Penitent Disciple

For much of my life, I never knew there was a name for the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I knew of Shrove Tuesday (the day before Ash Wednesday), when historically people would use up “luxury” cooking items such as butter, eggs and fat prior to giving them up for Lent. And of course there’s Ash Wednesday which kicks off the liturgical season of Lent, a 6-1/2 week period leading to Easter Sunday which was historically a period of repentance and self-denial for believers. At the end of Lent, during Holy Week, I knew of Palm Sunday (celebrating Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem to complete His mission), Maundy Thursday (commemorating the Last Supper), Good Friday (remembering the crucifixion and death of Jesus), and Easter Sunday (celebrating Jesus’ resurrection).

It wasn’t until much later that I heard of Holy Saturday.

What an awful day that must have been for Jesus’ disciples and other followers. They had seen so many mind-blowing healings and miracles, and on more than one occasion the disciples specifically had been given power and authority by Jesus to drive out demons and heal diseases. They had, on some level, come to the understanding that Jesus was the long-awaited Christ, the Messiah. But even though Jesus had warned them – multiple times – what was going to happen to Him, they apparently weren’t yet ready to fully understand what He was saying.

And now He had been betrayed by one of their own, arrested, and brutally executed. The disciples and followers were shocked, sad, confused, frightened. Things had been going so well. They had experienced the power of God. It was exciting. They thought they knew where things were headed, that it was going to continue. And then…

I suspect that Holy Saturday is where many of us find ourselves on a regular basis. Life’s pretty good. We feel like we’ve got a handle on things. We make our plans. We may even feel like our faith is pretty strong. And then…

In the book of Mark, chapter 9, there’s the story of a father who brings his demon-possessed son to Jesus. The father says to Jesus, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us”. Jesus replies, “If? Everything is possible for those who believe”. At that the father replies, “I believe – help my unbelief!”.

That’s become a refrain for me. “I believe – help my unbelief!”. I believe that Jesus is who He says He is. I believe – at least on some level – in His promises. But my faith is incomplete, lacking.

Pastor and author Jeff Vanderstelt argues in his book ‘Gospel Fluency’ that all of us are unbelievers at various times, in varying degrees. For example, we don’t believe that God is truly great, so we take control of things instead of trusting God. Or we don’t truly believe in the salvation and forgiveness given to those who put their faith in and follow Jesus, so we still feel like we have to work to make up for our failures and sins in order to “earn” our way back, to prove ourselves worthy (even though we can never be worthy on our own).

We believe. Help our unbelief.

And so I pray for God to fill that gap, and to make up for what I lack. Sadness, confusion, and questions aren’t the end of the story.

Tomorrow is going to be glorious.

If one was looking for a diagnosis of what ails the world, they would be hard-pressed to find a better example than this headline and story.

Tourist mecca Notre Dame also revered as place of worship

As one with introverted tendencies, I tend to “live in my head” quite a bit. I ponder stuff, think about the future, play out scenarios in my mind. That tends to be both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing insofar as it enables me to think things through, to “count the cost”. It’s a curse in that I can have a tendency to visualize things at the expense of actually doing things.

Another – perhaps bigger – issue is that those scenarios in my head often tend to be predicated on bases that aren’t particularly helpful: based either on my current circumstances and trajectory, or based how I’d like things to play out via on my own desires. The first tends to lead to hopelessness. The second tends to lead to a temporary delusion that I can ultimately be in control, that I can somehow bring about a future where I’m at the center of esteem, with plenty of material comfort and security.

I’m learning – ever so slowly – that I need to spend less time envisioning scenarios and more time simply trying to live faithfully day by day, acting on God’s direction as best as I can decipher it in my fallen state. God knows my needs, and my dreams. If I can learn to truly trust that my needs will be provided, and that my dreams will be refined in the fire of God’s love for me – that in doing so I will receive “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20) – I can live each day with a sense of peace. Even joy. Joy has been a fairly elusive thing for me, for many years. Left to my own devices, I tend to revert to a stance of sober stoicism.

But once in a while, my soul will get a glimpse from somewhere that I can only refer to as “beyond”. A sense of surety. A brief glimmer of something resembling joy. Most often that comes in the context of reading, studying or hearing scripture – timeless truths echoing from eternity. I’m working to better tune my soul to those frequencies.

Mark Heard – Tip of My Tongue

There’s an oasis in the heat of the day
There’s a fire in the chill of night
A turnabout in circumstance makes each a hell in its own right
I’ve been boxed-in in the lowlands, in the canyons that think
I’ve been pushed to the brink of the precipice and dared not to blink
I’ve been confounded in the whirlwind of what-ifs and dreams
I’ve been burned by the turning of the wind back upon my own flames

(Chorus)
Knock the scales from my eyes
Knock the words from my lungs
I want to cry out
It’s on the tip of my tongue

I’ve seen through the walls of this kingdom of dust
Felt the crucial revelation
But the broad streets of the heart, and the day-to-day
Meet at a blind intersection
I don’t want to be lonely, I don’t want to feel pain
I don’t want to draw straws with the sons of Cain
You can take it as a prayer if You’ll remember my name
You can take it as the penance of a profane saint

(Chorus)

There’s an oasis in the heat of the day
There’s fire in the chill of night
And when I know them both, I’ll know Your love
I will feel it in the twilight
As circumstance comes crashing through my walls like a train
Or like a chorus from the mountains or the ocean floor
Like the wind-burst of bird wings taking flight in a hard rain
Or like a mad dog on the far side of Dante’s door

(Chorus)

 

For the past year and a half, I feel like I’ve been in a sort of waiting room. I’ve knocked on door after door after door, but none have been opened. I’ve had moments of frustration. Resentment. Anger. Utter hopelessness. It’s been agonizingly uncomfortable. And extraordinarily humbling.

I really can’t say why for sure all this is happening. But I think it may have something to do with what Oswald Chambers wrote in the April 4th installment of ‘My Utmost for His Highest’ – learning how to have faith even in the absence of “feelings”, and in the absence of blessings…

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Indeed the hour is coming…that you will be scattered… —John 16:32

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Jesus was not rebuking the disciples in this passage. Their faith was real, but it was disordered and unfocused, and was not at work in the important realities of life. The disciples were scattered to their own concerns and they had interests apart from Jesus Christ. After we have the perfect relationship with God, through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, our faith must be exercised in the realities of everyday life. We will be scattered, not into service but into the emptiness of our lives where we will see ruin and barrenness, to know what internal death to God’s blessings means. Are we prepared for this? It is certainly not of our own choosing, but God engineers our circumstances to take us there. Until we have been through that experience, our faith is sustained only by feelings and by blessings. But once we get there, no matter where God may place us or what inner emptiness we experience, we can praise God that all is well. That is what is meant by faith being exercised in the realities of life.

“…you…will leave Me alone.” Have we been scattered and have we left Jesus alone by not seeing His providential care for us? Do we not see God at work in our circumstances? Dark times are allowed and come to us through the sovereignty of God. Are we prepared to let God do what He wants with us? Are we prepared to be separated from the outward, evident blessings of God? Until Jesus Christ is truly our Lord, we each have goals of our own which we serve. Our faith is real, but it is not yet permanent. And God is never in a hurry. If we are willing to wait, we will see God pointing out that we have been interested only in His blessings, instead of in God Himself. The sense of God’s blessings is fundamental.

“…be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Unyielding spiritual fortitude is what we need.

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‘The Great Divorce’, by C. S. Lewis, is a fictional account of a trip to Heaven, and a fascinating study of why many people would choose not to stay there.

Later in the story, Lewis is met in Heaven by one of his real-life literary and spiritual heroes, Scottish author and pastor George MacDonald. (Lewis never had the opportunity to actually meet MacDonald, in this world anyway – MacDonald died while Lewis was still a young boy – but Lewis was greatly influenced by MacDonald’s writing).

At this point in ‘The Great Divorce’, Lewis and MacDonald have a series of discussions as they observe interactions between people who have embraced the joy of Heaven, and new arrivals who cannot, or will not, let go of their pride, envy, anger, or resentments. During one of these discussions, on the topic of having pity, MacDonald distinguishes between the passion of pity – centered upon emotionalism – and the action of pity – centered upon goodness and truth.

That distinction had never particularly stood out to me when I read it before, but in revisiting that section of the book yesterday, I was struck by the degree to which the passion of pity is currently controlling our culture and our discourse – at the expense of truth.

In the following excerpt, they’ve just witnessed a joyful woman – a resident of Heaven – simply unable to embrace and adopt the bitterness and misery of her earthly husband who had just arrived. Over and over, she cheerfully encourages him to let it all go and come with her. In the end, the husband clings so tightly to his resentment and unhappiness that he literally disappears back to Hell. Yet the woman is now so utterly filled with joy and love that it’s no longer possible for her to experience even the slightest amount of sadness, and she continues on her way, surrounded by a host of singing animals and other creatures.

Lewis begins:

“And yet . . . and yet … ,” said I to my Teacher, when all the shapes and the singing had passed some distance away into the forest, “even now I am not quite sure. Is it really tolerable that she should be untouched by his misery, even his self-made misery?”

“Would ye rather he still had the power of tormenting her? He did it many a day and many a year in their earthly life.”

“Well, no. I suppose I don’t want that.”

“What then?”

“I hardly know, Sir. What some people say on earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.”

“Ye see it does not.”

“I feel in a way that it ought to.”

“That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it.”

“What?”

“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”

“I don’t know what I want, Sir.”

“Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside…”

“But dare one say – it is horrible to say – that Pity must ever die?”

“Ye must distinguish. The action of Pity will live for ever: but the passion of Pity will not. The passion of pity, the pity we merely suffer, the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth, the pity that has cheated many a woman out of her virginity and many a statesman out of his honesty – that will die. It was used as a weapon by bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken.”

“And what is the other kind – the action?”

“It’s a weapon on the other side. It leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world’s garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses.”