Lighthouse Commissioning Service

In all of those old-school psychological thrillers (or maybe I'm thinking of ACME cartoons...) there's a scene when the hero is standing under a chandelier or an anvil or a bucket of boiling hot tar that is hanging by a frayed rope that will break at any moment. Well, hanging over my head right now is a sharp, 2-ton, crushing three-papers-and-a-physics-test-all-in-the-same-freaking-week. However, I feel compelled to write a quick little scribble of text in reflection on the Lighthouse commissioning service.

First of all, it was beautiful and thrilling how many people came out to encourage our Lighthouse (short-term missions) teams tonight. It's a rough week for most people (like me) but if there's one thing missionaries need (besides funding :) ) it's prayer and encouragement. The theater where the service was held was packed out, all there of their own volition and all with a passion and a heart for the importance of missions. Beautiful.

The music took on a new, tangible meaning for me, too. The "generation rising to take its place" was real, composed of my peers and friends. They cried for God to "fill my heart and make me clean, open up my eyes to things unseen. Show me how to love like you love me." They will need it. My friends will need to be filled up, to be satisfied by Christ's love when everything else is unfamiliar and maybe even frightening, and to move past their concern for themselves to see what God is showing them through images of disease, poverty, godlessness, and unrest. I hope we mean all the words we sing in chapel on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but I know that those men and women who will represent Taylor University most certainly meant those words together tonight.

Finally, Scott Moeschberger showed me what I want my future in missions to look like. He spoke from Micah 6:8, a verse most people around here know quite well: "What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." But people the world over cry out for justice. Hamas and the IRA demand "justice." How is the Christian's justice different from the world's justice? It is motivated and dictated by the Love of Christ, the loyal, faithful, undying and self-sacrificing grace and mercy of our own dear God. And not only that, but when we give of ourselves we must do so with only Him in mind, demonstrating that we are nothing but servants of the great Judge, the one whose Truth will reign forever over the righteous and the wicked.

We speak of the "passion" of Christ on the cross. What is passion? Passion is love lived out, freely given from sacrifice and the depth of our souls. Passion is action motivated by faithfulness to the Holy Father who calls us and demands our very lives. Maybe it's easy (though I doubt it) to have passion for one month on a Lighthouse trip. But what else will you commit to your God?

This morning in church, Jason Dorsey (*sigh* my favorite) said that, yes, when you become a Christian, God will indeed require you to give up drinking or your sexual promiscuity or your gambling. But I'm sorry, that's only the easy part. GOD DEMANDS YOUR LIFE. Don't take this Christianity lightly. It goes beyond tithing or resisting temptation. When you sing, "Show me how to love like you have loved me," you had better expect Him to do that--because He will and it will hurt. It will be painful. If you turn your life over to God, He will turn your life upside down. HE WILL MESS WITH YOU.

Mercy, justice, humility, love, and passion are the road to which you commit yourself. Don't fool yourself when you try not to fear where God will take you. Don't diminish the call He has placed on your life. It will try you as the cross tried our Lord.

But know that His love and truth will be your comfort in the darkest of times. He will never lead you where He won't accompany you. He will not require of you what He did not do for us Himself. And wherever you go, even if you don't have an auditorium full of brothers and sisters to comfort you, live in the confidence that He will bless you richly for responding to His call. He will know you and you will know Him. You will be His witness and He will be your God.

Please pray for Sarah Albinson, Julie Coddington, Julie Hogan, Kayla Cange, and others who will be traveling to foreign countries in January to serve on Lighthouse teams.

Faithfulness

I think I've explored some different ways of looking at what "faithfulness" means (see post about Kierkegaard from June). This little scribble looks at fides in a couple of other ways.

First: K talked about giving a hope or love or passion back to God with the expectation that we will receive it back. His perspective pertains to the faith required of finite Man to interact with an all-powerful God, having more than just a generic confidence in the Provider. I've experienced this in a small way this year; I don't suppose K would have included it as something wonderful and marvelous in Fear and Trembling, but it has been a fulfilling experience for me.

I gave up something close to my heart, like my child or my great lover or my security blanket...I gave up my PLAN. Plans are good things, of course. K wouldn't have approved of my incident as an act of faith if my sacrifice wasn't a good thing in the first place. Plans are good things because they demonstrate our desire to act, a focus on life beyond the present moment, and a conscientiousness of my purpose and usefulness on this earth. I've learned a lot about plans in the past few years -- 4-year plans, summer plans, travel plans, house plans, work plans, etc. The major thing I've grappled with is how plans change, whether we like it or not (and usually, we -- okay, I -- don't.) But when a plan is swapped out for something I don't understand, when I give up my presumptions and commit myself to taking big risks, embracing my finitude and the sometimes uncomfortable nature that God gave me as a human being...when I personally commit myself to a morality that relinquishes expectations and requirements that I've copied down from "The World's Book of Success Stories"... When I did this, I became something totally different and unexpected: I became a philosophy major.

The short explanation of why this is a leap of faith for me is that I never saw myself as the graduate school type...and now I hear from everyone that I'm headed towards a PhD. WHAT? Where do I get money for that? Am I even smart enough for that? Could I really go places as a philosophy professor? They don't make money--how do I support myself?

Those are the remaining questions. Now to part II: my Faithful God.

I heard a really great song this summer by a group out of Knoxville, TN called United Pursuit Band. They write wonderful worship songs, one of which goes like this: "You provide the fire, I'll provide the sacrifice. You provide the spirit, I will open up inside. Fill me up, God." And that's what I feel like, and that's what He did. Except that, like Elijah, I had to provide the sacrifice before He ever threw down even a tiny spark or ember from heaven. And I had to rip open my chest and hold my delicate, vulnerable heart in my hands as an offering before I could see the Spirit that He would send to me. It goes both ways, faith does. In my short-sightedness, I must give; and as I do, He gives back. And for every little sacrifice that I blindly relinquished, He faithfully gave more abundantly than I could have dreamed.

Now He keeps on giving. It's usually not what I expect from Him, but as I said about this summer, it's usually better than what I plan for myself. I don't think K could have possibly gotten the whole concept of faith right (that God gives back a specific thing that we give up to Him first) because Paul said something a bit to the contrary in Romans 8: "Now, hope that is seen is not hope. Who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it patiently." The blind do not know what good things lie in store for them, nor can they begin to imagine it. The limits about which I only complain prove to be the ways God shows his power--because He is faithful.

Three posts in two days? I'm on a roll.

I guess a lot of things have been ruminating in the past two weeks. Here's another one.


I've composed a new phrase to live by. It might seem harsh, but I'll explain it.

"Be sure you're worth the words you use to say what's on your mind."

I've noticed that people are often extremely superfluous. We talk on and on about unnecessary things. Our words are fluffy and ultimately mean little in the grand scheme.

Of course, as Naomi Watts says in one of my favorite movies, "If we only spoke when there was something to say, the human race would soon lose all power of speech." But please--please, please, please--if you're going to say the superfluous things, say the important things, too.

People waste words. Perhaps words are (to borrow an economics term) "public goods" that cost us no money and are in endless supply. However, the consequences of ill-spent words can be more than we instinctively foresee.

Do we even know what we mean, who we are, the truth we think we try to communicate?

"Lightly men talk of saying what they mean...when the time comes to you at which you will be forced to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they listen to the babble we think we mean?"

Liberty is natural and instinctive; but ethics are a rational restriction we impose on our own behavior for a greater ultimate good. Perhaps we say what comes to mind, break the ice, tell that story you happen to think of as a result of a funny coincidence...but what are we saying? Do we consider that speaking is an action, and one that requires ethical consideration?

My most compelling ethic lately has been Authenticity. It takes true courage and honesty to be authentic--to live as God made me, owning my own personality and passions, and to remember that it's His image that I bear. Yet we humans are hasty and thoughtless in our anger, but hesitant and shallow in our encouragement. To love is to value, to know truth. We take for granted our priceless proximity and depart alone, undiscovered, unfamiliar.

Consider the value, impact, and meaning of your words and your life. Live as the image-bearer and co-heir that God made you to be. Then tell me something that's worth the words you use to say it.

Resolute

Determination is only weakened by waiting and my patience is already thin.

The best things in life don't just happen to you. You have to seek them out.

Quite Content

In this moment I am content. I am... not HAPPY, per say. Indeed, I have hopes, dreams, desires, and ambitions that are yet unfulfilled. But the state of my spirit does not rest upon emotions. Those change and morph with hormones, chemicals, situations, and people. But my true heart of hearts is at peace, knowing that I don't have to depend on uncertainties. My Father (our Father) is in control.

In this struggle, I am discovering what God wants us to give to each other through friendship. We lift each other up, rejoice in each others' victories, mourn in each others' sorrows, and praise our great God together in all things. We force each other to look to Him. We enhance each others' existences. We build upon the completed foundation and framework that God already put down.

Not Anti-Oxidants and High School Chemistry

Free Agent.

That's me, that's what I am. I operate independently (to a degree). And it surprises me sometimes. Sometimes I don't even realize it...or maybe I deny it. And as often as not, it frustrates me because it's sure as hell not easy. Yet--

Certain friends speak wisdom into our lives and we don't even realize it until some time later. I've processed and analyzed: "a bold woman." ...Hm. Wow. Strong words. I didn't ever imagine... And at the moment, I only thought, well, bold in your perspective doesn't really reflect or understand the insecurity I hide.

But "bold" doesn't mean you have no insecurity, just as courage isn't the absence of fear. Perhaps it's the strength to overcome that earns the title.

I could write a whole commentary on how this manifests itself in my own life and social culture and the lives of others I see around me... yeah, that's a lot of stuff to say. But at least, I realize that the thing it enables me to do more than anything is to be myself. I don't think everyone sees it like that, whether in me or in others. But it's like that poem I wrote years back. "...take my hand and run."

"He is himself. Love it."