Category Archives: surrender

Summer

{for Summer… who made it home to Canaan today}

It occurs to me this evening that earthquakes come in all shapes and sizes. And while the world’s eyes have been focused on Haiti’s earthquake over the past week, my eyes have been fixed on the one occurring beneath the surface of my own little piece of ground… the place I call home… the woman I call friend.

The ground beneath her has been shaking for the past four months, but her faith? Well, not easily shaken. And while leukemia has not been kind to her, her Father’s strength has been exceedingly kind. She has weathered her quake with all the dignity and grace of heaven. Some would say the cancer got the best of her, but I would say differently. Today, cancer had no say in the matter, because today the quake beneath her feet ceased in its shaking as she made her grand entrance to the throne of her Savior’s feet where she will worship him forever.

For those of us left behind, especially for her precious sons and adoring husband, the ground still shakes. The collective grief of our small community is palpable and strong. We’ve made this walk before. I’ve made this walk before—three times in the last two years. Cancer and its havoc is an all too familiar struggling in our neck of the world. For whatever reason, and God only knows (believe me when I tell you that I’ve asked him), our county claims some of the highest cancer statistics for our state. Everyone in our community has been touched by the disease at some point along the way.

Still and yet, familiarity doesn’t make the journey any easier. Each situation exceeds statistical data. Each road of suffering is unique and personally labeled with a name, a family, a life lived, a grief felt. There’s nothing neat and tidy about cancer. Nothing we can quickly and perfectly pack away even as we lower another casket into the ground.

Death and its corresponding mystery shake the earth beneath our feet. It reminds us all (whether we’re willing to own it or not) about the temporal nature of our flesh. About the eternal nature of our spirits. And that kind of reminder, friends, is sometimes a hard reckoning with which to engage. Why? Because of the searing pain that interjects its witness into the mix. Because of the questions that coincide with the grief. Because of the empty chair at the dinner table reserved for the one who has preceded us in death. And when all of that (the reckoning, the pain, the questions, the grief, and the empty chair) collide, the earth beneath our feet moves in witness to the internal wrestling of our souls. I don’t imagine there’s a Richter scale big enough to gauge that kind of rumbling.

As it should be. The burying of a loved one cannot be quantified and measured by human standards, only painfully felt at the deepest, rawest level of the human condition. We’ll try to quantify it; try to put some manageable parameters around it so as to better control the pain. Perhaps, this is needful… a necessary component to the grief process that enables us a measure of comfort during these days of unedited grief. My own heart stands as a witness to that this night.

Writing my heart helps me. Words enable me to put parameters around my feelings. To reign in my thoughts and the emotions which are spinning at full speed. Words, and all the pondering that goes into penning them, help me to re-focus my heart around the one truth that exceeds the pain of the moment. And that truth, friends, doesn’t in any way resemble a grave. That truth is a King and a kingdom and a beautiful, entirely whole, thirty-nine-year-old woman running through heaven’s meadows, partaking in the rightful promise that belongs to her as an heir of the Most High God.

Cancer did not get the final word. God did, and all of hell shuddered at the sound of his voice.

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

May the God of all comfort, the God of everlasting peace, the God who collects our tears in a bottle and holds them close to his heart, the God who promises life beyond the casket, the God who numbered our days long before one of them came into being, the God who is well-familiar with all of our griefs and sufferings, the God who conquered death and the grave…

be the God who peels back the layers of heaven tonight to give us a glimpse of forever and to remind us, each one, that this is not our home.

He is.

And he is coming soon.

And his is a kingdom not easily shaken.

I love you “T” family. And I love the woman you so willing and graciously shared with this world. Her witness lives on in you. Winter’s bite will soon be over. Summer is just around the bend.

peace for the journey,

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A Fine Child

“Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.” (Exodus 2:1-4).

The Nile is a difficult “letting go.” A hard release. A gut-wrenching surrender.

It was for Moses’ parents. It is for me.

Tonight I stand on the riverbank of the Nile and watch my son from a distance as he boards a plane at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, heading toward the mountainous regions of Bolivia. He will spend ten days at an orphanage, tilling the land, repairing the chicken coops, working on latrines, and playing a pick-up game of soccer on every occasion.

He will bathe little; sleep even less. Stomach Bolivian delicacies and try his best to speak the language he’s been intensely studying as his college minor. He’ll make me proud, of that I am sure. Others will love him, of that I am more certain.

And while all of this makes my heart smile with gratitude for the man he is becoming, there is a pang of sadness for me. Not because I desire to keep Nick to myself, but rather because I won’t be alongside to watch the unfolding of this “fine child” before the eyes of others. Moments and memories that I’d like to scrapbook for myself will be given as a remembrance to those who stand further down the river’s bank, eagerly awaiting his arrival and anticipating his participation in their lives.

I see the bigger picture; it’s been growing in me for a long season. God has amply supplied me with a series of “letting go’s” that continue to shape my heart for sacred surrender. They always make me cry, and I’ve never shied away from their wet. I simply allow the tears a spacious place to land in order to water the growth of my tender soil … my fragile soul. I pray them not to be too much, but rather just enough to seed my pain with some purpose.

It’s a good prayer to pray, especially because our “letting go’s” are going to arrive. It is the way of a forward journey, regardless of our willingness to stand still and not move one moment beyond this one. How much better would it be to allow our moments of “needful release” to birth in us a sacred shaping that will serve a better end—both ours and God’s.

Moses’ parents understood this better than most. They were commended for their faithful release and duly memorialized for it in the Hebrews “hall of faith”:

“By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw that he was not an ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.” (Hebrews 11:23).

By faith, they hid their son. By faith, they released their son. By faith, they watched their son from a distance. By faith, they understood that their son was no ordinary child, but rather a “fine child” destined for a better end than that of most of his contemporaries.

By faith, we should equally trust our Father with the release of our children to the River Nile.

They’re all “fine.” Special and beautiful and worthy of the nod of heaven. Like Moses’ parents, from the moment they’re born, we hide them. Shelter them beneath our wings because we understand that while heaven has marked them with eternity, hell has marked them otherwise. For destruction—as ordinary, expendable, unremarkable, and worthy of the nothing more than a swift slaughter simply because they carry the bloodlines of a King.

But three months passes quickly. Eighteen years for most of us. For a few of us, a painful and difficult less. For a few of us, a painful and struggling more. Still and yet, there comes for all of us a moment at the river’s edge. A time of release when we must find our peace at a distance and trust that Father God has something bigger and something beyond us that awaits our children on the other side of our hard surrender.

We may not see his wisdom in it all; rarely do we catch a full glimpse of our children’s forever. But occasionally we have an inkling—a heavenly whisper reminding us that, indeed, there is a wisdom that exceeds understanding. A “more” that is coming because of our willingness to “let go” and “let God.”

Tonight, I “let go” again of the son I dearly love. It won’t be the last time my heart is called upon to make such a surrender. But I do so in the spirit and strength of my spiritual ancestors who better understood the painful trust of a difficult release. Thus, I speak these words of release to my Nick as he flies the night sky and as I try to find him there, amidst the stars and dark that separates our flesh…

Go with God this night, my son. Sail the Nile with all the trust of heaven to guide you, shape you, strengthen you, and mold you into the man that God has intended for you to be. I will be keeping watch, but my arms aren’t long enough to catch you this time. God has orchestrated events accordingly. He means for me to stand on the riverbank while you engage with the wild and wet of a river that calls for your participation. You are a fine child, and you were meant for more than my arms. You were meant for the world. Embrace it, and it will embrace you. It’s time that others discover the wealth of who you are.

And just in case they don’t, if for some reason they reach any other conclusion, you can be certain that I’ll be waiting at the river’s edge to welcome you home and to remind you of just how extraordinary you truly are. I love you, Nick. I’ll see you on the other side of your river’s ride.

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On Graduation…

I’ve heard it said before that “this life is but a dress rehearsal for the next.” If that’s true (and I happen to think there to be some merit in this understanding), then we are best served by paying closer attention to the scene changes in our lives … to the crescendoing moments that warrant an audience’s notice and applause therein.

When the shifting of a season takes center stage, God offers our hearts an invitation for reflection. We can either refuse its pause, or we can bow our souls to the moment to consider its worth as it pertains to the grander epic being played out in creation. If our “now” resembles in part our “next,” then there is value in the momentary pauses that fill our lives. Through them we hear the eternal whispers and glimpse the grander glories that await us on the other side of a long and, sometimes, fragmented obedience.

Center stage moments are God’s gift to us. I’ve authored a few of my own in the course of my forty-three years on this earth. More than these, I’ve sat ringside to the moments of those whom I love the most. This weekend holds one of those pauses for me. My son will graduate from high school.

I’ve walked this road before, thus granting me the benefit of hindsight. This one doesn’t sting as profoundly as the first one did. Not because this one is less important, less special, or any less embraced, but rather because familiarity removes some of the mystery of it all. I can better enjoy this milestone because the pain behind the first one wounded me deep enough to teach me … to shape and to modify my heart’s approach to the process.

There is worth in this moment. There was worth back then. But back then, I couldn’t see it. All I could do was muster enough strength to get through it. This weekend, I will have the privilege of soaking things in rather than soaking up my tears. Thus, I choose the pondering of a high school graduation and its merit as it pertains to the bigger picture. What is it about “turning the tassel” that speaks of a heavenly tomorrow?

Here’s what I think…

Graduations are launch pads. Behind them? Lots of time logged into the classroom of programmed learning. Ahead them? Lots of time logged into the classroom of experiential learning. One is the necessary predecessor of the other if the “other” is to walk easier—more truthful and more peaceful. Without the benefit of a preceding knowledge, our launching resembles a premature push from the nest that often ends with an unnecessary wounding. Sometimes the wounding is fatal, but more often than not, it leaves us with a limp that slows the process of our becoming.

There is a time to every season in our lives. This is my son’s graduating season. He stands on the launch pad of an incredible “next.” He’s ready to fly, and I’m ready to push, knowing that his wings have been fortified with eighteen years worth of feeding that have prepared him for the highs and the lows of the winds that are certain to follow.

He harbors just enough courage to take this step; I harbor just enough grace to let him do so. And between the two of us and our “just enough’s”, God is faithful to come alongside and offer his portion of “more than enough” to see us through this moment and to move us further into the promises of a better tomorrow.

There is coming a moment for each one of us … a graduation of sorts … that will launch us from the safety of our nests into the mystery of winged flight. The time we’ve logged into our earthly classrooms, coupled with the learning therein, will be the lynchpin to secure our safe passage. Some will launch prematurely, unable and ill-prepared to face the frontier of God’s forever. Some will launch at just the right time, with just enough courage and more than enough grace to land them safely into the arms of a waiting Father.

Either way, all will be required to make that step; thus, what you’re doing right now holds value for what you’ll be doing in God’s next. You may not think that this day’s unfolding matters for much of anything. You may think it matters little. But I think it all matters to God. Every scene of our lives—every mile we walk, every test we take, every prerequisite laid out for us in the curriculum of a heart’s shaping—is significant and necessary as it pertains to the turning of a final tassel when we stand before our Creator.

In that moment, God won’t be looking at the long list of credits that we drag behind us. Degrees and promotions and the applause of man aren’t enough to launch us toward eternal flight. No, what our God will be looking at is the heart that supersedes our fleshly gains. Did it beat for him? Did it walk for him? Did it love for him? Did it die for him? Does it, in any way, look like him?

That is the criteria for our graduation, friends. If we pass that test, then the tassel will turn, the diploma will be given, and the sacred commendation of our Savior will speak a final blessing of truth over our life’s journey…

“Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.” (Matthew 25:21).

If “this life is but a dress rehearsal for our next,” then there is much to be learned via a high school graduation. I will be paying attention to the details this weekend. God is ever speaking. How I pray for a heart to be ever learning. Thus, I pray…

Keep me as a student in your classroom, Father, all the days of my life. Keep my heart in a posture that is willing to receive your instructions as vital and necessary for the road ahead. Forgive me for thinking that I “know it all”; forgive when I make excuses for “knowing too little.” Teach me just exactly what I need to know, and then fully grant me the courage and grace to walk in that knowing until I get home to you and receive my final graduation. Amen.

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The Amazing Confrontation of Grace

The Amazing Confrontation of Grace

“On hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’ Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, ‘Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.’” (John 6:60-64a).

I made a two-year-old cry this morning.

I didn’t mean to make her cry. Singing about the amazing grace of God isn’t supposed to bring one to tears, at least not her kind of tears, but this morning … it did.

Perhaps I sang it too loud. Perhaps too shrill. Perhaps too full of a truth that exceeded the silence of the moment. Regardless of the reasons behind her tears, they came in full measure toward the end of my song, accompanied by her tender proclamation to her grandma, “I don’t like that song.”

It made my heart smile, and then it made my mind think.

The amazing grace of Jesus Christ is a confrontational word. It is meant to stir a response in the hearts of those who sit within earshot of the proclamation. Jesus Christ didn’t go all the way to Calvary and back to keep us paralyzed by its truth. Grace is meant to evoke a response in each one of us.

For some, grace swallows sweet. For some, it’s a longer chew. For others, grace doesn’t swallow … amazing or otherwise. It’s simply too big of a bite for a stomach that is content to gnaw on the stony rations of an uncomplicated understanding.

Just ask them—those “followers” of Christ who were eye-witnesses to the real-time unfolding of grace’s “amazing.” Some would immediately take to its unwrapping. Some would live with it for a season before coming around to acceptance. Some would simply balk at the weight of it and run in the opposite direction. The “them” of Jesus’ day are no different than the “us” of this day.

We like to think that our responses to Jesus would have been different had we been there. That somehow we would have immediately taken to the truth of his living witness. But I don’t think the benefit of a 2000 year hindsight has birthed a better faith in most of us. Why?

Because we have the truth of Christ’s living witness in our midst. He is here among us; he didn’t vanish on a hillside to never be seen again. He’s been presenting himself and his amazing grace to humanity throughout the existence of time. You and I sit on the backside of grace’s redeeming finish; still and yet, its truth isn’t an easy cloaking for many. It is a “hard teaching” in our time, even as it was during its genesis on a Judean soil so long ago.

Does this mean that grace no longer works? That the amazing of John Newton’s 1779 penned reflection lacks in its truthful punctuation about the completed work of the cross? That our many words about the Word have somehow lost their potency … their capacity and strength to transform?

Not at all.

Grace is still amazing. Two thousand years of testing its waters hasn’t diminished its effectiveness. Grace’s truth remains, despite man’s neglect to the contrary. But grace is as grace has always been.

Confrontational.

Thus, some will receive it and some won’t because confrontation pushes the issue of our consent for God’s holy consecration of our lives. Grace stands at the door of a heart and knocks and pleads and invites and offers, but never will it hammer its insistence into the heart of unwillingness. The cross of Jesus Christ will never force its grace into the will of an unbeliever. It only forces a choice in the matter.

Acceptance or rejection. There is no middle ground when it comes to the amazing grace of an amazing God. Hearing his truth requires a response.

As a teenager, I walked my definite response to an altar on a wintry night in Alabama during a youth retreat. In some ways, it was a familiar walk; from my earliest days I have believed in a great big God who loves me beyond reasonable limits. It wouldn’t be the last time I would walk a pilgrimage of surrender. I’m still walking it. I did so today.

Not because I have finally come to the conclusion of what an amazing grace means, but rather because grace and all its amazing is worthy of my bended knee and a heart’s pause that cries out a prayer or two of unashamed thankfulness.

Even when it’s loud. Even when it’s teaching is a hard swallow. Even when it elicits unsuspecting tears. And especially when the fullness of its truth exceeds the worth of a world’s silence to the contrary.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound!
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.[i]

How glad I am for the amazing confrontation of God’s grace with my heart. May I never lose the wonder behind its unwrapping. May I always speak the witness of its truth. I pray the same for you. Thus, I offer my plea this day to the One who created us with grace in mind…

Intersect our hearts, Father, with grace’s amazing witness this week. Fill our mouths with the sweetness of its taste. Loudly knock its truth upon the door of our wills so as to drown out the world’s insistence to the contrary. When it’s hard to understand, when it’s difficult to accept, paint grace for us in a way that swallows easy and that portions fully. May our tears pour the witness of understanding rather than the wet of confusion. Gently wrap our faith in the mystery of Love’s redeeming work and then give us the ample courage to tie the bow accordingly. What we now know in part, we will one day fully grasp. Keep us in revenant anticipation of that final revelation. Amen.

[i] Robert J. Morgan, “Amazing Grace,” Then Sings My Soul (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), 78-79.

Through and Through

“Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21-24).

It was waiting for me in my inbox this morning. An email from my friend who is battling for her physical health from a hospital room that’s been her home for over a month now. Her life has changed dramatically in that time. She went into surgery with high hopes of gaining some relief from a tumor that was growing on her upper spine. What she received, instead, was partial paralysis in addition to her continuing fight against cancer.

Her hopes have changed over the past month. Today she lingers with the prospect of a wheelchair and a return home very soon. I imagine it to be enough for her in this moment—to get home to her family and to bask in the warmth of some normal, if only for a season.

She’s journeying down a long and uncertain road right now. A “through and through” kind of work in her own heart and life that doesn’t seem fair. That hardly seems necessary. That rarely feels right and good and pure as it pertains to the life of a saint.

And while I would never want to “explain away her pain” as some part of her purification process … as if there is something in her that “needs” the lesson of a difficult suffering … I do know this, as it pertains to the life of a saint. To the lives of all of us who know Jesus and are walking ever closer to seeing Him face to face.

Our process of becoming like Jesus is a “through and through” process. A word in the Greek language (holotelous) meaning “All, or the whole, completely or entirely.”[i]

The opposite of holotelous is monos meaning “only, alone, without others.”[ii]

Thus, our sanctification is a collective work, not a partial or solitary experience. It is an entire work. A completed work that can only be accomplished through the faithful hands of a peaceful God who seeds our lives, as we go and all along, with the flames of holy fire with a holy end in mind. He is a God who is after far more in us and through us than we are willing to concede at the time of our salvation.

Surrendering our hearts to the way of the cross—to the road of a crucified life—is a costly decision. It means that we willingly submit our flesh to the purifying flames of a holier notion … a better becoming that would otherwise be left undone should we have chosen otherwise—to stay as we are rather than who we are meant to be.

When we say “yes” to Jesus and his cross, we say “yes” to our Father’s “through and through.” Rarely do we understand on the front side of our “yes” what that will look like in the seasons to come. A good “ignorance” I suppose. God grows us in our sanctification. To receive it all in a first moment with Jesus would be too much. Perhaps, would be too hard. Too difficult of a cloaking at the point when our tender hearts cross the line from flesh to faith.

A “through and through” kind of work is a gift from a gracious God who understands that the more we come to know him … that the more we grow in our understanding of just exactly how long and wide and high and deep his blood was shed … the more willing we become to surrender our flesh for the same. When we finally come to the place of a deeper knowing of Christ’s love for us, then we are willing, like the Apostle Paul, to surrender it all—our flesh and our now—for the sake of our completed end.

It’s not easy. It’s not always fun. It’s never predictable, and rarely does it ever make sense. But in God’s hands and through God’s love, of this one truth we can be sure.

It’s always good. It’s always right, and his work in us is always for us. For Him. And for a kingdom’s sake that exceeds our momentary grasp at understanding.

There is coming a day, when our “through and through” will make it through to the other side. God will push our flesh through an invisible barrier, and in a moment’s pause, our faith will be made sight. We will have the glorious truth of our difficult now laid out before us in a way that makes perfect sense and that will leave us panting a breathless “hallelujah” for the process that we walked to get there.

Hold onto the good, weary pilgrims. Hold onto the promise. His name is Jesus, and he is faithful to complete in us that which he began in us over 2000 years ago—perfection. A “faultless to stand before the throne” kind of finish because of his willingness to bow before the throne on a cross.

Oh, what wondrous love is this? It’s a love that calls us to a “through and through” kind of faith. May we all have the good sense and the willing “yes” in our hearts to take up our cross and follow faith through to the threshold of our finish that will birth the truth of our beginning again.

A beginning that lands us at home, at rest, and face to face with the One who created us with such sacred splendor in mind. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus. As always,

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Copyright © March 2009 – Elaine Olsen

[i] Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary NT (AMG Publishers: Chattanooga, 1992), 1039.
[ii] Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary NT (AMG Publishers: Chattanooga, 1992), 996.

 

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