Flood of Faith

"Whether we are adults or children, our best memories are usually the sort which, like a tuning fork, strike that resonant chord in our souls.  It's a song we never quite forget and recognize immediately whenever we catch its echo.  We recognize it because it is so full of heartbreaking beauty.  Like deep calling to deep, it is stamped with His imprint; and since we bear His image, the memory is sealed in that deepest, most profound part of us.  Such moments cast soundings and plumb the real depths of who we are."  - Joni Eareckson Tada

Today, I had one of those moments.  The echo penetrated my heart, speaking of Faith.

It's been difficult to perceive the presence of God lately.  I've felt parched and thirsty for His presence... but this little word soaked me today.  Faith.  Through the last months, through the dryness, through the darkness, I have been saturated with a great gift.  Faith.

It wasn't by tenacity that I have hung on.  It wasn't by fierce determination that I've persevered.  It wasn't by the strength of my will that I've refused to give up on God.  Faith.  The gift of God, for the daughter of God.  A priceless treasure pressed firmly into my open and pleading hand, I haven't even realized that five letters have been sustaining me without my permission.

This little word hints at such immense grace... His presence with me expressed generously in one rich syllable... so often carelessly spoken as a command ("you've just got to have faith"), today received as a saturating flood.  This is the gift: the Spirit of Christ in me believes in Christ at work in the world.  Faith.

Zucchini Hidden in the Hamburger

My secret is out... everyone at Life on the Vine now knows.  When I cook hamburger for my family, I blend up onions, garlic, and zucchini and I hide it in the ground beef.  My kids think they're just eating ordinary hamburger... but they're actually eating life-giving veggies.

We started a sermon series at Life on the Vine about seven practices of Christ's presence (find it here).  And in the same way that I hide veggies in beef, as we engage in these practices, our ordinary human activity is actually loaded with divine presence - the life-giving nourishment of Christ Himself.

Our extended families think they are inviting ordinary hamburger over... but we know we're bringing onions and garlic along with us.  Our coworkers think they're eating lunch with ground beef, but we know we're packing zucchini.

And so there is this mysterious and mind-blowing partnership between the presence of Christ and our human activity.  Without His presence, our activity is merely an obligatory checklist.  Without our activity, His presence remains hidden and intangible to a world that is waiting to see Christ incarnate in His people.

It's about relationship.  Christ in us... us in Christ.  His presence is a frame through which to view our practice... and our practice is a frame through which the world can see His presence.

Where I've been...

I know... it's been a long while since I've blogged.  I guess I decided to take the summer off... I just didn't realize it until the summer had gone by without any motivation to post anything.

This summer, there was a lot of fumbling in the curtain... finding it difficult to perceive the presence of Christ in any sort of tangible way.  In the Immanuel prayer process, I've been "stuck" all summer in a childhood place... locked out of a dark room and Jesus is keeping the key from me.  Perhaps I'm not ready for what's behind that door.  In any case, the forward motion and the deep healing I had been experiencing have stalled out.  And I became suddenly aware of how much I had grown to depend on that "experience" of His presence in the past two years.  So much so, that when I lost that way of connecting, I felt as if Christ was no longer with me.

Although I believe Christ means for us to know His presence in tangible ways, I also recognize that part of what happened was that I had turned signs of His presence into a subtle form of idolatry.  I recently re-read part of "Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross (excerpt found in Devotional Classics).  It became clear to me that, once again, I had 'misused spiritual consolation' and it seemed that God had taken away my consolation in order to purify my soul.

"God perceives the imperfections within us, and because of his love for us, urges us to grow up.  His love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason he takes us into a dark night.  He weans us from all of the pleasures by giving us dry times and inward darkness.  In doing so he is able to take away all these vices and create virtues within us.  Through the dark night pride becomes humility, greed become simplicity, wrath becomes contentment, luxury becomes peace, gluttony becomes moderation, envy becomes joy, and sloth becomes strength.  No soul will ever grow deep in the spiritual life unless God works passively in that soul by means of the dark night."

In the midst of this 'dark night,' I was given the task of proclaiming the presence of Christ with us, as He promised in Matt. 28:20.  And here, I found an obvious sign of Christ's presence with me... In His wisdom and tenderness, He forced me to wrestle with what He meant by "I will be with you always" even while I was in the midst of wondering where He had gone right now.

His presence still isn't tangible like it was before this summer... but perceptions will never measure the reality of His presence... instead, the reality of His presence shapes perception.  (I think I must have read that somewhere... but I can't remember where).