Hannah Farver's Blog, page 5

Giving Grace Away

As a kid, I dreamed that people could be divided into two teams: heroes and thieves; beggars and heirs. At night, beneath a ceiling of glow-in-the-dark stars, I fully expected to be a heroine. (Everyone intends to be superman—not the victim who needs saving.) Now I know better. “Not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world where everything fits,” I am what Annie Dillard called a “frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world.”

It sounds as if I have some dramatic story to tell. That’s not true—my life story is no more or less dramatic than your average person. Sin ravages us all, though in different ways. It took some years before I realized I am no heroine. I am unable to fix or save anyone. And yet I am called (as every believer is) to have a ministry of reconciliation to the world. Not washed and beautiful—but commissioned to represent Christ.

How does someone like me carry that out? How do I serve? More than in books or articles, composed of paper and ink, but in my mood-swinging, fallible existence how do I contribute to the Christian community? What ought to be the anthem of the heroes, who find themselves truly thieves?

Originally, I intended this article to be three tidy points, each reflective of my perfect, sanitary life. The original idea quickly found its home in the trash. All I have to share is the depths of God’s grace where I have come to wade, and how he can overcome any of our frailties to show his strength.

In his essay “Damage,” Wendell Berry wrote, “To lose the scar of knowledge is to renew the wound. An art that heals and protects its subject is a geography of scars.” To ignore sin and frailty is to subject ourselves again to its power. To dress our lives like the airbrushed cover of a Christian fiction novel when we actually resemble the disjointed lines of an unfinished Picasso, is to be dishonest about our own strength.

But authenticity—or the term I prefer, “biblical realism”—is really tough to maintain. Heck, I’ve found it’s impossible to stay honest with myself about myself for too long. That’s why an out-of-the-way phrase in the book of James commands us to do the unthinkable: “Confess your sins to each other” (James 5:16)

I don’t know why public confession is so powerful. All I know is that speaking aloud makes our repentance solid. Humbling becomes real when we tell the embarrassing truth…

Read the rest at Christianity Today’s blog, Gifted for Leadership.

treadmills

Some days feel like treadmills. You never see the muscles in your legs tighten while you’re running. You’re just drained and your lungs burn.

I usually don’t look back on those days with any fondness, or as remarkable landmarks of growth. They remain in my memory as vague blurs of “making it.”

I have other life landmarks: Moving to the farm. My brother’s accident. Losing friends. Gaining new ones.

But I wonder if that’s accurate. Those events were pivotal catalysts of growth, but the growth did not end with them. The treadmill days matter too, in all the beauty of their straining and all the glory of their endurance.

“He will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is Zion’s treasure.” (Isaiah 33:6)

Don’t let yourself forget.

Hello, beautiful Fall day.

Hello, beautiful Fall day.

cold tangerines

Haven’t read this book yet, but I can identify completely with the quote.

“I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly. In college, the post-college “adult” person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized. Then the married person, then the person I’d become when we have kids. For twenty years, literally, I have waited to become the thin version of myself, because that’s when life will really begin.

And through all that waiting, here I am. My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start. I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin.

I love movies about ‘The Big Moment’ – the game or the performance or the wedding day or the record deal, the stories that split time with that key event, and everything is reframed, before it and after it, because it has changed everything. I have always wanted this movie-worthy event, something that will change everything and grab me out of this waiting game into the whirlwind in front of me. I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment. I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that wasn’t what it looked like in the movies.

John Lennon once said, ‘Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.’ For me, life is what was happening while I was busy waiting for my big moment. I was ready for it and believed that the rest of my life would fade into the background, and that my big moment would carry me through life like a lifeboat.

The Big Moment, unfortunately, is an urban myth. Some people have them, in a sense, when they win the Heisman or become the next American Idol. But even that football player or that singer is living a life made up of more than that one moment. Life is a collection of a million, billion moments, tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous, glowing pearl. It takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads and moments are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than the movies.

But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I’m waiting for, that adventure, that movie-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets – this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of us will ever experience.” 

- Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines

living like we are dying

I wrote a letter to a dear friend the other day, who had written to say that three acquaintances had died and she wondered “what God might be saying.” I replied. I pontificated. Then, quite suddenly, I began to think about death too—my own—and became (ungratefully and selfishly) depressed in the following days. I started thinking about what I wrote, and how little I actually live the message.

So. Considering I’m thinking about this so much, I thought I’d post a piece of it here:

In this life, our happiest moments are tinged by the possibility of loss. So laugh. Love life. But our perfect happiness will never be here.

You are blessed to know this because people in the world always seek for perfect happiness, and their discouragement only deepens over time. On the other hand, Christianity lets us take our days in both hands, look at them closely, and love them for what they are, because all the ways they fall short will one day be re-cooped to us. It’s like when you’re hungry, but it’s nearly dinnertime so you wait. Because dinner is promised, you can be content in your small snack of carrot sticks. Heaven is the feast. Earth is the snack. Enjoy the snack for what it is, because you don’t need to trust it to fill you completely.

I don’t think God is trying to say anything through their deaths to you (necessarily). It is the Earth which cries out, aching and bleeding. In Rwanda, you saw white toothy grins in a place the world associates with devastation. We are called to live that same life. We may not have concentration camps here—but death is as much a reality here as in North Korea. We live that life, that middle breath in between birth and death.

G.K. Chesterton said it’s easy to understand the world when you remember that fairytales are true. There is a dragon loose and destroying fairyland. Death and tragedy are parts of our scenery as long as the dragon is here sweeping his barbed tail. But like the fairytales say—death is just a long sleep. (Remember? Snow White never completely dies. When she is poisoned, her death is softened to a mere sleep—something from which it is possible to awaken. This is because love is a deeper magic than evil spells.)

See the truth here? We live in fairyland. Love ones go to sleep, and we cry. (Remember the tears of the seven dwarves? Their pain and mourning was real and appropriate in the moment. They ached for the sleeping girl as we now ache over death.) But all Christians ever do is go to sleep, because One Great Love has taken death and made it nothing. We have the hope of Happily Ever After, when we will at last be awakened by Love, forever free from dragons and spells.

What you are witnessing may not be God saying anything. What you’re seeing is fairyland; that is, reality. Earth groans. It has since ancient times. Your ears are just now catching the sound.

If you are to “hear” anything to learn from death, I think the lesson is to “live like you are dying”— but only in a specific sense. It’s not that you should go skydiving or blow your savings on a last holiday. Truly, to live like you are dying is to see how much you are a branch and Jesus is your vine. “When time and space are through,” know that you will be found in Him. To live like you are dying is to be relieved by the knowledge that He is the love of your heart. He is behind your every heartbeat—both in your birth/source and your goal/ever after.

When people “fall asleep,” let that be your chance to remember who He is in your life. For me, I want to live my life to make beauty, to write stories. One day, I really want to be able to teach little children and get married and help my husband (as much as it’s in my power) to fulfill his calling—because of that foundational love. Death pulls us back to our foundations, making us remember why our hearts beat, and what is our calling…

"Spend your days as you would spend your life, because one day you’ll awaken and find they were..."

“Spend your days as you would spend your life, because one day you’ll awaken and find they were one and the same thing.”

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they..."

““Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony… It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.””

- Chesterton

delighting in God

There is not formula to knowing You. When I walk to class on foggy Fall mornings, listing off thanks and acknowledging Your gifts, there is no two-step process. When my soles trudge over the brick threshold of class, I am not instantly close to You. 

Because You are not a formula.

Plato told a story about the sun, and men from caves crawling to see it. Augustine said the sun was You. You are the sun that exposes everything good and true, while You are also Good itself.

But that’s just a story. You are not only the sun. We come up with pictures to describe You, but You are not pictures any more than You are a Lamb or a Lion. You are a living Being—with more dimension than any other living thing.

And I cannot depend on pure habit to knit my heart with Yours. Duty alone cannot make You my delight. You are a Person.

That is the beauty of this. I do not snap my fingers and summon spiritual maturity or a sense of Your presence around me. You are always here, but You show Yourself slowly. I  cannot chant prayers and purify my heart; I must actually seek Your face to pray with sincerity. You know the difference.

And since I am weak (and am humbled by saying so), You also humbly come. You stoop down to lead one who seeks You. She seeks You not from the strength of her habits and force of her prayers, but from the weakness of needing Your help even to pray:

“But He gives more grace…God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” (James 4:6-8)

View from my desk today. Lovely. (Taken with Instagram)

View from my desk today. Lovely. (Taken with Instagram)

"You are not always kind.You are not always smart.You are not important to everyone.But You are..."

“You are not always kind.

You are not always smart.

You are not important to everyone.

But You are loved with a love that confounds the ages

and will blow the angels’ minds ‘til kingdom come.”