Woes of Weakness

Throughout school, I’ve always wondered what ‘difficulty’ actually looks like. 15.5 years of formal schooling later, the question persists. This is not to say in any way that the studies I’ve had thus far were any less taxing, challenging, or infuriating than my dismal high school sleeping schedule suggests. However, for me, the idea of difficulty has always been very binary: you either get it or you don’t. Perhaps internalizing Master Yoda’s wise words from an early age, physics problems in which I had poured countless hours in complete befuddlement didn’t seem quite so bad once the solution was apparent. Homer didn’t quite seem the transcendent, enlightened savant once his initial barricade of “winged words” was penetrated. Even courses in college that, at the time, were long, bloody, painful wars of attrition seemed almost elementary once the concepts were mastered (circuits come to mind). Furthermore, this suggests that the process of learning only seemed ‘difficult’ as long as I was failing, not understanding, not cutting it. For some strange reason, hindsight is always 'easy.' Where then does ‘difficulty’ live? Does she only take up residence in the present (gender assignment completely arbitrary I assure you)?

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul says that, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (NIV). For me, the most curious part of this assertion is in the last line; Paul groups together weakness, insults, hardships, indicating that this is the cross we must bear. However, there arises a qualitative discrepancy that I can’t seem to reconcile.

Upon closer examination of this laundry list of struggles, it appears that insults, hardships, and persecutions are all external while both weaknesses and difficulties are deeply internal. For me, the two are worlds apart. While the external persecutions that we face in America are certainly insidious, subtle, and conniving, I certainly don’t fear for my physical safety when attending church. The focus of my dilemma however is on the internal. Weakness and difficulty often like to hold hands and play together. While weakness describes my inability to act/overcome/understand, difficulty perhaps then describes the nature of the need to perform the very same action. Paul himself describes this internal struggle he faces in Romans 7: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” What Paul wants to do is obviously very difficult and where he fails, instead doing what he hates doing, is where lies his weakness.

What then is weakness? What is difficulty? Is it only the storm of internal conflict that rages when I am struggling to do what I know is right and then abates once I make the right choice, then relegated as ‘easy’? Or does weakness depend on my continual failure? Do I understand my own weakness by how persistently I “have the desire to do what is good, but […] cannot carry it out”? If difficulty ends when understanding/action begins, does boasting “all the more gladly about my weaknesses” require my ongoing inability to perform? I know that when I overcome evil, it is not I, but Christ living in me who does it. But if this is true, where is my weakness?

bit of Eternity

This is from a friend of mine.

bit of Eternity

July 23, 2005

My paternal Grandma lost her sister about 15 years ago. She told me often how hard it was to let her go because they were so close. She told me once about a dream she had about Jodi and in this dream she could feel Jodi’s flesh and even smell her. She said that the dream was refreshing and brought her much comfort.

About a year after Nathan died I laid awake, finally fully aware in one instant that he was completely gone and that I was to for the rest of my life be lonesome for his touch. I wanted so badly to feel him and see him again.

I remembered my Grandma’s dream and begged God for the same small bit of relief. It was some months later that I woke up with tears soaking my face and the feeling of a deep something inside of me that I couldn’t place.

It was one of those dreams that sits right at the front of your brain all day and just on the tip of your tongue until finally, a word is spoken, an image is flashed and the memory of the dream comes flooding back. I was on the phone with Mom when she said something that triggered my memory.

I had dreamed that I saw Nathan. He was in a building that was under construction and he was wearing a suit and a hard hat. I knew somehow that he was in charge of the construction, like a real estate mogul or some sort. He didn’t say anything to me and I didn’t say anything to him, we just embraced.

I could feel every muscle in his arms and I could even hear the deep thudding of his heart. I started to weep, loudly. I cried with a loud, mournful and yet joyous wail that I could actually see reverberating off the walls of the building and then outside into the world. I saw the echo of my cry repel off canyons and skim the waters of the ocean. In one instant I saw the surface of the entire universe, and I saw it all get bathed in my grief and my joy.

When I woke up I had this sense calm and peace that had no tangible identity. It was as though I knew the truth, but I wasn’t sure what the truth was; a feeling of all at once wholeness and longing.

At the remembering of the dream, I realized the word for what I was feeling: Eternity.

That was the feeling deep in my gut that gave me that peace. For just an instant I felt Nathan, I smelled him and I felt the eternity in which he waits. Eternity is the only comfort the grieving have. It is the promise that death is only for a little while and grief knows an end.

I am not sure if any of this makes sense. I just really needed to write about this dream.

Christmas... Hope

Here's a little Christmas hope. This is the kind of football I'm trying to teach my son to play.

There are some games where cheering for the other side feels better than winning.

by Rick Reilly

They played the oddest game in high school football history last month down in Grapevine, Texas.

It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through.

Did you hear that? The other team's fans?

They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, "Go Tornadoes!" Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions.

It was rivers running uphill and cats petting dogs. More than 200 Faith fans sat on the Gainesville side and kept cheering the Gainesville players on—by name.

"I never in my life thought I'd hear people cheering for us to hit their kids," recalls Gainesville's QB and middle linebacker, Isaiah. "I wouldn't expect another parent to tell somebody to hit their kids. But they wanted us to!"

And even though Faith walloped them 33-14, the Gainesville kids were so happy that after the game they gave head coach Mark Williams a sideline squirt-bottle shower like he'd just won state. Gotta be the first Gatorade bath in history for an 0-9 coach.

But then you saw the 12 uniformed officers escorting the 14 Gainesville players off the field and two and two started to make four. They lined the players up in groups of five—handcuffs ready in their back pockets—and marched them to the team bus. That's because Gainesville is a maximum-security correctional facility 75 miles north of Dallas. Every game it plays is on the road.

This all started when Faith's head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery—many of whose families had disowned them—wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.

So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the Faithful to do just that. "Here's the message I want you to send:" Hogan wrote. "You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth."

Some people were naturally confused. One Faith player walked into Hogan's office and asked, "Coach, why are we doing this?"

And Hogan said, "Imagine if you didn't have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you."

Next thing you know, the Gainesville Tornadoes were turning around on their bench to see something they never had before. Hundreds of fans. And actual cheerleaders!

"I thought maybe they were confused," said Alex, a Gainesville lineman (only first names are released by the prison). "They started yelling 'DEE-fense!' when their team had the ball. I said, 'What? Why they cheerin' for us?'"

It was a strange experience for boys who most people cross the street to avoid. "We can tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to the games," says Gerald, a lineman who will wind up doing more than three years. "You can see it in their eyes. They're lookin' at us like we're criminals. But these people, they were yellin' for us! By our names!"

Maybe it figures that Gainesville played better than it had all season, scoring the game's last two touchdowns. Of course, this might be because Hogan put his third-string nose guard at safety and his third-string cornerback at defensive end. Still.

After the game, both teams gathered in the middle of the field to pray and that's when Isaiah surprised everybody by asking to lead. "We had no idea what the kid was going to say," remembers Coach Hogan. But Isaiah said this: "Lord, I don't know how this happened, so I don't know how to say thank You, but I never would've known there was so many people in the world that cared about us."

And it was a good thing everybody's heads were bowed because they might've seen Hogan wiping away tears.

As the Tornadoes walked back to their bus under guard, they each were handed a bag for the ride home—a burger, some fries, a soda, some candy, a Bible and an encouraging letter from a Faith player.

The Gainesville coach saw Hogan, grabbed him hard by the shoulders and said, "You'll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You'll never, ever know."

And as the bus pulled away, all the Gainesville players crammed to one side and pressed their hands to the window, staring at these people they'd never met before, watching their waves and smiles disappearing into the night.

Anyway, with the economy six feet under and Christmas running on about three and a half reindeer, it's nice to know that one of the best presents you can give is still absolutely free.

Hope.

Walking and Talking

I remain totally convinced that when human sperm penetrates human egg, you get a new human immediately. And at that point, it's Life that trumps Liberty and the Pursuit of Happyness every time. (Yes, it's misspelled.) The order was intentional.

Walking and Talking
Pro-Choice as Rhetoric

December 3, 2008

The smartest thing “abortion rights” advocates ever did was to coin the phrase “pro-choice.” That shifted our attention towards the act of choosing and away from what was being chosen—the dismemberment of a human being in utero.

Eventually, however, at some point, “choice” has to go from mere rhetoric to an actual deed. Somebody has to actually perform an abortion if “freedom of choice” is to become a reality, as one medical student learned recently.

The November 23rd issue of the Washington Post Magazine told the story of a medical student named Lesley Wojick. She plans to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology and is unapologetically “pro-choice.” She even helped organize a “day-long abortion seminar” at her medical school.

At the seminar, a medical director for Planned Parenthood of Maryland asked the attendees, “How pro-choice are you?” She asked them what their families and neighbors would think of their performing abortions.

Wojick was determined to “walk the talk,” to make her “actions to be consistent with [her] words.” She thought that if “pro-choice” doctors like her didn’t do this, “the right to abortion might be rendered meaningless.”

Wojick then attempted to “walk the walk.” But not for long. During her obstetrics rotation, she realized that “vacuuming out a uterus and counting the parts of the fetus” wasn’t for her. “Somebody else . . . would become an abortion provider. But it wouldn’t be her.”

It’s not surprising. Once you get past the rhetoric of choice, what’s left is a bloody and, for most people, disreputable business. As Wojick discovered, even people who insist that it’s a right want little to do with the actual practice or the practitioners.

Someone else who understands what abortions really mean is Stojan Adasevic, a Serbian doctor who performed 48,000 abortions in 26 years. Studying medicine in communist Yugoslavia, he was taught that abortion was simply removing a piece of tissue.

Then he began to have nightmares about a field filled with children playing and laughing. When they saw him, they ran away in fear. In the dream, a man in a black and white habit explained to Adasevic that these were the children he had aborted. The man in the habit was St. Thomas Aquinas.

Adasevic insists that he had never heard of Aquinas. In any case, he knew what he had to do. He stopped performing abortions. What he calls his “conversion” came at a cost—the then-communist government “cut his salary in half, fired his daughter from her job, and did not allow his son to enter the university.”

Today, Adasevic is a leader of the pro-life movement in Serbia and persuaded authorities to air the pro-life classic, The Silent Scream, on television. Not surprisingly, he has returned to the “Orthodox faith of his childhood.”

These stories are reminders that rhetoric can only obscure the truth for so long. Then those on both sides of the abortion debate will have to decide how to “walk the talk.”

http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=10635

Prop 8 Post

Posted something about Prop 8 on my blog: http://livingonapearl.blogspot.com/

Please feel free to comment here or there if you wish. I posted it there for the sake of some of my church, and even non-church, buddies.

Persecution is heating up.

Glory, Holiness, and Suffering

Confession: Sometimes I post here because I know only our little group ever looks at this, if even you.

I've long wanted to write about how glory, holiness, and suffering collide. Here is a story that illuminates it: Punk Rock Mommy. You see, we cannot solidly be who we are called to be, His holy ones, until we know where we stand in God's eyes, a display of the glory of God. And that will not be clear until we see our suffering in the proper light.

Glory: worshipful praise, honor, and thanksgiving; to exult with triumph, and rejoice proudly. YES! Highest praise only accompanies sacrifice. Inherant talent isn't sufficient. Pain is required. Even fanciful dreams of our grand requiem flirt in the imagination. But supreme praise is hoarded for supreme self effacement even when thrust upon us. War gruesomely offers examples in rows even inspiring Glory. Mother Teresa's name requires no introduction, engenders deep respect, because she poured out her life selflessly to the very end.

But at the crossroads of glory and affliction, you find holiness. (No! Not piety! Though perhaps a bit in its root, kindness.) In ASL, with palm up and palm down the motion swipes across from heal to fingertips leaving one with the image of cutting. A removal or separation, or to be set apart, to be made unique and special is the reality of the Holy. Jesus sits atop that mountain too. Talk about weird and wonderful, He defied normality in every sense. He trusted the Father to make Him. And the Father sculpted Christ into the perfect man that Adam failed to achieve. And Peter knew it wholeheartedly. Pete's first letter explores sacrifice, death, holiness, and glory. Amazingly, Peter uses Jesus suffering as an example with his point to encourage us in our time of trial. For those who dare to stand outside the World's norm will pay the price, but be encouraged by Jesus' example because the glory of God is completely worth it.

Praise be to the lamb that was slain! Be glory and power and strength. Hallelujah. Amen.

Christianity at the Visitor's Center

Long time, no post.

Here's a vision for our lives. But it requires risk, courage, and faith.

Christianity at the Visitor's Center
Just Courage

September 18, 2008

By Mark Earley.

In his new book, Just Courage, Gary Haugen, president of International Justice Mission, recounts a childhood trip to Mt. Rainier with his father and two brothers. When his dad suggested that they try to reach base camp, 10-year-old Haugen wasn't sure he could make it. His father reassured him he'd be there to help. But Haugen opted to stay in the cushy comfort of the visitor's center. As he writes, "I went on the trip, but missed the adventure."

Haugen uses this to illustrate a widespread malady in the Church today. Christians often choose safety and comfort over courage. We don't believe that risk and suffering may be part of God's plan for our lives. But in cutting ourselves off from the risk, explains Haugen, we also miss the adventure, the joy, and the experience of seeing God meet us at our point of need.

Haugen—the 2007 recipient of BreakPoint's William Wilberforce Award—speaks from experience. He and his colleagues at International Justice Mission take risks for God every day. In some of the world's darkest regions they liberate women and young girls from sexual slavery, families from forced labor, and communities from widespread injustice.

Haugen tells the story of one young man, Sean Litton, a brilliant lawyer, who was at the top of his game professionally when he decided to join IJM's staff. According to Sean, he wasn't afraid of joining the on-the-ground work in the Philippines. But he was afraid of losing that competitive career edge when he came back. But Sean came to decide, "If I can rescue one child from the unspeakable horrors of prostitution, it would outweigh any sacrifice."

Sean got his wish and a lot more. Through his efforts, he and his staff rescued hundreds of women and girls from sexual exploitation.

He knew it was all worth it when, as he says, "I looked into the eyes of a fifteen-year-old girl who had been brutally raped two years previously and no one had done anything to help her: I was able to tell her, 'God loves you. I know he loves you because he sent me here to help you.''

As a result, the man who raped this young girl is now serving a 20-year prison term, while she is now studying social work at a local university. She hopes to help other abused women one day.

Stories like this should thrill you, and I recommend you get yourself a copy of Haugen's book. But, like Haugen, I want to encourage you not just to listen to the stories and be moved, but to join the adventure.

Maybe you'll volunteer your expertise with International Justice Mission. Maybe you'll help to break the chains of men and women enslaved overseas. Maybe you'll move out of your comfort zone to share the Gospel with millions of incarcerated men and women right here in America, helping them loose their chains of addiction and spiritual bondage, helping them reintegrate into society once they leave prison behind.

Perhaps there is some other way that God is asking you to take a risk for Him. But either way, I hope you won't be content to stay put. It's time we all left the visitor's center.

http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=9317

Are we able to pray, "God, help us avoid the rich young man's plight"?