Could Use a Little Truth Over Here
I twisted a little in the chair and felt my shoulders pull in tight. The edges were fuzzy, but the conversation was starting to come back to me in pieces as I sat at the kitchen table drafting a report into the evening hours.
I said that?
I wanted to be sure, so I texted her.
Did I really say there was a third brother?
Yes, she answered back. I think you did.
Blast.
::
Fresh from ten-plus days at the edge of night with Heman, my heart felt a little achy and exposed. I probably should have taken a nap. Instead, I let my mind loose on the playground a little longer, until it hung upside down on the monkey bars of one question: Did Heman’s light ever come back on, or did his world stay dark until the end?
Earlier that morning, our adult class spent some time on the swing set of Luke 15. We looked at the brother that went all wild, exhausting the riches stashed in his pockets from his father only to be washed away in an even wilder grace that rushed him while he was still on the road to home.
And we looked at the brother who witnessed redemption and seethed, angry that grace should be so crazy and not better measured.
We thought together that much of the time, we find ourselves to be one brother, or perhaps the other.
But that afternoon, in my petulant brooding, I determined to be neither.
There was a third brother, I barely recall saying. The brother nobody talks about. The father built a shed out back and put the third brother in it because they didn’t know what else to do. That’s the brother that is me.
Here in the light of day, that’s outrageous. And even as the words appear in front of me on the screen, my stomach goes soft and my shoulders clamp tight, and shame drips down around my neck.
I’ve just rewritten words that drew life from His lungs.
::
But I stop, and consider. While in adding a new chapter to His parable I may have been less nuanced than usual, I see I am a revisionist through and through.
I footnote and annotate and asterisk where His Word clearly stands on its own. Yet I feel compelled to qualify His truth and articulate the provisions that might just not apply to me.
Why must I think I stand outside the reach of His unrelenting mercy?
Where did He ever say such a thing?
And when will I cease to deny the power of the Gospel with my slimy, proud disbelief?
::
I stood some feet away and looked at the Word, still open to 88, to Heman’s painful cries of anguish from a dark place. And I asked Him, quiet, not to ask me to go there again. Please. Let’s move on.
He smiled, it seemed, and so I took to my place on the floor and turned pages. In mere moments I rejoiced over the Rock of my salvation right there in 95, just like it had been waiting for me to arrive.
And mere moments later, I doubled over as though sucker punched.
I wasn’t. God doesn’t do that.
But it felt so all the same.
This song of rejoicing, it ended badly. It was Heman and his bestie the darkness all over again.
“They shall never enter My rest.” (95:11)
Was this the answer to my jungle gym question? When I wonder if Heman died in the dark (and by implication how that might have anything to do with me), this is what I hear in response?
“They shall never enter My rest.”
Quick, read backward. Read backward. Read backward. Hurry!
I read backward a lot. What did He say before that?
What He said was “do not harden your hearts.” (95:8)
I slumped back and let out a long draw of air.
You know what is true. But you harden your heart against it. So yes, it will be tiresome and dark and you will not rest. Not until your heart is soft and you take the truth as it is written and stop writing your own.
You will not rest until your heart is soft enough to believe that when He said it is finished then it really is. And when He says He is enough then He really is.
And so, yes, I know what is true. I know it is finished and He is enough and grace doesn’t run out and mercy reaches me.
I know.
Oh, how I know.
And oh, how I forget.
::
So how would you like to help me out today? Because I could sure use a little truth over here.
Tell me some truth.
The rules are simple:
- It has to be the truth. That is, God has to have said it in His pages.
- It has to be the truth. That is, I don’t need an ego boost; I need Jesus.
- It has to be the truth. That is, unqualified, no-asterisk, straight-up truth.
Here’s your chance to “give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” (1 Peter 3:15)
Ready to preach me some Gospel? Go!
::
Photo: sad swing by Jonathan Malm via Stock.xchng
From Psalm 139…”7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
and from Hebrews 4…”14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet was without sin. 16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
2010/07/13 at 8:34 PM
Oh, Nancy. You must know my heart. Preach me 139?
Thank you . . .
2010/07/13 at 11:25 PM
Oh Lyla, how much the Lord loves you. St. John of the Cross talked a lot about the Dark Night of the Soul just like your friend Herman. Spent a lot of time in the Dark with God even though He didn’t seem to be anywhere near. How precious you must be to Him. Few choose to stay in the dark until God is done with them there. That makes it all the more precious to Him. Just like the “third son” in the building outback. He isn’t there because the father didn’t want anything to do with him, it was because of how special he was. The Father wanted him separate, wanted him to himself.
2010/07/14 at 5:21 AM
Holly, right you are. He love us.
2010/07/14 at 9:45 PM
I’m not sure where you’re coming from here. As someone who has also been going through a dark time, I thought one day to check my desire. Did I desire God or did I desire evil? The answer gave me hope. And I remembered that faith is, in the end, a choice. We may not receive the blessing or even the sustenance we think we need, but we are free to choose Him anyway. Serve Him? If only I could. Love Him? I’m not quite feeling love, either. And I can’t promise God I’ll not harden my heart at some point. I can’t promise Him I’ll never waver. But today I can choose to believe He is good. And when I do, He gives me a measure of peace. There’s comfort in knowing Christians throughout history have faced such struggles. Why should I be different? His grace is bigger than me or my struggles. But to give that platitude a setting, His grace is personal when personal circumstances don’t reveal Him. That’s what I choose to believe. Jesus is Lord. And if love is a choice, then I guess I love Him. He is good.
2010/07/14 at 9:36 AM
God bless you, Solveig, and thank you for your comments. Truly. Where I’m coming from? Some days I honestly don’t know. In this case, a return, quite simply, to the intermittent doubt that creeps in, a rebellion in some ways, and pride in many others, that wants to paint myself as beyond His mercy, as though I could in my infinite smallness ever be too much for Him to handle. As though I have some corner on the dark. When I think this way, I tend to adjust His Word to suit my purposes, and I caught myself doing so in such an outrageous, blatant way that it stopped me in my tracks. I post on these episodes in many ways to hold my own feet to the fire, say it out loud so I can’t pretend later that I had it all figured out. I don’t know if that helps it make sense or not.
Ultimately, I know what is true. And as you wisely suggest, it’s a choice we make to believe that even when circumstances suggest otherwise. Most days I make the right choice. Some days I don’t. The lights are on today. I’m choosing to believe truth. And I’m hoping we can encourage one another with some proclamations of that truth here.
It’s Good News, really.
We need to preach that to our heart.s
2010/07/14 at 10:05 AM
From Genesis 32:24-29
“So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. … He touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched…”
He’s touched your hip socket, and you’re changed forever, Lyla. Perhaps you feel as though you walk with a limp this day? Know that it’s because He has touched you. And that’s the Truth, with a Capital T.
2010/07/14 at 10:20 AM
Some days I wonder if I don’t need a walker.
Thought you said his hip was “wretched.”
Thanks…
2010/07/14 at 7:42 PM