Advent. The season of hope and of longing. The ache of transgression, the expectancy of restoration.
You know when Anne Shirley asks Matthew Cuthbert, "Which would you rather be? Divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?" I always thought it was an obvious question--who wouldn't pick to be divinely beautiful? If you were beautiful it wouldn't matter if you were clever or not, and it would, of course, I just know it, make it easier to be a good person if you were already divinely beautiful... Today I would answer differently.
I just finished proofing a book for work called The Garden of Martyrs by Michael C. White. I really enjoyed this one and would recommend it. It's a story of two men wrongfully accused of murder in 1806 Boston. It was a sad tale--all the more so because it is, in fact, true--but it had a really strong Christian voice in the character of Father Cheverus, the French priest of the Boston parish. The epilogue of the book finds Father Cheverus going for a walk, where the author narrates, "But he had ceased to hope for things concerning himself. If the years had taught him anything it was this: his life was not his own to do with as he pleased." (Garden of Martyrs, p. 561)
I've recently been so bogged down with how bad I am. How I can't seem to quiet my loud self-critic. How I always jump on the defensive. How I am never truly selfless. How my motivations always seem at least a little skewed. How I struggle with entitlement, pride, fear, anger, resentment. I could go on and on. I keep feeling the need to try harder, to be better.
I started re-reading Hinds' Feet in High Places last week because I felt the need to. I felt like I was in that place again, I was Much-Afraid, in the valley, waiting to trudge up the steep cliffs. But quickly, in the Preface even, the author righted my wrong:
"But the High Places of victory and union with Christ cannot be reached by any mental reckoning of self to be dead to sin, or by seeking to devise some way or discipline by which the will can be crucified. The only way is by learning to accept, day by day, the actual conditions and tests permitted by God, by a continually repeated laying down of our own will and acceptance of his as it is presented to us in the form of the people with whom we have to live and work, and in the things which happen to us." -Hannah Hurnard (p. 11-12)
Or, as Ann Voskamp would say, "We don't have to change what we see, only how we see."
I am not at the bottom of the cliff. I'm on it. I am on the journey, and I'm struggling, just like everyone else. I was so encouraged by these words. Instead of hoping that God will change my circumstances, or that I will gather the strength to do it myself, I can know that he is working within me. Even when I'm not aware. Even when I don't feel it. Even when all I can see are the bad parts.
It's so unlike me to be encouraged by failure, but recently I felt greatly humbled and joy came afterward. Joy because all those times of failure, of gratitude, of varying degrees of humility, all those times are cracks in the surface. All the suffering and vulnerability and conflict and community, are not without purpose. It's God working in my circumstances. It's God chipping away at my rough edges, my fears. And the cracks are what let God shine through.
Oh, to be a person who is always gracious, who responds with empathy to every one on every side of every issue. To be "angelically good" in that you believe the best about people, you continue to hope for people even after they disappoint you. To be able to quiet the cynicism and the self-pity. To know and accept that my life is not my own to do with as I please. To be humble in all things.
I'm grateful today that God is working out those things in me. Even though it's slow-going. Even though I can't measure progress in tangible ways all the time. Even though I have a lot of surface area left to be chipped away. Even, despite all that, I'm glad that God has promised to be at work to make me more like him. And that God has hopes for me. (And for you.)
You know when Anne Shirley asks Matthew Cuthbert, "Which would you rather be? Divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?" I always thought it was an obvious question--who wouldn't pick to be divinely beautiful? If you were beautiful it wouldn't matter if you were clever or not, and it would, of course, I just know it, make it easier to be a good person if you were already divinely beautiful... Today I would answer differently.
I just finished proofing a book for work called The Garden of Martyrs by Michael C. White. I really enjoyed this one and would recommend it. It's a story of two men wrongfully accused of murder in 1806 Boston. It was a sad tale--all the more so because it is, in fact, true--but it had a really strong Christian voice in the character of Father Cheverus, the French priest of the Boston parish. The epilogue of the book finds Father Cheverus going for a walk, where the author narrates, "But he had ceased to hope for things concerning himself. If the years had taught him anything it was this: his life was not his own to do with as he pleased." (Garden of Martyrs, p. 561)
I've recently been so bogged down with how bad I am. How I can't seem to quiet my loud self-critic. How I always jump on the defensive. How I am never truly selfless. How my motivations always seem at least a little skewed. How I struggle with entitlement, pride, fear, anger, resentment. I could go on and on. I keep feeling the need to try harder, to be better.
I started re-reading Hinds' Feet in High Places last week because I felt the need to. I felt like I was in that place again, I was Much-Afraid, in the valley, waiting to trudge up the steep cliffs. But quickly, in the Preface even, the author righted my wrong:
"But the High Places of victory and union with Christ cannot be reached by any mental reckoning of self to be dead to sin, or by seeking to devise some way or discipline by which the will can be crucified. The only way is by learning to accept, day by day, the actual conditions and tests permitted by God, by a continually repeated laying down of our own will and acceptance of his as it is presented to us in the form of the people with whom we have to live and work, and in the things which happen to us." -Hannah Hurnard (p. 11-12)
Or, as Ann Voskamp would say, "We don't have to change what we see, only how we see."
I am not at the bottom of the cliff. I'm on it. I am on the journey, and I'm struggling, just like everyone else. I was so encouraged by these words. Instead of hoping that God will change my circumstances, or that I will gather the strength to do it myself, I can know that he is working within me. Even when I'm not aware. Even when I don't feel it. Even when all I can see are the bad parts.
It's so unlike me to be encouraged by failure, but recently I felt greatly humbled and joy came afterward. Joy because all those times of failure, of gratitude, of varying degrees of humility, all those times are cracks in the surface. All the suffering and vulnerability and conflict and community, are not without purpose. It's God working in my circumstances. It's God chipping away at my rough edges, my fears. And the cracks are what let God shine through.
Oh, to be a person who is always gracious, who responds with empathy to every one on every side of every issue. To be "angelically good" in that you believe the best about people, you continue to hope for people even after they disappoint you. To be able to quiet the cynicism and the self-pity. To know and accept that my life is not my own to do with as I please. To be humble in all things.
I'm grateful today that God is working out those things in me. Even though it's slow-going. Even though I can't measure progress in tangible ways all the time. Even though I have a lot of surface area left to be chipped away. Even, despite all that, I'm glad that God has promised to be at work to make me more like him. And that God has hopes for me. (And for you.)
This is divinely beautiful. I'm reminded in reading this that the process of chipping away is also, inexplicably, part of the way God made things to be. Somehow, for some reason, it will have been better this way when all is made new.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Allison. Yes, that reminds me of that lengthy Dostoevsky quote:
ReplyDelete"Like a babe, I trust that the wounds will heal, the scars will vanish, that the sorry and ridiculous spectacle of man's disagreements and clashes will disappear like a pitiful mirage, like the sordid invention of a puny, microscopic, Euclidean, human brain, and that, in the end, in the universal finale, at the moment universal harmony is achieved, something so magnificent will take place that it will satisfy every human heart, allay all indignation, pay for all human crimes, for all the blood shed by men, and enable everyone not only to forgive everything but also to justify everything that has happened to men."
It is hard to remember that God is not efficient. :)
It makes me think of a line from Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," about God making "the world just so and no different." That line, of course, comes from before the disaster. But I think it's in our nature to expect that our own disasters -- the bad things we do and the bad things that happen to us -- really weren't part of the plan. We say we believe they were, but we face each one as if it were a surprise or an accident. I think freedom comes with understanding that they were part of the story all along.
ReplyDelete