet again? What if He is able to restore absolutely everything? What if He is planning to? What if His heart is kind enough to pluck me out of the river of mud I've been in and place me in the river of His grace and mercy, which flows down from Heaven and is strong enough to wash all of my tears away?  What if He has plans for me that are so good I can only afford one bite at a time because the richness would overwhelm me?

This is a God I am willing to gamble my life upon. This is a God I will seek.

Soul Chocolate

Today has been really hard. I give out a lot of sound advice. Putting it into practice in my own life...well, now, do we really, really, REALLY have to go there? Okay, I will.

Yesterday I tried to encourage someone who was despondent. I really tried. We sat there in the gray of the gathering near-winter evening and I did everything I could think of to cheer them up. I went home under a dark cloud. I was still carrying their burdens when I woke today. They sat on top of my own burdens and, because I deeply love the person I was consoling, the two backpacks of grief melded into one hulking mass that kept me ten inches from the floor all day long. I tried prayer, scripture, a nap, coffee and chocolate. Still struggling. Still brimming with tears.

So much of what I believe is awfully hard to walk out. But walk it out I must. Why is it that we can see so clearly for others what we cannot integrate into our own hearts? Maybe I'm just tired. I've fought certain challenges for so long that I am simply soul-weary.

But I am still down here on earth because my assignment is not finished. Oh, and that. I was listening to a teacher as I washed the dishes today...she was saying that we have certain tasks that we will feel unfulfilled unless we complete...chin sank lower into the mire as I have struggled with feeling like I have wasted such a huge part of my life.

What I REALLY need is soul chocolate. Yes, that's an apt description. Soul chocolate. That encouragement that only Christ can bring through the power of the Holy Spirit. Somebody pray that for me today and I will pray it into your life, too. I just need to be reminded that Jesus loves me so much He went to the cross for me. He is looking forward to seeing me in heaven and He is walking with me every single day here on this earth. I need to ground out the pity party like a stale cigarette and look up. He DOES care about the details of my life here on the earth. Like I told the person yesterday, King David believed that. He said in Psalm 27:13: "I would have lost heart, unless I had believed/That I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." (Holy Bible, New International Version)

Satan wants us defeated, discouraged and degraded. Jesus lifts us up, dusts us off and makes us worthy through His blood. And it is through His blood that we rise from the ashes of our circumstances and make a joyful noise to God through our praises and our lives.

Group Think...Could It Happen to Me?

I've always prided myself on a little bit of individualism in certain signature ways.  For example, I love moccasins. A salesman in an Atlanta store informed me last year, with a note of disdain in his voice when I asked where the moccasins were, that, while they had some, they did not sell Minnetonka. That's my favorite brand. I wear them all late fall and winter and put them away with a grimace in the spring. I don't care that latch hook rug-making went firmly out of style in the 1970s, I still do it with joy in my heart.

Never did I ever expect to succumb to any sort of group think...you know, the kind of situation whereby one slides into the mindset of others on an issue or group of issues because you believe, consciously or unconsciously, that a large number of people simply couldn't be wrong. Me fall into such a silly trap? Impossible.

Well, I have been humbled. Imagine my surprise when I found out, with quite the jolt, that even my physical vision can be swayed by peer pressure. Yes. Allow me to explain.

This past weekend I went to Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I was on the loop with my sister, her husband, her daughter and two sons. We were looking for bears in particular because my niece had her heart set on seeing one. I have seen lots of bears in Cades Cove because I live 50 miles from the place and I've been quite often. We had made our way quite a distance around the scenic loop and had seen none of the animals when, as we approached the area where there is a little settlement with a mill, we saw a group of teenaged girls on the side of the road gesturing and pointing excitedly in the direction of a stand of trees.

"They're punking us," I said with a world-weary air. "They want us to think there is something there." Then we all noticed a little crowd gathering down in the field near the edge of the trees. Suddenly, I saw the bear. He was a large-sized cub, unwieldy in the tree but not full-grown. I shouted. Mary saw him, too and then added that there were actually two in that area.

Soon we were all urging my brother-in-law to turn into the parking lot by the settlement and gift shop and, for heaven's sake, let us all out. We had a bear or two to photograph! There was a mini-pandemonium as folks tried to exit a slightly moving vehicle, my niece pleaded with my brother-in-law and my brother-in-law admonished someone. In a flash, my eight and eleven-year-old nephews were bounding across the field toward the trees, with me and my sister Mary following briskly behind them. "STAY FIFTY YARDS BACK. IT'S THE LAW," I said with all of the gravity I could muster.

"It's a squirrel's nest," said a man who was turning back from the scene, his voice flat.

I was stunned. Stunned. It never entered my mind that what we saw was anything other than a bear. I know what tipped me over into my pseudo reality. The presence of the small gathering crowd, all looking in the same direction. It made me see what it was I wanted to see all along. After all, SEVERAL people couldn't be wrong. One or two, maybe. Three teen girls, certainly. But a little crowd looking expectantly? Never. Except that it was, most assuredly, wrong.

Some in the group didn't give up the dream as easily as we did. My sister heard a lady ask her husband if the bear was playing dead. He dryly informed her that he didn't think that bears did that.

The point of my story, which we will be laughing about for many years, is that it opened my eyes to something we are all susceptible to, even in the spiritual realm where natural laws are very, very often suspended. We will frequently see what it is that we want to see, particularly if others are "seeing" it too.

How do we veer away from errant group-thinking about God, His world, our circumstances? By knowing who it is that we have believed, as the scriptures say. Jesus said quite clearly in John 10:27 that "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me."  (Holy Bible, English Standard Version) That's pretty straightforward. I CAN know Jesus so well that His voice is very familiar to me. And, instead of fervently urging my brother-in-law to let me out of the van to see a non-existent bear (I mean this metaphorically), I can calmly walk the path laid out for me since long before I was on the earth. I'm pumped by John 10:14, which says "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me." (ESV)

Our experiences with God are not going to be less exciting, less colorful, less anything if we let go of expectations, stop following popular theology and look deeply at what God is showing us personally. I submit to you the exact opposite will be true. If I have learned nothing else in my fifty-one years, I know this: life with the Lord is the most interesting, fulfilling and life-giving adventure a human heart can know.