Appearance of chaos

C. S. Lewis wrote “if you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it is not so bad.”

That quote reminded me of something that happens in our building from time to time. Periodically there is a training course on how to learn to adapt and thrive when working in different cultures. One of their exercises is not in the classroom but in the hallways. They take a half day to simulate applying for visas or residence permits from a rigid and inefficient bureaucracy. They set up tables around the halls to represent different offices one needs to visit. I can overhear snippets of the conversations, how the photographer assures the clients there’s no problem with him taking their ID photo of them, but just not right now. If they will just come back in an hour, he’ll be totally ready. An hour later he won’t be there, or the clients are still in line at another office.

How does this relate to Lewis’ notion that this world is really a training place for us rather than a resort spa? It struck me that the training exercise attempts to maximize the sensation of chaos and disorder with the frustration that the desired goal cannot be obtained. But really it is only an appearance of chaos. It is by design that it looks chaotic. Maybe the distresses of this life are also designed to look more chaotic than they are. I think Scripture does not want to give us naive optimism, that nothing can really go wrong. But it does want to give us hope, realistic optimism, that when painful, horrible things do happen, God is with us, and the pain of the chaos is not the final word. 

My Psalm

How wonderful you are, Lord!

How amazing your world,

How awesome you love me.

Who am I to be loved by the Lord?

Do I ever really care about you?

What do I have to offer?

How much do we really have in common?

Surely there can be no other reason for loving me except that you love me.

Your world is startling and intricate.

I’ve made it a joke before: “God must love details, he made so many of them.”

Yet true indeed: How many things you have made!

And I am one — with so many things inside me.

Organs, skin, blood, down to myriads and myriads of atoms,

to one another.

I am a wonder. Yet so is my neighbor.

Even the annoying, hateful ones.

Help me remember how you hung there in agony

Asking that they be forgiven. That I be forgiven.

And I don’t understand why.

You who say “Let there be” and the thing is,

Why wasn’t forgiveness that simple?

A bloodless, painless “Undo” of our self-centering, self-defining egos.

Yet that isn’t what you chose.

You descended into our world, held firm through pain and agony.

Forgave, said it was finished, gave up your Spirit

Then took it back again.

Hallelujah, worthy is the Lamb that was slain,

To receive glory and honor and wisdom and power.

this was inspired by these two articles:
The Gaping Hole in the Modern Missions Movement: Part 1 Part 2

Letdown

Did Jesus’ disciples have a post-Easter letdown? We can read how they struggled to believe in the accounts of the resurrection, but then they saw him. That must have been awesome. But how many more times did they see him? Luke says he stayed with them for forty days, then was taken up into heaven.

Did they wonder what on earth Jesus was doing? “Lord, why are you going away again? Isn’t it obvious how lost we are without you?”

Then Pentecost, the Spirit came with power, tongues of fire and words you had no idea what you were saying, except that others said you were praising God and declaring his works in languages they understood. And the small group of one hundred disciples is now over three thousand.

Yet Pentecost was just a one day event. Normal life comes back. Questions, doubts must have come. You must have exaggerated, made up that story. It’s sure not happening now, is it?

All of Scripture really is a series of one time events that don’t repeat. But we are called to remember the God who acted, and is still present, even if hidden.

The one who is able

One of my wife's favorite passages of Scripture:

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." Ephesians 3:20-21. 

I have a complicated relationship with these words. I think more often I've prayed and God did significantly less than I asked for. I can remember praying in the 70s that Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev would come to Christ. It didn't happen (as far as I know). In the 2000s I prayed that Osama Bin Laden would come to Christ. That didn't happen (as far as I know). When I told my wife how I was praying for Osama, she said that sounds good, but don't get disappointed if it does not happen. She knows me well.

I notice Paul clearly does not say God will give us more than all we can ask for or imagine. He says God is able to do more than all we ask or imagine. 

But I have seen God answer with more than I asked. In 2001 right after a conference which had talked about mentoring, I was in church thinking I wasn't sure anyone had ever mentored me. And I prayed, God mentor me. I don't quite remember what I was expecting, but I look back and realize God has been answering that prayer for years now. I believe I have been mentored now. Yet keep it coming, Lord, I need more. 

And I'm sure when I see God face to face, I will see how much more he has done, far beyond what I have asked for or imagined. Saying he is able won't be such a theoretical exercise as it often feels now. 

“However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,
    what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
    the things God has prepared for those who love him— 1 Cor 2:9, also Isaiah 64:4

Secrets and Significance

Like anyone, I wonder if what I do matters. Who really notices?

A curious novel encouraged me last fall on this topic: Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan. A fantasy-like novel set in contemporary San Francisco. An obscure guy, once web designer now bookstore clerk, uncovers a secret hidden by a 16th century typeface designer, a secret that Google with all their computing power had failed to find. 

Maybe totally unrealistic, but the story touched me. I am convinced that each of us knows things that Google or Apple or Amazon do not know, that the media and politics do not know, and that these things matter to God. I could make a joke of this (altered from a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln): "God must love details. He made so many of them." But I think it is true, not just a joke.

Along these lines, I think of the liturgy C. S. Lewis imagined at the end of Perelandra. A few snippets of it:

Each thing was made for Him. He is the centre. Because we are with Him, each of us is at the centre. ...
In the plan of the Great Dance plans without number interlock ...
All that is made seems planless to the darkened mind, because there are more plans than it looked for. ... There seems no plan because it is all plan: there seems no centre because it is all centre. Blessed be He.

God knows, God hears, something whispers to me, and I believe it. I feel joy, and think I can be calm, I can listen, I don't have to prove myself.

The persistent widow and the lamb that was slain

My devotional paired two readings the other day: Luke 18:1-8, the parable of the persistent widow; and Revelation 5, the Lamb that was slain celebrated as worthy to open the seal.

They do resonate together. The widow persists in crying out for justice, until the judge who doesn’t care decides to give in and respond so she’ll stop bothering him. How much more, Jesus says, will the Father hear those who cry out for justice day and night? He will swiftly grant justice.

“Swiftly?” I want to ask. Jesus can’t mean that literally, or else there would be no need for persistence in crying out. I suppose he’s presenting the eternal perspective; that the injustice or afflictions we suffer for a day, a week, ten years, a lifetime, all seem so short compared to the fullness of eternity. So don’t be afraid to cry out to God in suffering, he does hear and will swiftly answer (and the time will come that it will appear swift).

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain. Worthy is the one who appeared weak, gave no resistance, is also the victorious Lion who has conquered. The great Winner is the one who appeared as the Loser, helpless and weak who did not defend himself. So losing is winning, crying out and not getting what you ask for is not a loss but a gain. Can I believe that?

Are we each alone?

“Each heart knows its own bitterness,  and no one else can share its joy.”

There’s a lonely thought. What sad-hearted cynic penned this? Actually it comes from the Bible. Proverbs 14:10. (Perhaps still a cynic, if Proverbs and Ecclesiastes were written by the same author).

What is the point of this proverb? Are we indeed each alone? In human terms, we may well be. If we are each unique, if the modern proverb is right (and I believe it is) that there will never be another you, then it is inevitable that we will never know anyone exactly like ourselves. If this is what true companionship depends upon, we are indeed each alone. We are each unique in our experiences of sorrow and joy, the things that encourage and the things that perturb. Whose heart knows exactly the same notes of tragedy or of triumph? No one.

I remember some years back attending a family reunion. Early morning before it started I roamed our motel parking lot wondering how much I really looked forward to this event. I wasn’t typical, I was different. But then I thought how everyone probably had their own list why they are different, the things that other people don’t just get. I summed it up with the ironic thought, “We are each alone.” No one exactly like me. But no one exactly like him or her either.

We can extend grace to one another, remembering to be kind when we do not understand. It is not easy to be misunderstood, we all know that. But can we ever really, fully understand? So let us strive to be kind when we do not understand, remembering when we were not understood. And let us turn our hearts, and encourage one another to turn our hearts towards God, the one who does know and does understand.