(an excerpt from) Story by Steven James

White Rose

I dreamt, and in my dream an angel appeared to me, hovering just out of reach.
“Tell me about your world,” she said.

“Well, it’s a good world,” I said. “A wonderful place, actually, where healing can be found in even the deepest of our wounds…and yet…”

“And yet?”

“Yet it’s a painful and pain-filled world where scars appear on the souls of even the greatest of our saints.”

“Your world is a mystery!” said the angel.

“Yes.”

“But even your saints are failures?”

“They’re the ones most aware of their failings and the first to admit them. The rest of us claim we’re good even through we’re not. And our saints claim they aren’t good even though they are. We think of them as holy, but they see themselves only as unclean and in need of healing.”

“So your sickest spirits think they are well and your healthiest souls know they are sick?”

“I guess so.”

“You live in a puzzling world indeed!”

“Is there any hope for your world?”

I didn’t know what to say. “We hope there’s hope, but we’re not sure. This much we do know: any hope won’t come from within our world or from within our hearts because—“

“—even your saints have stains on their souls.”

“Yes. Even our saints.”

This little light of mine

Darkness and Enslavement. 

They have a tendancy to hold hands.

I've been following these words through the story of Scripture.

It's beginning to feel a little bit like a "which came first?" riddle.

Enslavement or Darkness?
Freedom from oppression, slavery, blindness, corruption, confusion--whether in reference to a mental, spiritual, physical, social, or moral prison--involves not just a coming out of but a coming unto. 

Another "which comes first?" riddle.

Coming into light, coming unto Light.

Those must hold hands as well, right?

Except I'm not sure I really own that. 

The question I find myself asking is can we really come into light if we don't come unto Light?

In my own spirit I can feel the hesitation. 
The temptation to go half-way.

The temptation to grasp for answers instead of intimacy.

The temptation to find security in religion rather than relationship.

To pawn off freedom management in exchange for social respectability.

Like passing out candles in a windstorm.

Providing flashlights with nonrechargeable batteries.

 

What I keep seeing over and over is that when God frees, He doesn't just desire to free captives out of a Kingdom of Darkness.  His desire is to gather us into His Kingdom of Light--where He is not only the provider of light but the very source of light. 

Here is the application point for me.

Am I brave enough to ask for it all? 

If I'm honest, it would be easier to do one or the other.  Give me a social justice platform.  God--I want to free these people from human trafficking.  It's wrong that they are enslaved.
OR
Give me a spiritual ministry.  God--I want to help these people to find healing from their wounds. Let me build them an oasis where they are invited to come and meet with Jesus.

But what if God wants to do it all?

What if God wants to free these girls and women and boys and men from this bondage of human trafficking and sexual slavery?

What if Jesus wants to be their healer?

What if God wants to come against the corruption and darkness behind all that drives this horrible practice?
What if God wants to uproot it politically, socially, morally, mentally, and spiritually?
What if God wants people to know that He did it?
What if an overwhelmingly pervasive process of redemption could really happen?
What if God wants to set people free from darkness and bring them unto Himself? 

Unto the Source of Light?

What if God wanted to make Himself known in a really big way?

Am I able to believe God can do it all?  That He wants to do it all?

That He has the power and the desire to tear down strongholds in the kingdoms of the political world and the spiritual world?

That He wants to bring the world into an understanding and relationship with Himself where all things are made new?

It's all so far beyond me. Beyond all of us.

Laughable, right?

 

Yet, sometimes it feels like it is the very substance of my existance.

Because it isn't about what we can do.  It's about what God wants to do.

It's about people crying out.  It's about God answering.
Does God want to do this now?

Do you want to use me?

Worth a Thousand Words

This photo might need a little explanation.  Every once in a while when I'm taking a shot of something or another, my shadow gets my attention.  Today, when I was taking some photos of Emily catching tadpoles in the gardens, it cast itself on the water.  Then Emily leaned over and I gasped as I saw her reflection inside my silhouette.  I held my breath to see if it would show up in the photo. 

I saw my shadow.

I saw her reflection.

I saw the yellow leaves floating on the blue water.

I saw the wind in her hair. 

I saw so much more than I care to water down with words.

It's your birthday Em.

This gift was for both of us.

Someday you'll understand. 

Evening Reflections

I took Grace to dance this evening. Usually I need to hurry home or go straight into work, so I don't get the chance to watch her, but Jean had Em and Sarah and I had the night off so I stayed.  I was only going to stay a few minutes, but I just loved watching her so much I sat for over an hour.  It's not like they were doing anything special--bar work, turns, and leaps.  Grace is in a class full of dancers that are around the same level as she is.  They have varying strengths and weaknesses.  I love to watch her teacher correct her and complement her.  It's not really anything terribly exciting, but for some reason there is little on this earth that settles my spirit like watching Grace dance.  There's something about it that just feeds my soul.  It's not exactly motherly pride or anything like that.  It just brings me peace, as if I know that something is right in the world, that this is as it should be.
Grace's dance is close to Matt's office, so on the way home I called him to see if he had to work late.  We decided to go have drinks at the Symposium.  His boss (our friend) joined us after a bit and we enjoyed each other's company for a while before I excused myself to go relieve Jean. I had the car to myself for reflectiong on the ride home. 

What really surfaced in my heart was a deep gratitude toward God for the present.  There are times in my journey when I am tempted to think that God isn't working or doing anything about my future.  He's shown me some pretty interesting possibilities about the directions my career may take.  But then I wait and wait...and I could get impatient.  Or I could begin to doubt. 

Except that what God is doing in the present keeps my doubts at bay.  I look at Grace and all that is in the works there, how I couldn't have possibly orchestrated a better environment for her and how I see her growing and progressing far beyond my expectations and I know that God is bringing about what He said.

Then I look at Matt and all that has transpired over the past 14 months and I am sobered by God's blessing.  I have loved every minute of walking this growth process with him in his career.  Really!  Even the moments between 2 and 4 AM.  He is shedding all of those things that have crippled him in the past.  He is rising to the task at hand and he's doing it beautifully.  The harder things have gotten the more he's had to step up.  He's faced every possible difficulty--political, ethical, relational, technical, spiritual...and he's fought through it.  He's faced his own demons, and those of others too.  His promotion was a blessing we had prayed for, but when he got it it was to me only an acknowledgement of what he had already proven.

I have loved the opportunites I've had to fight for things regarding his job through prayer and fasting and just listening and encouraging him.  It has been so meaningful to me to  know that when I sense his anxiety rising and the enemy begin to attack him in his sleep that I can lay my hands on him and go to battle until his breathing returns to normal and peace takes over.  I have been blessed by seeing God's words to me regarding Matt proved true--and I can't wait to see how much more they will become true.  My respect for Matt has continued to grow as I've seen him time and again do the right thing instead of the easy thing and return kindness when dealt with unfairly. He's stayed true to who he is and insisted on treating people with respect even when pressured to deal with things differently so that people would be more afraid of him.  I am so proud of him.  But even more than that I am incredibly grateful to God.  If Matt lost his job tomorrow--none of these past 14 months would seem like a loss to me because the changes that have taken place that matter are in Matt.  Not in a job.  That is the work of God and the cooperation of Matt with Him.

And when I look at these things I realize more and more how important (oh captain, my captain) it is to suck the marrow out of life.  Out of the present.  I would not trade any of the present for the future I'm hoping for.  Because if I did--it wouldn't be the future I'm hoping for.  Every moment of the present is preparation and a becoming for later.  What I am learning, and the person I am becoming as enter into each relationship and circumstance the Lord leads me through is an important part of preparing me for the future.  The present is the pathway to the future.

I'm so grateful for those times that God allows me to see His hand working and doing what He has said.  It gives me faith to believe that He is working far beyond my scope of sight. 

Tonight, I decided, the more God shows me what is to come, the more I'll seek to fully enter the present--with it's blessings and trials and battles and rests.  More than that--In the present, I'll seek to enter into a deeper intimacy with the One who has great plans for me--to prosper and not to harm me, to bring me a hope and a future. 

Choice

Sometimes I’m tempted to think that choice does not really exist.

Until I remember Eden.

Does God know all that will be?

Do we have choice?

How much?

Does He know what we will choose?

Does He know what He will choose?

How is it that when we truly want to choose God’s will we can end up so far away in another place?

Will we ever get to choose again?

What is prophecy?

Is it what will be chosen?

Or what should be chosen?

Or what we’re heading toward unless something changes?

I wonder how often God intervenes.

How exactly does God choose?

Does His choice override ours?

How often?

How many times are our choices made by not choosing?

How do other’s choices affect what I have to choose from?

How hard does God work to bring things back to His plan?

Or does He make another way?

Or are the detours His idea in the first place?

Or did He just know about them and incorporate them into His master plan?

Does He ever change His mind?

Do a lot of things He plans just not happen because we don’t move and choose along with Him?

How many times does He prompt us to choose?

How long does He wait?

How many things flow in and out of possibility the longer He waits?

If we choose according to His will is it an act of worship?

If we think we are choosing according to His will but we were wrong is it still an act of worship?

Is everything an exercise of choosing His will or is there freedom to choose among options and still be in His will?

Does it depend on whether or not He has called us to a specific path?

Is God ever disappointed in us?

What would Ezekiel say?

Is He ever angry with us?

What would Jeremiah say?

Does He ever remove from us the blessings He has promised us?

Why did He say Jerusalem would not fall, and yet it did fall?

Does he overpower our will and our faculties and our ability to choose sometimes?
What would Nebuchadnezzar say?

Will God redeem our poor choices?

What does that look like? Undoing them?  A change in direction? A new beginning? A new creation? A new plan?

Or did He know all along that we would make wrong choices and even in our acts of disobedience or weakness or confusion does He choose to bless us even as He disciplines us?

Is the best choice to let God choose for us?

Or does a greater union exist where when we yield to God so fully and so purely He can entrust us with the freedom to choose in righteousness?

How do we enter into that?

Does He experience joy in our co-creating with Him?

Is that what it looks like when freedom and creativity and power and beauty find their full expression?

Is that what Eden was supposed to be like?

Did God open up the opportunity for sin and redemption simultaneously?

What if the tree was staked before the apple was ever picked?

I wish I had Eve’s opportunity.

Might I have chosen differently?

Of course not.  We would have all chosen the same thing that Eve did. 

Says who?

But what about Adam? What about the Snake?  What about God?

How much did their choices impact the outcome of the story?

What if they had chosen differently?

Or didn't they have choices?

What if we're the apple in the story?

I wonder what answers Moses, who never entered the Promised Land, might have to my questions.

I wonder how Samson, who bore fruit only in death might have a different perspective.

I wonder what David would have to say about choice, as he prayed God might change His mind about his baby’s death. Would he have the same view as Hezekiah?

What could Pharaoh teach us about how much choice we have over a hardened heart?

Did Peter feel like he was set up to fail? Did he ever have a choice not to deny Christ?

Can we choose differently even after a prophecy has been given?

Is there power in the mere utterance of a prophecy? 
What would Balaam say to that?
Does Joseph believe that every step was ordained or could there have been another way to the fulfillment of the prophecy?

How would Ruth understand the course her life took? Was Boaz always on the horizon or was that birthed only after she chose to follow Naomi's God?
What does it mean that Esther was Queen "for such a time as this?"

I wonder if when asked these questions, they might even disagree with each other in their answers.

Oh, but that’s silly now, isn’t it?

Or is it?

Photos by Bgrace

There's only one place I want to write from.  It's not the only place I do write from, but it's the only place that I should write from. 

It's that place somewhere in the middle of your chest that every once in a while feels like it opens all the way up and if you reached in you could reach forever and never find the end of it.  And somehow, someway the very core of you is open and vulnerable, except that you're in the presence of God and so your safe and no harm can touch you.  You find yourself smack in the middle of reverance, of sacredness, of dread awe.  You don't want to move because you're afraid you might lose it, but you know that it is precisely out of this place that you must move.

Help me to stay there.

Help me to move there.

Help me to be there.

Sometimes

...beauty lies in the imperfections.

Sarah crawled into bed next to me this morning. We had all slept in and the sun was glowing through the curtain next to the bed and warming us with soft light. She smiled sweetly up at me and studied my face. Then she pointed to my cheek and said, "Mom, what are dese?" I sighed and asked, "You mean these lines on my face?" She nodded. "They're wrinkles," I said. "Why?" she asked. "Because I smile a lot," I answered.

"What are dose on Daddy's back?" she asked as she pointed to his skin. "Those are beauty marks," I said of his moles and freckles. "Why?" she asked. "Because he's very beautiful," I chuckled. Then I told her she better go give him a kiss (which is a sneaky way of getting him to wake up in a good mood.) It worked...until Sam came in and mauled him.

Later this morning I made my way up to the gardens and noticed these two distorted flowers sort of spooning each other. They just seemed more interesting than the perfectly splayed ones next to them. Purple blossoms focused in the same direction, one leading, one covering. The soft light warming their folds. More beautiful in their imperfections. Spending the moment in movement together.

The Best Possible Place

I just spent two days at a prayer conference listening to a woman named Marilyn Newburg. I heard a lot of things I needed to hear again. And I heard a few things for the first time. But the most important thing that happened was that I came to blinding clarity of where I am at right now.
The Lord has asked me to put myself in the best possible place to hear Him. He's given me specific instructions as to how I am to discipline myself. And He's told me why, and what will come from it when I do. I actually know His purposes and I know what it will produce. (Perhaps not everything, but I know more than I could without revelation.) He's told me what He will do, and He has shown me my part in it.
I have been given every possible motivation and you know what I feel?
Completely paralyzed.
But I know the only way I want to go from here is forward.
So I am praying that God will strengthen me in my inner being. I do not have in me what I need in order to do His will on my own. I need His help. I need to change. I need to become. I need to yield. I need to grow.
I need prayer.
Thank you for yours.
B