Job Does Good Job

"They make night into day; 'The light,' they say, 'is near to the darkness.'" - Job 17:3

I have considerate friends and family.  They understand me often-times more than I do.  I've been really blessed.  But I know many of you who are reading this blog (by now I'm sure it is very popular) who do not have sympathetic or considerate friends.  Your friends may even be abusive and not know it.

I've been picking up on this theme in Job.  His friends are not only unsympathetic, they are positively abusive.  And while many of their speeches would make good Psalms, this adds to the scariness of Job's situation. He was being abused by individuals who claimed to know God and his ways.  Their abuse is hidden behind a thick veil of spirituality.

This has me thinking (always a pain), how often do I abuse others with my dysfunctional spiritual life?  This God of rules that seems to be so entrenched in my thinking, how often do I use him to measure and diagnose my friends.

God is not some formula or robot.  We all know this, but it bears repeating over and over.  In fact, it'd do me good to repeat it every morning before my feet hit the ground (they do so timidly - I hate mornings).

Why?  Because God is immensely mysterious.  His ways are not comprehensible.  His ways are beyond.  And his ways are good.

God doesn't need me to defend him.  God doesn't need me to justify even my own suffering.  God doesn't need me, period.  Yet he wants me.

One thing (and I picked this up in my ESV study notes) Job does really well is argue God's character back to God:  God's ways are good;  He is just;  I am suffering;  I have done nothing to deserve this.  These are a few of Jobs tacks.

And I find that they are arguments that enable me in my smaller suffering to breathe.  Like Job, I can deal with God.  The simplistic answers and arguments for God that I hear in Christian culture often don't hold weight.  I can cling to God, precisely because his character is good enough and strong enough to be argued back at him with.

Suffering doesn't need a defense of God.  What suffering needs is deeper knowledge of God and his goodness.  It's what Job is after, and it's what he gets in the end.  This should be a comfort to sufferers everywhere.

Note on the quote above: take a little time and mull it over.  Or if you're like me, look at you ESV study bible and get the quick answer.  It's intriguing...

Gremlin

"To you, O LORD, I call." - Joel 1:19

I haven't written in a while.  I've actually felt like I don't have much to share.  Life has been sort of ho-hum.

People ask me how I'm doing and I say, "Good," but I'm not so sure.  I'm thinking that maybe I should start answering with "Really iffy, with a 70 percent chance of anger and malaise after 3PM."  Ironically it's almost 3PM.

Maybe it's all the days of sun and 70 degree weather here in Florida that has lulled me into this no-man's-land.  Maybe I'm not comfortable with not being all-good.

I was just doing my daily scripture reading, and I could barely keep my eyes open.  They felt dry, itchy and my lids felt like little gremlins were dangling from them.

That's how I feel.  I feel like a little gremlin that's been left out to dangle on God's eyelid (well it's not a perfect metaphor).  If you haven't seen "Gremlins" you must, it's sort of like watching "Nanny 911," and no matter how bad a parent you are you can say, "At least my child is not a gremlin."

So this little gremlin has been dangling.  I have felt put out to pasture, left in no man's land and just waiting for something to happen.  I feel like I was promised a fishing trip in the streams of Montana, and am now sitting in front of a stagnant pond in Florida, fishing for catfish.  Yuck!

Living the life of the Gospel is not always an adventure.  Sometimes it takes great patience and ability just to not pack it in due to the strong feelings of inadequacy that come with equal doses of anxiety and boredom.

I think that the key to living fruitfully, is to not give up in times like this.  In dry seasons, we must cling to God, for he still is our help.

I was in staff meeting this morning and the thought hit me really clearly, "You don't have to be productive right now, because I have a plan."  Sometimes that's all we get - the promise of a plan.

Sorry if this sounds depressing.  But it cuts the illusion that Christ following is always exciting, happy, adventurous, envigorating and you-name-it good stuff.  What we are promised is not fulfillment in the stuff of this world, but fulfillment in God.

So if you're like me, and don't know what to say when people ask you how you're doing, tell them to go to Hades.  No I say it's time to cling real tight to your hope in God.  That's all I've got.

Rubber-Band Religion

A few days ago, rummaging through our van, I found a big red rubber-band stamped with the line "God is Awesome" (rummaging through our van is a little like dumpster-diving).  Not being a big fan of chintzy sorts of stuff (I hate it when people put fish on the back of their cars - how do they get to make rude gestures at other drivers?) but loving wearing wrist-bands I was in a quandary.

The more I thought about wearing the rubber-band, the more I was conflicted.  You see, I've recruited a bunch of local teens from the skate-park near our house to build dirt-jumps behind a local grocery store.  I find that there's nothing that unites guys like doing something that's not exactly, um, totally technically legal.

I thought about the guys as I considered wearing the band.  Would this be a good thing to wear as I'm around them?  Could it open up spiritual conversations?  Realizing that it just might, I decided to wear it.

So I've been wearing this funny rubber-band for a few days now, and while I haven't seen the guys yet, it taught me a totally different lesson about myself this morning.  I was driving (where I do most of my thinking and cursing) and was stopped at a red-light when I remembered hearing about how depressed people sometimes wear rubber bands and snap them against their wrists just to feel pain.

I considered this for a moment, finding in me a desire for a little asceticism.  I've felt spiritually frustrated recently and thought I could use a few snaps.  Then it hit me, is this the way I view repentance?  I do feel I have to punish myself don't I!  When I repent, I seek "earnestness" by attempting migraine loads of brain-wracking.  Um, I don't think that's repentance.

And now that I think about it, the rubber-band I'm wearing has a little smiley face on it as well.  It would be humorous to go around snapping that!  Imagine people wondering around snapping their wrists in guilt with "God is Awesome :)" bracelets on.   What sort of testimony would that be?  Oh the layers of irony and social commentary that my new rubber-band religion would provide.

I was reading Lee Strobell's book, "The Case for Christ," yesterday, where he examines the medical evidence for Jesus' death by crucifixion.  It made me feel sick.  Here I'd been thinking about snapping my wrist with a rubber-band in an attempt to punish myself for my sin, when Jesus endured a Roman torture in crucifixion that was so intensely painful that a new Greek word needed to be invented to describe it - "excruciating."

Time, distance and lack of intimacy with God, has me thinking I can exercise my sins with a rubber-band.  When if I look at the pain in my wrist compared with the pain in Christ's wrists - with raw, bleeding and seething ripped nerve endings (the nails would have gone through the biggest nerves in the body - found in the wrist) - I've got to admit my little rubber band insanity boarders on the absolutely absurd.         

So I had a near brush with asceticism this morning, and I'm proud to say I haven't snapped my rubber-band once precisely because of the words written on it, "God is Awesome."  No doubt, the love that endured the cross for me, the absolute brutality for me, was fueled by the Awesome love of God.  Pure love, that I won't ever know fully this side of heaven.  And come to think of it, probably won't ever know fully.

"Don't snap that rubber-band Phil."

"Cinnamon Toast"

"He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake."  Psalm 23: (something)

My five year old, Teya, smacked her lips, put down her cinnamon toast, leaned across the table from me and whispered with menace in her voice "cinnamon toast."  I was prepared for anything but not the cinnamon toast threat.  No!!!

I don't know why my daughter threatened me with cinnamon toast this morning, but as I'm getting older, I'm learning that we don't have to know everything.  In fact the more ignorance the better I say (not really, but in some areas yes).

When it comes to God being our Shepherd King, the fact that he "leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake" is a source of great comfort and satisfaction for me.  I don't have to know exactly where I'm going, but I know he's leading me in a good direction.

Just as Teya's thoughts and actions are tied to mine since she's my child (though they involve inexplicable threats) I rejoice because she is mine.  May she threaten many people today with cinnamon toast for my name's sake.

I believe Teya's weird threat is yet just another hint of how God loves as he leads us.  It's a family thing.

 

Mourning

"Jesus wept."  - John 11:35

I heard a friend relating his frustration with his past today.  He just wished he could let it go and forget about it.

Another friend piped up and said "I don't think God wants us to forget our pasts."

I agree.  In the story of Lazarus, Jesus took time to mourn even though he knew the outcome.  Jesus had to mourn, for he was "deeply moved" (it says this twice in the passage) by his friend's death.

God wants me to remember my past mistakes and heartaches so that I can go through appropriate mourning. Harder said than done right?

But appropriate mourning, moving through my past while deeply troubled, is a step I must take to see God's "glory be known."

Jesus want's his glory to be known in my life.   And in the Lazurus story I see that I am not only to mourn my past but more importantly that God mourns with me.

This for me is a great comfort.  To know that not only am I being made knew, but the God who is remaking me, is also "deeply troubled" and weeping with me over my past mistakes.

May I weep with Jesus today that I might see his glory tomorrow.

Face to Face

"Though he slay me, I will hope in him;  yet I will argue my ways to his face."  - Job 13:15

Can we take our most troubled troubles to God?  Can we beat our fists on his chest?  Can we argue our ways to his face?  Job thinks we can.

A few days ago, I was really having a hard time.  I had been reading a book on creative writing and thought I'd try my hand at 4:30 on Monday afternoon (note to writers everywhere, never attempt to be creative on a Monday, EVER).  I was feeling a little off, but I had no idea the demons I was about to exercise.  

I ended up ranting wildly for about an hour.  It was scary to see the depths of darkness emerge in my writing.  So much rage, anger and frustration.  I was violent in my rage. I was so angry I ended my entry with "Don't tell me to pray!  Don't tell me to pray..."  

It is in times like these that I don't need quaint answers with tagged on verses, since they often act more like salt on the wound than balm for the soul.

What I needed to be reminded of is that I can and should as a Christian take my darkest rage to God.

Have it out with God.  He can handle it.  That's what I needed.  That's what I craved.  Not only did Job remind me of this but I found the same sentiment in Numbers 14, as Moses was tying the people's cause to God's cause.  Here Moses reminds God of his reputation, and what the Egyptians will think if he wipes out his people for, and this is really important, the Egyptians have heard that "you, O LORD, are in the midst of this people.  For you, O LORD, are seen face to face..."

What?  The only person that's quoted as seeing God face to face in the OT is Moses.  So what's this?  Moses is expressing the personal aspect of God's nature.  He's right there with his people, dealing.

This God, with whom we get to deal "face to face", is such an encouragement to me.  For if I couldn't take my hurt, rage and big "Why?" questions to God, I'd simply explode.

So here's to not exploding.   And here's to being real with God.

Soul-Bleeding

"It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him."  -John 9:4

At the office I can feel the eyes boring into me.  As I walk my neck gets tight, hands shaky and my palms sweaty.

I walk into the bathroom, look in the mirror, and try to understand what's going on inside.  Maybe just by looking into my own eyes I can see it, I can find it and fix it.

For me it's just another day living with the specter of depression.  It never leaves fully.  And when it's gone, it leaves scars.  Scars that always make me ask the same question, "What is wrong with me?"

The past couple of months have been on an emotional roller-coaster that has my head spinning and my feet groping for some solid ground.

I've wrestled with depression nearly my whole life (not always knowing that that was what I dealt with), but still no matter how many times I've been down the road to Funky-Town, as I like to call it, I never get used to it.  I've broken my arm, separated my shoulder multiple times, had a number of concussions and nothing hurts like depression.

Those who suffer from depression suffer from an internal bleeding of the soul.

Now I don't want to be too dramatic, but when you're in the middle of the Town of Funk, you can't help but be desperate.  And I find that spiritual fixes don't work either.

Don't tell me "This will all work out in the end" or that "This is for my own good."   Don't ask me if I have any "unrepented sin in my life."  Are you kidding me?  Who doesn't.

That's why this verse above has always been a bandage for my soul bleeding.  To hear Jesus defend the blind man with these words, whispers, no shouts, his compassion.

It also speaks of Jesus' hope.  God is in Funky Town.  God is in my life.

No matter how much I prod and poke my soul in my desperate search to find out and fix what's wrong, He's here.  He's never left.

Not only is God close in these moments of desperation, but he pleads my case.  And my guess is he argues something similar to the passage, "It's not that Philip or his parents have sinned, but that God's works might be displayed in Philip."

This is the other side of soul bleeding, that my internal pain and suffering can result in God's work being done.

As I look one last time in the mirror and wash my hands, I think, "There is hope, I will see.  You will see Philip, just hang on."

"My soul clings to God, his right arm will lift me up." - somewhere in the Psalms