Hannah Farver's Blog, page 6

shadowlands

I had a terrible dream. In the middle, I woke and tried to shake myself loose from its fingers. “This isn’t reality. This is a dream. Don’t believe it,” I said. But I fell back asleep and again, it was. Every emotional part in me accepted that the dream was real.

Funny how that happens—how wise and skeptical we can be when fully awake. We can keep fear at bay with logic. Yet with eyes scrunched closed, reduced to ourselves and our gut reactions, what we truly suspect comes easier to the surface:

I secretly suspected every gift from God was a tool to hurt me. In this nightmare, everyone I knew contorted into manipulation that laughed in my face.

I fumbled downstairs to the coffeepot, blinking and reviewing the list in my mind of what is true. And I realized with a shudder that if I could so easily believe in the betrayal of those I love most, how much more could I believe lies about the One my eyes have not yet seen? I am easily deceived.

If anything, this world is a dream-like state. Oh, it’s real as flesh and blood and pain. But we can’t see clearly here either, and I think it’s quite easy to believe lies about the God of joy and hope and love while we’re here. Lewis called this “The Shadowlands.” Monsters loom bigger in the shadowlands. The light seems more distant here.

It’s helpful to review what’s true.

Ann Voskamp wrote,

“All fear is but the notion that God’s love ends… Doesn’t your Father always give you what you need? I am the Bread of Life and My bread for you will never end. Fear thinks God is finite and fear believes that there is not going to be enough… In Me, blessings never end because My love for you never ends. If My goodnesses toward you end, I will cease to exist, child. As long as there is God in heaven, there is grace on earth and I am the spilling God of the uncontainable, forever-overflowing-love-grace.” (One Thousand Gifts, p. 161)

The truth is knit in thousands of centuries that tell of God’s faithfulness and in which the end of His grace was never reached. Everything offshoots from this truth, which is truer than anything else we know. I think that’s why the Psalmist said, “Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea…” (Psalm 42:2) He was talking about the firmest thing he knew. God’s goodness is truer—don’t let the shadows deceive you.

"I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages."

““I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.””

- Spurgeon

true woman conference

The True Woman conference is returning this year. I went to a previous True Woman conference in Chattanooga, and it was seriously the best conference I’ve ever attended. If I weren’t planning to be at school this September, I’d definitely try to attend again. (And, as an added bonus, this year’s ticket cost for students is $20 off the regular price. Woohoo!)

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"You made my stiff heart know that I am yours."

““You made my stiff heart know that I am yours.””

- Penelope to Odysseus, the Odyssey

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how you began

The Spirit: Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you’ll never learn to see the country.



The Artist: 

But that’s just how a real artist is interested in the country.



The Spirit: No. You’re forgetting... That was not how you began. Light itself was your first love: you loved to paint only as a means of telling about light... Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him...



-C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

hope & the color yellow

I know it sounds funny, but there’s a conversation I’ve been dying to have. The script is all arranged in my head. The clinch is that conversations are two sided, and the only lines I’ve written are my own:

“Tell me everything you know about hope.”

That’s how it starts. The reason I haven’t had this conversation yet is because I haven’t thought of a good intro. One does not merely plop down in a chair and ask to hear the stories of another person’s soul.

Oh, but I am more than half tempted. We need deep conversations, honesty, and truth.

This might sound like a want ad for sensationalized testimonies; for more tragedies worn on sleeves. But when we speak of vulnerability, we speak of the bearing of souls. The purpose is to yank at the veil that shadows our lives—so we can see, really see, the wonder if this life we’re called to. Our stories highlight that. That’s why we have them.

For instance:

We eat Cheerios and drink water and sleep on bedsheets—yet strung through these moments is a constant ribbon of mystery. We live in an epic story, yes, but “story” is a small way to put it. We only use that word because we’d fall off the edges of vocabulary trying to say what we really mean: some word to describe what it is to live in the realm where everything is vanity, but where its beauty still makes us go dizzy with glory. (And glory—joy like that—simply doesn’t vanish, does it? Can that be vanity too? Or is it an echo of another place where nothing good disappears?)

We are mortals who still—strangely—know what immortality tastes like. We crave it innately, as if it were something we once knew. But I wasn’t born before the Fall, so how can I venture to imagine eternal life? Shouldn’t explaining “forever” to me feel like explaining “yellow” to a person born blind? And yet, sometimes I shudder with a craving for something I have never tasted. The story, the glory and the mystery, I’m sure is carved on the insides of our bones. We carry the imprints of who we were born to become.

These wondering questions stream out like one gleaming spiderweb and I want to trace all its threads. Tell me when you’ve been surprised by joy. Where does your Bible hold its most dog-eared pages? Why?

Tell me what you know about this epic story and about disaster.

Then tell me everything you’ve learned about hope.

That’s what I want to ask. And then I just want to listen.

"Truly, it is worth being poor and greatly tried in faith, for the sake of having day by day such..."

“Truly, it is worth being poor and greatly tried in faith, for the sake of having day by day such precious proofs of the loving interest which our kind Father takes in every thing that concerns us.”

- George Muller

dominion

I used to think you had to be incredibly hokey to find spiritual truth in superhero movies. Truth be told, I still kind of do, and am even hesitant to publish this post. But good stories always carry secret truths. Sometimes we need to be humble enough to find them, even amongst layers of fantasy.

It was in the Avengers scene when Hulk thwaps Loki. For a moment, I identified with Hulk. (I know that sounds strange, but run with me here.)

You have to remember the context: Hulk is the weakest hero. He’s bitter and sardonic. His emotions swing from Very Depressed to Really, Very Depressed. Naturally, the alien-villain Loki targets Hulk’s psychological frailty. He intends Hulk to be the key to crippling the Avengers.

Yet as explosions rain down on New York City, it isn’t a pristinely virtuous Captain America who saves the day. It isn’t Thor. The one the enemy pinpointed as the weakest ends up dropping him through concrete. As the credits begin to roll, the voiceover says the Avengers are a signal to aliens everywhere that Earth is protected. They send a message to the cosmos.

Maybe it’s a little (or a lot) cheesy when we think of it in terms of green-monster-scientists. Forget that—you’ll see something familiar.

A friend of mine’s mom said there’s a pocket of time in your early twenties when a ton of growth happens. I translate that to, “There are seasons in your life—particularly in your twenties—when you may feel like you’re rolling headfirst through a shredder.” Growth occurs only after said shredding. I’ve known a little bit of shredding.

Redemption inevitably follows—slow and sweet. My life—only one in a sea of stories—is still written to echo through the ages. I am a signal to principalities whose names I haven’t heard, but who have left their fingerprints on me. They know. At every turn they learn again.

It happened with David—the king they almost derailed. He was the godly hero turned into a murderer, until God’s forgiveness had the last say.

It happened with Abram—who chickened out, handing his wife over to Pharoah while lying through his teeth: “She’s just my sister.” God still drenched him in mercy and saved Sarai without any of Abram’s help.

It happened with the biblical Hannah—who was physically unable to bear the children she so wanted, while emotionally bearing the weight of mockery. God miraculously gave her Samuel, blessing her faith. He didn’t have to. He just wanted to.

Then there’s me—a person who is sometimes an intensely fragile thing.

But then God intervenes. He moves in the way we don’t expect, with graciousness we can hardly comprehend. By His empowering, we become filled. And beyond reason, fragile things turn fearless. At every milestone a flare is shot through the cosmos—God is who He says He is. He’s won.

Kind of like Hulk, sending a message of strength to the universe, despite his own issues. Yet comic book ink doesn’t compare to the flickering cosmos in this story. My weakness is only a stage for God’s strength. He has dominion, and the best is yet to come.