I watched the news last night even though I really didn't want to. I knew it would be filled with endless accounts of Monday's shooting spree at the Naval Yard in Washington DC. Sure enough they started releasing the victim's identities and showing interviews with their loved ones. A daughter's tearful testimony grabbed my attention....she did not want her father remembered as a victim of some crazy shooter...he was her father, her dad and she wanted that story to be his legacy not the one which tragically took his life.
This is a powerful statement. What she was in essence saying is that her father had a story....one she and her sisters and her mother had been privileged to inhabit. She knew him as a person not a mug shot. Her memory banks are filled with treasures of golden moments of life shared with this man. Her body was imprinted with his hugs from the moment she was born and she grew up learning to read his face knowing what every little expression meant. She knows the kind of cologne he wore and will spend the rest of her life being taken off guard when she suddenly captures a whiff of it on a stranger.
She lived in his world, his story and what she was so tearfully trying to communicate was how this world filled with so many different dimensions; not just the five senses of taste, touch, sight, smell and hearing, but a world with dimensions of love, life, memory, and joy had now in an instant all been reduced to a mug shot on a screen. A robust life flattened out into something she could not even begin to grasp; and so her tearful plea to remember him as a dad not a victim.
Her words are true and good and precious. We should honor them but we should understand that this truth of "a person not a mug shot" goes far beyond the victims of tragic events. This is the great tragedy at the heart of a fallen world. This is what death does....it takes all the dimensions ( and we cannot possibly know how many) of what God originally intended for His children, all the fullness of life and flattens it, crushes it, extinguishes it....leaving at best only a mug shot; a grotesque caricature of the real person. We have a lot of walking mug shots wandering around. I would bet money that the perpetrator of this tragedy had been a dead man walking for quite sometime.
So what are we to do? Just roll over and say eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die? Are we just to throw our hands up and turn off the news like I wanted to because we don't want to be confronted with more senseless acts of violence? Are we just to accept that tomorrow there will be another tragedy and the next day another and so let's all just numb ourselves with the painkiller of our own individual choice? ( We are numbing ourselves....one hundred thousand mug shots have come out of Syria and we hardly blink an eye.)
No I say emphatically we are not. Why? Because God did not leave His world, His creation in a fallen state. On the contrary He entered in to it, in a Person, in a Story, in a Life, and that Life walked straight into the deepest darkest Death for us all. The Resurrection of the Son of God Jesus Christ is the sign that death has been defeated and a new kind of life ...eternal life is now being infused into the broken fragments of this world bringing New Creation ( 2 Corinthians 5:17).
I know for some of you the moment you read the name Jesus Christ your heart sank......"Oh you're getting religious...Darn!!!!" That is Death speaking...for death always tries to reduce Jesus Christ to a mug shot not a person and certainly not God in the Flesh.
So here is the point to all of this.... you have to get back into your Father's Story and inhabit it and not believe the lie that it's over. I write this not just to the "lost" but to the "saved" as well. Let me say it again....you have to get back into your Father's Story and inhabit all the dimensions of His glory, His grace, and His love. I can promise you this....if you get to know Him as intimately as this daughter knew her father wonderful things will begin to happen to you; not least of which you will begin to see the other as your heavenly Father see him or her and always has....as a person not a mug shot.
Jesus bestowed the dignity of personhood on broken, crushed, flattened out individuals. He listened to their stories....He was acquainted with their sufferings; he bore their grief and carried their sorrows. We who are called "Christian" are called to do no less. So perhaps the very first step is to turn off our television ( or other screen devices) and starting right in our very own home, neighborhood, or workplace begin the journey of following Jesus and becoming the means by which He continues through the power of the Holy Spirit to bestow the dignity of personhood; the means by which He continues to defeat death and bring LIFE!
What you encounter,recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation.
When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace" John O'Donohue
I came across this quote today and marveled at its beauty, truth, and timeliness for my life. I have just returned from a small town about sixty five miles away which I visit quite frequently....my daughter and her family live there. I have to confess right up front it has never entered my mind to stop and consider how I approach my visits. Truth be told I usually buzz in and out and could easily qualify for being in the "rushed heart" category if not the "arrogant mind"!
This visit was different. I decided to go to this town early to take my dreaded driver's license renewal exam. No four hour wait here, just a short fifteen minute stop and suddenly I had some extra time to to kill. I went to the cemetery (no pun intended). I don't know anyone buried in this cemetery so I was not going to "visit" a grave, I just have grown quite fond of this particular place. Instead of being hidden on the outskirts of town, this cemetery is located right smack dab in the middle. There is an elementary school, a YMCA, and some beautiful homes riming its borders, all making the silent statement that death is very much a part of life.
So I pulled into this quiet spot and parked under the shade of a large oak tree with no real agenda on my mind other than to sit and wait. Without realizing it I was approaching my upcoming family visit with reverence; the very quality of my approach was being transformed by this unusual pause in a holy place.
There is nothing like a cemetery to pull you out of a "rushed heart and arrogant mind" state of being. Try it! "As we are, you will be" cry out all the names on those stone markers. No one escapes passing through the thin veil separating time and eternity...very humbling. As for rushing; generations are on display here...years and years and years...centuries even, and the question arises in my heart "what's all the hurry"?
My family visit was very different this time and until I read John O'Donohue's words this morning I did not know why. Now I realize those moments of approach I passed in the cemetery brought to light the concealed beauty in many things. A verse of scripture was highlighted on one of those graves; a verse I sorely needed to see and know. And later the concealed beauty was revealed in my daughter and grandchildren sharing a meal together and watching a beautiful sunset. Great things came forward and I was embraced. Yes the visit was very different.
These words challenge me to examine how I approach so many things in my life. Do I approach a new day with reverence? Or am I rushed and arrogant taking it for granted? Do I approach another human being with reverence? or am I rushed and arrogant concerned only with myself? Do I approach God with reverence? Or am I rushed and arrogant wanting only a quick fix for one of my problems?
Read the first line again.....What you encounter, recognize, or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. How will you approach life tomorrow? In a rushed and arrogant state of mind? Or are you willing to try a new approach, to pause with reverence and be grateful for one more day?
I have a young friend who recently was cast into a small part in a local production of Les Miserables. As if this wasn't exciting enough guess who came to see it and guess who she got to meet? No, not any of those people.....she got to meet Rolfe-from The Sound of Music. Don't ask me why he was there I don't know the details, but I was fascinated that she called him Rolfe-from The Sound of Music. We all know who Rolfe is or rather was; the cute seventeen year old who sang the famous song "16 going on17" in the Gazebo to Liesl and then betrayed the Von Trapp family after he joined the Nazi party (which is why we both love and hate him).
After hearing how my friend referred to him as Rolfe-from The Sound of Music making it his given name rather than saying "I met Daniel Truhitte"; I couldn't help wonder if he liked going through life as Rolfe-from The Sound of Music. When he was cast in the role did he know the movie would become one of the most beloved films of all time? Did he sign up for being forever fixed in the public imagination as a seventeen year old Austrian singing a catchy tune? Did he realize he would spend the rest of his life being introduced as Rolfe-from The Sound of Music? Maybe yes...maybe no. Of course this may have been wonderful for him, maybe he would rather be Rolfe than Daniel who knows? But it has to be somewhat difficult to age gracefully when every stranger you meet cannot understand why you don't look seventeen anymore and they are secretly disappointed. Your Rolfe????Okay...loved the movie!
At the same time I was pondering these questions I went to see Fox Searchlight's new release The Way Way Back ( which I highly recommend). The movie opens with a slouching awkward fourteen year old boy sitting in the way way back seat of a classic station wagon. He is going on vacation with his mother, her new boyfriend, and the boyfriend's teenage daughter. In the first scene the boyfriend Trent looks at Duncan in the rear view mirror and asks the youth to rate himself by picking a number between one and ten. You can literally feel Duncan's discomfort at being asked to put a number on himself. First refusing he eventually succumbs to Trent's goading and selects a safe choice, the number six; to which the older man replies "I think you're a three". Ouch!!!
Fortunately the movie is a hero's journey and does not leave Duncan in the loser role Trent wants to cast him in. Escaping the house one day the boy crosses a threshold and enters the new world of "Water Wizz"; the local waterpark. Here he meets his mentor Owen the waterpark manager, makes allies of the other employees and passes tests that prove he is much more than a three. The best line of the film comes toward the end when Duncan opens his wound to Owen and repeats what Trent said to him; this time the "older man" speaks truth to Duncan and says "that's about him and has nothing to do with you". Wow!!! That's about him and has nothing to do with you!
So my question is Who cast you into the role your playing" Are you like Rolfe living out of a false persona because at some vulnerable age you were offered this chance to become a "somebody" if you would only take the part? Or did some older and supposedly "wiser" person label you a three or speak ugly words over you which in your youthful insecurity you accepted as fact? Did you ever have a mentor who knew you, loved you and was able to expose the lies and give you truth?
More important than any of these questions is this one: What role did God want to cast you in? If you are in any other role than the one He chose and created you for, your not only missing life with Him....your in the wrong story.
A writer I respect, Ian Morgan Cron posted this poem on his Facebook page.
The Healing Time
Finally on my way to yes I bump into all the places where I said no to my life all the untended wounds the red and purple scars those hieroglyphs of pain carved into my skin, my bones, those coded messages that send me down the wrong street again and again where I find them the old wounds the old misdirections and I lift them one by one close to my heart and I say holy holy.
I was deeply moved by this poem and my heart was captured by a few words in particular....red and purple scars...hieroglyphs of pain....holy. What happened next I can only describe. I saw a scene in the new DreamWorks movie The Croods ( if you have not seen the movie its ok!). The caveman father Grug is sitting with his family in their dark cave and he is telling them stories which he then illustrates on the walls of the cave. All of his stories end in death so he puts an emphatic The End to each one by placing a large red handprint on it. The effect is dramatic for when you look at the walls of the cave you don't see the family stories...you see large red handprints. Death has won, life has been blotted out.
But....my mind raced to another cave thousands of years ago, one that actually looked much like the Crood's cave. It had every story of death ever told for it was the very home of Death. I saw that The Son of God Jesus Christ went down into Death's dark cave and spent three days there. What He did we cannot put into words but we know that when He came forth from that grave He brought Life and Light and New Creation. Death was not the end of the story; Christ wrote Holy over it all!
If you are In Christ you no longer abide in Death's dark cave of fear. Every story of your life illustrated on those walls the Son of God inscribed HOLY over and it can never be erased for it was written in His blood. Death holds no power over you. Those stories have no power over you. Your purple and red scars, hieroglyphs of pain have been healed, redeemed....marked Holy to the Lord.
Can you see your cave, your body, your life, your heart, your soul; your story is holy to the Lord? You are a Holy one, a Saint marked out by the Holy Spirit created in Christ Jesus for life in His New Creation. When you see this you are finally on your way to saying Yes...Amen...so be it. You are on your way to the true healing time.
I don't think it is an accident that Dreamworks new animated movie The Croods arrived in theaters just before Easter. And before anyone jumps to the conclusion that I am going to bash the movie and the time of its release let me assure you I am NOT. As a matter of fact I think one of the ways you could learn a valuable lesson about the real meaning of Jesus' life, death and resurrection would be to go see this movie. Okay, some of you are reeling now or worse, and asking how could an animated movie about cavemen have anything to do with Jesus. Well here goes....
The meaning of Jesus' life, death, resurrection and ascension has been reduced ever since the Reformation to a gospel of "Jesus died for your sins so you can go to heaven when you die", or as Dallas Willard calls it a gospel of "sin management". A gospel which focuses more on death than on life. I do not have the time here to go into detail but let me just say the Gospel of Jesus Christ is much larger and more wonderful because it focuses on LIFE. Yes, He dies for the sins of the world but He rose to bring the Life of the New Creation; a concept which unfortunately has been lost to much of the Christian Church especially in the West.
So here it is in a nutshell.....Jesus proclaimed the Coming of the Kingdom of God....the reign of God when all sin and corruption of the Old Creation would be judged and dealt with. He died on the cross as the King of Israel bringing to a climax the story of Gods plan of redemption through Israel for the world. He rose from the dead as the first alive of the New Creation signifying the inbreaking of the New Creation and inviting others to follow Him into that Creation. He ascended as King of Kings and now reigns from the right hand throne of God. We live in the "already and not yet" of His Kingdom. It has begun....it is here....it will come in its fullest at a time known only to God.
So what does this have to do with The Croods?
Well if you have eyes to see and ears to hear you can see a beautiful picture of this "inaugurated eschatology"...fancy words meaning the inauguration of the "last days" that began when Jesus rose from the dead. The Old Creation is ending...you see this beautifully in the movie...the world or darkness, fear and death is coming to an end. There is one last family ( interesting that the Old Creation started with one first family) the Croods a pun on crude obviously. The daughter Eep ( a pun on Eve or Eek whichever you prefer) hates the dark and reaches with a prayer for the light...and the LIGHT comes into her darkness. I won't spoil the movie but the whole theme is leaving the Old Creation and following the Light into the New Creation. It is no accident that at the beginning of the movie the family has spent three days in their cave of death and then the Light comes. Nor is it just a coincidence that the light is symbolized by fire; reminiscent of following the pillar of fire in Exodus which foreshadowed following the One who baptizes with fire leading the greatest Exodus of all time ( John 1:33).
The phrase that sums up the entire movie is "riding the sun into tomorrow". The word tomorrow takes on a whole new meaning as not just another day of survival but of the Day that will never end, the Day of New Creation. The film makes relevant in ways we have too easily forgotten the urgency of the Gospel. The Old Creation is crumbling and has been for two thousand years...we must go to the Mountain of God that is already on the horizon by following the Light of Jesus Christ who came into the darkness to deliver us. So for this Easter there is a beautiful metaphor of the already and not yet, of "riding the Son into tomorrow". Go see Dreamworks The Croods and be blessed.
Season Three of the famous Masterpiece series Downton Abbey came to a conclusion with a grand finale, and no I am not going to weigh in on THAT.....rather I thought it a great time to share my all time favorite scene and why I am so taken with it.
In the last episode of Season Two entitled "Christmas at Downton Abbey" Daisy the kitchen maid finally pays a visit to the farm of her father in law Mr. Mason. If you aren't familiar with the storyline, Daisy married the farmer's son William on his death bed, doing it more as an act of kindness to a dying soldier than out of deep affection. She has been conflicted about it ever since. This scene opens with William's father fixing tea for Daisy and goes something like this:
Daisy: You shouldn't have gone to all this trouble ...not for me.
Farmer: No? Not when you're the nearest thing to a child of mine left on earth?
Daisy: Well I don't deserve it... not when I was only married to William for a few hours...you were there, you saw it.
The farmer goes on to explain to Daisy that William had three brothers and one sister all who died at or near child birth. He believes one of the reasons William married Daisy even though he was dying was so that his father would not be left alone. Then Mr. Mason makes this amazing confession and beautiful offer to Daisy....
"Without you I would have no one to pray for. So will you be my daughter? Let me take you into my heart and make you special? You have parents of course..."
Daisy: No I have no parents....never been special to anyone.
Farmer: Except William
Daisy: I was only ever special to William ...never thought of it like that before.
Sweet, sentimental, but the all time favorite out of the entire three seasons? Yes! Let me explain why. I see within this little exchange a beautiful resemblance to a much Larger Story. The dying son marries Daisy to ensure her being taken care of and so his father won't be bereft of children. An act of loving kindness to be sure but it is the father's invitation that captures my heart. "Will you be my daughter...let me take you into my heart and make you special?" This is the very heart of God the Father who having lost his children now extends the greatest invitation ever to those loved by the Son, "come and be my daughter and let me take you into my heart and be a special treasure to me".
Daisy the kitchen maid the very least in the world she inhabits, who has never been special to anyone is invited out of her small story and into a place of relationship, blessing, and inheritance all because she was the beloved of the son. Now she has a father who will mentor her, guide her and take care of her; she can leave "service" and come to the farm and to be his apprentice for he will give her everything he owns!
When we reduce the gospel to a religious act of "asking Jesus into our heart" to get us into heaven when we die we minimize the extravagant love of God and bring Him down to our size. How much greater to hear the invitation as it should be heard..."will you be my son/daughter and let me take you into my heart and make you special to me....Be my apprentice...I will teach you all you need to know for the inheritance that I am going to give you"
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1Peter 2:9-10
Reclaim, Restore, Upcycle these are all very trendy and fashionable terms these days. Maybe they were subconsciously in the back of my mind when I was cleaning out the hall closet. I was rearranging shelves and trying to put away Christmas decorations when I spied this little cup all black with tarnish. I know this cup....I have moved it around the closet many times before. It is one of those things you cannot throw or give away but you do not want, so you move it and move it and move it . Meanwhile it gets darker and darker and darker.
I know the reason why I can't get rid of the cup and I know the reason I don't want the cup. The cup bears three sets of initials with a year underneath each set: RWC1924; my father's initials and the year he was born; JGC1945, my brother; and JCC1969 his son. This was my father's and brother's baby cup.
The initials are the reason why the cup has been hidden and become so tarnished. They represent three lives that were tarnished and filled with pain. Father and son were hard core Marines that went off to war very early in life and spent the rest of their days drinking away the pain of those wars. They died ugly deaths and left those who loved them with nothing but sadness and loss. The third set of initials was lost to the family at six months of age due to divorce and then came suddenly back for one painful weekend eighteen years later, only to reveal that the alcoholism had claimed another generation. The initials and who they represented, was the cup to me and so I hid it, moved it and forgot it.
On this cleaning day, however, a thought came to me out of somewhere...polish it! Yes maybe it was an upcycle/restore/reclaim kind of thought. What does this look like besides the initials? Is there more to the cup than those dates? So I got the silver polish and went to work. I should have taken a "before" picture as the cup was so black with tarnish you could not see the initials or dates. It took quite some time and a lot of elbow grease to rub away all those years of neglect but as I polished an amazing thing happened. For the first time ever I began to see the beauty and the value of the cup itself.
The cup is sterling silver and has the mark stamped on the bottom. There is a whimsical sweetness about this baby cup and years of patina I could never have seen with all the tarnish on it. Small dents made me realize a little hand had held this, banged it, and drank from it. The handle has a wonderful design, which let me know this cup was chosen with love for my father. What I am trying to say is there was so much more to the cup than what I thought! After the tarnish was gone there was a beautiful vessel of sterling quality marked by its maker and reclaimed from its corruptible state.
The cup wasn't about me upcycling an old object from my closet. It was a reclamation and restoration of my heart. For years all I saw in the cup and the people it represented was tarnish but today I see a deeper beauty, something the Lord saw and knew all along. He was their maker and to Him they were a precious vessel and because He is a great God I can have hope.
The cup is no longer hidden in my closet forgotten and tarnished. It has been reclaimed and restored to a place where its beauty can reflect the light and bring joy not sadness. It is a great reminder that there is far more to a human being created in the image of God than the ugly tarnish of sin. I was given a gift of grace to lovingly polish a silver cup while in reality God was polishing my heart....and showing me just how amazing and wonderful He is.
I was standing in my daughter's kitchen looking down at the most precious face of my granddaughter Lily Grace. At age six her beautiful smile has those gaping holes from losing her two front teeth and a few others. She was smiling and laughing and saying good-bye to me when her eye caught the small bisque like figurine on the counter. "Look Nana at what I bought at the Restore with my own three ( tongue through the hole in teeth) dollars!" She was so proud of herself and her treasure.
I, in my usual get on the go hurriedness said " oh that's wonderful Lily Grace" and immediately began to dig in the large black bag that eats everything I put into it especially my car keys. Digging around and having a hard time finding anything....yes, you know what is going to happen...I moved the purse without realizing how close to the figurine it was and down went her little ballerina crashing on the floor.
The look on her face is forever etched in my memory. Shock...pain...loss...disappointment. She stood there crushed and the knowledge that I had crushed her little heart broke mine. "Oh Lily Grace" I grabbed her..."I am so sorry", "I am so sorry"." Please forgive me" I cried..."I will buy you a new one". Here I was desperately trying to undo the terrible deed I carelessly had done and acting as if I could go find her another figurine like the one she so proudly purchased with her own three dollars. Hugging her I kept saying "I am so sorry".
And then the miracle happened. No not instant rewind photography like in the movies where the little ballerina suddenly flew backward to the counter and ended up in one piece right where it was originally. No not that kind of a miracle, another kind. Little six year old Lily Grace took my face in her hands and pulled me down to where my face was touching hers and as our noses touched she said "I FORGIVE YOU".
In that moment we were released into a freedom that saved us both. She wasn't captured by anger and bitterness over a careless Nana who broke her treasure and I wasn't left in the pit of regret and condemnation. We were both freed by her generous loving act of forgiveness ....BUT... the figurine was still broken.
I learned a hard lesson that day. We live in a world that has not only "random acts of kindness" but "random acts of carelessness" and worse. I need not elaborate as we have all experienced pain because of someone else's sin( let's call it what it is). Forgiveness does free us when it is given and received and in my case brought immediate reconciliation between Lily Grace and myself; but it did not fix everything as if nothing had ever happened. Her figurine was broken and she and I both have to live with that loss. But my hope does not lie with what I can do to repair something that has been broken for the truth is I cannot repair it...but there is one who can.
My daughter was standing there and watched the whole episode unfold, and the second that figurine hit the ground she was there gathering every fragment...down to the last tiny particle. She was not content to let one piece go missing, and I knew what she was intending to do without her saying a word.She is a loving mother and daughter and so she would go patiently to work with her magic crazy glue and begin the slow tedious process of putting it all back together. To me she symbolized the beauty and the work of Jesus Christ.
In the Anglican tradition there is a prayer that is prayed at the end of the Communion service.:
"Almighty God, before whose face the human generations pass away: We thank you that in you we are kept safe for ever, and that the broken fragments of our history are gathered up in the redeeming act of your dear Son,remembered in this holy sacrament of bread and wine. Help us to walk daily in the Communion of Saints, declaring our faith in the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the body. Now send us out in the power of your Holy Spirit to live and work for your praise and glory. Amen."
Those who are "In Christ" are forgiven and even though we may have to live with brokenness in our lives we can rest assured that He is gathering up every broken fragment and in a mystery and miracle we cannot explain is making all things new( Rev.21:5). That is the hope of the Resurrection and that is worth pondering new everyday.
I have a young friend who's name is Cade. He is a very precocious ten year old filled with spunk and a tad bit mischievous, which makes him even cuter. Since he hails from the great state of Texas ( I had to say that for Cade's sake) he plays football and loves those Friday night lights! This year very close to Cade's tenth birthday he entered a new school.....the school of suffering.
Within a one month period of time his father lost the job he held for twenty years, was diagnosed with cancer in the spine and ribs, and was told he had a tumor in his right sinus the size of a baseball. The doctors decided the tumor was the most life threatening and so Cade's father had to undergo a twelve hour surgery and then endure weeks of horrific pain, knowing that when he was sufficiently recovered he would have to start the battle with cancer.
Anyone of these things alone would have been devastating; but all three together are very hard for adults to comprehend much less a ten year old who loves his dad very much. Cade's father is one of the best men I know. If I were to look around and try and nominate someone from the male species for best husband, father, friend, boss etc. he would be at the top of my list.
One day while I was praying for this family a picture came to my mind; one I thought might help Cade in his ordeal. So I wrote him a letter and he has graciously given me permission to share it with others in the hopes that this picture may find its way to another who is in the school of suffering.
Dear Cade,
I was going through my bookcase the other day and came upon one of my favorite stories...War Horse. I don't know if you and your family went to see the movie last year when it came out and are familiar with it. At any rate I felt I was to send it on to you and I do hope you read it.
It is about a very special horse named Joey. The story opens in a world of beauty with Joey living on a farm and having a master (Albert) who loves him very much. But then a war comes and Joey is forced to go into another world where he becomes a "war horse". He serves much like a humble servant to each of the warring factions of men and they both recognize his noble qualities. He also has one true friend Topthorn who he looks up to and who helps him survive his ordeal.
But then comes a terrible day when he loses Topthorn and runs from all the shelling into a place called "no man's land"....and in the awful darkness he gets all tangled up in the barbed wire the men at war have strung all across the deep dark trenches. He can do nothing but stand in pain and wait.
It is Christmas. One man from each side gets brave enough to care more about the wounded horse tangled in barbed wire than their own safety. They each set aside their weapons and walk out into "no man's land". I will let you read and finish the story; but what I want to suggest to you is that Joey is much like Jesus. Jesus lived in a world of beauty with his Father and then came the war caused by men which separated heaven and earth and brought destruction on human beings and creation. He enters the world of men as the "Suffering Servant' and ends up on a cross with a crown of thorns...which represent all the thorns that have now covered the creation; much like Joey being all tangled up in barbed wire.
What Christmas really means is that because of His sacrifice peace has now re-entered the world of warring men; they can have peace with God and peace among themselves. They can go out to Him like the two men did Joey, laying aside all their weapons and warfare and find something more to live for ; something of great nobility and beauty.
There is another reason I hope you will read this book Cade, and actually what inspired me to write to you about Joey. It is about what has happened to your own dad. You see Cade, as Christians we are called not to just believe in Jesus; we are called to follow Him. That will look different for each one of us but one thing we can know, if His own life went into a place of great loss and suffering ours will too.
For your dad it is pretty obvious what all he has lost and how much he has suffered. He is a lot like Joey all tangled in barbed wire and waiting. The important thing here is that this very thing is not going unnoticed here on earth and in the heavens above. Like Joey's suffering causing men to lay down their weapons and come out to him, so many people are looking at your dads suffering and patient endurance and are being changed by it.
Your dad is one of the bravest and finest men I have ever known. He is a hero Cade. Like Joey everyone recognizes him for the noble man that he is. He has served others sacrificially all his life and blessed so many people (I am just one of many). Now he is being used in a way that is hard for us to understand, very hard for you, your brothers and your mom. But you must not lose hope! Joey is restored to Albert and gets back to England. Our stories have a good ending because we are following Jesus and His story has the best ending.
You have a great part to play now in your dad's story...and your own story. Will you be brave and be one of the ones to go out and help your dad? To go where it is very hard to go...into his suffering? It must have been very hard to cut the wire off of Joey, to wash his wounds and help him. Read the story and you will see how Albert comes back into it. I am convinced Cade that you have it in you to be brave and courageous and to move toward your dad and help your mom. This won't be easy but being a hero never is. Your dad is a hero and you are his son, love him well.
I ended the letter with a personal blessing. The charge I gave to Cade is really a charge to myself. It is too easy to withdraw to my safe world rather than walk into someone else's pain and suffering. It is a way of self protection that I know only too well. Yet I am convinced the love of Christ looks like this....laying our weapons of self defense down and walking out into "no man's land". Remembering when we move toward the suffering and wounded we move toward Jesus.
I am a rule keeper. I am sure I learned this very early and it has been such a part of my life and character that I never gave it serious thought until this trip to Alaska; then I was made painfully aware of just how much of a rule keeper I am.
Our first morning in Anchorage we woke to find our hotel had closed their breakfast bar. No problem they said, just go down the street to_____and you can find a great home style breakfast; the fact that our Alaskan friend did not want to go with us should have been a clue but we were famished and so we went.
This was one of those greasy, way more than you can eat places with stuff all over the walls and Polar Bears standing around for local color. We were waiting in line for a table and noticed a large oak barrel on a stand and it had written on it "Do Not Look Inside This Barrel" right above a peep hole. Okay...how many of you would go look in the barrel? You're not a rule keeper. It would never enter my mind to go look in the barrel because it said not to. But I had one free spirit in my company and the very first thing she did was move to go to look in the barrel. Which is when my rule keeping morphed into something else; fear/control took over and I said "oh no, you aren't supposed to do that". Seriously I did this!
The much saner and freer person said "Why not? Don't you get it, they want you to look in the hole!" Well we won't go into the logic of the reverse psychology operating here but it was clear that my rule keeping had been exposed. Not to others; they have probably long been aware of it and tolerant of me. No it was exposed to me. All of a sudden in a real epiphany I saw the silliness of the rule and how my rule keeping not only wanted to keep me in line but desired to keep others there as well.
A week later we were staying in a private home in Seward and by total coincidence another friend from the Carolinas arrived in Alaska and came over to the hosts home for dinner. After she arrived everyone was out on the deck taking in the seldom seen Alaskan sun and looking at Mt. Alice when this lovely lady who brought the wine for everyone said"How about a glass of wine?" Oh this is painful.....my response was "it's not 5 o'clock yet". Yes, I really did say that. Do not ask me where I got the rule you cannot drink a glass of wine before 5 o'clock. I did not know it was in my personal rule book until that moment. "Why not?" said the lovely lady; a very kind way of saying "where is it written?"Or more importantly who's rule is this?
Exposed again. God really.....you bring me all the way to Alaska to show me what a rule keeper I am? And aren't rules important? Yes, sometimes they are. A few days later we were down at the local airport and our Alaskan friend said "oh you can go walk down there". "Really?" I said, for there was a large sign warning us not to. And just as if on queue a black bear came out and crossed the runway. We ended up getting a cheap thrill and some nice photographs; but the man who ignored the rules in Denali that week was not as fortunate, he lost his life.
So how do you know when to obey and when not to? When are the rules silly and when are they vital? And what about God in all of this? What about His rules? Didn't Adam and Eve break a rule to get us into this mess? And didn't Jesus break rules to get us out of it? How do we know what to do?
Well I don't think rule keepers like me are going to like my answer nor do I think rule breakers will especially like it either. You see rules are easy. We want rules because it makes life easy. We can go by the rules and be self satisfied or we can break the rules and be self satisfied, it really doesn't matter. What is hard is relationship. What is hard is being real. What is hard is love....Love? Yes, let me explain.
Adam and Eve did not break a rule. They broke a relationship. They turned from loving God to loving self and the moment they turned they began to re-image the creature rather than the Creator. Their life union with God was broken and their relationship with each other, with the animal kingdom and with the creation was shattered. Had they maintained their union with God and continued to walk with Him they would have received His knowledge, His wisdom, and His truth about each and every thing that crossed their path. This is what we see in Christ. He lived and modeled a life in loving union with His Father. He said "I'm telling you this straight. The Son can't independently do a thing, only what he sees the Father doing. What the Father does, the Son does. The Father loves the Son and includes him in everything he is doing ( John 7:19-20 The Msg.) He lived by relationship not by rules. Was it easy? Obviously not...it led to the cross.
When we reduce Christianity from a relationship (loving union with God) to a religion we get rules. The rule breakers exit the Church and the rule keepers stay and make more rules and unfortunately like me they tend to project their rules on everyone else. Some of you are probably still asking how we could have been drinking wine in the first place regardless of the hour.
So what is the answer? Christ. He has given his life not to save us to go to heaven when we die; but that we might be restored into loving union and communion with his Father. And he has poured out his Holy Spirit to be our Comforter, Teacher, Guide, Mentor, ....you name it. Here is someone you can be real with.
What might this look like? Let me give you this analogy. In Mockingjay the third book of The Hunger Games trilogy, Peeta one of the main characters has been brainwashed by the folks in the Capitol. When he is restored to Katniss (who he really loves) he attacks her because he has been brainwashed and does not remember what is real or true.In order to restore their broken relationship (and cleanse his mind) they come up with a plan where he will simply ask her real or not real. He will have to trust and it will be very hard because his mind has been filled with lies; but gradually their relationship and their love is restored.
Might I suggest this is exactly what God desires of His brainwashed children? Walk with me...trust me....ask me...live in union and communion with me and I will be your guide, your teacher. Just this week I read how Dallas Willard* said he gets up in the morning and asks the Lord "what do you want me to do today, what do you want me to learn today. He is the teacher I am his student". Life in the Kingdom of God is that simple. And when you come to a sign that needs interpreting just be real and ask real or not real. The one who gave his life to restore the relationship and bring you into the Kingdom doesn't care about your rules; he cares about His union with you.
*Dallas Willard is the author of The Divine Conspiracy, The Spirit of the Disciplines, and Hearing God.
