Transformation

As human beings, we have an inborn desire for God.  Whether we are consciously religious or not, this desire is our deepest longing and most precious treasure.  There is a constant yearning in our hearts to find fulfillment, a pining for completion.  We live on a broken planet fallen far from God's original intent, and this state of brokenness magnifies the emptiness in our hearts.  It impels us to seek, to search, to hunt for wholeness, for a fullness that not only brings our lives meaning and purpose, but one that leads to peace and contentment.

In the normal course of providence, God works through and in creation, not despite it.  God did not design our planet as an arena to showcase his greatness and his power and his sovereignty.  He certainly could have done this if he so desired.  Instead, he designed it to be governed by relationship.  God longs to relate to us personally, to love and to be loved.  As with us, God's greatest desire and need is relationship.  In the truest definition of who God is and what God is like, Scripture tells us God is love.  In order for love to be love and for love to survive, love needs relationship.  Without relationship, there is no need for love.  Without love, there is no fulfillment, no wholeness, no completeness.  Absent of this totality, we are left in a wounded state pursuing any course or path we sense might satisfy our emptiness and unfulfilled longings.  Sometimes, like the parable of the Prodigal Son, these conduits lead our lives to inconceivable locations of loss, humiliation, regret, and pain; locales we presume will forever alter our lives and deprive us of a future filled with blessing and goodness.

Occasionally we travel certain paths not of our own choosing.  We do not come into this world alone and we make no choice regarding our birthplace, our environment, our family.  We arrive in a fallen world of imperfection alive and fluid with the active dynamic of relationship.  We are linked to others, and this arrangement of connectivity can pull our lives down paths we never desired or chose of our own volition.  Be it routes of our own design or nomadic choices of others to whom we are attached, sometimes we wind up in strange lands of captivity, foreign domiciles in which the grimness of our surroundings blind us from anticipating recovery, picturing hope, envisioning healing, visualizing wholeness, imagining freedom.  In truth, our wounded state veils us from seeing who God is and what he can do, concealing one of life's certainties: God can transform our lives, transform our surroundings, and transform our circumstances.  It also masks us from recognizing who we are, God's creation, obscuring us from comprehending who we can someday become, God's triumph.  At the heart of all reality is God, an unimaginable source of power and love.  In the face of such reality we can grovel down paths of our own choosing and remain in unfamiliar abodes of captivity, or we can allow his work of transformation to take its course in our lives.

Because we live in a world of matter, most of the ways we encounter God include materiality.  God's own state however, God's preferred milieu if you will, is the realm of spirit.  It is only through Spirit touching spirit – through transformation ­– we become the people we are designed to be: people complete and whole and content, lacking in need and want.  We cannot become what God has called us to be unless we accept our wounded state.  God already knows who we are; we are the ones who must find a way to come to terms with our true selves.  If we are made in God's own image, God will make a way to fulfill our deepest longings.  Transformation is that way. 

Transformation is cooperation with God, a consent that opens the way for grace to work so we can experience the majesty and wonder of life God's way.  Jesus said, "I have come to give you life and life abundantly."  This is life beyond, life above, life exceedingly more than all we can ask or imagine.  We only find, discover and experience this life by allowing God to do his work of transformation in our lives, by engaging him and trusting him and submitting to him no matter where we find ourselves, no matter how hopeless our conditions might seem.

The story of humanity is one of God choosing to give away power and entrust individuals with the gift of free choice.  Virtually everyone who has breathed life and walked the planet has failed God some way in handling this freedom.  Even those we place on a pedestal, our heroes of faith, messed things up badly at some point in their journey.  Those whom God picked to lead new ventures, his select – Adam, Abraham, Moses, David – made dreadful choices adversely affecting their lives along with the lives of many others.  Yet, they recovered and overcame through the process of transformation by submitting to the hand of God and allowing his hand to do its work in their lives regardless of where it led them and what it put them through displaying God's great verity: nothing irredeemable has happened or can happen on our way to our destiny in God's full world.

In short, transformation is the work that brings God into my world and ushers me into God's, permitting visible and invisible worlds to congregate.  Encounters and contact with God do not just provide a moment of spiritual ecstasy; they equip me for living, for life.  They change me and launch me into the abundant life God has planned for me, enabling me to experience grace through my defects, mercy in my failures, and abundance and blessing in adverse circumstances triggered by the hand of another's doing.  Every now and then the strands of messiness and confusion and unfairness manage to braid themselves together and – in the most improbable and miraculous way – offer up a radiant affirmation of possibility that transcends anything you could ever hope to imagine.

Most of our struggles in a life of faith circle around two themes: why God does not act the way I want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to.  Transformation is the precise point where these two themes converge, and it's the process God uses to mold and shape us into his image.  By allowing his work of renovation to take place, change is experienced in all facets of our lives.  God does not exclude any part of who we are from this process of conversion.  This act of alteration touches our hearts, our minds, our emotions, our bodies, our relationships, our careers, our dreams, our trials, our failures.  No part of us is immune from God's hand of change, for transformation is the sudden immersion of his Spirit into the universal world surrounding our lives, the current of all life flowing in and through and around us.

 

Transformation is a continuous act of renewal converting deep personal internal structures into visible surface structures enabling formations to evolve in form and function, causing one to experience change detectable and noticeable.  It's a painful and joyful experience and a path we do not walk alone.  God walks with us and gives us strength and courage to change.  He fills us with power to become new people and imbues us with hope, enabling us to see our lives not only for what they are but also for what they can become.

I have found great comfort in knowing that many of God's servants throughout Scripture have found themselves in situations of captivity, in settings distant and lonely and difficult, surrounded by conditions that should have destroyed their faith.  Somehow they overcame the elements of their torn-up lives and chose to trust God and walk with him.  I think of Joseph who was betrayed by his own family, sold into slavery, and then thrown into prison in Egypt.  I consider Daniel who was abducted and forced to serve enemy administrations in Babylon and Persia.  As a result of committing civil disobedience and breaking the law, he was delivered to a lion’s den to be ripped apart and eaten alive.  Then there were Moses and Peter; the former went on the run for years in the Sinai Desert after murdering another, and the latter found himself in prison facing imminent death through beheading.  And let’s not forget David who was so overcome with lust for a beautiful woman he allowed his cravings to escort him down the painful path of adultery and induce him to murder the stunning beauty queen's husband.  All of these found themselves on crooked and dangerous paths, either through acts of their own choosing or because of someone else's decisions, and those selections sent them to a point far removed from God's intent for their lives.  Instead of turning from God and hardening their hearts, letting bitterness and failure deprive them of God's future blessings, they allowed God to work in their state of affairs by reaching out to him and opening their lives to his work of transformation.

In turn, God was with them and brought each one of them through their crisis in a unique way.  He also used them powerfully in their given environments and situations.  Their faith and unshakable conviction in a living God was the main reminder of a reality contradicted by their surroundings.  This resilient belief served to restore the truth belied by everything around them and caused them to believe they would overcome, that they would one day rise from the ashes of apparent destruction.  This is perhaps the most powerful truth the process of transformation has taught me in my darkest personal crisis.

Every so often, events in our lives take place and it's not until we arrive at some distant point where over time we can see how these events have shaped themselves into a meaningful pattern.  Back when they took place, we did not understand the full significance of such experiences and the lessons they imparted, nor could we see how they fit into the larger part of our story, our journey, especially when they are negative experiences partially created by our own hands.  Our lives in some sense are a roundabout tale filled with loose threads of twisting roads we ply with our choices and decisions, and sometimes we get lost amid the unexpected detours and the landslides of complications that cascade down upon us as we venture through the harsh and wondrous journey of life, of living.  Over time we see how these digressions and dead ends also provide and fill our lives with insight, depth, discernment, discovery, leading us to a place of healing.  Once we come through we can look back and make peace with failure, hurt, injury, and regret.  This empowers us to continue our journey, giving us strength to make wrongs right, freeing us from the past, enabling us to again engage the future.  Hope resides with what is yet to come, while perspective and wisdom are almost always found by looking to the past and glimpsing the road traveled.

Occasionally we arrive at a place so distant and so far beyond the margins of our known world, a place we believe is the end of the road, a place of lost hope, one that is the most isolated and foreboding place on earth.  But sometimes this is the place we need to land.  For it's here we discover depths of life we never knew existed.  We learn things about ourselves we never understood.  We come to a place of dependence that lies beyond anything material, anything created by our own talents and gifts.  This is a place uncorrupted by the false pretense of misguided egos chattering in the background filling our minds with the detritus of narcissistic thoughts in which we naively believe we are better or more important than others, that we play some heroic or grand role in the world in which we have been placed.

In my current arrival at this spiritual and emotional place, I have discovered it's the most liberating place a person can land.  For it's here we fully find truth and freedom, truth that matters, freedom that frees.  This place is seen throughout Scripture and it wasn't until men stumbled, fell and landed in this place did they discover the truth and freedom that transformed them into the great individuals they became, individuals who went from trusting God to individuals whom God could trust.  It's this discovery that has instilled in me a fierce and hardened belief that happy endings can be found anywhere, at anytime, at anyplace – in a lion’s den, in acts of betrayal, in abject failure, in wanderings through lonely deserts, in prison.

Transformation is the process God brings us through, enabling us to believe and to pursue, to chase the ending we know God has for us.  We must never give up.  Never.  Miracles and destinies of fate merge at the most improbable intersections, crossroads on the road of life one could never envision or imagine.  And they often arrive at times we never expect.

Allowing God to do his work of transformation in my life has birthed a new feeling inside, a hope that surfaces once the darkness has passed.  It is the rare kind of feeling that comes when something inside is woken from slumber and brought forth to live.  As I sit and contemplate and look back on the road traveled, I listen to the tick of an unseen clock marking murky moments of time passed.  The tick in my mind holds me and carries me and keeps me like the slow swing of a pendulum suspended in air, moving back and forth across two passageways.  Momentarily, I sit in a trance; I see the process of change as the world has stopped.  Transformation has taken its course.  The old is now gone.  The grief, the anger, the pain, the hurt, they reside in the grave.  New life has begun and with it are signs one finds when the rite of passage is complete.  My heart surfaces through the dark, hard, rocky soil; like new growth in spring signifying the end of the black, cold, dreary winter.  God has not placed a period in my life that signifies an end; He has placed a comma that signifies a pause.  The best is yet to come.  New life.  New love.  New moments.  God's abundant life awaits me.  It awaits you as well.  Allow God to transform your world, to take you down the path that leads to this abundance.  He believes in you deeply.

A Day In My Life - Shackled

 I am standing in a parking lot in some location somewhere and everything is not as it should be and it's horrible and bad and horrible horrible bad and I am confused and lost and do not know where I am or where I am going.  I am in a time warp and have been transported to some bizarre place for some bizarre experiment in some bizarre world and no one could understand unless they were standing next to me and if they were standing they could not understand ever understand.  My body is dressed in dirty clothes belonging to someone else and the shirt on my back is speckled with patches of bile from someone else.  The underwear slipping off my waist is streaked with stains from someone else and the pants sliding down my legs are blemished with dirt and grime from someone else.  My face is hot and red and wet and it's burning and throbbing.  My sweat is baking and bubbling and scorching.  My eyes are stinging and itching and every few seconds hot fluid slips inside and seals my lids and for a moment there is relief as the world turns black.  Black black black.

My hands are distended and they are chained to my waist and my wrists are red and blue and they throb as steel shackles cut into my white puffy skin leaving deep impressions of purple and violet.  My feet are swollen and they are tethered together and heavy manacles weigh on my scraped enflamed ankles perforating the thin tissue resting as shelves on my bones.  I stand and I breathe and I stand and I stare.  I am alone, lost and broken.  I stare at my surroundings.  I stare at freedom.  I stare at once was at should be.  Alone lost broken I stare.  Stare stare stare.

The hot sun is shining and all its rays are penetrating and I am burning and melting and dissolving and liquefying and through a flaming mirage I see the waves rolling and rising and rolling through the conflagration that surrounds me and I have slipped into hell and the staggering waves roll and rise and roll and bounce and crush and through the blur I see the blonde and the blue and the brown and the brown and the blonde and the blue and the innocence and the smiles and I am carried away to another place in another time and I hear the voices, the soft little tender voices, I hear.  Hear hear hear.

I Hear.

Daddy.

I hear.

Giggles.

I hear.

Laughter.

I hear soft, sweet, tender, beautiful voices from heaven and for a moment, just for a moment there is peace and calm and tranquility and the waves are lucid and clear and they carry me softly and gently to a better place, to a better better place and I hear Daddy Daddy Daddy.

I hear.

Daddy Daddy.

I hear.

Daddy look.

I hear.

Daddy Daddy come see.

I hear.

Hurry Daddy hurry hurry.

I hear.

Daddy Daddy look look hurry Daddy hurry hurry.

I hear and I hear and I hear again and hear again and hear again and again and I am lost in a better world in a better time in a better place and I close my eyes and the world is bright and blue and blonde and brown and liquid slips from eyes, seeps trickles escapes slips from my eyes.  I try to forget where I am and why I am here.  I try to forget what lies in front of me.  I try to forget about prison, about separation, about loneliness, about shame, about failure.  I try to forget that there is a world outside of that which is in my head.  I try to forget that my daughters have lost.  I try to forget that the blue and the blonde and the brown and the blue have lost.  Lost daddy lost daddy lost lost lost lost.  I try to forget that daddy can't look can't see can't hurry can't look can't see can't hurry.  I try to forget to forget to forget.  I hear a voice.  I hear a terrible and awful voice, a terrible terrible awful voice.

Move.

I hear.

Move now.

Harsh yelling screaming.

Quit standing and move.

I hate the voice I hear.  I want to squeeze my head and my ears and squeeze and plug and press and stuff and jam and swing and punch and tear and rip and destroy and scream and squeeze and plug and stuff.  The sun is burning and I am sweating and dripping and soaking and hurting and aching.  My feet are heavy, my body is tired, my mind is broken.

I hear the awful terrible voice.

I said move.

Move now asshole.

I ignore and I move.

Alone lost broken I move.  Step.  Shuffle.  Step.  Shuffle.  Step.  Shuffle.  I hear chains.  I hear metal.  I hear scraping.  The walk is only a few minutes but it seems like a lifetime. Step shuffle step shuffle step shuffle. 

Keep moving.

I hear.

Faster.

I hear.

Move faster.

I ignore and I move.  Step shuffle step shuffle.  And I hear, I hear it all.  The voice in my head.  The voice outside my head.  The noise in my head.  The noise outside my head.  I hear it all I hear it all I hear it all.  Daddy daddy chains metal scraping move Daddy come look chains move now Daddy come see come see Daddy metal move faster hurry Daddy hurry hurry scraping move faster move move faster.  I want to scream and run and go back to a better place and a better time and there is this voice, the awful terrible voice I ignore and the voice screams MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE.

I turn around and I stare.

Alone lost broken I stare.

I still have some dignity.   I have lost everything but still have something.  A speckle, a sliver, a grain, I still have something.  I still have some dignity somewhere somehow.  You won't steal my dignity.

MOVE.

I am moving.

MOVE FASTER.

I am moving faster.

TURN AROUND AND KEEP MOVING.

Screw you I am moving.

The gates open and hell and its legions are manifesting themselves in dense pain in heavy anger in fiery rage in foul language and I hear a voice, a vile hostile voice, an awful terrible vile hostile voice.

WHAT DID YOU SAY ASSHOLE?

You heard me.

My eyes close and my mind closes and my heart closes and the world goes black and everything goes black and I am lost and I have lost and this lostness has reduced me to a lump of sadness and regret and grief and anguish and my daughters have lost and daddy is lost and we have lost.  The sun is climbing and the heat is rising and the day is growing and my feet are weighty and my hands are heavy and my body is burning and my heart is pounding and I hear steps.  I hear footsteps.  I hear running footsteps.  I hear heavy running footsteps.  I hear heavy running angry footsteps and I hear vileness and craziness and madness and I am surrounded by insanity and my mind is black and my heart is black and the world is black and I hear steps.  I hear footsteps.  I hear running footsteps.  I hear soft running footsteps.  I hear soft running happy footsteps and I hear happiness and joyfulness and playfulness and I am surrounded by small little feet pattering and running and jumping and leaping pattering running jumping leaping into my arms and I hear laughing and giggling and kissing laughing giggling kissing and I hear Daddy Daddy I love you I love you Daddy I love you.

Something else comes and it makes me feel weak and scared and fragile and I don't want to be hurt and this feeling is the feeling I have when I know I can be hurt and hurt deeper and more terribly than anything physical and I want it to come and I want to believe and I want to hold on and I want it to come but I am alone lost broken weak fragile scared.  My mind is shackled and my heart is shackled and my dreams are shackled and my hopes are shackled and my faith is shackled and everything I believe is shackled but it still comes and it arrives and it comforts and it calms and it assures and it promises and it declares and it does not leave and I hear and it speaks and I hear a voice, a still small voice.

I am here.

A still small voice.

I am here.

A still small voice.

I am here.

Here.

Now.

I hear a voice.

Fight.

Survive.

Overcome.

Recover.

Rise.

I hear voices.

Blue.

Blonde.

Brown.

I hear a voice.

Fight.

Recover.

Rise.

I hear a still small voice.

I am here.

Christmas Night

It’s taking place somewhere near Berlin.  Snow is falling gently to the ground.   Few cars are on the road this time of night. Illuminating the countryside in silhouette form, it is the most spectacular moonlit sky I have ever seen.  Its beauty is magical.  There are gold and silver linings, created by the reflection of the moon’s light on the clouds surrounding it.  Every few minutes, the wind blows these clouds across the face of the moon, bringing with it a mystical presence.  After a few moments, the clouds clear, and the warmth of the light grants me a new joy.

I have been on the road for twelve hours.  My trip began early this morning in Helsinki, Finland.  Following a short flight from Helsinki to Stockholm, Sweden, I picked up my car.  From there I drove through Sweden and Denmark, crossed the Baltic Sea on two separate ferries, and finally landed in Northern Germany late this evening.  

On this trip, I viewed some of the most picturesque scenery in the world.  Sweden has a charm all its own.  All day the countryside of this nation had given me a deep appreciation for the creativity of our Creator.  And now twelve hours later and 600 miles farther, I am awestruck by another aspect of the Creator’s creation, the moon and the sky.

After traveling all day, numerous thoughts crossed my mind.  For me, I tend to dream, reflect, and wonder.  Of the three, the aspect of dreaming always seems to dominate my thinking.  An array of ideas, goals, and wishful thoughts keeps my mind occupied for hours.  Constantly, I am searching for notepads and pens to record these ideas.  However, at this time, my mind is filled mostly with wonder.  There is no need for a notepad.  My thoughts are coming from deep within.  And this is largely due to what I am seeing outside my windshield.  Considering all the elements surrounding me, this night would have been the perfect Christmas night.  At least to me it would have been.

Staring at the breathtaking scene in the sky, I decide to pull over to the side of the road.  I climb out of the vehicle and sit on the hood, staring into the night.  To those passing by, it must be a peculiar sight.  After all, it is midnight.

During my fifteen minutes on the hood of the car, I am reminded of something I wrote once in New York City.  Sitting in the heart of Times Square, people-watching and reflecting, I was penning some thoughts into my journal.  After a few hours of observance, I found myself writing, “Every moment has significance.  Every ordinary thing carries its own beauty.  Look deep and you will find it.”  People rarely realize the most precious and beautiful things in life are usually found in the ordinary.  The following story of Bob Edens illustrates this point.

*            For fifty-one years Bob Edens was blind.  He couldn’t see a thing.  His world was a black hall of sounds and smells.  He felt his way through five decades of darkness.  And then he could see.  A skilled surgeon performed a complicated operation and, for the first time, Bob Edens had sight.  He found it overwhelming.  “I never would have dreamed that yellow is so ...  yellow,” he exclaimed.  “I don’t have the words.  I am amazed by yellow.  But red is my favorite color.  I just can’t believe red.”

            “I can see the shape of the moon  ...  and I like nothing better than seeing a jet plane flying across the sky, leaving a vapor trail.  And of course, sunrises and sunsets.  And at night I look at the stars in the sky and the flashing light.  You could never know how wonderful everything is.”   He’s right.  Those of us who have lived a lifetime with vision could never know how wonderful it must be to be able to see for the first time.  The ability to see is something we take for granted.

But Bob Edens is not the only one who has spent a lifetime near something without seeing it.  All of us suffer from some sort of blindness.  Amazing, isn’t it?  We can live next to something for a lifetime, but unless we take time to focus on it, it does not become a part of our life.  Unless we somehow have our blindness lifted, our world is only a black cave.  Think about it.  Just because one has witnessed a thousand rainbows doesn’t mean he’s seen the grandeur of one.  One can live near a garden and fail to focus on the splendor of the flower.  A man can spend a lifetime with a woman and never pause to look into her soul.  Most of us are blinded to the beauty, joy, and fulfillment that is to be seen in the ordinary.  We miss it by looking for the spectacular.

During my recollection of the above, I begin to see the beauty hidden in the sky.  My wondering allows me to realize the significance of this moment.  I discover for myself why I am being drawn to this particular scene.  You see, from God’s perspective, this scene is no major accomplishment.  When we imagine how big His Universe and Creation is, this sky is just a minute fraction of everything He owns and has created.  Yet, to me, it is one of the most awesome scenes I have ever witnessed.   It is so vast and large.  It covers everything within my natural view of sight.  When you consider all the elements – the wind, the snow, the lighting, the clouds, the moon – in one sense it is incredibly elaborate.  In another, it’s so simple and ordinary.  My perception is determined by my perspective.  The Creator or the creation.  This is when it hits me:  Tonight is like the first Christmas night, so elaborate, yet so simple.  Let me take you there.

Somewhere over Bethlehem, a star is shining brightly.  High above the city, the moon and its companions sit silently.   In the city, people are hustling and bustling everywhere.  The motel and private vacant rooms are filling up quickly.   Soon, no vacancy signs would cover the city.  Thousands have gathered in Bethlehem for the taking of the census.  I imagine just about every walk of humanity was represented.  The rich, the poor.  The “in” crowd, the outcasts.  The moral, the immoral.  The white collar, the blue collar.  The elaborate, the simple.  All were there.  Bethlehem had become a melting pot of the personalities that represent humanity.  

From the East, men of prominence arrive.  With them, they bring gifts.  They are looking for one of great importance.  Following many months of searching and chasing a star, they reach their destination.  The star has come to rest over Bethlehem.

On the outskirts of town, shepherds are doing what they always do.  Watching sheep.  Cracking jokes.  Dreaming about a better life.  Wondering what tomorrow holds.  Searching for stray sheep.  And crowding together around a warm fire to tell stories.  Many stories.  Mostly re-runs.  Men certainly have not changed much in 2,000 years.

In the city center, things are booming.  Vendors keep their shops open late.  Taverns and places of gathering are full.  Business is being discussed over a few drinks.  The innkeeper is running around trying to meet his guests’ every request.  A pillow needed here, a blanket there.  It has been a long time since his establishment was sold out.

In homes around the city, children bypass their normal bedtime hours because of all the commotion.  Relatives are reunited.  Families catch up on lost time.  Meals are cooked late into the evening.  It’s a joyous night.

In the heavens, Angels are being prepared.  Soon they will descend upon a little middle-eastern city.   Bethlehem will host God’s greatest miracle yet.  This will be the night for it to take place.  After thousands of years of planning and preparing, the time has arrived.  Tonight, God himself is going to enter the humanity He created.  He will become one of them.  The Creator will be born.

Mary and Joseph have been on the road for days.  The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was no simple one, especially for a pregnant woman.  Upon their arrival, they discover there are no rooms available.  In a desperate attempt to find a place of rest for his expecting wife, Joseph inquires with the locals.   Through a series of people, he is directed to the outskirts of town.  Here he finds a stable.  A filthy stable.  Not elaborate.  Only simple.  Nothing but an ordinary stable.  And this is where Joseph and Mary will spend the night.

Meanwhile, in the synagogues, Rabbis are enjoying each other’s company.  It’s not often they can meet together like this.   So they take advantage of the occasion.  Pulling out the Talmud, they discuss and debate over the Scriptures.  The conversation settles around the coming of the Messiah, the chosen one of Israel.  The Jewish people are longing for this moment.  And the purpose of the people gathering in Bethlehem fueled the Rabbis’ discussion.  They are tired of Roman rule.  The census is being taken to ensure everyone is taxed.  This did not sit well with the Rabbis.  Money that could be given to their cause would now go to Rome.  And in their hearts, they know the only deliverance from this bondage is the arrival of the Messiah.  So they discuss the matter.  Let’s imagine for a moment.  Maybe they just happen to read through the Prophet Micah’s words:

         “ But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are of old, from ancient times."

Following their discussion, they enter into a concert of prayer, pleading with God the Father to send His Anointed One, the Messiah.  And wouldn’t you know it.  God would answer their prayer.  This same night He would answer it.  Almost immediately.  But they will miss it.  Incredible.

Slowly, the town of Bethlehem settles down.  Taverns close up.  Vendors lock their shops.  Business deals are finalized.   People wander home.  The inn-keeper finds his way to bed.  Children fall into a deep sleep.  The Rabbis’ discussion about the Messiah ends.  For most, it will be another simple and ordinary night in Bethlehem.  The stars will shine brightly.  The moon will rest quietly.  And a few candles will flicker throughout the evening in various places.  Yes, in one sense, this night in Bethlehem will be like all others.  In another, it will be so radically different.  This night will be the first Christmas Night.  Not for all.  Only for some.  Only for those who are looking.  Only for those who can see.  See in the world of the simple and ordinary.

In the filthy stable, Mary enters into labor.  Joseph sits nervously by his wife’s side. His heart is racing.  He is experiencing all emotions.  The thrill of being a father.  Concern for his wife.  Wishing he could alleviate her pain.  Wondering what he can do to help.  All his efforts are futile.  In reality, all he can do is stand by and watch. 

Mary is experiencing deep pain.  Bearing a child is more excruciating than she had imagined.  Especially in a stable.  And there is no one to help her deliver the child.  She only has her husband’s encouraging words.  So she presses on.  Then it happens.  She hears a cry.  Joseph’s heart leaps with joy as he picks up the little, innocent baby.  Mary, exhausted from the ordeal, stares with wonder at the sight of her firstborn.  She looks into the face of the baby.  Then it hits her.  This is Him.  Her son.  Her Lord.  She can’t take her eyes off him.  Somehow she knows, Joseph is holding God.  And yet, Joseph is holding her son.  The extraordinary takes place in the ordinary.  The elaborate in the simple.  Simply amazing.  The most spectacular event has just happened in an ordinary and simple way. 

Somewhere in the heavens, the order is given.  The Angels are to descend upon the fields surrounding Bethlehem.  And within a twinkle of an eye, they arrive.  Suddenly the fields light up.  Angels are dancing and singing.   The shepherds are stunned.  Their mouths hang wide open.  Their eyes are big and round.  Never in their lives have they witnessed a scene like this.  Fear now grips their hearts.  But one of the angels chases those fears away by proclaiming, “Don’t be afraid.  I bring you the most joyful news ever announced, and it is for everyone.  The Savior, yes, the Messiah, the Lord, has been born tonight in Bethlehem.”  Then the angels begin to sing “Glory to God in the highest, peace and goodwill to all men.”  And then they’re gone.  Just like that.  The shepherds can’t believe what they’ve just experienced.  It happened so fast.  After a few moments, they rush to Bethlehem looking for the Savior.

Meanwhile, most are sleeping through the night.  Most are unaware of what has taken place.  In the morning, they will wake and face another day.  To them, the night before will have been just another simple, ordinary night.  Few will realize the impossible has occurred.  The One they have been looking for has finally arrived.  After hundreds of years of waiting, hoping, praying, He is here.  And yet most will not know.  They missed it because it was not spectacular.  No earthquake.  No lightning.  No audible voice to wake the city.  Only a baby’s cry.  Nothing else.  It was too ordinary.  Too simple.

           

Here I sit, two thousand years later, pondering the simplicity of the Incarnation.  The snow is falling heavily now.  As I stare one last time into the night sky above Berlin, I wonder how many magical moments I miss because I am blind, because I look beyond the ordinary for the spectacular.  If I were in Bethlehem on the first Christmas Night, would I have missed it?  Probably.  They missed it because of its simplicity.  They became too familiar with the fact the Messiah was coming.  It became too ordinary.  I am not much different.  And you probably are not either.  Those who missed His Majesty’s arrival that night missed it not because of evil acts or malice; no, they missed it because they just were not looking.  They were blind.  Blinded by looking for the spectacular.

            Remember Bob Edens?  Something else he said is worth noting.  “Grass was something I had to get used to  .  .  .  I always thought it was just fuzz.  But to see each individual green stalk, and to see the hair on my arm growing like trees, and birds flying through the air ...  It’s like starting a whole new life.”

Getting vision can be like that.  Especially when you look at the simple and ordinary things in life.  Just like the first Christmas Night.  So simple, yet so profound.  Look deep and you will see it.  Especially at this Christmas season.  Allow me to remind you one last time:

“Every moment has significance.

Every ordinary thing carries its own beauty.

Look deep and you will find it.”

* Story quoted from Max Lucado’s “God Came Near”

Love in the Rubble

Tragedy has a way of visiting those who can bear it least.  Catastrophe has a propensity to strike without warning.  Unimagined carnage can fall upon anyone at any time in any place at any moment.  And so it was in Port-au-Prince.  There was no ominous thundercloud, no wailing siren, no public announcement, no forewarning.  There was nothing.  One minute the ground was still and the next the ground was rolling and cracking and something terrible had begun.  One second people were living their lives and in the next they were running for their lives.  In the flash of an eye everything changed.  Everything.

For thirty-eight seconds the largest city in the poorest nation of the western hemisphere was in the grip of a violent monster rumbling below the surface of the earth, generating a crushing cascade of death and destruction and devastation.  Every man, every woman, every child was caught in the monster’s grasp as it terrorized Haiti and shook its capital ferociously.  Twenty-one year old Evans Brice was sitting at his workstation when suddenly his desk started jumping violently and the walls were swaying and the roof was falling and the floor opened, swallowing people and furniture and its own contents and there was dust and smoke and fire and screams and everything was shaking and splitting and crashing and breaking and plummeting.  Evans tumbled with debris through the open floor, enveloped in a cloud of disintegrating powder and toxic dust bursting with loose objects of twisted metal, shattered bricks, and splintered wood.  Falling, he could only think of his fiancée Fiona Jean – his first love – the girl who had captured his heart when he was sixteen, the girl who still captured his heart five years later as he stared death in the face.

The universal longing and yearning for love is found everywhere throughout our world.  Feelings of love are felt as strongly in the third world as they are in the first world.  People are people and hearts are hearts.  Every heart in every person in every nation aches for love and desires to give love and thirsts to be loved.  Love is the one force that connects hearts and it’s the only force that completes hearts.  No force, no emotion, no possession can silence the ache of the heart, fulfill the longing of the heart, quench the thirst of the heart except for love.  Love is an ineffable wonder coveted in every corridor and chamber of the human heart, creating a vacuum of want and need and craving – a void that can only be filled through the amazing happening of experiencing love.

Every person, everywhere, longs to take a breathtaking journey with someone and encounter the agony and ecstasy of pioneers who discover the miraculous happening of love, creating a path of two lives becoming one, of two hearts uniting.  This is what makes love so captivating and entrancing, a force so powerful and exhilarating, a force every human heart desires.  Love is the only force in the universe that can change hearts, change lives, change existence; it’s the only force that can survive the unimaginable and the impossible and the inconceivable and the unthinkable.  Love cannot be silenced, eradicated, destroyed, exterminated.  No tragedy or wound, no calamity or disaster can eliminate or do away with love, for love is a force that never dies.  Love is eternal.

And so it was for Evans as he lay trapped in rubble, buried in debris, entombed in the worst disaster in Haiti’s history.  He was miraculously wedged in a cavity the size of his body, surrounded by voices of despair and anguish.  Slipping in and out of consciousness, he could think only of love.  Of love and love alone.

The love he felt.

The love he experienced.

He could think only of love.

The love of his life.

The love that completed him.

He could think only of love.

Just love.

Love alone.

Love.

Fiona.

Love was alive in the rubble.

A day after the most devastating earthquake in recorded history struck the West Indies, Evans is freed from the rubble.  For a moment there is light and a little hope as faith unfurls in his heart.  Then panic returns.  Fiona.  Minutes after being rescued, he hits the seemingly stable ground and runs toward the textile factory where Fiona works in the blue collar neighborhood of Carrefour, in Port-au-Prince.

His lungs burn.

His head pounds.

His heart hurts.

He runs and runs and runs.

He has to find her.

Just has to find her.

He does not care how or where.

He runs and runs.

He just wants to find her.

Just wants to find her.

Wants to find her.

Just her.

Her.

Fiona.

Everywhere he looks streets are covered with collapsed buildings as multi-story structures have turned into something resembling short stacks of pancakes.  Screams are coming from buckled edifices, people begging and pleading to be saved.  Some are crying for God.  Some are crying for others.  Some are just crying.  Crying parents are looking for children.  Crying children are looking for parents.  Everywhere, on every street, in every building, in every pile of rubble someone is crying and someone is looking for someone.  As Evans rambles through the streets, devastation looms in the shadows and sunshine alike as a ubiquitous tormentor of Haiti’s men, women, and children.  Images of mass destruction are seen in every direction: dangling power lines, riots of electric wires, shards of broken glass, ruptured pipes, fractured streets, and mountains and mountains of rubble.  Nearly 290,000 buildings are destroyed or damaged.  Over 220,000 are dead and 300,000 more are injured.  It’s like running through an apocalypse as scenes of devastation are encountered every second: detached limbs lying in streets, one man is seen shrieking in pain; he lost both legs, another is screaming in agony; he discovered his wife crushed in rubble.  Everywhere there are bodies and people are stumbling and staggering in a shock-induced stupor, some covered in dirt and dust and dried blood, some in ripped and torn clothing, some barefoot, some naked.  The city’s life is beaten back in clusters of cowering refugees, like the results of some inexplicable experiment gone badly wrong.  Evans is a mile away when he passes an area strewn with backpacks, textbooks and loose papers fluttering in the breeze.  It was once a school.  He ignores the smell in the air, the cries in the streets, the horrors all around.  He keeps running and running.

Each second is an hour long.

Each step a long distance race.

He runs and runs and runs.

He must get there.

He must.

There.

Fiona.

The mist starts to form.  A distant fog rises from someplace he does not know and begins to envelop his heart.  He grows fearful as it approaches.  Like a rolling cloud it blankets everything.  His throat begins to close and his eyes well up with tears.  Hope fades into desolation, into loneliness and despair, into pain so deep, so so deep.  His head turns side to side in a universal gesture of negation as he stands silently among the ruins.  Dense tears slip down his cheeks as he stares in disbelief at the mangled corpse of a beautiful woman half crushed beneath the concrete.  It’s the love of his life.  It’s Fiona.  Grief manifests itself as he sinks to his knees and desperately rubs his wallet filled with her pictures against his heart.  A profound sense of loss inhabits and overwhelms him as sorrow and pain and deep heartache pour out in heavy sobs and a shortness of breath and stammering broken words, “I cannot leave.  I cannot leave.  We’ve been together since we were sixteen.  I cannot leave.  I love her.  I love her so much.”  His trembling hand reaches out and touches her hair, powdered white with concrete dust.  Slowly he moves closer and gently cradles her head in his arms.  He tenderly brushes the white dust from her hair.  His tears fall softly on her face as he whispers in her ear, “I will not leave you like this.  I will not leave you, Fiona.  I will not leave.”  He closes his eyes and prays she can hear his words.  Somehow, somewhere, he wants her to hear his words.  He wants her to know she is safe in his arms, that she is safe, she is safe safe safe.

Safe in his arms.

In his arms.

Safe.

For he will not leave.

He will not leave.

Will not leave.

Love does not leave.

Does not leave.

Love stands in the rubble.

In the rubble.

Love stands.

Sometimes you see the most beautiful expression of love in the most painful picture of human loss and suffering.  And it’s in this moment you really understand love.  Love cannot be explained.  No words can ever convey the magnificence and splendor and depth of love.  Love can only be seen with the eye and felt in the heart.

In a traumatized world where everything had been turned upside down and the ground itself had given way, love offered certitude as Evans stayed with Fiona until her body could be safely removed.  Love could be seen and felt as he held her for three days.  He waited so he could give her a proper burial, a peaceful place where she could be laid to rest.  People may die.  But love does not.  Love stands in the rubble and cares for the wellbeing of another.  Love does not run, or cower, or abandon.  Love waits for the best interests of another to be fulfilled and realized.  Evans would not leave because the love for Fiona was greater than the pain of her death.  Love endures all things.  He stayed with her until she could be freed from the debris.  His girl, his love, would be buried in dignity.  Not in a large grave with others.  Not scooped up.  Not abandoned and buried in rubble.  No, this was his other half, his heart’s companion.  This was the love of his life, the girl who captured his heart at sixteen, the girl who still captured his heart in death.  And love – true and authentic love – does not leave.

We don’t know how much we are capable of loving until the people we love are being taken away, until something beautiful has ended.  Love means you care for another person’s interests and their happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.  No matter where you are today, love can work in your rubble if you really take a moment to see life for what it is and understand what truly completes you.  May you hold those in your life close to your body and feel them breathe and take in their remarkable scent and give them your love – give them your love while you still have them.  Life is short, very, very short.  If you take a moment, a humble and sincere moment, and look through the lens of love at your life and your world, you will see the depth of love and feel the wonder of love; you will understand why love never leaves and always remains; you will discover how love endures all things and stands in the rubble.

A Day in My Life – Dark Secrets

I learned one of my coworkers has lied to me about who he is and what he is and why he is here.  I learned his story of fraud and millions and living high and far was a cover for something dark and gross and horrible and evil horrible horrible evil.  I learned he is filthy and sick and disgusting and a dirty horrible lying animal.  I am a father and if anyone did to my daughters what this pervert did to other children I would be lost in a fury and a cyclone and a rage and want to punish the sick twisted distorted perverted atrocious individual who could subject beautiful and precious children to such horrors and terrors, scarring their lives forever and ever and ever.  As a father, God gave me precious angels to watch over and protect, to guard to defend to shield to shelter.  The thought of anyone hurting and injuring and destroying and despoiling the innocence and purity and wonder and dreams and hopes and sensations of childhood, of the oung days of my girls’ lives fills me with an anger like fire like a burning rage that consumes everything I know and understand and believe and want to believe and hope to believe and have ever believed.  Thoughts of tears trickling from young round beautiful blue and brown brilliant eyes filled with life and joy and wonder suddenly filled with fear and terror because of a sick distorted warped cruel perversion sends me to a place I have never been before.

Never been.

Never.

I look down at my hands and they are shaking.

Shaking and trembling and shaking.

Shaking and shaking with rage and fury and anger and wrath.

I brace myself against the white porcelain shaking and trembling.  My mind twirls and gyrates and contorts and I am sick and revolted and repulsed and nauseated.  An emotional cyclone of dark thoughts of wanting to protect, to defend, an inferno of reckoning retribution to protect the little ones who can’t protect themselves circles and circles and circles coiling in my mind tightly coiling curling down an endless dark spiral of blackness that spins and spins and spins twisting and torquing to the darkest abyss and the gates are open and I see it.  I see it for the first time for the very first time.  I see why there is Hell and why God allows people to go there and why there is endless suffering and fire and pain and heat and torment where one always remembers because it is endless and bottomless and deathless, a place where one wants to die but they can’t die because they died once and they can never die again.  They scream and plead and shriek and beg because they see the fear and the terror they inflicted.  They see it over and over and over in the round brilliant brown and blue and green and hazel.

The innocence they filled with shame.

The hopes they filled with fear.

They see it.

They see it.

He said it and He thought it.  He must have seen what I saw in my mind when I saw the beautiful innocent young blue brown brilliant eyes.  He said it and I finally understand the full depths of the meaning of His words.  Truly understand.

He was angry before.  Very angry.  Angry over much lesser things.

After the Incarnation He was angry.

In the temple, His house, He took a whip and turned over tables.

He said it after He came to earth.  He said it as a man, fully flesh, full of blood and bones and tissue wrapped in skin breathing the same air we breathe walking on the same planet we walk.  He said it in an era of grace and mercy and forgiveness, just one simple prayer and all of it will be forgiven forgotten gone.

Yes it is true.  It’s very true.  It extends to all.

Forgiveness.

Mercy.

Grace.

Yes it extends to all.  All can be forgiven forgotten gone.

But He still said it.

Better for you to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around your neck than to offend one of these little ones.

To offend and hurt one of these little ones.

To offend and hurt and injure innocence and purity.

Have mercy on us all Lord.  And protect the little ones, the ones who can’t protect themselves.  Protect them today in this horrible and cruel and dark and evil world we call our home.  Protect them Lord, please protect them.  Please please please.  And help me, really help me in this dark place where I live to fully understand and see how far and deep and wide your grace and mercy extends and reaches.  Today I can’t seem to see too far or understand too much.