A New Work

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; Your steadfast Love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands. (Psalm 138:8)

I’ve adopted this verse as my theme and prayer for the summer while working here at the Boys and Girls Home. In the face of discouragement and frustration, which threatens to take me under everyday, God’s promise faithfully lifts me above the water: “A New Work,” I hear God whisper in my ear.

I was studying that verse above, and in the original Hebrew, the word used on that second line for “steadfast Love” is the Hebrew word hesed (Blue Letter Bible). According to several of the Bible dictionaries I’ve consulted, hesed means an enduring and lasting Love, or like my translation of the scripture put it, a “steadfast Love.” One scholar put it this way: “Hesed connotes a depth of loving-kindness unmatched in the world’s various kinds of love.” Hesed, this deep and holy love, is everywhere.

Genesis tells us God’s hesed preserved Joseph as he suffered in prison after being betrayed by his brothers and master.  Exodus tells us God’s hesed saw the Israelites suffering and led them out of slavery into a land of promise. Jeremiah tells us God’s hesed was stronger than the sins of the people and it drew them back to God. Daniel tells us God’s hesed protected Daniel and granted him favor in the eyes of the King. Jonah tells us God’s hesed transformed Jonah in the belly of the fish and gave him strength to fulfill God’s plan for his life. What I find when I study the Bible is unending evidence of God’s hesed, and it’s that same everlasting Love that the Psalmist writes about.

The reminder of God’s hesed in this scripture comforts me, and God’s promise here rouses me. I can’t always see what God’s purpose is for me, but I know God sees it and promises to fulfill it. To think that I am a work—a piece of art or a construction project—is both humbling and empowering; I am not my own, and yet it’s God’s hands that are on me—pressing me, fixing me, and turning me into something greater than what I am right now. Coming vulnerable and weak to allow myself to be changed by a power I don’t quite understand is scary, but when I remember that the hands of God move over and through me in hesed, I realize that the pain I feel is God working out the lumps and smoothing me into a masterpiece of priceless worth.

God has begun a work in my life, and God promises not to give up on me. As the Psalmist writes, “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.”

Worth

[context: working as a Pastoral intern at the Boys and Girls Home for the summer]

The other day, I led a Bible study here at the Boys and Girls Home for some of the newer guys. At first, we just talked about life--the bad stuff we’ve done in our pasts, the mess we’re in now, how cruel life’s been. So I asked the question: 

   What are you worth?

Are you worth more than the life you’ve been given? The situations in which you’ve been placed? The things that have happened to you? Are you worth more than the quality of life you have right now?

Without a hesitation, an adamant “yes” from every guy. So what are you worth? “Everything.” That one word--“everything”--released from the breath of the youngest, invaded the room, filling the spaces between each of us. Whether that one word captured the inner voice of everyone in the room, or whether the conviction in which it was said was so sincere, or whether the ache for it to be true outweighed the need to utter an alternative, that one word “everything” connected us and stole the need to speak.

Silence. So loud you almost smarted from it. Then (of course), I talked. I was probably wrong for what I did—I’m usually very wrong. I looked that young boy in the face, who’s struggling through layers and layers of the injury being rejected has caused, and I told that boy, “No.”

To be honest, you’re not worth it. You’re too risky an investment. Too many times you run away. Too many drugs stay in your system. Too many wounds, too much bitterness, too much. It’s not worth unpacking. Even if you change, even if you don’t totally screw up again, your return would never be worth the investment. Everything? You think you’re worth my everything? All of my goals and passions, all of my desires and needs, my very life—you’re worth that? No. You’re too dirty, too stained, too messed up. Not strong enough. Can never be good enough. You don’t deserve anything because you’re just not worth it.

But for some reason that I do not get, you are loved anyway. Despite the risk, the cost, the loss; despite your brokenness, and helpless; despite how many times you’ll walk away and give up on, no, turn your back on him; despite how many times you’ll curse him, and fight him, and criticize him, and doubt him; despite the fact that you will always disappoint yourself and never do enough right—He will love you.

As dirty and untouchable as you feel, you are accepted by the maker of things as intricate as blood cells and as massive as mountain ranges. You are loved and prized by majesty. The God of all, the God who births all life and works to make it good, says you are worth it. And let the one who knows you best and loves you the most anyway tell you your worth.

Finishing my monologue, I gave every guy a copy of the words from the Psalm: “O Lord, you searched me and know me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up…You hem me in, behind and before, and your hand is always upon me…Where shall I go from your Spirit?”

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God, take the stupid works of these barren hands and the crippled words from this broken vessel and use them in spite of me. I pray every child here finds a home in you, where your consuming and steadfast love gently tickles our ears with the assurance that, to you, we are worth it. 

I Could Be a Farmer

I think for the longest time I knew only a black-and-white joy because I was a grazer. A fat, lazy cow chomping blades of grass under a burning sun. My movements slow, I'd eat my way from pasture to pasture. School--being fed. Church--being fed. Family and friends--being fed. We need that for so long, being fed, because we can't sustain ourselves. At some point, though, we do get it, and at that point, I think we're invited to change. The choice isn't forced on us--we're allowed to keep grazing off what others have sown if that's what we want. But that choice visions a black-and-white life. The invitation is to plant. To labor in the field farming what others will eat. A choice including sweat and blisters, but illuminating so much more color to life. I guess a lot boils down to what we choose to do.

Here's to being a planter instead of a grazer.

On Earth

You know when Jesus closes his prayer and says, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven."? Well, I've been thinking a lot about that lately. This past week in Sunday school, we kept talking about the point of Christianity being Grace, being saved from eternal punishment, a loving God giving us eternal life if we choose it in the way we're told He (She) wants it. Now, I love that Sunday school, but I'm not so sure about the theology anymore. What I've been taught all these years growing up in the church misses the point. It's got to.

I'm reinventing my eschatology, because I'm just not convinced that Heaven's so exclusive and Hell's so default. But good grief! is that too much to talk about in one blog post, and it's not what I want to focus on anyway. I don't think Jesus wanted us to focus on it so much, not in the ways we're doing it now at least.

Okay, here's my theory. Think about what pisses you off, disturbs, or saddens you most about life here on earth (I'm thinking about kids being abandoned, orphaned, left feeling unloved and unwanted). Now imagine the best Heaven you can possible conjure up (I'm thinking about everyone feeling totally loved and wanted, everyone belonging and communing continually). Whatever you just imagined--for that will look very different from person to person--is your responsibility. Jesus said so himself. "On Earth as it is in Heaven." Jesus seems more concerned about widening the gaps to let Heaven crash into Earth here and now than He is about us one day being in Heaven later.

Maybe that little exercise in imagination doesn't work for everyone, but it definitely works for me. We've got to start laboring and toiling and never stop striving to bring to Earth that vision of Heaven each of us has. It may seem futile work (it very well may be), but it seems the only thing worth our blood.

Like Glass

Clay is easier than glass. I'm clay. You only see what I want you to see, and I can display myself anyway I desire. I take care of myself. No one gets in to screw around. None of my sewage spills out. Glass is too weak. I can't fog it enough; you see right through. See the smears and smudges on this man, the inconsistencies and imperfections. The flaws in this plan I'm trying so hard to live into. Glass can break and crumple and it's too trusting in its exposure.

But glass is the only way we can change this jacked-up world. Glass is the way of Christ, the way of descension. It's a denial to self-protection and an acceptance of something greater than me. It's time to be more exposed, more transparent about our hurts, our failures, our shame, our brokenness.

I would blog more, but I need to get off my bum and share my story.

Peace.