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Becoming Human (A Short Story)

21 Jan

Something happens when you come alive and are set free from fear.

You realize existence is messy and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Control is an illusion, a grasping at the air only to fall over.

This reality: It’s bloody, gritty, reality.
Broken hearts and broken bones are just a way of life.

So you begin to realize you don’t have to expend your energy trying to avoid the mess.

(You breathe a sigh of relief.)
Once upon a time, you had this idea everything would be smooth because you were trying to say and do all the right things.

The universe seemed to align and God was on side because you were be moral enough and separated yourself from the world, to be to “holy” enough to avoid being like the others you judged and pitied.

Any trials or pain that happened you blamed on some outside force of evil, or how God was testing you.

But you were terrified to admit when you did wrong, you couldn’t believe you could possibly still be struggling with wanting to lose yourself in something you’ve been told is so wrong, so you denied your desires instead of understanding why you have them in the first place.

But they didn’t go away. You can only shove down your humanity so much. 

So when all that inevitably blew up in your face, you couldn’t help but feel a little crazy.

You may have tried again and again, thrusting yourself into an endless cycle of failure and guilt, but when you finally realized it’s all a sham, you got angry.

So you fought back a little. You did something rebellious.

They looked at you and thought,

“There’s another one lost to the darkness.”

But what they didn’t realize was this was all part of your journey to grace.

So you broke and screamed and let go and let all the pain in.

You accepted the fact you are poor and dirty and dead.

You decided to live a little dangerously.

To embrace instead of exclude.

To dare to be open and see the truth all around you.

And I say, if it’s one step closer to you coming alive, go for it.

Feel all your emotions.

Question what you always thought to be true.

Allow your heart to be broken.

Because let me tell you friend, if you spend your life trying to guard yourself, trying to behave, trying to fit into some religious mold, you will cheat yourself out of truly experiencing life.

You will cheat the world out of what kind of beauty can explode when a human being is actually genuine.

And what happens when a genuine human being allows the spirit of a perfect and loving God to be life within them.

God doesn’t want a robot. He just wants you.

Real change comes not in us trying harder, but in giving up and letting go and realizing the beautiful and terrible truth,

We are broken and we can’t fix ourselves. 

………………….

Exactly.

That’s the entire point.

That’s what Jesus is for. 

 

 

A Handful of Crumbs- Thoughts on Grace & Identity

18 Nov

I picked up this memoir by Kim Sunee, “Trail of Crumbs” partially because the cover was pretty, partially because it was on clearance for $5, but mostly because of the subtitle,

“Hunger, Love and the Search for Home.”

That subtitle could just as well describe the book I am currently working on, “The Wizard of God.”

Anyways, it’s a beautiful and intriguing life story. Kim was abandoned on a bench in South Korea when she was three, left with nothing but a fistful of crumbs to survive on. She sat there for three days until a policeman finally brought her to an orphanage where she was adopted by an American couple.

Fast forward many years. Kim meets a wealthy French businessman man who is charming and wonderful and gives her everything she has ever wanted. I was swept into the beauty of their life together, living in the countryside of France in a huge house surrounded by orchards and gardens. Kim cooks these fabulous dinner parties for traveling guests, exquisite combinations that made me long for new food and new places. Her lover bought her a building in Paris to open her own book store that specializes in poetry. There she meets fascinating artists and writers from all over the world. Her life seemed ideal. A fairy tale. She came from nothing, and was given everything.

And it wasn’t just money. He loved her too. Passionately,  in a way that made all their friends jealous.

That would seem like the end of the perfect story, right?

No. she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stay. She left him and threw everything she had away.

Why? Two reasons stuck out in my mind.

After being abandoned as a child, and growing up in an American family that was emotionally distant, she traveled to try to “find herself,” find a place where she belonged.

She thought she could find herself in a man, in this group of friends who were built around her in France, but it wasn’t enough.

She needed the one she came from to give her an identity.

The other reason was, in her lack of knowing who she was, in her struggling with abandonment and rejection, when offered the wonderful gifts of not only a beautiful life, but the heart of a loving man, she felt like she didn’t deserve it.

It’s impossible to accept grace when we don’t know who we are.

She was left in this world with nothing but a handful of crumbs, and so that’s what she built her identity around. She tried to get professional help, but it never subsided the ache. The more her lover lavished expensive and beautiful gifts on her, the more empty she felt.

I am not trying to psychoanalyze this woman specifically. The reason I write about her story in particular because as I was reading it I was struck with the idea that is perhaps the human condition.

We were born into this world with nothing, naked and screaming. We are often left with nothing more than a handful of crumbs, a few grains of rice, pieces we try to put together to make a life for ourselves, to create a home and a family, to find a sense of belonging.

A little boy in a slum in Chennai India, getting his one meal of the day.

Some of us find grace, find God.

We see He is not angry, we see He has given us good things. But often the more He gives, the harder it is to accept. That sense of debt that was established sometime in the losing of our innocence surfaces.

“Who am I to deserve this?”

The question can really be edited, cut in half, leaving the first three words for us to contend with,

“Who am I?”

It’s easy to see the brokeness, the tragic mistakes we’ve made, the reasons we were left with nothing.

It’s a lot harder to see who we really are:

Sacred, beautiful, works of art.

“It is our light  not our darkness that most frightens us.”

C.S Lewis said it this way in The Weight of Glory, 

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”

So, what then?

Is there some simple formula? Do we do like this awesome girl and repeat in the mirror every morning convincing ourselves that we are really wonderful people?

I love this video. Yet, there are  not enough magic words to overcome a lifetime of feeling we are unworthy.

There can never be enough people telling you how brilliant or fabulous you are, when your  inner voice that tells says you will never be enough.

It is only in the opening of our ears to hear the whispers of The One who created, the only one with the right to tell us who we are. It is only in believing that we are free

To quote Lewis again,

“And that is enough to raise your thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex forever will also drown her pride… Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

We may see ourselves as having only a handful of crumbs, but there is a veil that has been ripped and beyond that, there is a feast we can sit down and partake in anytime we like.

Once we see this feast, once we understand we are no longer slaves but sons and daughters, we can invite the whole world to come, sit, and dine.

From Starvation to Drunken Joy

13 Nov

It’s hard to swallow sometimes
the sweet liquid that You are enough
it burns my pride as it cures it

but when I get pills stuck in my throat
(self-made medicine
from a factory in my heart
in that smoggy part that doesn’t fully believe)

I can see no other alternative
and I wouldn’t want to

truth is too delicious

because there is no cure
other than Your bread and wine

and that is my sustenance
and my drunken joy

I’ve tried  to get meat
bloody and rare
left overs from an altar somewhere

but it’s a carcass filled with maggots
I  couldn’t see that because I was
so busy counting up
what I thought I owed you

so bent on a payment plan that
I sold my last bit of grain to the poor
only for it to be lost in transport

it was only then
in my feverish aches
in my grand delusions
in my starving hallucinations
that I could somehow provide
what I needed to survive

I finally collapsed and saw
my bloated belly
and emaciated face

(and I knew I was one of them too)

I knew that the grocery stores were empty
I knew that the garden was dead
I knew that the store houses were rotting

only then was I able to be fed

carried to a feast, a banquet, a buffet
endless and guiltless and always mine

because there is no cure
other than then Your bread and wine

and that is my sustenance
and my drunken joy

“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred-proof grace-of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel-after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection your bootstraps-suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.”

-Robert Capon, Between Noon and Three (as quoted in Brennan Manning’s, The Ragamuffin Gospel)

Why I Don’t Wear “The Ring.”

7 Nov

This is a ring.

It says “Semper Honorablus” which mean “Always Honorable” in Latin, I guess.

I was given this ring when I was eighteen, after “committing to live a life of honor.”
I don’t talk about this much. I might say casually when people ask me where I went to school,

“Oh, this errr… bible college.”

Sometimes, I will mention to people I lived on a bus for two and a half years. Some look at me like I am insane, most don’t really care.

I don’t always mention all the wonderful and terrible things that happened from being a part of Teen Mania Ministries for four years.

I don’t mention I took the ring off soon after leaving in 2007, because I didn’t even know what it meant anymore.

I began to question what I really believed and whether aspects of my faith were really mine, or something that had been forced on me.

Can I be honest and say, it’s hard to write this?

I decided to no longer remain silent because things seem to be coming to a head. People are hurt, and people are angry at those who are hurt.

People say Teen Mania is an abusive cult.

People say it is a life-changing program, the best ministry ever.

People say that it is where God is.

People say that God has used this ministry to transform thousands of lives. I  understand that, mine included. I was seventeen and desperately needed God. I knew if I didn’t go to the Honor Academy I would end up in a trailer park with the baby of some druggie.

But right now, I need to shut out what people are saying.

Right now I am letting go of it all, the good, the bad, the ugly.

Not because of what anyone did to me, but because of the bondage I put myself under.

Please hear my heart in this. I am not slandering anyone.

I  am speaking up now, because a lot of things have changed. Because I have changed. Because I used to be afraid. I wasn’t necessarily afraid of not being accepted by God, (at least not after a while) I was afraid of not being accepted by them.

Being accepted by the group I claimed allegiance too, spent thousands of hours on the phone convincing people to attend, gave four years of my life to… that meant everything.

At one time I felt guilty. I felt like I owed them my allegiance. After all, I experienced the love of God there like I never had anywhere else. I realized my life had purpose there. I learned to love myself there. The world opened up to me. I got to travel, experience incredible things. I met some of the most amazing people I have ever met, and many of them I still have a deep connection with.

But now I know, those things were simply the grace of God in my life.
Jesus was loving me.
I am not angry. Ok maybe a little. I am angry people are hurt and no one is listening. I am angry at the gross militaristic “us vs. them” mentality. I am angry at religion trying to make people pay for what God has already given us for free. But by the grace of God, I am not bitter. I am thankful for the things I learned, the opportunities I had, and the beautiful people I met.

But I can’t wear the ring. To me, it represents a mental and emotional legalistic pressure that Jesus never ever put on me.

I am under no obligation to anyone but Christ.
And in that, I am free.

I don’t need to “be the standard.”
I don’t need to conjure up some fake pious morality.
I don’t need to sign a creed and commit to an ideal, a better way of life.

Those things are bullshit.

They don’t work.

Jesus made a covenant with God and has given me all things. I just simply have to believe. I don’t owe God anything… How can you pay for something that is a free gift? Even if I tried, I couldn’t pay Him back if I tried. God doesn’t want my disgusting bloody rags, my failed attempts to be holy.

He just wants me. And He has me.
He wants me to understand what he did on the cross was enough.
I don’t have to “try to get closer to him,” He is part of me.
I don’t have to rally people to a massive conference to beg God to “come down,” He is everywhere.

And I already am holy. Because He made me a new creation. It wasn’t my doing.

(At times, the self-righteous nineteen-year-old in me is cries, “Heresy!” in the back of my head. But I am learning to shut her up.)

I am completely free.
I am under no obligation to any system of religion, any conformity, any pressure to be a leader, or to keep up appearances.

I can just be Brooke.

And Brooke, with the Holy Spirit in her, is more than enough.

EDIT-

Ok, I need to add this. I don’t want this to come across like I am bashing Teen Mania. This is not my heart. I almost didn’t put the name here, but I figured most people would figure out what I am talking about anyways. This is not against people, this is against a system that tells you you have to be more then Jesus has already made you in him. I could apply this to many churches as well. There are Christian communities out there that are loving and grace filled and not exclusive. Those are amazing, we need more of those. The point is, my identity is not in being “alumni” or a church member at so-and-so.

Shout It From the Rooftops

13 Oct

God doesn’t hate you.

He is not pissed off at you.

He is not rolling his eyes at your stupidity.

He doesn’t point out your flaws.

He doesn’t think you’re crazy.

He is not embarrassed by you.

He never, ever condemns you.

He isn’t impatiently tapping his giant foot up in heaven, waiting for you to grow up, to get over your addictions, to clean up your act.

He doesn’t just “put up” with you because he has to.

He doesn’t inflict disease on you to teach you a lesson.

He doesn’t leave you alone so you will realize you need him and stop taking him for granted.

He doesn’t emotionally manipulate you.

He doesn’t demand you give your “110%,” to work until you are worn out.

He is not schizophrenic, hugging you one day and slapping you the next.

He is not far away, someday somewhere in the sweet by and by.

He doesn’t “hide his will from you” and then choose someone else when you don’t “follow your destiny.”

He doesn’t think you’re more awesome than his other kids because you attend church, tell everyone to accept him, sponsor poor kids, or try to overcome your porn addiction on your own.

His doesn’t change his mind about you when you decided to throw it all away and completely F up your life.

He isn’t impressed by your self-made “holiness.”

He isn’t shocked or surprised by your horrific disgusting sin.

His view of you has nothing to do with how hard you try not to sin, how much you strive to be good.

NO!

God simply loves you because he IS love, not because he has to, but because,

You are his son, you are his daughter and he sees you as worthy to be loved.

He only gives you good things.

He only offers you life.

He only responds as a loving father with open arms, not just forgiving your sins, but throwing you a party.

He is only pure grace and pure beauty, and he gives himself to you.

He only sees who you really are: whole, loved, absolutely fantastic and brilliant.

He will do anything to free you from the chains around your mind.

He will do anything for you to see what you already have in him.

He only asks you see who you are and believe it.

AND

You will realize you are already healed, whole and restored.

You will stop trying to do and realize it has all ready been done.

You will live in peace and contentment.

You will live a beautiful adventure, free from guilt, shame and fear.

You will create and grow and change the world without even trying.

And you will love people and love yourself and feast and drink and see that you have the Kingdom of God in you, beauty all around you, and eternal life here and now

If I Had a Bus

3 Oct

I would travel the country and give away coffee, juice and water,

and tell people we are all the same,

all in need of LIFE, offered freely by God,

and we are all loved beyond our ability to comprehend.

“God’s Will” Doesn’t Tie Us Up

24 Sep

Christianity is a weird and awkward thing. The more I love Jesus and see who He really is the more I realize I want absolutely nothing to do with religion.

“Religion” literally means, “to bind or tie.”

I have returned to bondage over and over again in my life.
I have listened to the voice, and I have parroted the voice that says:

You are not praying enough.
You need to read (and translate and study and apply) the bible more to your life.
You need to give God more of your life.
You are not doing enough to meet the needs of the world.
You are not telling enough people about Jesus.
You need to make sure you avoid anything that looks sinful.
You need to give everything you have, not waste a single second, always be trying to become a better human being.

Sounds like good advice…..right?

In the past, it sure seemed like it. I used to give that advice to others when they struggled. I used to preach that advice, believe it, try to live up to it, but now the grace of God has revealed it for what it is: disgusting.

It adds links, one by one, to the heavy rusted chain around your neck, choking all life out.

When you grow up in the mindset that these things, listed above, are necessary to be “in”— to be loved, to be worthy to gain an eternal reward— it is hard to be released from those sort of shackles.

It feels safe inside the bondage of religion. It feels easier to try to be under the law and attempt to gain some sort of right-ness with God by the petty little things you do, but it is just worthless.

So worthless.

Then, to complicate things even more, I brought “THE WILL OF GOD”  (Duh, Dun DUHH! Pause for dramatic music) into the whole matter.

(Now, I cringe at that phrase, thinking how many lives have been ruined by attaching that label to a selfish, evil, or just plain lame decisions and events.)

As if it were not enough to try to avoid sin and “get closer” to God, I believed if I wasn’t close enough I wouldn’t be able to hear His voice and understand what he wants me to do with my life. Oh the pressure.

This is especially treacherous when you are eighteen and you have to have a complete life vision and plan from the LORD all laid out or you will end up a drifting loser and make all the mistakes your friends did, living some mediocre life in the suburbs with your eyes glued to the television and the world will end up dying because you did not fulfill your DESTINY.

Or, at least that is what I believed. Maybe I was crazy.

So I fasted, cried, read more books, sought consul from “more mature” Christians, prayed, and screamed:

“God just tell me what to DO!!”

I lived in fear that I’d marry the wrong person, have the wrong job (or be in the wrong ministry, because the thought of having a “normal” job sounded like suicide,) move to the wrong country, miss out COMPLETELY on God’s “perfect will” and waste my short life, ending on my death bed with regret. DUN DUN DUHHHHHH!

(All these thoughts were religious, returning me to bondage.)

The great irony is,

The will of God is simply that I live in freedom, in love, in Him.

It was never hidden until I was “good enough” to see it, it was always right there for me to see, my eyes were just closed.

I am so grateful for a God that rescues.

He wouldn’t let me stay in my chains playing with my filthy rags.  He gently led me to a place where I realized I had nothing.

I saw my neediness. I saw my failure. My own stinking humanity.

I saw the worthless and futility of it all.

I came to see I can’t do a thing, and that’s the point.

But there is a but.

“Then who can be saved?”

“With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible. “

Yes. Hallelujah. LIFE. This is the Good News.

There is no fear in that. There is no pressure. There is no condemnation. There is no “getting it wrong.”

As I my eyes have been opened to what is behind the veil that has been torn,

I see all things have already been done, all things are already mine, and it changes everything.

I don’t need to ask God what His will is, it’s right there! For me to start believing all that I have in Him.

Yet at times I still choose not to believe, to allow emotions and confusion to take place of the reality of His life in me. When I can’t see where I am going, when I don’t know where I am going to live or what I am going to do or how I am going to make it, I go back to my old cry, “God just tell me what to DO!!”

And then, I hear it, a  whisper:

“Here’s what to do- let me love you.
Stop trying.
Realize this is a gift, this life, this right-ness with me.
There is nothing but Grace, it is not a concept, it is ME.
I have given you all things.
There is nothing you can do to be closer to me, I am as close as your breath.
I will take you on this beautiful, wild adventure if you just stop trying to figure things out.
You don’t need to return to bondage by trying to be better, you never will be.
Let go of that.
Let me live through you.
Let me love in you and out of of you.
Then you will live in joy. You will not know guilt. You will be free from fear.
Your life will be abundant because it will be my life.
You will not look at your petty sin because you will look at me.
You will dream big and have the courage and motivation to follow those dreams.
You will not need to constantly stop and ask me which way to go, because you will know I am the way.
You will stop asking for answers and rest in my love.
You will stop asking for a plan and realize, this is the only plan- to know me and be known by me.
That is my will.”

 

*For a great biblical teaching on this, check out Andrew Farley’s Message Click on “Recent Messages” Then  “8-28-11- Finding God’s Will.”

Or e-mail me- writeeveryday@gmail.com and I’ll send it to you.

Also you should read a blog by Don Miller, because he is awesome.

How To Remember Well- Thoughts on 9-11 & Fear Vs. Hope

11 Sep


Ten years ago I sat in Junior English class and heard that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. To be honest, I vaguely knew what the World Trade Center was. At sixteen, I wasn’t really into New York architecture. I knew about the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, but that was about it.  My world was all about the here and now, the drama of every day life. I lived in fear, but that fear was that I wasn’t as pretty as the girls in my new school, that I would never be good enough, that I was still too awkward and shy. I didn’t fear terrorists, I feared I would end up alone, that I would never accomplish my dream of being a writer.

Tragedy has a way of changing the priorities of our fears.

We gathered in the history room of my small Christian private school and watched in terror as the events unfolded. I remember feeling sorry for my History teacher, a darling woman who was the most patriotic person I knew. I watched tears openly flow down her face, her eyes red with shock. I don’t think I cried, I was too numb. Although New York was less then 300 miles away, it felt like a different planet, and seeing explosions on the TV seemed like good special effects in a summer blockbuster.

Fear has a way of causing us to live in denial and hope to God that reality isn’t what it seems.

Ten years later, and we’ve finally found the man believed to be solely behind these attacks. While it would seem that would alleviate our fear, it just doesn’t seem to have let up any.

Many say our threat of terrorism is just as strong, or worse. Even if the threat was gone, there will always be something else to fear.

Fear has a way of multiplying like a cancer and taking over. It doesn’t matter what form it takes, it is all destructive.

We fear unemployment, the economy crashing, government control, everything we know and love in this country ceasing to be.

We long for some political savior to ride in on his white horse and rescue us from our nightmares.

But this will never be.

As this peculiar group who claims faith in God as their way of life, we have another fear- the devil.

We haven’t met him, necessarily, but we’ve seen his attempt to mess with our “God-fearing” nation.

We fear evil taking over our country more then anything.

We fear our morals being pushed aside and “secularization” becoming the norm.

So we do what any Jesus-loving patriot would do- we fight it.

We picket. We protest. We preach against it. We speak against it. We try to pinpoint what went wrong, to find a source to blame.

And all the while fear breeds, takes over our consciousness, becomes our drug of choice.

Fear leads to more fear. Blame leads to more Blame. Hate leads to more hate.

Whether fear of Al-Qaeda, or conservatives fearing liberals pushing their “godless agenda,” it always leads to bondage and hate.

“There is no fear in love, perfect love cast out all fear.” (1 John 4:18)

 

The good news is: we don’t have to live like this.

(Breathe deep sigh of relief)

Whoever you blame for the state of our country, know that blame will always lead to bitterness, and bitterness will always lead to cynicism and the death of joy.

Even as I am writing this, I become face to face with my own hypocrisy because my own blame points to The Church. I get angry at our reputation to instill fear and hopelessness while we should be the last group on the earth to do so, yet I cannot allow this the lead to bitterness.

(I am part of the problem.)

Every fatal word spoken, every anti-people statement, ever finger pointed in blame, is all part of the problem.

Ten years later, I want to remember the sacrifice made by the heroes who responded immediately to the tragedy in New York, those who daily sacrifice in order to keep us safe, I want to honor those 3,000 who died. Yet, I completely miss the point if I let that negate remembering the sacrifice made by Jesus in order that we may walk in peace, freedom, love and LIFE.

The other night I went to a comedy show. My boyfriend made fun of me, because out of all the hilarious things Michael Jr. said, the thing that stuck with was the one serious thing he said. He shared how his goal in comedy used to be to get people to laugh. It is a normal goal to have as a comedian, and you wouldn’t think of it as selfish until you realized that the reason he wanted people to laugh was to validate his career. At a popular club in Los Angeles, he saw a homeless man hanging out outside and something in him shifted.

It was then he realized, God didn’t want him to get people to laugh, but to give them a reason to laugh.

As People of Hope, it is not our job to get people to change, to believe, to try to be like Jesus. It is simply our job to live love and that will give them a reason to laugh. To hope. To love.

I believe that the best way to honor this day is cut out the nay-saying and begin to speak words of hope over our world.

Our country.
Our church.
Our family.
Our neighbors.
Ourselves.

In order to speak hope, we must first open our eyes to see it- everywhere, all around us.

Jesus, redeeming the world. We are secure. Our future is certain. The war has been won.
For every judgmental blanket statement of blame made over a particular party, religion, or people group, let us be the ones who point out the loving individuals who break that break the stereotypes.

For every eye wide with fear after turning off the evening news, let us be the ones who soothe bristly souls with words of comfort and hope as Jesus did.

For every finger pointed in blame, every word written that stirs the need for revenge, let us be the ones who peacefully disarm, hand out grace like it’s bread for the starving, and live unconditional love until revenge loses its appeal.

This is how we remember well.

Men & Rocks (A Parable)

30 Aug

Two men were walking down an old dusty road called life carrying sacks.

One stopped along the way and picked up a stone called “Addiction,” and put it in his sack. The second man picked up a stone called “Evangelism.”

They walked a little further, when the first man found a rock called “Sexual Sin.” He put it in his sack. Nearby, the second man realized he must be missing something so he found a rock called “Feeding the Poor,” and did the same.

The two men walked on, a little slower this time because of the weight. The first man stopped by a tree and found a large boulder called “Self-Hatred” which he carefully squeezed into his bag. The second man found one just as big called “My Reputation,” and fit it in his bag.

They continued along the road. The first man acquired several more over the miles of travel: “Abuse,” “Dishonesty,” and “Drunkenness.”

The second man also picked up more to add to his load. They were big shiny rocks with long fancy names such as: “Memorizing Scripture,” “Attending Church,” and “Protesting Abortion.”

By this time, both men could barely walk under the load.

Out of nowhere, along came a man with a smile on his face. He stopped and looked at the men, both sweating and straining under their heavy sacks.

“Let me carry them.” He offered, firmly but gently. The first man put down his sack and looked inside. He recognized the rocks were no good. They were jagged and dirty and making his back ache. He closed the sack and handed it to the smiling man, grateful for the relief.

The second man put down his sack and looked in. All his rocks seemed were smooth and shiny, even though they were just as heavy.

“I can’t just let him carry them,” he thought to himself,  “They are my responsibility. Besides, they are not all dirty and jagged like the other man’s rocks.”

So the second man said “No thank you.” He closed his bag, and hoisted it back onto his own aching back. He continued to shuffle down the road, miserable and sweaty, but filled with a sense of self-pride.

The first man joyfully skipped down the road, following his savior, free from all things that had weighed him down.

 

Starving For Grace

17 Jul

 

We live in a world where gracelessness is the fuel that runs this machine called society.

“At least they got what they deserved.”

“We’ll teach them a lesson.”

“Nothing is free.”

“If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”

“God helps those who help themselves.”

It is a very human attitude. We disguise our un-grace with our sense of hard work, our sense of fair, of right and wrong.

Our sense of justice.

In Phillip Yancey’s “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” He tells the following story.

While in a meeting of prominent christian leaders of the time, there arouse a discussion on what makes Christianity different then other religions. The idea of the resurrection was brought up, but quickly shot down. Other religions had accounts about people being raised from the dead. What about God coming to earth as man? No, that was not unique to Christianity either. Then, C.S Lewis wandered into the room. The leaders asked him the questions, and without a beat, he responded,

“Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”

Grace is not a topic, it is not a certain theological view. It is the gospel. The word’s grace and Jesus are interchangeable.

Salvation is a gift. Furious, unconditional love is offered freely, spilling out of the Creator of the world. It is ours if we just accept.

Grace. It’s the name of a girl. It’s also a thought that could change the world.

In the movie Seven Pounds, Will Smith plays a man desperate to give back that which he (by accident) had stolen. In a scene in the middle of the movie, he finds a broken woman suffering abuse at the hands an abusive man, with no where to run to. Not only does Will Smith take the fearful woman and her children out of that horrible hell they are living in, but he does something unthinkable- he gives her his house. A beautiful mansion over looking the ocean. The woman, at first, was obviously skeptical. She, like we all would if such a gift was offered from a stranger, wanted to know what the catch was. How could a man who just met her give that sort of grace to her and her children, without wanting something in return?

When Will Smith assured her that there was no catch, it was then she was able to let down her guard and fully realize the extent of what had been given to her. In a tear-flowing scene, her children and her walk on the beach, safe and sound from abuse, able to start their lives completely over.

We weep at such scenes because we were created to live inside of them.
But our world is so good at gracelessness, and unfortunately the church has not done much better.

We fear showing this sort of unconditional love because we have been cheated, taken advantage of. We want to teach people a lesson. We want to be wise, mature. We don’t want to give people “a license to sin.” We want justice.

We want people to get what they deserve, but do we really?

She travels outside
Of karma, karma
She travels outside
Of karma

What if we stopped judging things as moral and immoral, and instead, did our best to offer unconditional grace to everyone we met?

From judgmental relatives,
to snobby backstabbing ex-friends.
From famous preachers caught in sexual scandals,
To pimps who prey on children.

Is it too much for us?

Recently in an article about forgiveness in response to the outrage against the Casey Anthony trial.

It was the spring of 1944 when 10-year-old Eva Kor, her twin sister Miriam and her mother arrived in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Immediately, guards ripped both girls from their mother and they were never again to see her, their father or their older sisters.
Shortly thereafter, in a sick bay, a doctor told Eva “You have just two weeks to live.” The doctor was Josef Mengele. He had just injected her with a lethal cocktail of bacteria as part of a barbaric experiment with twins.
Eva had a strong immune system and survived but so, too, did the pain of her suffering. Her sister Miriam suffered an inexplicable disease from the injection of poison. Eva later tried to save her sister’s life by donating one of her own kidneys, but Miriam died in 1993.
In January 1995, at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Kor brought along a doctor who worked alongside Josef Mengele. Eva read a confession of guilt from the doctor who accompanied her and then shocked the world press by saying “In my own name, I forgive all Nazis.”

…If Jesus could ask God to forgive the people that were about to murder him and if a Holocaust survivor could forgive the people that poisoned her and tried to exterminate her family, then what holds you and I back from forgiving anyone?

How is this even possible? It’s not, in a human sense. But when we begin to realize all that has been offered us free of charge, all that we are blessed with that we don’t deserve, the wild wide-eyed gift of life that has been extended to us, we begin to realize that nothing is ours to hold onto, yet everything is ours to give.

When she goes to work
You can hear the strings
Grace finds beauty
In everything

(U2- Grace)

And so, may we dare to offer grace, forgiveness, and unconditional love in a world simply starving for it. Even before taking that step, may we begin to accept it. May we understand life is a gift, everything we long for is ours, free of charge.  In choosing to walk in grace, even when it’s hard and painful, we are fighting against violence, against revenge, against evil itself.

In embracing the gospel of Jesus and feeding grace to a world starving for it, we will be in essence walking inside another kingdom- one where everyone is equal, everyone is welcome, and everyone understands how much they are loved.

 

 

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