Hannah Farver's Blog, page 12

"It's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard, she said, is..."

""It's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard, she said, is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.""

- Shauna Niequist

landmines and concrete

I saw a movie once (okay—if you know me, you know the truth—it was a Korean drama) where a guy walks through a field and, from nowhere, hears the slightest clicking sound. He stops in his tracks. The audience sees the tiniest metal disc on the ground, beneath his sandal. The disc triggers a hammer; the hammer hits a pressure chamber.

The landmine is set and active. If the guy moves, he'll be blown apart.

In the story, the guy's uncle follows him into the field. He sees the pure horror written on his nephew's face. The older man runs to him, shields him with his body, and the two take off just as the mine explodes. Shrapnel flies everywhere. Blood runs down the uncle's legs and back as he covers the body of his nephew.

Why bring it up?

In my worst moments, I think of God as a trip line. You know. The trigger. The if-your-weaknesses-re-emerge, you're-dead, Watcher of my soul. A landmine.

It's an embarrassing confession, but I know it's not new to the world. The ancients begged their idols and brought offerings out of fear. They feared if they neglected their gods, the gods would hold back the clouds from giving rain; that the gods would send sickness; that the gods would break their hearts.

And I do the same. Superstitiously, I fear that if I do X, then Y will happen. Because I am weak in {this} area, I am destined to {insert some disappointing thing here.} You might do it too. 

I have read the same passage in Colossians for literally a week without it making a dent. Today the whole chapter lit up. One portion spoke particularly to this fear. It's a hefty piece of Bible to chew on, but here's what it says. Fittingly, it's how God views this kind of superstition/legalism:

"Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: 'Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!'? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence." - Colossians 2:20-23

That's the structure for how we should think about superstition. But the beating heart behind that passage? Our God is one whose grace seeped out in blood. He's not a landmine hoping to tear us apart if we step in weak places. Superstitious thoughts? Behavior regulation based on some dumb theory that we can play chess with God and strategize Him into giving us good things? It's a waste of time. God is no chess player; no landmine; no begrudging stone image. 

If anything, He is like the uncle whose shirt is stained red. The Rescuer; the Shield of all that we are, to protect us from all that we were. He comes with grace, to seep in and fill weak places, like fresh concrete poured on cracked sidewalk. He brings enough, enough, enough…

"I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is...

"I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the cross.' In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?

I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness.

That is the God for me! He laid aside His immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering. 'The cross of Christ … is God's only self-justification in such a world as ours….'

'The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak; they rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone." 

- John Stott

"Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live."

"Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live."

- Johnathan Edwards (via deathbybillions)

Poet Patricia Young wrote, "They say…that our ancestors lay ...

Poet Patricia Young wrote, "They say…that our ancestors lay down on their stomachs in school hallways; as children they lay down like matches waiting for a nuclear fire." She added, "It wasn't supposed to end like this…so quietly…" (Patrick Young, "Ruin and Beauty.")

A child's first awakening. Eyelids flutter. The scream of new lungs. Wrapped then held close. Hair like fuzz, soft and static.

Limbs lengthen and muscles shape. The mind turns to dreaming long before the tongue learns to articulate those dreams. When I grow up…

But as the sun sets, and the boy becomes a man, the briefcase is tossed on the counter. Moments are measured by odometers and deadlines and bills and receipts.

"Darling…tonight you sit on the edge of the bed loosening your shoes," the poet ends her piece with a mundane act. (Untied shoes. Silence.) And a question worthy of its own paragraph:

"Should we name this failure? Should we wake to the regret at the end of time doing what people have always done and say it was not enough?"

It wasn't supposed to end like this…so quietly…

Tell me, will we wake up at the end of time still hungry?

Will our lives shatter like shells of trees—will we break like bark without a core of rings?

Will we implode from the fragility of all we are?

Will we be like Eliot's "hollow men"? Their obituaries begged, "Remember us—if at all—not as lost, violent souls, but only as the hollow men…"

It's a dark question.

I have sometimes suspected that loving and serving people is the only way to find fulfillment. I am wrong often, and this is one of those times. Tack that one up with my lists of other idols.

Serving people doesn't fulfill (though compassion and humanitarianism is the most popular form of goodness for people to praise). Neither does "being there" for them, or bending over backwards to be a friend. 

Good as it is, the abstract "community" does not give the soul significance. Give, give, give…and you may still run empty if you lack the "one thing that is necessary." (Luke 10:42)

When Eliot described the land of the hollow men, he said, "Here the stone images are raised…" The men are hollow because they sought idols. And idols can't satisfy—whether it's a leering bronze statuette or an idol that is a real, breathing image-bearer of God.  

I have found, discovered, then found again on blustery days such as this:

There is only One who brings rest to the soul.

David wrote in Psalm 42, "My soul thirsts for God—the living God." Psalm 62 starts off, "My soul waits in silence for God only."

There is only One Cause who lends meaning to moments.

The breath that filled the dust to create us and our beating hearts—-is from the same Eternal One who can breathe meaning into our days, our compassion and our service.

The Bread of Life is our portion; the Morning Star (fixed—immovable) is our hope. With Him, all will not end quietly. In fact…there will be no end at all.

"Oh, to shoot my soul's full meaning into future years/ that they should lend it utterance, and..."

"Oh, to shoot my soul's full meaning into future years/ that they should lend it utterance, and salute/ Love that endures, from life that disappears."

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

glimmers

One shard of a glimmer of a glimpse I got to cup and examine in my hand today:

God blesses.

Like, if we watched a human parent bestow as many blessings upon their children as God bestows upon us, we would think that they were spoiling their children. And though I believe God is good, I cannot yet wrap my mind around the idea of some Being who is filled with infinite kindnesses.

Infinite.

I cannot wrap my mind around that word. Infinite kindness? It's too much for this "Type-A-gotta-keep-running-to-deserve-love" kind of kid.

Just sit back and be amazed with me for a second. Realize—God gave me grace yesterday, and I didn't thank Him for it. If I did thank Him, it wasn't pure enough, it wasn't loud enough. It wasn't thorough. Then what did God do?

He gave me more. He gives us more.

It's like if your Dad gave you a bike for Christmas, and after you forget to say "thank you," he goes ahead and builds you a treehouse too. This is not to imply that God is a bad parent, or won't correct and teach us. I'm just trying to put into words—there's grace upon grace; forgiveness piled upon more lavish forgiveness. My praise is never enough to completely appreciate Him, yet I am given "every spiritual blessing in Christ." (Eph. 1:3)

You know why? Because I don't need to be the perfect, model-child for Him to love me. Good fathers love their kids, not because of what they've done, but simply because that's their kid.

Mom calls me "Preciosa." Dad calls me "Sunshine," because I light up his life. And that's not because I'm a glowy person or easy to live with. (I kinda suspect the "Sunshine" nickname was originally meant to be ironic.) But the nicknames are meant to reflect the fact that they love me, and I'm their daughter—not because I am ever-pleasant.

So take the grace in that, and magnify it to the billionth trillionth degree.

Abba-God adopts us in the gospel. We are really, truly, honestly His children—as much as if we'd been born originally into the His holiness.

As my pastor reiterates in a way that rings in my head, "God does not just love some future version of you." It's not some distant point in the future that He's finally going to say, "Atta boy." The love of God is now; refracted in a thousand graces of an ordinary day. Those tiny glimmers are stunning.

So much for which to be grateful.

So much for which to be grateful.

excerpt

Heyas.

Moody Publishers has graciously allowed me to post an excerpt from my book, Uncompromising.

Click here to download the first 22 pages.

Amazon's Uncompromising page
ChristianBook.com
Barnes and Noble

the joys of admitting mortality

the joys of admitting mortality:

Written by a friend who will no doubt be world famous one day for her writing.