In his book The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning writes about a friend of his who said her greatest anxiety about going to Heaven was not being able to choose her tablemates at the heavenly banquet.
And then someone told me this joke a couple months ago, in which St. Peter was giving some new residents of Heaven a tour of their new home. He walked them down the streets of gold, showed them the various mansions, and let them see what was behind the doors. The group walked down a small hallway, past a closed door, and Peter shushed everybody -- finger on his lips. "Now you have to be very quiet," he said. Everybody wondered why. "Because behind that door..." Peter said, "that's where the [Southern Baptists, Catholics, Apostolic Christians -- you fill it in as you choose] live. They think they're the only ones here."
I laughed.
The humor has faded; the joke is not funny. It is sad and sick and twisted. Whether exclusive Christianity is common in one denomination or another is not the question. The question is: how often do thoughts of my exclusive acceptance in Heaven cross my mind, not necessarily excluding Christians of different denominations but individuals?
How do I love with the love of Christ, the love that says to the sinner, "Yes, you were a prostitute, a liar, a miserly tax collector, a homosexual. But go, and sin no more. You are a child of the King now -- His child. I love you." Under the blood of Christ, I have no room for haughtiness, looking down on the people I think are more annoying than me. I have nothing to boast about. I'm as sinful as the next guy. Do racism, anger, pride, little white lies displease the Lord any less than murder, homosexuality, robbery?
In Heaven, my forgiven tablemates are overcomers. There is no heirarchy. God looks at my brother who, on earth, struggled with pornography and sees "clean." God looks at me -- my lips that used to drip with complaints, my body that used to be drenched in slothfulness, my mind, my eyes, my feet, my hands, my heart -- and sees "clean."
We sit together at the table (in Heaven... or is it right here, today?). And when my tablemate tells me he never had a church because he never stopped going to mosque after he started believing in Christ, I don't want to have to doubt how that could be possible of a true Christian. I want to rejoice that I know such a man, an overcomer, covered in the blood of Christ just like me.
8/23/06
8/21/06
discouragement
written 06.july.2006
Dear God, this is the part when I’m supposed to remember that You are more than enough for me. This is the part when I’m supposed to feel You fill all my inadequacies and rest in the peace of knowing that You have.
I’m not remembering.
I’m not feeling.
Instead, I’m wresting in my incompleteness. I’m knowing I’ll never measure up. I see my failures all over the board and can’t see the above them. In spite of being “smart,” I can’t figure out how to succeed. In spite of being passionate, I have no passion for You – or at least I don’t know how to live it out.
Your Psalms await me. I can’t face them.
Every part of me wants to pull through, but I try one thing: it fails. I try another: it fails. I fail, and fail, and fail again.
Oh, God, when? When do You rain Your power on me? When is the part when I realize I need to be broken? And when’s the part when everything makes sense because You breathe sense into it? When, Lord? When do I get to stop feeling like a failure? When do I find purpose? When do I learn it’s not about me?
Dear God, this is the part when I’m supposed to remember that You are more than enough for me. This is the part when I’m supposed to feel You fill all my inadequacies and rest in the peace of knowing that You have.
I’m not remembering.
I’m not feeling.
Instead, I’m wresting in my incompleteness. I’m knowing I’ll never measure up. I see my failures all over the board and can’t see the above them. In spite of being “smart,” I can’t figure out how to succeed. In spite of being passionate, I have no passion for You – or at least I don’t know how to live it out.
Your Psalms await me. I can’t face them.
Every part of me wants to pull through, but I try one thing: it fails. I try another: it fails. I fail, and fail, and fail again.
Oh, God, when? When do You rain Your power on me? When is the part when I realize I need to be broken? And when’s the part when everything makes sense because You breathe sense into it? When, Lord? When do I get to stop feeling like a failure? When do I find purpose? When do I learn it’s not about me?
8/18/06
falling in love with God
I believe we have to fall in love with God again before we desire to spend time with Him, reading His thoughts that He left with us, talking to Him in quiet whispers. We have to feel Him reaching down and touching us with a sunset, with rain, with delicious food, with the quietness of rest or the beauty of forgiveness. And all of a sudden we remember why we fell in love with Him the first place. And then it’s harder to face the day without Him; we desire Him then, in the morning hours; we need Him like we never knew we needed Him.
When we aren’t intimate with someone, we forget how much we love that person. And then it happens again, and we remember -- in a wash of beauty and grace and love and peace and joy -- and all we can do is catch our breath and bask in the remembering.
When we aren’t intimate with someone, we forget how much we love that person. And then it happens again, and we remember -- in a wash of beauty and grace and love and peace and joy -- and all we can do is catch our breath and bask in the remembering.
8/17/06
baby training
My mother-in-law Karen says that God does little things with our pregnant bodies to prepare it for motherhood. I don’t think she has any medical or spiritual proof of this, but I believe it. The getting up at night because your bladder is about to burst is good practice for getting up all the time with your wailing newborn. (C’mon, I know you see the similarities.) And I think maybe, too, my arms are being strengthened by pushing myself up into a sitting position, because my abs sure don’t work anymore.
I think God does other things to sort of make the landing on the motherhood pad a little softer than it could be. For instance, I was baking pumpkin bread today. I scooped the pureed pumpkin out of its can, getting it over all over myself in the process. It looked like baby food to me, squishy and orangey-brown. I had pumpkin bread dough splattered all over my shirt and arms by the time I was done mixing the batter. I thought, “This is great. I’m going to have to get used to looking and feeling like a sticky, poopy slob for days at a time.” (I’m not saying I want to look like one.)
I wonder if God’s training my feet, too. I don’t know for sure, though. Seems like if they had a break they wouldn’t be the worse for it. Two nights ago, they were all red and swollen from standing up practically all day. I had been baking monster cookies barefoot, and my heels were all callused and dirty from the kitchen floor. I gave my ankles sympathetic glances every once in a while because I had never seen them so swollen (although, I’ll admit, they were normal enough to make me question whether they really even were swollen at all). But I was still able to coerce Kyle into a foot and leg and lower back massage, and he was an absolute darling about it.
I’m getting up earlier these days, and completely voluntarily. I don’t have to get up very early, now that I only leave the house for doctor’s appointments and getting groceries, so I usually get up at eight. This morning, though, I woke up at 7.15, and I thought to myself, “You know, I really don’t need any more sleep.” So, I got up. It was a big victory, so don’t scoff at it. I think God puts the desire for earlier rising in me, and I thank Him for it. There’s something peaceful and miraculous about mornings, and there’s no other way to feel that except to get up for them.
Nesting is another way of God preparing me for motherhood, I think. It’s hardly instinctual; it’s more what I expect myself to do, so it’s very planned. I’m wiping down doors, touching up the walls with paint, baking for all I’m worth. I told Kyle I thought we might need to get a deep freeze by the time I’m done making all the food I want to make for when the baby comes. Aside from the red, swollen feet, it’s really rewarding to have made so much food lately. I’ve got pumpkin splatters on my shirt, but I’ve also got two lovely loaves of pumpkin bread cooling on the counter.
Something’s happening in my heart, too. This morning, when I was swimming in the pool, fretting about the sign that had warned, “Adults should not swim alone,” I was thinking how I was ready to plead to my murderer for my life “for the baby’s sake.” And I meant it, too. It wasn’t some cold-hearted, selfish scheme to get him to change his mind about killing me. In fact, I thought about arguing next that he could kill me as long as he called 911 first, so they could at least rescue my premature baby.
I’m trying to figure out where I got this love for this little being I’ve never seen or heard. When he kicks, Kyle says he practicing soccer, but I know the truth: he’s sending little love messages and playing games because he knows we’re out here, wondering quietly, waiting for his next move.
I think God does other things to sort of make the landing on the motherhood pad a little softer than it could be. For instance, I was baking pumpkin bread today. I scooped the pureed pumpkin out of its can, getting it over all over myself in the process. It looked like baby food to me, squishy and orangey-brown. I had pumpkin bread dough splattered all over my shirt and arms by the time I was done mixing the batter. I thought, “This is great. I’m going to have to get used to looking and feeling like a sticky, poopy slob for days at a time.” (I’m not saying I want to look like one.)
I wonder if God’s training my feet, too. I don’t know for sure, though. Seems like if they had a break they wouldn’t be the worse for it. Two nights ago, they were all red and swollen from standing up practically all day. I had been baking monster cookies barefoot, and my heels were all callused and dirty from the kitchen floor. I gave my ankles sympathetic glances every once in a while because I had never seen them so swollen (although, I’ll admit, they were normal enough to make me question whether they really even were swollen at all). But I was still able to coerce Kyle into a foot and leg and lower back massage, and he was an absolute darling about it.
I’m getting up earlier these days, and completely voluntarily. I don’t have to get up very early, now that I only leave the house for doctor’s appointments and getting groceries, so I usually get up at eight. This morning, though, I woke up at 7.15, and I thought to myself, “You know, I really don’t need any more sleep.” So, I got up. It was a big victory, so don’t scoff at it. I think God puts the desire for earlier rising in me, and I thank Him for it. There’s something peaceful and miraculous about mornings, and there’s no other way to feel that except to get up for them.
Nesting is another way of God preparing me for motherhood, I think. It’s hardly instinctual; it’s more what I expect myself to do, so it’s very planned. I’m wiping down doors, touching up the walls with paint, baking for all I’m worth. I told Kyle I thought we might need to get a deep freeze by the time I’m done making all the food I want to make for when the baby comes. Aside from the red, swollen feet, it’s really rewarding to have made so much food lately. I’ve got pumpkin splatters on my shirt, but I’ve also got two lovely loaves of pumpkin bread cooling on the counter.
Something’s happening in my heart, too. This morning, when I was swimming in the pool, fretting about the sign that had warned, “Adults should not swim alone,” I was thinking how I was ready to plead to my murderer for my life “for the baby’s sake.” And I meant it, too. It wasn’t some cold-hearted, selfish scheme to get him to change his mind about killing me. In fact, I thought about arguing next that he could kill me as long as he called 911 first, so they could at least rescue my premature baby.
I’m trying to figure out where I got this love for this little being I’ve never seen or heard. When he kicks, Kyle says he practicing soccer, but I know the truth: he’s sending little love messages and playing games because he knows we’re out here, wondering quietly, waiting for his next move.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)