Exploring the Well

Wandering the savage garden...

Desires

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I went to a small group meeting yesterday, where the leader asked each person to describe what they wanted God to show them through this year. It was an interesting question, because it makes you think about what, specifically, you expect from God.

I didn’t have a good answer, not really; I don’t think mine was impressive or surprising. (It was: “aid in transitions,” because I have three young men who are getting older – two of which are actual adults at this point, and I want God to guide their steps and grant them wisdom, whether they want it or recognize it or not. And I also want peace in my own heart as I watch them go through these transitions.)

But one other person there just wanted God to restore faith, and felt like she’d let Him down by … you know, living. Living a busy life, where sometimes we don’t have time to spend lots of time doing the things that we consider visible manifestations of faith, like explicit prayer or Bible study. (She said, rather tearfully, that she liked watching Downtown Abbey, and felt terrible that she spent time watching the TV show rather than in some kind of holy living.)

It got me thinking. One of my priorities this year is to do more explicit, self-directed Bible study, and another is to try to establish a habit of prayer every day; I’m sort of an informal guy when it comes to these things myself. (I pray, but it’s very much not something that you would describe as regular. It’s sort of a daily “Hey, where am I? I probably should remember to honor the Name…” thing. I’ve been trying to make prayer something I do when I wake up, and when I lie down.) So I know exactly where my friend was coming from; I’m there myself, really.

I’m there even though I know that that’s not quite how God works. Feeling like that paints God as a vending machine: if I show this kind of faith, God will reward me – perhaps by doing that, perhaps by doing this other thing. I don’t really care how the reward is manifested; maybe the reward is ephemeral, as simple as “I know I’ve done what God wanted me to do,” and that’s fine…

… but I can’t help hoping that He will reward me by lightening the burden I bear.

Maybe He could see fit to showing me His Hand on my son, for example, or maybe even dropping me a check to pay for the various expenses that come with a newly-minted eighteen-year-old.

Or maybe He could be a little sneakier, and somehow give me a bonus check from work (can you tell I’m enjoying various financial pressures right now?) or maybe He could even just take the stress I have in my heart and disperse it. (“Peace,” I call it, even though I don’t know if I would recognize it if He gave it to me like that.)

But… it’s still not how God works. I know that, intellectually and spiritually, but it’s still very tempting to want to define God that way. And how pleasant would it be to use a reward as a measure, like a prosperity gospel? (“You are making lots of money, you must have great faith and God loves you…” except if you don’t make lots of money, the prosperity gospel implies that God’s actually in the process of smiting you, you unfaithful slacker. The prosperity gospel is a lie, folks.)

It’s just curious how tempting it is to see God through invalid lenses to make ourselves feel better.

The Differences in our Realities and Dreams

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It’s Super Bowl Sunday! From the perspective of a football fan, I can’t really lose; I live in North Carolina, so if the Panthers win, I win (local team and all that); if the Broncos win, well, I used to live in Indianapolis and always respected Peyton Manning (and I have nothing against Denver). The only way I lose anything in the game is if it’s played terribly, or maybe if someone’s injured badly.

(I love football; I hate when people are injured in the process of playing a game.)

But I caught myself thinking about the excesses of the game this morning.

Mild shift in focus: this is where you’d see those wavy lines during a scene transition…

I’ve been in a lot of cities across the United States. I’m not exactly a world traveler (or a US traveler, really), but I’ve been around a little.

The city I dislike above any other is Las Vegas. New York is a distant second (and only because there are too many people in the parts of it where I’ve had to be – apart from the population pressure, New York is pretty nice.)

It’s not that the people in Las Vegas aren’t kind; it’s the excess you see everywhere. I can’t walk through Caesar’s Palace without thinking of how many hospitals could have been built with the money invested in the building, or how many of the homeless could have been sheltered, or how many children fed or educated (or both).

I know that it’s a personal reaction; Las Vegas is run by businesses, and I don’t know that the builders did not contribute to their societies as well as building these places.

But if it had been me, I think I’d have held off on the ostentation, and made sure there were none in Las Vegas who were sick, hungry, uneducated, or sleeping under the stars without choosing to do so for their own edification.

Wavy screen transition!

The Super Bowl always reminds me of Las Vegas; everything is over the top, and it’s over what is, in the end, a game. The halftime extravaganza is… just too much. (I haven’t been able to appreciate the halftime show in a long time, even when The Who was on it.)

So I caught myself thinking: “If it were me, I’d take the money I’d have spent on a ticket and given it to my local food bank!”

And there’s the problem: would I really have done that? Honestly? For true?

And the answer is “probably not.” I want to think I’d do that. And now, honestly, since I feel kinda bad about it, maybe I will give money to the local food bank as my conscience is instructing me to do.

But the thing that stuck out the most – and actually hurt – was the difference between the narrative in my head – what I saw myself doing, in pride and in how awesome I was – and what I actually do.

More Persistence

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I still feel like I’m on a plateau, writing-wise. I am feeling a little sorry for myself, and I keep thinking of Nehemya in the process.

But it struck me, in the midst of my mild self-pity, that Nehemya isn’t the only example of dogged persistence in the Bible. Instead, you find many, many, many people who stuck it out despite long odds and stretches of despair.

I was trying to think, “Who would have been the earliest?” but I think as soon as you hit any form of history you have the story of persistence in motion. Even in the bits of Bereshis that are pre-modern history (i.e., before Avraham) you have that same record of “I will persist.”

I think Avraham, though, is the start of persistence, someone standing in faith against everything around him. Ur was polytheistic; Avraham was a monotheist, and held his own as a champion of the One. Even though he failed (presenting Sarah as his sister, for example, which I don’t quite think I understand) he kept his faith – in stunning and frightening ways. (I don’t think I would have had the faith to sacrifice Yitzchak.)

Then you have Yaakov, waiting fourteen years to marry Rachael. Then he ran and reconciled with his brother Esau, whom he cheated.

Then Yosef, in Egypt, forced into slavery by his brothers and then rescuing his family from starvation.

Then Moshe. Then Y’shua bin Nun. Then the judges of the tribal league… even Yiptach, who sacrificed his daughter.

David, too, persisted. Shmuel.

In the end, I had a harder time figuring out the protagonists in the Bible who did not show that their lives were their worship of the One than finding examples of persistence. In other words, everyone showed that persistence was one of the core values – not just faith, but faith in this and every other moment.

In a way, that’s encouraging – it means that their faith isn’t being measured in the moment. Having faith when the chips are down, or up, isn’t the point, although it’s a point.

The key is realizing that faith is a picture, painted over a thousand days – from its birth in your soul to your last day on Earth. By trying, by living, you’re having faith, even if you may not feel like it.

Nehemya, for example… he probably had his down days. He probably looked around at the wall around Yerushalaim being slowly built, at the enemies around him who didn’t want the wall built, and had his moments of despair and ennui.

Then he might have remembered why he was there, and remembered the progress shown despite the obstacles, and decided that it didn’t matter how he felt – he could see the wall from his dreams, and see a world in which Yerushalaim was rebuilt and repopulated.

And he kept going – showing the faith and persistence he’s known for.

Hopes

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I’m at an impasse.

I’m writing five hundred words a day, as part of a writing challenge, and I’ve reached what feels like a plateau.

I feel really awful about it, too.

The thing is, it’s making me question what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it.

The thought that started this train of thought (sorry for duplicate words, not editing!) was “if you write it, they will come.”

Well, I’m writing. And nobody’s reading. Nobody cares.

In the end, that’s okay; I’m not trying to write so that I can be loved, or appreciated, or glorified. (Or so I hope. I’m not comfortable with those things, but it’s hard to say from someone else’s perspective what my motivations actually are.)

But when I started this particular site, I did so because I wanted to write from a Christian perspective, and preserve those meager observations I had, in the hopes that someone, somewhere, would benefit from them, and through my efforts, God would be glorified.

(Okay, so maybe glorification was the point — just not my own. Again, such is my hope and my intent. I purposefully don’t use my name here, because I don’t want someone saying “That whatever his name is is a brilliant writer! I sure wish I was as talented as he is!” Likewise, my name not being here also means that nobody can throw toilet paper at my house in pure resentment. Everybody wins.)

But… like I said, nobody’s reading it. I’m not able to market it to increase readership, really (for a few different reasons) – I could, but I’d have to violate various terms of service for the social networking sites to do it well, and something about that rubs me the wrong way. I don’t want to say I’m someone other than who I am; my anonymity, in relation to this site, is precious to me.

So why am I doing it? Why try? The five hundred word challenge has its own merits, but realistically, I’ve been there and done that before; I used to have a job where I had to write at least three pieces a day, every week day, for years.

While I’ve lost the habit of writing on a daily basis (thus, this site having nothing published for seven months), at least I know that I can do it, and it’s just a matter of having a need. (Since I’d done it already, I feel often like I’ve had my exposure already; I don’t need to feel like people are reading me, since I know people did. Like I keep hoping, my goal was glorification of God’s Name, not my own.)

So here I am, plugging away, feeling hopeless in how I write, hoping that somehow, there’s something worthwhile being recorded for posterity. I’m trying to keep God in all of this, and maybe the hope I have in His Name is enough. I guess it will have to be enough.