Hannah Farver's Blog, page 15

that which is deathless

"It pleased the Father to crush His Son…"

Pleased. That word is too content, too almost-happy to settle well with me. The Father was pleased to crush…His…Son.

God, who is love, who speaks of being churned up inside for a people who betrayed Him, who speaks of singing over His children in love, is not the type I easily imagine subjecting His Son to torture.

I don't know of any dad that would sit by and let his child be murdered. But God would? How could that make sense?

[This was a ransom.

There was a reason, and this was the only way. The divine pair had agreed. John 17 makes it clear that Jesus and God are of the same mind. They have the same thoughts of us: Glorify the Father; help these loved ones who don't yet even see their chains—the ones who are to come and will hear this testimony.

It was a joint plan of love. The Jesus who could've exploded out of His frail human form and collapsed all of Rome's armies with a word, Hebrews 12:2 says He willingly went to His death "for the joy set before Him." The joy of our adoption.]

We sing about this gift in Church. We sing about Jesus'…pain. 

Then we scream at God about ours. It's sometimes easier to think of God subjecting Jesus to pain than it is to think of God subjecting us to pain. It's easier for me to think of the death of Jesus because I was on the ransomed end of that equation. I am one of the rescued. I wasn't the one who felt the painful side of submission to the Father.

But what about when I do? What if one day I will be called to experience great pain? It's not so much a "what if," as a "when it comes."

In Terrance Malick's The Tree of Life, a clergyman asks, "Is there nothing which is deathless?" While we bear the life-blood of God [who is All Source of Life], we still have a violent coexistence with death. Pain is no stranger. We're neighbors, here. If there is something that is deathless, it is certainly not us.

Michael Bleecker, the worship pastor at my church noted,

"Nero became emperor in 54 AD…[he] enacted the only law that survived his reign: the banning of Christianity.

"Christians were used as food for wild beasts…Christians were forced to act as characters murdered in plays…they were used as torches along the oldest road in Rome, called the Appian Way.

"Can you imagine Peter walking this road and hearing the cries of his brothers and sisters? I can imagine him walking back to his home and penning the words we just read:

Brothers and sisters, there will be various trials, but take great hope. An inheritance is coming. Salvation is coming. But it's not yet. Already, but not yet." (paraphrase of 1 Peter 1:1-9)

Salvation is here, but it's also yet to come. Until then, pain is here to stay.

When pain comes again, will I submit like Jesus? Romans 8:18 says the sufferings of this time are nothing compared to the joy set before us.

But ultimately, I realize that I am on the wrong side of this scenario to be looking for beauty in pain. I'm buried somewhere in the dark side of the cloud, where pain still surrounds me daily and my human, fragile-y afraid self isn't in a place to see clearly.

So here's what I know: If He could turn the deaths of Christians along the Appian Way as a loudspeaker to spread news of salvation to people who had never heard, that's a miracle of redemption. If He could bring so much good out of something as staggeringly awful as a cross, He can do anything. If He did not even spare His Son, but dove into this mess to save us, then how could I imagine that He would ever leave us to suffer alone? And even those sufferings, do we not see them as measured, hemmed-in and limited, accompanied by the grace to bear?

There is, after all, One thing that is deathless, and He has bound Himself inextricably to us.

"I have one passion. It is He, only He." - C....

"I have one passion. It is He, only He." - C. Zinzendorf

juxtaposition: "noun. an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, especially for comparison or contrast."

juxtaposition: "noun. an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, especially for comparison or contrast."



also, when your twitter feed shows an ad for a $170 pair of shoes while another tweet asks for help in providing for homeless children in Kenya.



it makes you think.

"Your main problem is not your weakness, but your delusion of strength."

"Your main problem is not your weakness, but your delusion of strength."

- Paul Tripp (via katiecrosby)

thoughts on cutting

Sweet girl, it is not cool to cut.

Stripes on your wrist are not a sign that your pain is real.

Your pain is already real.

Expressing it in scabs only adds to the drama, tightening the grip of the pain on you, for the sake of a short-term high. The cut only triggers chemicals in your brain. 

It doesn't make things better for long. That's why you have to do it again and again to find that same effect.

You probably know this already.

When Jesus met with the woman at the well (I use the word "met" loosely, because He'd known her since the dawn of time), He offered her water. Water bubbling with life. Water she wouldn't have to return to again and again to find that same of effect of feeling satisfied.

Listening to Demi Lovato's "Skyscraper" on repeat can't give that healing. Saving photos on your computer of cutting can't make you feel less alone. Following pro-healing blogs on tumblr can't pull you out.

There is a river that can wash your cuts clean, and make those scars become souvenirs of "that time long ago, before I was rescued."

Sweet girl, this can change. You are not an accident. You are not your scabs. You can be lifted out and above this.

I just want you to know that, with all the aching of this heart for you.

John 4; Psalm 81; Rom. 8.

I don't usually link to these on my blog, but who knows? It might help.

Please consider re-blogging, so we can remind the Church.

Please consider re-blogging, so we can remind the Church.

Someone tweeted me a message that disturbed me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an overly...

Someone tweeted me a message that disturbed me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an overly sensitive blogger. But the response on twitter was different. I'd written, asking for people to pray in preparation for Orphan Sunday (Nov. 6!). I asked that we pray the Church would grow in its passion for serving the fatherless. The end, right?

A responder didn't think so. They wrote, "How about we pray instead that the Church would grow in its passion to witness to the unsaved?? Refocus. It'sallboutJesus." 

It stuck with me for some reason, and I had to wrestle (on paper) through what they said. Here's the result.

Dear Twitter Friend,

I find it hard to be gracious to you at the moment, cause I'm still kind of riled. But I freely admit that is wrong and sinful. (Forgive me?) Because Jesus was and continues to be so ridiculously and unforgettably gracious to me, how can I be anything less to anyone else? Honestly, that would be a most hypocritical and dumb thing for me to do. The Gospel is a lived message, which He lived first. It isn't enough for me to hold it like a creed; I have to hold it even closer, as a creed that decides how I live.

Now, it's just one tweet, and typically I'd just read it and go about my merry way. But I realized that I, too, have thought like that at times. I've been tempted to get behind one specific form of ministry and make that "mine"…kind of like one would claim a football team…except in this game you talk smack by talkin' holy. 

There's a lot of issues interlaced with this.

1. Evangelism packs more punch if it is undergirded by service. I realize that men like Charles Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, and Billy Graham have been used to bring thousands of people to sit at God's table. This is important and in many cultures, an effective tool. I'm not going to toss out streetpreaching just because it isn't my personal cup-of-tea. (See point 2.) But more often than not, I see people humbled and brought into the Kingdom by the Gospel spoken in conjunction with the serving hands of God's people.

When the Gospel was brought to India's caste of "Untouchables" (or the "Dalits," meaning "crushed") it spread like wildfire because, for the first time, someone took notice of them. There were men like Alexander Duff who said, "I will lay my bones by the Ganges that India might know there is One who cares." There were missionaries who gave all they had. Like Jesus left the respectable company of the Pharisees to reach out to those festering with leprosy, His people show His beauty when they reach out to shake hands with the Ones You Never Touch. (Now India's lowest caste composes 70-80 percent of India's Christians.) The Gospel must not only be a message we preach, but a message we live.

2. If we rally behind one cause and feel possessive of it, we're missing the point. If we limit ourselves religiously to evangelism only, we must wonder why we're doing evangelism in the first place. Is it because we love people? Because we have a heart for the lost? Because we want to be imitators of Christ? Or even simply evangelizing because God is glorified in it? I doubt any of those can be our true motivation if we are only willing to speak the Gospel, without serving and offering unmerited love.

Also, when we attach ourselves to any specific ministry-type and tout that as the "only way" to bring glory to God, we've become total legalists. We should stop pretending to be Gospel-centered, cause that attitude is a complete dysfunction of the Gospel.

Evangelism isn't in competition with everything else; it should be the bones and service (like feeding the hungry and caring for orphans) should be the muscle. Without "the bones," our service becomes short-sighted and limited to this lifetime. Without "muscle," our evangelism becomes rigidly compassionless, and ceases to make sense. (Can the Ultimate Compassion of the Gospel make sense to people if we preach it without compassion? Really?)

Yes, the Gospel is supreme. Jesus is first. This is not an act of humanitarianism to "make the world a better place" or help us feel like better people. This world is not our final hope. Jesus is.

But if the Gospel is truly supreme, we understand the bottomline:

Love preaches the Gospel from any pulpit it can find. But Love also cannot sit by in perfect rest while its neighbor is hungry, cold, and crushed by oppressors. It would then cease to be Love.

Our bones need muscle. Our muscles need bone.

[Thanks for taking the time to read this, friend.]

Photo

right here

Spurgeon said, "Borrow the telescope of faith; wipe the misty breath of your doubts from the glass; look through it and behold the coming glory." There is a mystery I'm starting to unravel. Somehow, eyes set on the glory of what will be illuminate the glory of the now. Rather than rummaging for satisfaction in the crumpeled tissue paper and unwrapped gifts around us, hope for the future sets us free to enjoy what we have right now.

Right here.

Even if Right Here doesn't look like sparkly Christmas morning, or even sparkly at all, it doesn't have to. The pressure isn't on this place to satisfy. And in a remarkable twist that makes this—really—a mystery, when this place loses the pressure of being ultimate, we start to give credit to the little beauties that are here. We start seeing glitter in the small spaces; this place becomes a heckuvah lot more interesting.

For me, the word contentment doesn't quite carry the full meaning. More than contentment. Joyful…stillness. Exuberant rest. That's what it's like.

Believing He's got this, and that this thing is truly like a treasure hunt where we have to stalk joy with eyes wide open to wonder—this is the secret of the mystery. Excitement in the mundane; joy in the moment; life lived and filled to the edges. "The art of losing myself in bringing You praise." Losing this tight-fingered clutch on fear and resting in what He's said He will do.

"Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him." (Romans 6:8) Borrow the telescope of faith; wipe the misty breath of your doubts from the glass; look through it and behold the coming glory.

"…I wanted to live deliberately; I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life; to put to..."

""…I wanted to live deliberately; I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life; to put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.""

- Thoreau