Again.

This morning, I woke up earlier than usual and couldn't quite make it back to sleep. Feeling a bit restless, and wondering if I should write, I powered on my computer, and the first thing to greet me was a friend's blog post I had opened but left unread in my browser window from yesterday (I have a bad habit of doing that--pulling up blogs and other sites/articles and leaving them to read later). I haven't heard from her in quite a while, so instead of closing the window and opening the word processor, I began to read. And it broke my heart. What she had to share seeped into cracks that hadn't quite penetrated all the way to the point where the tears flow, and opened that place of grief, of pain, of knowing more fully that this world is not as it should be.

It's partially because she's not the first. I've had other friends, even people I grew up in church with, whose parents have divorced in recent years. Just last week, I found out that two good friends are in the process of a divorce. I'm not here to judge the motives or the hearts of any of these people, because I don't know them. Every divorce I've heard about has been between people I've not been in contact with in years. And it always leaves me thinking, "What happened?" 

Because, I knew you (with the exception to the parents of the friend whose post I read earlier this morning). I saw the smiles, the laughter, heard the everyday comments that may have expressed annoyance or displeasure with something, but ultimately...I thought we were all on the same page. I thought you had committed to something that was only to be separated by death. Not by struggle, not by difficulty. Not even by sin. I thought you had, both of you, pledged to love eachother through the hard times, pledged to show Christ to one another, to walk through life together, as a team.

My heart aches for every divorce I hear about, even if those involved are complete strangers to me. Because if marriage is meant to be a representation of Christ and His Church, of two people laying down their lives for eachother just as Christ did for His Bride and just as we are called to for the sake of our King--then a separation of that just seems...unnatural. It feels like a fracture of everything our families and even our daily lives are founded upon.

We live in a broken, fallen world, and all is not as it should be.

If you don't believe me, look at the little boy joining a gang because it's the only place he's ever felt somewhat accepted; look at the girl trying to dress a certain way to feel beautiful and wanted in ways she doesn't; look at the foster kid who's been stripped of everything he's known and handed from one "home" to another because he's just too much trouble to put up with; look at the man standing on a street corner because "some bad choices" have alienated him from his family and there's no way they'll ever consider taking him back; look at the famous people overdosing on drugs or throwing their lives away on empty pursuits because not even money and acclaim can satisfy them.

I'm not saying family is the answer. I'm not even saying marriage or staying married is the answer. Because at the end of the day, there is only one answer, one solution, to this world's brokenness--and that is the One who makes all things new. The Redeemer. The Healer of broken hearts and severed lives. He will not abandoned us. He has not abandoned us. In our darkest hour, when our world caves in, He is here, He is whole, and He is able. When everything else in this world and this life fail us, He never changes. He alone is faithful. Nothing we could ever do can change Him or turn His hearts from us, because He loved us first.

He saw that divorce coming. And it grieved His fatherly heart, because no divorce comes without the unnatural pain of that severing, nor without devastating in some way all parties involved, including (and sometimes especially) the children. He does not delight in our suffering, but He most certainly walks with us through it. Because He is God. And He sees the end from the beginning. He knows it doesn't end here. He knows what He plans to reforge, and He knows how He will redeem every single sin and breakage and pain for our ultimate good and His ultimate glory.

If life were all sunshine and easy paths, if we had no obstacles and no heartbreak, we would never experience what it means to truly live. It's when we face adversity that we have a choice to make; to follow God even when we can't see where He's leading; to trust Him--or to go our own way based upon what we can see and what we feel capable of. It's when we chose the former that we see Him come through in ways we never imagined were possible. And it's when we chose the latter that we discover His grace truly is enough--that He is able to take even our worst mistakes and our most devastating failures, and forgive them, and walk with us through the consequences, and display His great love as He patiently bears with us in our weakness and shows us that He is faithful even when we repeatedly fail.

Our God is not daunted by evil. He's not terrified of our sin. He's not distant in our suffering. He is here, always. And I pray you come to know that in a deeper way, whoever you are, reading this right now. Whether you're in agony over your own life situations right now, or reeling from someone else's choices that have effected you, or simply looking for hope in a world that's so broken. Because we're all looking for hope. We're all in need of healing. We're all in need of a love that never fails.

And I for one have found what my soul longs for. There is peace in the storm and faith in the questions and hope in the pain, because Jesus Christ has proven Himself true, faithful, and able. Always. He is the Redeemer. I'm not saying it's easy; it almost never is. But it's worth it, to trust Him, to know Him, to see Him at work in this world. He is worth above and beyond all that He's ever asked me to trust Him with.

By His power at work within us and this world, one day all will be as it should be. Again.

He is able to make beauty from the ashes.

Let's Be Dreamers

For as long as I can remember, I've been a dreamer. I've been able to look at something as-is, and see what could come of it, what it could turn into or become part of. The first evidences of this trait didn't bless my mom much--all kinds of crafts made of things like gum wrappers, toilet-paper tubes, leaves, and anything else I found ways to create things with. As I've grown older, it hasn't gone away; I see what most people look on as useless junk, and can often envision at least a couple good uses for it. It's the reason for a drawer in my room that holds what I term "useful stuff," but it also comes from something that runs much deeper in my soul.

We serve a God who looks at ruined and broken souls that have been completely crippled to the point of being worthless--and sees the plans He's had for us since before the world began. He did not create us to be wrecks or failures, and He is not discouraged when He sees us in our most depraved state. Why? Because He is in the business of bringing beauty out of ashes, of redeeming what seems long-gone and utterly lost, of creating again that which He has purposed for us all along. I know that because I've seen Him do it, in me and in others.

So forgive me if I get a little irritated when people try to tell me or anybody else that any of us possess any kind of beauty or power on our own, because when I came face-to-face with my Savior I also came face-to-face with the reality that He saw me at my ugliest and my weakest and my most hopeless, and He had still been pursuing me all along. He wasn't blind to my shortcomings and my sin; He knew (and knows) me better than I'll ever know or understand myself. But neither was He intimidated by my darkness.

You see, no matter how much it ever seems like the odds are stacked against redemption or hope, there has never been a moment where Light has lost to Darkness. Ever noticed that? Flip the light switch on, and you don't have to wait for the darkness in the room to retreat; the fight is over in an instant, because light trumps darkness. Even where there are shadows, they're usually not pitch dark, because the light reflects and refracts off of other things around and lightens even the shade (which is how you can still get a sunburn sitting in the shade on a sunny day). If you ask me, there is great significance to the fact that God compares Himself to light in the Bible. He is greater than every force of evil this world will ever know.

That being said, it would be easy for Him to snap His fingers and obliterate all evil in an instant, so why doesn't He? Because He has a much bigger and more beautiful design in mind, and because He sees potential where we don't.

I love rooting for the underdog. There is perhaps nothing more inspiring and victorious than seeing the most unlikely odds flipped on their head. And our God is in the business of doing just that sort of things. Let the odds be stacked against His plans; let darkness seem to gain the upper hand in the lives of man; let a turnaround look about as impossible as water springing up in the desert. We and even all creation look at that dry, cracked, crumbling ground and say it's a wasteland; nothing can grow there; there's no hope for life to happen here.

Enter the God who says He'll make rivers break forth in a dry and barren land (Isaiah 35) and flowers blossom in the desert wasteland. It's what He does: He brings life where before was only death. He takes lives ravaged and ruined by sin and breathes life into them, creating again a clean heart inside and reversing death's hold. He's not intimidated by the insurmountable odds we see; His vantage point is higher, and He sees the real odds: the odds that say darkness will never win out against Light when they come up against one another. He is stronger.

So in light of who He is and what He is capable of, how can we look at this world and say it's hopeless? Do you know your God? Do you know that He is aiming at redemption? Do you know that He's chosen you and me to be part of that process? If you ask me, it's amazing.

So let's not be afraid to dream. Let's not be intimidated by the darkness; let's instead lift our eyes to the Author of Light and ask Him to give us His vision for what is to come out of this desert land. And let's not shield our eyes or avert our gaze from the places--the hearts--overshadowed by darkness. Let's not pretend they're not there or that it's not our problem. If you are a child of the King, you are called to shine His light. Reflect it into that darkness. Let's not cower in fear of the darkness, giving into the apparent odds that it will swallow us too. If you have been rescued and redeemed, His Light lives in you. He is with you. And He will not be beaten. So don't fear--follow Him into the darkest dens of Hell on this earth and let His light shine until every shadow disappears. You may feel like one lonely and fleeting matchstick. Well, fire tends to spread. So burn bright.

Let's not be afraid to hope. Don't look at the situations and relationships you face and allow despair to overtake you. Look to the One who saw you at your worst and never turned away. Look to the One who never gave up on this mess, never saw my failure as proof He couldn't use me--the One who knew all along that He is more than enough for me and more than capable of somehow taking my brokenness and inability and using it for His glory, using it to draw me to Himself and show me how much I need to rely on Him and not myself.

I get sick of people cheering others on with things like, "Believe in yourself!" and "You can do it!" because the longer I live the more inescapably convinced I become of the fact that I am absolutely incapable of doing anything good or right on my own. I can't tell you how many times I've been talking to God and paused a moment to look at my own track record--a long line of mess-ups and failures and even well-intentioned blunders--and then at His track record--unending faithfulness and grace that is greater than all my sin, that is actually capable of taking all my failures and using them for good in a way only He can. He has taught me through every season, and drawn me closer to Him even in the midst of the worst storms.

I am a firm believer in the fact that I can't do anything good on my own. But I'm a firmer believer that God can do greater things in and through you and me than we can even imagine. I'm a firmer believer in His ability to redeem and restore and bring life from death, water and flowers from the desert wasteland. His Light shines into the darkness, and will not be overcome.

So let's not be afraid to believe Him, to believe in His ability to do what we cannot--that He can redeem what is lost, He can remake what is broken, He can bring life out of death.

"For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world--our faith." -1 John 5:4

Let your faith look to Him. Rak khazak!!

Take Your Kid to Work Day

There is a scene in The Lion King where Mufasa takes his son, Simba, up to the top of Pride Rock at dawn and tells him, "Everything the light touches is our kingdom." 

After Simba's awed response, the young lion cub looks around and asks, "What about that shadowy place?"

"That is beyond our borders," Mufasa replies. "You must never go there, Simba."

Well, unlike Mufasa, our Father, when He shows us what all is under His dominion, does not order us to stay out of "that shadowy place" where the Light doesn't seem to be reaching. Instead, He says, "That's Mine too; they just don't know it yet." And rather than ordering us to stay put while He goes and takes care of things, our Father takes us with Him to work. He shows us the ropes. He teaches us how to defeat the enemy by relying on Him, and by training us to be like Him, enables us to reach others and win souls right alongside Him. 

I used to pray as if God preferred to do everything Himself, like a dad who would rather fix the car the right way and get it done more quickly than he would if he were showing his son what was wrong and what to do. But then God started showing me the grandeur of His plan. He is perfectly able to quickly, effectively, and effortlessly make all things as they ought to be. He could have destroyed Lucifer and the angels the moment they rebelled, could have extinguished Adam and Eve the very moment they ate of the fruit. He could have simply eliminated the sin that was trying to wreak havoc on His perfect plan for creation. But He didn't. Why?

Because He had a greater plan. He let Lucifer rebel, let him try to destroy and usurp what was rightfully His. God has been thwarting Satan's plans every day since. It started with a promise--the promise of a Messiah who would come and set His people free. And for centuries upon centuries, Satan accused God of having a double-standard. How come he was punished and cast away from God's presence, while the humans weren't? How could He forgive them? 

And then Jesus came on the scene and paid the price of sin, fixing the problem by offering Himself as the sacrifice for God's wrath, taking the just penalty of sin on our behalf. He made a way for us to be justified in the eyes of a holy God. Not only that, He adopted us as His own children. Us, who didn't even deserve to be slaves or servants, because what we really deserved was death. But He made us heirs of His Kingdom. 

But you see, our Father will never die--not in a stampede of antelope, nor by any other means. He is eternal. So we do not inherit the Kingdom by waiting until the present King dies. No, in His infinite wisdom and glory, God has made a way for something far better. We don't have to sit around and watch Him do His work. Instead, we get to be part of it! 

God uses people. It seems like a bad idea to us sometimes--why use the imperfect to represent the Perfect?--but God knows exactly what He's doing. Incredibly, He is able to better prove to this world who He is and what He is about through imperfect vessels known as human beings, because His strength is proven in our weakness, and His goodness in the midst of even our failure. And He doesn't leave us to an endless cycle of failure and forgiveness, either. He teaches and leads and builds us in His ways, after His own image, enabling us to be more like Him the more we seek His face and bear His heart for those around us. 

Do we always get it right? No. But just like a father teaching his child how to do something, when we mess up, He makes good come of it. Sometimes He uses our failures simply as a learning experience, but He also turns those situations around and uses them for good. Through it all, He leads us to follow in His footsteps.