God is not like you

I have a stack of unfinished blog post drafts in my queue. Writing comes harder these days, probably because I don’t have the two- or three-hour uninterrupted stretches of time it usually takes to get my thoughts down coherently on any topic, and also because I’ve been battling a weird sense of the pointlessness of it. It used to feel more like a calling to write out what God had put on my heart. Now I so often feel too small and insignificant to have a voice, when there are hundreds and thousands of other voices speaking at the same time, about the same things. Why not leave it to them?

But I know from many hours spent in the pages of God’s Word that His calling doesn’t have to make sense. It only has to be obeyed.

So even though there’s probably only ten minutes left of this naptime, and even though this might not be written as carefully as usual because of it, and even though someone else is probably out there preaching exactly the same thing at this moment, here’s what has been weighing heavily on me in the last several months:

God is not like you.

I’m hearing Christians justify their voting choices based on “who Jesus would vote for.” I’m noticing that Christians substitute the causes of social justice for the truth of Biblical justice. I’m watching Christians wait on the government to love their neighbor for them, because we’ve forgotten how to do it ourselves.

And the basis of it all seems to be this strange assumption that God has the same priorities that we do, that Jesus would be part of the same political party that we are. Is it becoming more and more shocking each day to consider that God might not actually agree with us on all the opinions we so strongly hold? How dare He?! As my Bible teacher used to say, “God made man in His image, but for generation upon generation, we’ve been trying to make God in ours.”

Did Jesus come as a political activist or as Savior of the world? Does God uphold peace at any cost or truth at any cost? Is love the avoidance of discomfort or the willingness to absorb whatever discomfort it takes to rescue someone else? Should the radical grace of Jesus for the lost inspire pride in one’s lostness or grief over one’s sin?

The answers to these questions seem obvious at a glance, but the words and actions of so many Christians prove just how confused we are about what ought to be basic.

Jesus is nobody’s mascot. He isn’t in your party and He didn’t vote for the person you voted for. He doesn’t celebrate your pride or fear your discomfort. He isn’t too holy to stoop down and save you right where you are in your moment of desperation and He’s not waiting for the government to do His job.

He is not like you. He is not like me. He is not waiting for our counsel or our approval or our opinion. He’s already King, already Creator, already Rescuer.

It’s nothing but grace that He has invited us in.

1 The Mighty One, God, the Lord, has spoken,
And summoned the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.
2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,
God has shone forth.
3 May our God come and not keep silence;
Fire devours before Him,
And it is very tempestuous around Him.
4 He summons the heavens above,
And the earth, to judge His people:
5 “Gather My godly ones to Me,
Those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.”
6 And the heavens declare His righteousness,
For God Himself is judge. Selah.

7 “Hear, O My people, and I will speak;
O Israel, I will testify against you;
I am God, your God.
8 “I do not reprove you for your sacrifices,
And your burnt offerings are continually before Me.
9 “I shall take no young bull out of your house
Nor male goats out of your folds.
10 “For every beast of the forest is Mine,
The cattle on a thousand hills.
11 “I know every bird of the mountains,
And everything that moves in the field is Mine.
12 “If I were hungry I would not tell you,
For the world is Mine, and all it contains.
13 “Shall I eat the flesh of bulls
Or drink the blood of male goats?
14 “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving
And pay your vows to the Most High;
15 Call upon Me in the day of trouble;
I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.”

16 But to the wicked God says,
“What right have you to tell of My statutes
And to take My covenant in your mouth?
17 “For you hate discipline,
And you cast My words behind you.
18 “When you see a thief, you are pleased with him,
And you associate with adulterers.
19 “You let your mouth loose in evil
And your tongue frames deceit.
20 “You sit and speak against your brother;
You slander your own mother’s son.
21 “These things you have done and I kept silence;
You thought that I was just like you;
I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes.

22 “Now consider this, you who forget God,
Or I will tear you in pieces, and there will be none to deliver.
23 “He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors Me;
And to him who orders his way aright
I shall show the salvation of God.”

Psalm 50

the Lord is (not) slow

I wrote a post earlier this year about different things God has used to help me understand Himself and His Word. One of them was in anticipation of becoming a mother. I didn’t know what, exactly, God would show me about Himself through this sudden new identity and role, but I knew it would (and will) be plentiful over the coming years and decades.

He has already begun.

There are probably thousands of tiny lessons I could write about, and some big ones taught over and over again, but for the sake of time (it’s the last naptime of the day) I just wanted to record one:

The Lord is (not) slow.

The verse in 2 Peter reads without the parentheses, yes. “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). And I’m sure Peter doesn’t need my grammatical input to make exactly the point he wanted to make!

But I added the parentheses here because having a baby has shown me that in so many ways a mortal human wouldn’t be, God IS slow. He is not rushed. He doesn’t hurry to get things done in the most efficient way possible.

He is slow. He enjoys the process of doing, creating, being, rescuing.

He didn’t come to rescue His people as a white knight on a white steed to destroy all their enemies with a word (although that will come later—see Revelation 19). He came as a baby.

And while babies certainly grow at an alarming rate, constantly developing in skill and motion and speech and independence, and learning at a pace that they will never replicate later in life—they also take a comparatively long time to be good for much, at least in the way of rescuing.

I try to imagine Jesus newly born, squashed and curled up and red-faced like Clara was. I try to imagine being Mary—did she think, “This is how God is going to rescue His people?!”? I look at Clara, who is just now attempting to roll from her back to her tummy and hasn’t done it without help even once, and I definitely don’t think that’s how I would rescue my people. Why grow a person up for 30+ years before even putting Him into ministry, let alone letting Him do any rescuing? Why not just sweep down and get it done?!

But the Lord is (not) slow.

He may look slow to me, when He chooses relationship over instant results or when He allows for a process rather than waving a magic wand. But in His process there is so much patience—grace—longsuffering—love. There’s a plan. And that’s the only reason I’m here right now, writing this, looking ahead to the celebration of Christmas and the Child that was born to be God With Us… because He is, and at the same time beautifully isn’t, slow.

on church, faithfulness, and 2020

I wanted to write some sort of mid-year reflection post at the end of June, but with all that has happened in 2020 I had trouble knowing where to start. I’ve been pregnant for all of 2020 so far (and then some), for example; I lost my mother-in-law to cancer when the New Year was just 12 days old. This, on top of the chaos and crisis worldwide and nationally and individually and personally that none of us is quite unaffected by. So here we are in August, and I’m still gathering my thoughts.

I would describe this year so far as one long, existential earthquake. Life is being shaken up, and even as I brace for more aftershocks, I’m looking around to see what’s still standing, what’s crumbled, and what has fallen into place in a new way. Some of the things that have been broken or altered must be grieved, but maybe others had been outstaying their welcome, and it’s high time we celebrate letting them go? Maybe somewhere in the rubble we’ll find the perfect space to build something new?

I think this conversation is happening everywhere in some capacity, but my real prayer is that it will happen in the Church, and in the individuals who make up the Church. I’m praying that one of the goodbyes of this era will be the dismantling of some of the worn-in traditions of how we “do church” so that space can be made for us to BE the Church.

I’m convicted by the fact that so much of what we’ve preserved of church through the pandemic has been the least important parts, while what really matters has been lost. Some of that is merely the nature of social distancing, but some of it is also laziness, consumerism, and poor priorities. I speak for myself as much as anyone: when it became possible to tick the “go to church” box by merely opening a Facebook tab, without even the accountability of looking into someone’s face and saying hello, that’s all I did—and sometimes, not even that.

COVID-19 has starkly revealed that in the United States of America at least, our deficiency is not access. It’s abiding in Jesus. Even before there was a virus to require it, we could “go to church” remotely anywhere we wanted; we could choose any preacher or message we wanted; we could even round it out with our personal favorite style of worship music. But we have little understanding of how to love one another, meet each other’s needs, commit our time to prayer or fasting or feasting together, confess our sins to one another, reprove and forgive and reconcile with each other, serve the community together, have difficult conversations that matter, or teach one another the Word. And showing up for an hour and a half on Sundays to sing and hear a sermon isn’t teaching us any of it.

We have scrambled to hold onto the man-made structure of church, but it’s the real stuff of following Jesus that gets lost along the way.

What better time than our current upside-down reality to take stock of what is really important and to let go of what isn’t?

Jesus didn’t teach church. He taught abiding. He taught obedience. He taught love.

He didn’t ask us to prove our dedication by showing up and checking the box once a week—He asked us to follow His example and lay down our lives, every single day.

If that sounds as overwhelming for you as it does for me, take heart: We are not called to lay down our lives for everyone in the world, or even everyone in our church. Jesus already did that (hallelujah!). Our call, instead, is to lay our lives at His feet, and allow Him to use them in the specific places and for the specific people He has given to us. When He Himself was finite and human, limited by the same time and energy that limits us, He didn’t do everything for everyone—rather, He faithfully led and served the twelve disciples that God gave Him (John 17:6). He showed love and compassion for multitudes of others along His way, but always He prioritized and protected His call to the twelve.

Likewise, most of us are called to something far smaller and humbler than we often expect, like the handful of souls that make up our own families, not the hundreds who make up our church or the thousands who make up our city or the millions who make up our nation.

But faithfulness in even these very little things can explode into worldwide impact. We have countless Scriptural examples of rich harvest coming from a few small seeds—and the twelve disciples of Jesus, with you and I here 2,000 years later as their disciple-descendants, are just one of them.