leaning into mystery

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

and do not rely on your own understanding.

Acknowledge him in all your ways,

and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6 (NET)

My heart is so very tired.

This post has been slowly taking form and materializing in my own mind over the last several days. Weeks, really. I've felt as though I've been wandering through a thick fog which, for the time being, is here to stay. I've been fighting against it as valiantly as I'm able, hoping it will burn off. I'm exhausted. I surrender. [insert flying white flag here.]

In terms of relationships, faith, and life in general, I have come to the end of myself. No bridges have been burned, but familiar comforts have been stripped. While being taken to new heights and depths of faith, I simultaneously feel more clueless and uncertain than ever. I have reached a point where there is nothing more I can do. I am concurrently convicted and conflicted. I've come to the end of my own power. It is cold, it is dark, and I am in wholly unfamiliar territory.

Dear God, I am so terrified.

I've prayed for what you might pray for while in the midst of confusion: for clarity, for direction, for wisdom. None of these things have been provided. The only truths that have emerged are these: Faith is a choice, not a feeling. Faith is not for those surrounded by what is comfortable, familiar, or well-tested. Faith is for when it is desperately dark, when you can't see your hand in front of your face, when the next step you take might be over a precipice. Faith is for when your senses and your knowledge fail you. Faith is what you exercise when all conventional wisdom would say it's ridiculous to trust or hope. Faith is for when the only answer you receive is a question. Or when the answer is a deafening silence.

And so I've learned that there will be no clarity, no obvious direction forthcoming, no blaring red lights or voice from the sky proclaiming GO THIS WAY. And my wisdom? I've most certainly stepped outside the bounds of any knowledge or experience I possess. And so I'm left to lean upon God, to obey Him (sometimes blindly), to trust what He's promised. Ultimately, to trust Him. Like Noah did when he built the ark though the earth had never seen a single drop of rain. Like Abraham did when he held the knife over Isaac on the altar. Like Moses, who left behind a life of wealth and privilege in Egypt, having seen "him who is invisible" (Hebrews 11:27).

Nothing makes sense to me right now. I honestly do not understand what God could be up to, and I've given up postulating. But whatever work He is about, I know I'm slowly being emptied of myself and stripped of the things I did not even realize I leaned so heavily upon. I realize this is a good thing, even poetic in a way. To speak of it, it is such a beautiful concept: to be emptied of oneself so Christ can make Himself manifest in you. But may I say, ouch. The process of being stripped, emptied, cleaned out, molded, and refashioned is (at best) an unpleasant one. Tears come easier than prayers these days.

So when I pray, all I ask is that God would make something of all this. When my feelings beg to send me in a direction other than obedience and trust (which is the majority of the time), when I am tempted to reclaim old comforts, I am reminded that the ancients were not commended for following conventional wisdom or for paying heed to the opinions of onlookers. They were commended for exercising faith, for trusting the words of Him who could not be seen. They stood firmly on His promises and commands, building boats, raising knives against their children, defying those once called family.

They must have been afraid, but they did not let this drive them. In spite of what must have been an overwhelming feeling that obedience was insane, they simply did what God said to do. And so their examples shine in Scripture over two thousand years later.

In looking up the Scripture for this post, I looked at the roots for some of the key words in the passage. According to Bible.org, the word bÿtakh ("trust") has a dual meaning in Hebrew: in a literal sense, it means "to physically lean upon something for support" and figuratively, "to rely upon someone or something for help or protection". The commentary expands on this, noting that in this passage, "relying on one's own understanding is compared to leaning on something that is unreliable for support."

I've never thought of my understanding as unreliable. Nor have I ever obeyed God in spite of what (by all appearances) is most sensible. And I'm certainly not accustomed to putting aside the best-intentioned advice of those I'm in the habit of trusting implicitly.

And so my hope is that instead of just paying lip service to an abstract concept of trust, I would really learn to trust Him: that I would press my weight into Him, lean heavily into Him, look only to Him. That I would step forward even when I feel most like turning back.

On My Radar

I'm sure most (if not all) of you are aware of the fires ripping their ways across Southern California; I know many of the readers here have friends and family there. I am no exception.

I got an e-mail from my aunt this morning; she and my uncle live in the Corona/Riverside area and thus far, have only had dark air and drifting ash to deal with. Last night, they started looking for voluntary evacuees as the fire has crept into the hills that are nearly in their backyard. Their whole neighborhood is on standby as they wait to hear if the evacuation will become mandatory.

I'm praying harder than ever that the Lord has mercy on this area of our country -- for the thousands who have been displaced and for those fighting the spread of the flames. The below photos were taken just outside my aunt & uncle's home this afternoon ...

October Anomalies

While the weather is not the most interesting thing about what I'm up to these days, it certainly is giving us Pacific Northwest natives plenty to talk about. This is not typical October weather at all!

Yesterday was sunny, clear, and warm: as in 74 degrees. And this morning as I drove to work at 5 am, the temperature read 57 (non-natives, read: warm). Last year at this time, we had sideways rain, hundreds of felled trees, and several thousand homes without power for days on end. I don't know whether there is some rational scientific or meterological explanation for it all, but you won't find me complaining about all this ...

The Great Thing About Rain Is ...

rainbow photo by kirsten
16 october 2007

Black Bean Love

I don't know what the weather is like where you live, but here in the Pacific Northwest there is a sharp autumn chill in the air. As for me and my kitchen, this means that there is plenty of good cold-weather food cooking.

I have long been a fan of the black bean. Whether in spreads, soups, or side dishes, these beans are a favorite with me and my diet. I recently found a couple of very simple and tasty recipes that use my favorite little bean. They're healthy, they're cheap to make, they're gluten-free, and they're vegan to boot (provided you omit the dairy ingredients in the soup, as I must). If you're a meat-eater, don't let that information stop you! These are great as side dishes or can be easily modified to suit the carnivore's palate.

Black beans pack some serious nutritional punch: a single cup has about 15 grams of fiber and just as much protein. When it comes to anti-oxidants, these bad boys are hard to beat. The dark skins of the beans contain flavonoids that work together with vitamins in the body to prevent oxygen-related damage. Add to that that they'll do your heart a lot of good: studies have shown that consumption of black beans reduces the risk of heart disease and heart attack.

What I particularly love about this particular Black Bean Soup recipe is its simplicity. Every recipe I've found until now calls for soaking black beans overnight. Because I tend to eat on the fly (and tend not to know what I want to eat until the mood strikes), I wanted a recipe that used the canned variety of beans. The recipe calls for little prep time (opening cans, some minor chopping, and the ability to use a blender or food processor) and is so quick and easy, you won't even realize you're cooking!

The Quinoa & Black Beans is good as a meal (especially for smaller appetites like mine) or a side dish. Not only is it simple, but it makes plenty! This recipe was tested in my kitchen on Friday and we've been eating leftovers since. For lunch, I cooked up some lean chicken-garlic sausage, chopped it up, and added it to the mix. It was delicious!

Because I cannot take credit for either recipe, I'm providing the links so you can take a look when the appetite strikes.

Black Bean Soup

Quinoa & Black Beans

Enjoy!!

Breaking the Funhouse Mirror

One of the things I simultaneously love and loathe about being in relationship with others is how you are reflected back to yourself. Let’s face it – the reflection isn’t always pretty when someone who can lend some objectivity to your you-ness shows you what he’s seeing. There are days I’d much rather have my relationships function as a kind of funhouse mirror, but in reverse: distort and manipulate the truth so that what is reflected back to me is what I want to hear, what I want to see, a supermodel picture of spiritual and relational perfection – not the impalatable, hard-to-digest, I’m-really-quite-deformed-and-deficient-and-all-out-of-proportion truth.

But getting a truthful look at yourself is essential to seeing and knowing what needs to change, what needs improvement, what needs a tune-up, and what requires a complete overhaul. And while others may have an unmitigated ability to examine themselves critically and with utter honesty, I find I am fond of subconsciously (and sometimes not-so-subconsciously) convincing myself that I’ve got my stuff together. In other words, I sometimes need other people to tell me when I’m full of crap.

When you have a friend who possesses a blatant, unapologetically no-holds-barred variety of honesty, all I can say is, watch out and in the same breath, thank God! Honesty is a quality that many value but in my own experience, few exercise to its full potential (I include myself in this) because not only is there difficulty for the recipient, but it also requires a measure of risk for the one who speaks it. It is a delicate matter to speak the truth with tact and in love to another child of God. It is much easier to let things slide, kick your feet up and allow the friendship to coast, the ills of another remaining unidentified and unchallenged.

I once heard a pastor say, you are contributing to or contaminating your relationships one hundred percent of the time. The statement struck me as odd, but the more I allowed it to roll around my brain, the more I grasped its truth. While I may not be actively contaminating a relationship with my words or behavior, I am contaminating it if I contribute nothing toward it. If I do nothing to sustain its life, I am ensuring its death.

So I am thankful for the friend who is helping me learn this these days, who tells me the truth even when it might be painful to hear, and encourages me to reciprocate. As uncomfortable as these conversations might be at times, they are drawing me into the fullness of myself. It is helping me to identify those parts of me that are all too human and decidedly un-Christlike. Knowing this, I can choose to surrender them at the foot of the cross so Christ can give me the new self He has created for me, the self created in the “righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Eph. 4:24).

This is part of how we grow and live in love in the Body of Christ. This is how we attain maturity in Christ’s Body. To avoid it is to become careless and callous; to avoid it is to contaminate it and by extension, ourselves.

I think St. Paul says it best:

… if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, SPEAK TRUTH EACH ONE of you WITH HIS NEIGHBOR, for we are members of one another.
Ephesians 4:21-25 (NASB)

We are members of one another, friends. Grace and peace be with you.

A Harvest Home

I don't have much to say these days.

But it's not because nothing is happening. Quite the opposite is true. I just don't feel much like writing and having made the rounds in the blogging world, it seems that I am not the only one. As the days grow both shorter and wetter, as leaves forfeit the vibrant greens of summer for fiery shades of orange and yellow, I find myself drawing more inward. Being quiet. Taking it all in. Listening.

God is busy, but He's very quiet as He goes about His work.

Sometimes for my morning meditation, I'll turn to an anthology of Christian poetry I have. I turned to this poem this morning and as autumn is upon us, wanted to share what I'm thinking on today.

The Pastor Praises the Creator David Citino

Dearly beloved, I mean today
to praise the God who gave the tribes
wine, the crisp flesh of suckling pig,
then told them "Thou must not."

Who gave them swords and ploughshares,
lambs and lions, demons and redeemers.
Who made half of them like pestles,
half like mortars, then told them

in themselves they were complete.
Cool soothing fingers and fevers
between the legs. Reason and gooseflesh,
curtains and candles, lightning and oak,

seven days to live and as many sins,
lungs and mold, books and blind men, veins
and age. Who fashioned them a harvest home,
then created wanderlust and roads.