Category: God stuff

The thing I remember most about September 11, 2001 is not the images of planes flying into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, or of New York firefighters running into the twin towers. It isn’t the ghostly pictures and video of the forever altered New York skyline afterward.

Of course, on the day itself I was consumed by watching news coverage like everyone else was. I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to know if some foreign army was going to come charging into my neighborhood like in that Red Dawn movie. I remember seeing still pictures of people falling from the towers, and wanting someone to blame, someone to hate. It was that very day we got someone to demonize, to hate, and to hunt.

I wanted payback, just like everyone else did (the double tap from SEAL team six would not come for 10 more years).

Yet after the initial burst of horror, I began to see that the world was still going to keep turning. The United States was not going to be subject to an invasion, at least not right then.

More and more information kept coming out in the days and weeks following the attacks. There were so many stories of heroism, and quiet accounts of Grace where you would have least expected it. Out of all those things, what got to me most was the phone calls.

Many of the passengers on the doomed flights were able to call loved ones and speak to them before their deaths. I can’t imagine have to either make or receive that sort of phone call, but in the midst of what they were going through it was probably a blessing, and by most accounts, gave those making the calls some peace in their final moments.

That’s what I remember most about September 11, 2001.

To the best of my knowledge, none of those calls featured words of hate. Rather, in their last moments, those men and women thought of their loved ones, and in many cases, thought of God. I think of Todd Beamer, who along with a few other passengers, was about to try and take back the plane from the hijackers on United Flight 93. Beamer, unable to reach his wife, spoke with an operator, I think, and asked her to tell his family several things, none of which was regarding hate.

Because hate does not sustain. Hate destroys. Hate piloted those planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennysylvania.

It is love that sustains, and love that carried the passengers on those flights to their maker that clear morning. I didn’t think about it like that for years, but time, and healing, and experiencing that love myself has given me much perspective.

I don’t know how different I am now from the person I was on 9/11/2001. Those who knew me then would have to tell me. But I know the anger I felt then is not with me anymore. What I felt was righteous anger and a desire for vengeance toward the perpetrators of that day just seemed to melt away with the years, and a growing closeness to God.

Yes, it was a tragedy of incomprehensible proportions, and yes, I hate that it happened. But that feeling doesn’t clinch like a fist in my stomach any longer when I think of it. It doesn’t because the sustaining love of Christ Jesus has replaced the fear, and anger, and obsessive need for vengeance.

I felt it–felt all those things–just like you did, and many still do.

Just to be clear, I am not certain I believe the age-old maxim that time heals all wounds. I think in this case–in my case–love healed much more than time ever could on its own. I allowed my past to pull me farther and farther from God, and at the time it made perfect sense to me. I could retreat into the fortress of self-pity and entitlement I had built for myself, and hate all the people I blamed for my lot in life.

I can remember what that felt like, even though I do not feel it anymore, and haven’t in a number of years.

Loving God brought me closer to Him, and I allowed him into my withered heart, where He took up residence and remains today.

Without that, I would be nothing. Without that, I, too, would be withered. If I was lucky enough to still be alive.

I was not sustained by the hate I felt toward anyone or anything. I can see that so clearly now.

Let me close with a great Third Day song…

I wrote this a while back, before Jenny and I were married, but it meant something to me then and it means something to me now. Maybe it will to you, too

I was just thinking that one of the things I love best about God is the feeling of peace that knowing him brings to my life.

Peace. And also being loved, really loved.

I never had it before, or at least, I was not aware of it. I used to always, always worry about stuff. I used to spend so much time wondering what would ever become of my life. Would I ever get a decent job? Would I ever marry, or even be in love, for that matter? Would I ever really be loved?

That was the worst, I think. Wondering about love. I knew my sisters loved me–they’d always taken care of me, and had showing love down to a science. But family love is not the same as other love–it’s almost primal in nature, and in many cases, taken for granted.

But it’s not the same as other kinds of love. It’s not the same as being beloved.

I think that was the main thing for me. I needed to know I was beloved by someone. I think the friends I’ve had in my life–from the time I was a kid until now–were about as close as I’ve come to it. The love of my friends has saved my life more times than I can count.

And it helped me to find God myself.

But even that is not the same.

There’s something about being able to share the hard stuff with someone that makes it less hard. Sometimes life is just….horrible, and frantic, and scary. Sometimes life is colder than an arctic winter. Sometimes so utterly packed with bad circumstance after bad circumstance. It can consume you with business, and worry, and pain, and when that happens, all you want, all I want–is to just have it melt away.

When that happens, I want to step from the autobahn of my life into a valley full of peace. I want to rest, and rest, and rest.

When that happens, I want to be warm, and quiet, and still.

It wasn’t until I knew God that I knew any of that. Until the noise in my heart was quieted a little. Until the emptiness was filled.

Brennan Manning spoke at my Church once, and he told a story about a woman he met at a leper colony–Yolanda. She was young, only 37, and prior to her leprosy, had been stunningly beautiful. She had long, dark hair, a perfect body, and a perfect face. When she began to lose her perfection, her husband left her–the leprosy was too much for him to live with.

The leprosy took her beauty, little by little. He nose and lips became twisted. She lost fingers. The only part of her untouched was her eyes–they remained a beautiful and shining brown. One day, Brennan had just gotten to the colony when they called him to pray with Yolanda–she was dying. It was a dark day–cloudy and cold, with rain on the way.

He went to her room, and was preparing to pray. He faced away from her, near a window, and as he began to take his vestments and oil from his bag, he felt warmth on his face, as if the sun had broken through the clouds. He briefly that God for the sunshine, and thought that Yolanda would enjoy it.

But then he looked up, and there was no sunshine. He turned to Yolanda, and saw that the light was coming from her–her face, once beautiful, was shining, and it was beautiful again.

She told Brennan that she was happy.

Why, he asked.

She told him that Jesus was going to take her home that day. He’d spoken to her.

Manning asked her what Jesus had said.

Yolanda said that Jesus had reached out to her and said, “Come now, my love, my lovely one, come. For you, the winter is past. The rain is gone. The flowers appear on the ground. The cooing of turtledoves is heard in the land…”

Brennan recognized the above as from the Song of Songs, and assumed that she’d heard it or read it before. He prayed for her a few minutes, put his things away, and left. Later that day, Yolanda went home.

The next day, Brennan was speaking to a nun, and found out that not only had Yolanda been illiterate, but she had very little familiarity with scripture. Yet Jesus had reached out and spoken to her, to his beloved.

I was thinking about that this morning when I started to write this. I was thinking of how much different my life is now. I still have amazing friends, and family. And I’ve finally met the woman God always intended for me to meet, and am beloved on earth. But even more than that, I know that someday (hopefully not for a long time), my body will begin to wither. I might be sick, and scared, and in pain, and it might be too much to handle.

But I will still be beloved, and I hope to rest with the knowledge that my Abba is calling me home.

And then, like Yolanda in Brennan Manning’s story, I hope to fill a room with light.

from the Song of Songs, Chapter 2:

10 My lover spoke and said to me,
“Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, and come with me.

11 See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.

12 Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
is heard in our land.

13 The fig tree forms its early fruit;
the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.
Arise, come, my darling;
my beautiful one, come with me.”

I think also of a snatch of an old hymn–at least I think it’s a hymn. Something about Christ being the lover of our souls.

The lover of our souls.

And we, the beloved.

This is a remix of something I posted a while back. Got led back to it again–reposted, slightly revised:

I always thought I’d have to be perfect for God, or perhaps more accurately–that I would have to be perfect to know Him. That’s what it seemed like, anyway. The Christian people I knew growing up certainly presented themselves that way; it didn’t look to me like they ever struggled, or doubted, or had any family or relationship troubles.

One the surface they were perfect people, with perfect lives. I don’t know about anything deeper than that, because it was too hard to get past the plastic smiles.

The young man who led the youth group I went to for a while as a teenager was a little like that. Not that he ever said he was perfect—he was just this tower of faith, and love, and patience for the handful of obnoxious teenagers in his charge. It never seemed like he so much as had a bad day. He was an amazing guy, but I wonder what kind of affect he would have had on us had he been a little more transparent—had he let us know then we could expect things to get rough sometimes.

Then there were the “others.” The people that I met through the church my brother went to for a while.
These men and women did all they could to draw attention to the wonderful Christian lives they were leading. They made sure everyone could see how they obeyed the “rules” set forth by God. That is, when they weren’t picketing places and telling people nearly everything they did was wrong, and would be sending them to hell, eventually.

Observe my faith, and be awed. See how much I care about the virtue of my children, and how willing I am to protect it at any cost. If they’d been around during Jesus’ time they would have been standing on street corners tearing their robes and crying.

It was all about them, not Jesus. They spent so much time being “super-Christians” that I knew I could never meet that sort of standard. I would never be able to serve a God who demanded such things, because I would never be perfect. And if I tried to be, the person I was now would always, always undermine any potential I might have for the future.

That person was far from perfect.

That person was flawed, and broken, and wounded.

That person–that man, was a liar.

That man lusted, drank to complete excess, and blasphemed.

That man stole, and coveted, and was full of self-pity and entitlement.

That man indulged in relationships empty of all but sin.

That man did not honor his mother and father, even when they were alive.

That man felt he was such a bad friend that he helped drive someone to a bullet.

That man did anything and everything he could to run willfully from God.

That man resisted salvation with every fiber of his being.

That man thought that since God made his life difficult, then he would damn well stay away from Him.
It was not that I doubted God’s existence. I just doubted God’s benevolence, and His “perfect” will for my life. While I had seen things that convinced me God was real, and cared, it only seemed to be for those people who led perfect and flawless lives.

I knew that wasn’t me. So in my mind, that meant he could not care less about me.

There was no way the man I was then would give up his own will for the will of another, even God. I just didn’t want anything to do with Him, or what He had to offer, which was subjugation.

Conformity.

No sense of self.

The man I was had no concept of anything but self.

That man did not care about anything, or anyone, because it seemed that no one cared about him.

Why would God want anything at all to do with that man? And since that was the man I was, what would be the point of approaching God with any sort of entreaty? He wouldn’t listen to me anyway.

But then something happened.

I met a series of people that either told me about Jesus, or showed me his love in a very practical way. They demanded nothing of me, and painted a picture of a very different sort of Jesus than I was accustomed to.

This Jesus just loved.

He was less concerned with a litany of rules, and more concerned with gathering lost sheep.

This Jesus cared about that man, just as he was.

Not as he should be.

This God was in the business of healing, not condemnation.

This Jesus was a physician, a carpenter, and a Father.

I began to develop a different sort of awareness, and sought more and more knowledge.

I began to hunger and thirst for righteousness. I began to heal.

And I began to realize in my heart that perfection was not required. I didn’t have to observe a strict set of rules to know God, and to be his child.

The Jesus that I learned about loved me in my state of disgrace, right then.

Long, long before I ever sought him.

He loved me enough to endure the whip, the crown of thorns, and the cross. Enough to walk a steep path with a heavy piece of wood balanced on his bloody shoulders.

Sometimes now I think about Pilate bringing Jesus before the crowd after his flogging and telling them “behold the man…”

I see myself in that crowd.

I’m standing there with everyone, looking up at a bloody, battered, and silent man.

I see myself calling for his death. He looks at me then. He is far away, but he sees me there.

And he goes to the cross for me, even then.

Even then.

When I accepted him as Lord, it was not simply an “aha” moment, where all things suddenly were wiped off my slate (though it was that, too). When I accepted His life, I also accepted his death, and entered into it.

I had to—it was for me.

And when I did that, the man I had been began to change. A little at first, but then more and more.
With the awareness of God’s love and acceptance, rather than judgment and condemnation, I began to grow, and I began to heal, and I began to care.

This man could treat people the way he wanted to be treated.

This man had genuine friendships.

This man could love, and be loved.

This man saw beyond himself.

This man longed to conform to his Father’s will for his life.

This man learned about life beyond short-term gratification,

This man saw the only cure possible for what ailed him.

This man began to put away childish things.

With the knowledge I’ve gleaned over the past few years, I have learned that only when I sought God’s vision for my life could I even begin to become anything approaching the person I had been designed to be, even before I was born.

What I had been doing for most of my life was trying to navigate the world without any real sense of direction. It was really something wonderful the first time I wondered which way I should go, and heard my Father say, “This way…”

I remember the man I used to be. But I am no longer him, though he is still a part of me.

I am a new creation, a new man. I am not perfect, and I never will be. I still struggle, and I still sin, and I still need to be forgiven.

But I am on a different path now.

I am walking toward God instead of away from him. I’m a husband, and a father of two boys who are just amazing examples of the wonder of God.

I am a new man. Not always the easiest thing to remember, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

A new man.

My nine month old son taught me something about God not long ago.

John is a funny little guy. He’s been crawling a little while now, and has also recently started walking with the assistance of a walker that plays an assortment of old-school kid songs.

He gets so excited he almost runs, too, and seems to be developing the fierce independence of his older brother, who only asks for help as a last resort, and abhors reading instructions. John will totter around pushing his walker, or a chair, or anything he can get his hands on that will allow him to move.

I had my moment of clarity the other day when I noticed that when we put him to bed he usually just flops down on his side and sleeps whatever amount of time his little body dictates. Then he cries, and we make our way in to pick him up.

It’s a pretty easy routine.

I haven’t seen what he does when my wife goes to get him, but when I enter his room to pick him up from his crib, he’s usually standing and clutching the bars like a prisoner, while crying out as loud as he can for us to come and rescue him.

When he sees me, he usually reaches up with his little shaking hands, like he’s saying “Daddy, Help me!”

I think that’s what I’m usually like with God; I insist on doing things on my own way, and in a sense I push things around because I, too, am a big boy, and I know how to do things on my own.

It’s better than having someone carry you all over the place.

And then there comes a point where I forget that someone used to carry me, and carries me still. What my son taught me is that I don’t reach out my hands for Daddy to pick me up often enough.

When I lift John out of his crib, he usually shuts it off right away. Why not? Daddy has picked him up, and things are pretty good.

He’s safe, and knows he will be comforted in one way or another.

He trusts—in as much of a way as a baby can—that because Daddy has him in his arms, that things will be OK.

Why is it that it’s so hard for me to reach for those arms to pick me up, and comfort me?

My 6 year old even gets it better than I do. He’s got that independent streak of my wife’s, too, but when he gets to that place where the hurt is bad enough, or he is afraid, or needs wisdom about something, he asks for help.

What makes me think I have everything figured out?

I love my kids so much…