LONGING FOR THE NORTH

"It was cold, spacious, sever, pale, and remote"

          Since antiquity, mankind has used the North Star to navigate their travels on earth. When they are lost and confused, when they must find the way home, when they are at the end of their knowledge—they have always looked up and to the north.

It is strange that we instinctively lift our faces to the north when we need help, since the Bible says that the north is God’s own country. In Isaiah 14:13-14 of the Bible, Satan said that “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north.” Good can come from evil. Through Satan’s proud speech, we know exactly where God’s throne is located. God dwells up and to the north. I wonder if God placed the North Star as a guide so that we would look for Him when we are at the end of our knowledge.

            C.S. Lewis lost in atheism and hatred for God, found direction by looking to the north. All his life, Lewis had a feeling that he either called “northerness” or joy. Since he was a little boy, Lewis experienced an intense longing for something outside of his own sphere of knowledge. Lewis said, “I desired with almost sickening intensity something never to be described (except that it is cold, spacious, sever, pale, and remote) and then, as in the other examples, found myself at the very same moment already falling out of that desire and wishing I were back in it.”[1] This longing drew him until he met the source in the form of God. Lewis followed the pull of “Northerness” from atheism, to Deism, and at last to Christianity. He found his longing satisfied in Christ.

            I have also experienced a desire for the north. For a time in my life, I was lost in rebellion and self-will against God. I was a Christian, but I had lost my direction. When I returned, it was on a cold, starry night. I described the time in a personal essay that I wrote for my senior reading at college.

   It was a week before Christmas, and I had just returned home from a full day of work and school, when I finally stopped running. I pulled into my driveway, stopped the car, and turned off the engine.
The long drive home and my music had put me into a contemplative mood so that when I climbed out of the car, I stopped to stare up into the black sky, bedazzled with flecks of light.
   I leaned against the warm hood of my car, staring up into the heavens and searching for an answer from the celestial bodies of light. For a moment my misery was lifted, and I felt a sweet peace wash over my tired and worn soul. I felt very near to God, as if He was standing just behind my shoulder; and if I turned around fast, He would still be there offering peace with His scarred hands.    I knew that I was being given a chance to go back to Him, and I wanted to turn around.
   “God, I want out. I’m tired and miserable. I don’t want to live this way for the rest of my life.”   I had known this for a long time, but I finally admitted it out loud. This was my heart’s true desire.
 

            I still long for the north, but I am different now. I am not a rebellious creature surrendering to her creator; I am a longing creature loving her creator. When I look up to the sky on a cold fall night, I long for a country I have never seen. Just like C.S. Lewis was drawn to the north, I know that God is drawing me. Right now, I wander the earth but it will not always be this way. Someday, I will find my way home.

---

[1] Lewis, C.S. 1955. Surprised by Joy. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanich.

Broken Bottles of Perfume

This is the scent of Love-

"There came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she broke the box, and poured it on His [Jesus'] head." 

-Mark 14:3b

   Chanel No. 5 was my first perfume. L and B gave me the perfume at my high school graduation. That perfume adorned me during many firsts: my first year at college, my first time wearing heels, and my first date. But I will always associate the smell of Chanel with the them.

   
   When L and B entered my life, our family was going through trials that threatened to break us apart. I was still too young to understand the whys, but I understood the tension. And I remember the tears of my parents.

   Papa and Mama (that is what L and B insisted we call them) saw our family struggling, and they slipped their arms around us. They came without fanfare or pomp. I hardly remember the first time I met them. They simply melted into the family. L helped Dad with the farm work; B helped Mom can fruit during the fall. They were at every birthday, anniversary, wedding, and death, helping and giving to us.

   L and B were never rich for as long as I knew them, but they used to be rich. B had been the daughter of a wealthy French doctor and had received an inheritance from him when she was married. When they became Christians, they gave up their wealth and committed themselves to helping others.  The Chanel perfume had been a remnant of B’s past.

   When my younger brother and I went to college, L and B faithfully sent us a 50 dollar check every month. They were the reason that I could go on coffee dates with my friends every week. Sometimes I sent a thank you card, but sometimes I didn’t. I wish I could go back and fix that lack of love on my part. All during our four years of college, they never missed a month. They would have flown from Washington to Florida for our graduation, but by the time we graduated B was too sick to make the trip.

   Before I left for graduate school in the fall of 2012, I decided to take L and B on a dinner date. I felt like B was slipping away, and I wanted to give them a special dinner. I set up the time with L, called the restaurant, and reserved a table. I told Papa and Mama to meet me at 6 p.m.

   When I arrived at the restaurant, fifteen minutes early and holding a bouquet of flowers for B, I found them already seated at the table. B had bought a swan vase holding a single rose from a florist and placed it beside my water glass. My small bouquet of flowers from Wal-mart (I had remembered to buy flowers on the way into town, and Wal-mart was the only store open at that time) seemed tasteless and ugly. At the end of the meal, L paid the bill before I could.

   I hugged them goodbye in the parking lot and watched them drive away in their shabby white Subaru. I climbed into my truck, pulled my seatbelt down and over, put my hands on the top of the steering wheel, and sank my forehead onto my hands. I cried like a child—without restraint.

   Because of L and B, I had seen a startlingly clear picture of Jesus’ love. They had given to me without expecting or wanting anything in return because they loved me. I could never repay them. Why did they love me? But that question didn’t matter. They were only concerned that I was loved. And that is the reason that I cried into the steering wheel, overwhelmed by a love I could never return.

   Someday, I will buy my little girl a bottle of Chanel No. 5 for her graduation and will tell her about Papa and Mama. I’ll tell her that like the woman who poured her perfume on the feet of Jesus, L and B poured their lives into me. But perhaps they gave a more excellent sacrifice than the woman in Mark, because their lives were a perfume personified and poured out for the Master’s glory. They were most like Christ. 

  

     

Oh, the Rolling of the Proud Waves!

 Times that Try Men's Souls

  This is the hardest point. This is the time when the child died despite our prayers, you gave your last loaf of bread to the prophet instead of your starving son, and the three young men were thrown into the fire for their stand of faith. This is the test. God hasn’t shown up on time, and we have no more hope. What choice do we make? Will we turn our back on God?

If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, now may Israel say;

  Have you ever experienced this point of emptiness in your life? Please tell me that I’m not alone in this feeling. Have you ever prayed for a small request, but your prayers remained unanswered for so long that only a miracle can help now?

 If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us:

  We pray, “God, why? Don’t you know what the unbelievers are saying? Don’t you know that they are claiming you don’t exist after all?”

Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us:

  

  At this point, we have a choice to deny our Father or keep believing in the impossible. Can miracles really happen? Was it all a dream? Remember, faith is a choice.

Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul:

  In our desperation, we fall to our knees and cry a broken prayer. “God, I don’t understand. But I love you. I am overwhelmed by the mockery of those who don’t know or love you, but trusting in Your plan. I trust You.”

Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.

   

  I think that this is the attitude that God is waiting to see. He wants to see if we will love Him even when the proud waves try to overwhelm us. We have always claimed to love Him; we have a chance to prove our love. Will we love Him when everything goes contrary to our will?

Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth.

  Do you remember what happened to the child that died, the mother that gave away her last piece of bread, and the three young men in the fire? Do you remember where their stories ended up? Look in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews, chapter 11. Remember that you are not the only Christian tried by the crucible of faith.

This Song is a Cry of Dependence on God. 

I thought it was appropriate for our topic tonight.

Our Soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. 

  Father—our crystal balls are dark, we have stopped pretending to be divine, and we have stopped trying to see our future. We understand that we are only human, and we choose to trust you. We will love you and remember that you will “regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer. This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord (Psalm 102:17-18).”

Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. 

Psalm 124:1-8

Breathing is simple-for some

Suffocated by the Past 

“All I wanted was a good set of lungs and the air to fill them with.”

Leif Enger

   Over 80 forest fires have scorched Washington state during our annual fire season. Our little valley is filled with a haze of smoke, and the sun glows eerily in the sky like a dying coal over our farm. I stand with my hands on my hips, talking to my sister and feeling the smoke fill my lungs.

   Ok, concentrate. Breathe in and breathe out. I tell myself, trying to focus on the conversation, but I start to cough.

   I hate this powerless feeling of an asthma attack, like a massive invisible hand slowly closing and squeezing my lungs. 
   My childhood years were free of asthma, but I developed it during my sophomore year of college after a month of walking phenomena. (Not everybody is born with asthma; it can be developed later in life, especially among women.) Even though I recovered from that grueling semester, my lungs didn’t.

   I have been told that traditional Chinese medicine says sick lungs is grief affecting the body physically. I don’t know if I believe that grief causes lung disease, but it does help me make the correlation between asthma and the point of this post.

   Often, Christians are saved from horrible circumstances and broken hearts. Even though Jesus saved them and forgave their sins, they are plagued with regrets and memories of their past. A tendril of a memory drifts past, and they let sorrow and guilt fill them. Satan constricts them with their past, bringing them to their knees. They are suffocated by the vapors of their past brokenness, and they cannot breathe.

   But Jesus promised us the gift of life. He promised that we would be free of the sadness of our past. Why do we allow Satan to bring us to our knees? Don’t we know that there is no condemnation with our sweet Savior? But I know the helpless fear of crouching to the ground, struggling for the simplest of God’s gifts—air.

   You need to remember that God has given you the power to shake off this guilt. When I can’t breathe, all I need is my inhaler. I can’t breathe on my own, but if I use my inhaler (I hate to use it) I will be able to breathe. God has also given us a spiritual inhaler in the form of His word. He gave us many precious promises of His Word to chase away the suffocating presence of guilt. You need to look up the promises for yourself, but here is a small list of verses to loosen your spiritual lungs.

Remember that Jesus heals the people with pasts.

·         Psalm 147:3—He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.

Remember that we all have broken pasts. We wouldn’t need salvation otherwise.

·         Romans 3:23—For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.

And finally, remember that Jesus gives us victory over the past and promises a new future.

·         II Corinthians 5:17—Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Love or Ritual?

Love or Ritual?

"O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the 

secret places of the stairs, let 

me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice;

for sweet is thy voice."

Song of Solomon 2:14

   I’ve always thought it was odd when people describe me as “religious”. I am a Christian, but I hope that I’m not religious. I don’t want anything to do with religion. When I stopped running and surrendered, I was not surrendering to a religion. I was surrendering to a person named Christ, and I took on His identity because of love not religion. But I sometimes wonder if they call me “religious” because I forget and get caught up in the rituals of Christianity.

  

   Jesus was severe with the Pharisees because they had forgotten their first love. They were bound by their religion, forgetting the one whom they worshipped and loved. He tried to show them their hypocrisy but they did not want love, they wanted power over the people through religion. He said, “Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me (Matthew 15:7-8).”

   I have never experienced true love from a man, but I have experienced what true love isn’t. And I have been blessed to see true love between my parents, grandparents, and my siblings and their spouses. For these two reasons, I think I can define three aspects of love without making a complete fool of myself.

   I have observed that love gives without strings attached. We shouldn’t love Jesus and expect him to give us anything for our love. In Matthew 19:27, Peter asks Jesus “we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?” Are we worshipping God in the sincerity of love or do we give so that we can receive?

   I’m not saying that Jesus never gives us anything. He has given us eternal life, the promise of a future, and many other precious promises because He loves us and shows us true love, but why do we serve him? Do we serve him out of a pure heart of adoration and love?  If we don’t, we are hypocrites. We don’t really love him.

   I have also observed that love desires nothing but its object. In the Song of Solomon, the bride rejects her lover because she is tired. She says, “I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them (Song of Solomon 5:3)?” I often struggle with pushing away my Christ. Sometimes, I’m just too tired to either read the Bible or spend a few moments talking to Him in prayer. My love is cold.

   When my brother started dating his Meg, he would work twelve hours a day and then talk on the phone to her for two hours at night. He would go to bed at one and wake up at six, but he loved her. He didn’t want to go to bed without talking to her.

   Our Bible reading and prayer should be a time to speak to our love, our Savior, our Jesus. We should want to speak to the one we love.

   Lastly, love surrenders itself for the one it loves. I think that hardest thing we wrestle with as Christians is that we no longer own ourselves. When I sat down on that pine bench at Bible camp, a stubborn and independent teenager, I knew that I was surrendering myself to Jesus. Nothing would be the same.
   How much do we love Christ? Do we give him a little of ourselves or do we give everything? I think that love never stops giving, it gives everything. The Song of Solomon says, “If a man would give everything for love, it would utterly be contemned (Song of Solomon 8:7).”       

   

   We think that giving everything is too big of a price for “religion”. But Jesus gave everything for us by dying for us. Because He knew that we needed redemption, he redeemed us with His blood.

   When I think that Jesus died for love, I am overwhelmed by the weakness of my love. I struggle with giving him my life, with following the commands of the Bible, with trusting Him, with letting Him plan my future, yet He gave me everything.  I do not want to be religious; I want to do these things for love. It is the least I can give Him who is “altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend (Song of Solomon 5:16).”  

Wilderness Wandering

Wilderness Wandering

“O taste and see that the Lord is good:

Blessed is the man that trusteth in him.”

-Psalm 34:8

   This summer I experienced a time of emptiness that I dubbed “wilderness wandering.” I had just graduated from college and didn’t have a job or plan for my future. I had no other option but to return home and work on the family farm in Washington for the summer. Our farm, half an hour from civilization, lies at the feet of two mountains and drinks from the mighty Columbia river rolling through our valley. I felt isolated and forgotten on that farm. But I learned that sometimes God allows the wilderness so that we will draw close to Him. As I had plenty of time in the summer, I studied my Bible and found that many Biblical characters were driven into the wilderness.

   Moses experienced the wilderness because of his pride. He had been raised as a prince of Egypt, and he was going to save Israel by his own strength (Exodus 2:11). But God had other plans. After killing an Egyptian slave, Moses fled the wrath of Pharaoh and found refuge in the wilderness. For years, Moses learned humility while he herded the sheep of his father-in-law. He married a girl in the wilderness and let his dream of saving Israel die. But God knew that the wilderness was not Moses’ destiny. God met Moses in the solitude and told him to return to Egypt. 

   Depending on God, Moses confronted Pharaoh and the difference in result was drastic (Exodus 4). Before, he attempted to defeat Pharaoh only to flee; but now, God used him to crack Pharaoh’s strength with seven mighty plagues (Exodus 7-11). Moses had to realize that only God’s strength allowed him to fulfill his destiny.

   Another person who found refuge in the wilderness was Hagar, Abraham’s concubine. Sarah tried to fulfill God’s promise of a child by having Abraham sleep with Hagar. But God did not need help keeping his promise—he never does. In the process of time, Sarah found that she was pregnant. Now that Sarah had her child, Hagar and her illegitimate son, Ishmael, were unnecessary. Filled with anger and jealousy, Sarah had Abraham send them into the wilderness. Hagar wandered until her son was weak from fatigue. She laid him under a shrub for shade and sat down a little way off from him because she did not want to watch her child die. She thought that the wilderness was her end. But God found her (Genesis 21:17). In His great compassion, He provided water and promised Hagar that her son would live to become a mighty nation.

   Even though Hagar was used and cast out by those who should have loved her, God saw her. Alone in the world, a woman that no one cherished, she found sustenance and compassion with the God of the wilderness.

   Both of these people were driven into the wilderness by their circumstances, but one man in the Bible willingly sought the wilderness. Jesus knew the secret of the wilderness—he knew that he would find sweet communion with God in the solitary places. Every time the crowds of people overwhelmed Jesus, he sought the wilderness. It was only after seeking God in the wilderness that he found strength and grace to meet the needs of the people. Even in his last moments on earth, he retreated to the lonely Garden of Gethsemane so that he could find the strength to bear the cross.

   After a summer of ‘wilderness wandering’, I found such sweet communion with my Father that I didn’t want to leave. But God never means for us to stay in the wilderness. He has a plan for our lives and the wilderness is only a time of rest and rejuvenation. As the summer started to turn into fall, God provided a place for me as a reporter on a newspaper. I thought that He had forgotten me, but he never forgets His children.

   If you are being driven into the wilderness, remember the stories of those who have wandered before you. Accept this time as God’s gift to you. Perhaps, He knows that you need to be filled. Let Him fill you. When you finally return from the solitude, you will be changed. You will have seen the glory of God and found sustenance at His hand. Don’t believe that you are hopeless in the wilderness; your hope will be found in the wilderness.