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God loves geometry.
I think. At least he seems to particularly enjoy parallels, especially the ones that follow alongside his line. Maybe math is useful after all?
It’s interesting to think of God as a line, because lines are infinite. Segments end. We draw points on segments and arrows on lines. Lines don’t change direction. The only way to get to where a line is going is to follow that single, solitary line. I suppose God is a lot like that.
I’m more like a line with a point at one end and an arrow at the other. The longer I live the more I try to adjust my line to God’s. And I’ve also found that God likes to make other lines parallel to mine. In a time of grief and confusion, I’ve found no one traveling down the exact same path as me but many who are experiencing the same kinds of grief and confusion and pain as they try to trust God with their broken lives.
It’s hard to swallow for someone like me who tends to be a little on the prideful, stubborn side of the fence. I mean, as long as I’m alone in my suffering, I can wallow endlessly in my pain and pity. But I’m not alone, and that has strangely given me strength to rise up and fight my way through it. It’s a shame that it took one parallel line telling another that wallowing is not the way to deal with life’s unfortunates.
Meanwhile, wallowers like me wonder where God and his line are. The line sometimes gets buried by my own pride, but sometimes God makes it a little less distinct on purpose. He asks me to trust him. He asks me to wait. He asks me to stay obedient and faithful. It gets harder to keep doing so as time passes and it feels like I’ve been put on hold by God. The repeated recording, “Please hold, your patience is appreciated. Someone will assist you shortly,” gets a little discouraging after months of hearing it.
My study in 2 Peter 1 relieved a little of my anxiety when I read verse 19: “We couldn’t be more sure of what we saw and heard–God’s glory, God’s voice.” It seemed at first like this verse had nothing to do with my situation until I realized the great certainty in which God exists as a being. That when God comes to us, we know it with certainty. God leaves indelible marks on our hearts. Sometimes we forget to revisit them.
In moments of pain or uncertainty or confusion or despair or worse–waiting–you cannot forget the moments when you knew without a doubt that God exists and God loves and God is omnipotent and sovereign. “It’s the one light you have in a dark time as you wait for daybreak and the rising of the Morning Star in your hearts” (2 Peter 1: 19, The Message).
I cannot forget the times when God’s line was evident to me, because it reminds me that a new day is coming like the one before.
Meanwhile, I’ll try not to complain about the voices incessantly asking me for my patience.
I’ve been reading in 1 Peter lately, which came to me at quite an opportune time. I’ve been thinking about the refinement of a Christian through holy fire versus the cleaning up of a Christian on the outside. When I took it down to its most basic element, I came to this question: why does God use fire to clean up our lives instead of soap and water? I asked for it. I got it.
Any of you who have kept up with me recently know some of the not-so-fun details of my life’s happenings and how they have been quite painful. I started wondering why God allows things like this to happen to me and not some of the other Christians I know. Of course I had the generic answers: it’s developing your testimony, it’s making you stronger, life’s not fair, etc. But that’s never enough for me.
I was surprised at how directly 1 Peter addresses the issue, particularly The Message, which uses a lot of language and word choice associated with cleaning up. I couldn’t help but start by thinking of my life as a really dirty gas station bathroom, those ones you don’t even want to breathe in. Say someone hands you a toothbrush and a bucket of soapy water and tells you to clean it. For real, who wants to even open the door in the first place? I could describe how dirty the floor is and the yellowing toilet seat and the rusty sink handles. I could describe the stains on the wall that make you think of murder movies. But I’ll leave it up to you to draw from your imagination and personal experience.
Personally, if I had the option of scrubbing every centimeter of that bathroom with a toothbrush or just burning it down, I’d prefer to torch it, even if that meant starting over from scratch. I find it funny how razing something can be a benefit to it. One of the first verses I read that stuck out to me on this topic was 1 Peter 2:1-3 (The Message): “Make a clean sweep of malice and pretense, envy and hurtful talk… drink deep of God’s pure kindness. Then you’ll grow up mature and whole in God.” Of course, you must consider the word play there with “razing,” because when God burns us down with life’s not-so-fun circumstances, He’s able to build us up again from scratch, or raise us up.
This book also makes it clear that we’re in charge of the “housekeeping” of our lives, meaning we are held responsible for our behavior and decisions. But we are not strong enough to do what God does when He burns us down with holy fire. We aren’t knowledgeable in the construction of human beings. We are not fireproof. And when we’re lying flat on our backs, we can’t know which step to take first to rebuild, which is why many of us are still lying on the floor in ashes today. But God knows how to rebuild us if we let Him, for which I am grateful.
1 Peter also addresses the proper outer appearance of women, the way we speak to each other, keeping a clean conscience before God, etc…. The kicker is that the speaker directly addresses us to take charge of these outer things. He does not say that we are in charge of our own inner refinement. Face it, if you had to get clean by either being burned to ashes or scrubbing down in the shower, you’d choose the shower. We have an aversion to suffering. Even Jesus asked for the cup to pass from him. But God does what it takes to refine us to make us pure, strong, and sturdy in our faith, even if it means using holy fire to do so.
That’s why the writer goes on to say that Christ suffered for us, because suffering is ultimate like fire. Christ walked through holy fire “to carry our sins to the Cross so we could be rid of sin, free to live the right way.” (1 Peter 2:21-25). He freed us to take care of the outer things by walking through fire to take care of the inner things. Think about it: you can’t decorate a house that won’t stand up. He takes care of our structure and gives us charge of the rest.
We can scrub our skin clean, smell decent, even appear to be flawless and good, but the toothbrush can’t scrub the heart. It’s important to appear like Christ on the outside, but it’s even more important to be structured and founded on Christ underneath that. And that’s why sometimes we’ve got to be burned down to ashes and raised up again by God and for God.
my body turned into a sinkhole
never thought i’d feel so empty
so dead and so alive
i was in limbo
in the coffin with a heartbeat
on the cell phone with my mom
as i described how it felt
to breathe the dank air below the grass
so close and so far away from normalcy
she pretended
we played house and i was her daughter
and we were starting over
we ate cake and had tea parties
and we only faked fights
and i was five years old again
the day my head itched
my fingers tangled in a few strands
and like we used to pull the pampas grass
it plucked from my scalp
root and all and dad
he loved my long hair
he pretended like it wasn’t important
like it didn’t matter
but my tears fell out like my hair
i hoped they would eventually run out too.
some people brought me food
and they pretended like it would distract me
like i could stop thinking
about the walls of my body that were caving
like sand in an hourglass
but i knew they were only visiting and thinking
this might be their last time to see me
and death is a curious thing.
not death itself of course
but you never know what happens
until it happens and it’s something
like a hawthorne story
one is all it takes
and you’ve read them all
sometimes mom leaves me during treatment
because she can’t pretend there
and in between heaves
i look up at the white coats
and sterile scrubs to see no one pretending
except the occasional intern
i guess i haven’t started pretending yet
because my body still hurts
somewhere is a deep ache
like when your fingers get too cold
and i’m still in limbo between fighting
between pretending
and release
the sand is trickling into my coffin.
five years
two hours
fifteen minutes
twenty-nine seconds
since glass sprayed
like a blizzard of crystals
since impact spun her like a ballerina
in a pirouette of death
and the custodian swept remains
off the stage, left no memory of accident
but parallel burn marks soon washed away by rain.
here the grave of many gone before
though memory-less
the brothers and sisters purged pain
by eliminating evidence
to forget the cause
leave the effect behind to imagine
the unknowable was never true
we will build a monument
a white metal cross
commemorating the unexpected
a life lived once but snuffed out
or maybe an excuse for tears
as media hypnotizes us
as the movie box tells us is the norm
the norm for death
the norm for the unexpected.
the predictable for the unpredicted.
I will rehearse your dance in my head
hear the screaming tires
your screaming body
to the tune of the summer afternoon
when your heart stopped beating.
I will
shed tears
I will
fall to my knees
I do not know your last name
but I will.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever wished it was a straight road to where you were going.
Thought so. Now maybe in a joyride sense you’d rather have some fun, curvy roads and lots of scenery. But in a real life sense, we all like things better when they come easy to us. Take money for instance: college students like me could always use a couple of twenty dollar bills in their wallets. I can think of so many things that 40 bucks could buy me right now. I think of all material things in terms of cost and value. Can I afford that? How much of my checking account will that drain? Do I have that in cash in my wallet?
If I had a constant flow of easy money, I probably wouldn’t hesitate to buy what I wanted. Or how about relationships? Academics? Employment? Reputation? The future? I’m in this awkward place where hindsight is 20/20, but the future is so different and uncertain that I feel I can’t really apply what I’ve learned so far. Quite frankly, uncertainty makes me throw up a little inside. I’m lonely but surrounded by people. I’m intelligent, but college is kicking my butt. I’ve got two jobs, but they just might drive me to insanity. And when I graduate next year, I have no idea where I’m going.
It’s really tempting to pray for God to make my paths straight, as I understood it. The easy way. The way of minimal effort. Or as I wish I could call it, the restful way. If I’ve ever had a life verse, a verse that got me through thick and thin, a verse that backhands me every time I read it, it’s this one: Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Or as The Message puts it:
Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track.
I used to pray for God to give me the difficult path, the one that would exhaust me, keep me begging for more of Him, keep me clinging to His strength. I didn’t want the straight path as I had interpreted it. That was the path for wussies and wimps (excuse my juvenile French). I prayed for all the worst things: patience, humility, understanding. I got every bit of it.
Then I compared the two translations of the Proverbs verse, and I did the math.
“He will make your paths straight” = “He’s the one who will keep you on track”
SO…
Straight path ≠ Easy path
Put simply, it means that God will get you where He needs you to be. The easy path really isn’t the straight path in this case. The straight path is whatever He wants it to be. That may not be on the well-beaten path, the path that you’ve chosen, or the straight shot to point B. It’s probably going to be the one that will teach you what you need to learn.
It maybe the path sans money or relationships or reputation. What you will have will be what you need. You never are without what you need. If you don’t agree with that, you must have a different view of God than I do.
And don’t try to figure everything out on your own. Now that’s a relief.
Expectant.
Not a word to which I attach good feelings.
It means there’s a chance for you to get what you want… but also a chance that you could be terribly disappointed. It implies uncertainty about the future. And deep down, we all want to be certain–at least about a few things.
I started thinking about the meaning of it when I read these verses, Psalm 145:15-17 (The Message): “All eyes are on you, expectant; you give them their meals on time… Everything God does is right–the trademark on all his works is love.”
I had this picture in my head afterward of little children standing under their parents with their hands lifted high as they waited (some impatiently) for their meal or snack or ice cream cone. I started associating expectant with bratty children who cry in Wal-Mart when they don’t get a toy car or a cherry sucker. Expectant at first meant ungrateful, selfish ignorance to me. It was not a word I associated with thankfulness. Rather I took it to mean that one no longer thought about God’s provisions or thanked him for them, thus the blessings got ignored.
I didn’t think I should feel so appalled by expected. I needed rethink the verse, so I did.
Maybe expectant is something more than just waiting on something that you need or want. Maybe it’s something I should be doing in my every day life. I should be expectant when I meet with God. I should be expectant when I step into church. I should be expectant when I pray. I should be expectant when I wake up in the morning of a new day. Why? Expectance turns into faith. Expectance is a fruit of trust. It invites God into my heart and life, gives him a throne and asks him to sit in it.
It’s a form of faith that comes from a beyond-the-surface relationship. We can expect God to show up, to answer us, to listen, to love us, to have good plans for us that day. We can anticipate his presence because he loves us.
In high school I went to church camp for a week. Our youth pastor told us that if we wanted God to meet us there, that we should expect him, we should be attentive to him. If we didn’t think God would show up, that wasn’t exactly an open-door invitation for his presence.
It wasn’t like a “gimme gimme” situation where the kid expects his mom to give in and buy him the sucker every time. It’s more like you’re a child of God that expects him to reveal his love and provide should he choose to do so. Because he loves you. If you aren’t expecting God to come through for you, you’re more likely to take the wheel and credit the provisions and blessings to your own hard work. Just a smidgen selfish. Every need met is a witness to God’s grace. We miss the blessings because we weren’t expecting them, watching and waiting eagerly for them.
We often miss God not because he didn’t show but because we didn’t expect.
Blessed are those who listen to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. Proverbs 8:34
I once met an elderly lady at church who was deaf. Strangely enough, she always volunteered to be the greeter. She would take your hand in both of hers and hold it tight as if you were the guest of honor that day. Sometimes if she got excited enough about seeing you, you could hear her whimper a little bit. She wanted to speak with you, but sadly enough, most people couldn’t read her sign language or return it.
She had eyes deeper than I’ve ever seen. I could see inside her through them. I could tell that she ran deeper than anyone I’ve ever known. I wasn’t sure what was inside of her–at least I couldn’t tell you with words. But my soul connected to hers. Every time I saw her, I felt for the moment I met eyes with her that I could feel her soul, feel what she was feeling. I ached to communicate with her; I wanted to sit at her feet and learn her humility. Something burned inside me to know her, to tell her story.
Her husband passed away before I knew her. He was deaf, too. That alone makes me admire her. I can’t imagine the struggles they went through as a couple, but the fact that they stayed together ’til his death inspires me. I want that kind of love that says, “I don’t care what challenges you face, they’re mine, too…” or just that willingness to be a team. Although some people might think they were at quite a disadvantage to both be deaf and try to live “normal” lives, I think it might have been a blessing. Their relationship must have relied on an incredible amount of trust and positive communication and patience. I can’t imagine that either of them had a temper.
I think she does everything on her own now. Last summer, I saw her at Wendy’s after church. I helped her order food because the guy behind the counter was quite unaccommodating. I admired her patience with him while mine was waning under the frustration with his rudeness. She pointed and wrote on napkins until he understood everything she wanted. While we waited for our food, she and I carried on a conversation on a yellow Wendy’s napkin. I still have that napkin tucked away in my purse to remind me of the tears that gathered in my eyes as I drove home that day.
I want to be as loving, as patient, as beautiful as she is one day. She has touched my life without saying a single word. I never thought it was possible for a human being to do that (other than Christ himself). Being a writer, I often overdo it with words; I say too much and drown people in language. She drowns people in love and compassion.
I felt her heart. It overwhelmed me. I wonder if someday I can overwhelm someone with a handshake.
(And learn sign language, too.)
