Washed clean

My brother made a mistake.

It’s interesting, because he made a mistake the way most of us make mistakes: early and oft-repeated. He was working on a math sheet, and in the very first question, he made a multiplication mistake due to an error in carrying the decimal place. All of the questions that followed were similar, and so, because he was so confident he had completed the first question correctly, he carried that same mistake through the rest of the worksheet.

At first, he didn’t understand the error I was pointing out to him. I took a separate sheet of paper and did the question while he watched, and I saw the realization slowly dawn on him.

“Does that make sense?” I asked him.

“Okay, but I’m still confused,” he said.

“What are you confused about?” I asked.

“Well, that means I have to do the whole thing again.”

“Ah,” I said, understanding dawning in my own mind. “So you aren’t confused, but rather frustrated.”

Yes, he was sincerely frustrated.

I told him to take a break — to take ten minutes of not doing homework before he came and tackled it again — and in these ten minutes, I’ve been sitting here trying to determine how to make this a positive learning experience. I am so unbelievably struck by the strong analogy that this situation is for how God deals with our mistakes, but it is an analogy that I don’t think he will be able to see at this point.

As much as he was frustrated that he had to re-do the worksheet, I think sometimes the hardest part about correcting a mistake is taking apart the work that’s already been done. His worksheet was entirely covered in pencil. Granted, pencil can be erased, and often, quite cleanly. But a pencil-covered sheet of paper represents work. And erasing it represents destruction, even if it is of work that is poorly or incorrectly done. He had begun erasing it, but it was in anger and frustration. The paper has a crinkle or two that is evidence of this. So I suggested that he take a break and remove himself from the situation.

From my perspective, mistakes in a math sheet are not earth-shattering. I do remember what it was like to be in his shoes. Having to do a math worksheet in the first place was an arduous and lengthy process, not to mention re-doing it. But years have passed and I have grown a little wiser. My state of mind was significantly calmer and so, while he was gone, I erased the page.

And it was during this erasing that I was struck with the analogy. Our sins of scarlet will be made white as snow, I thought, as I watched clean, white paper emerge from underneath the pencil markings. For this is what God does.

“Everything in your life that you learn,” I told the young one, “you will learn in one of two ways: either because someone tells you how to do it and you listen or because you make mistakes and then learn how to fix them. This is that second way. You’ve made a mistake and now you’re learning how to fix it.”

I didn’t do his homework for him. In fact, I didn’t even help him correct it. In fact, aside from the above, I haven’t said much more than encouragement since he’s come back out to try again. All that I did was I gave him a clean slate from which to start.

The interesting thing about that slate is that he did do two of the questions correctly. I looked at his work and debated for a moment before I erased the sheet completely.

And that is the part that frustrates us about God.

“This part was fine,” we say. “We did it correctly. The answer was right. This was fine. Why did you erase it?”

Because the truth is, even though his method and answers were correct for those few questions, his knowledge and understanding of why they were correct was incomplete. I wanted his new understanding to affect every part of the worksheet.

The situation this evening does not make for a perfect analogy, because I am not perfect and the young one is not perfect. But for just a moment, imagine that I was simply an observer, and that the stakes were higher than merely a math sheet, and instead of me helping my little brother correct his homework, we have God Incarnate cleansing the world of all the mistaken pencil lines, smudges, and blackened sheets.

I’ve written before (though maybe not here) about this world being an echo of the eternal. Our longings are for things that last, for that is how we have been designed. And tonight, the shadows of our interaction painted for me images of incredible colour and vibrancy. While I cleaned penciled errors from a sheet of paper, Jesus Christ cleans the indelible mark of sin from our lives.

Much risk

What is love without much risk?

So says the artist of song I am quite enjoying. For the curious few (or many, whichever way it is), I am sorry that I don’t know either the name of the artist or the song. I shall find it after I post this and perhaps place it in the comments. It is on a CD in our car, thus I listen to it quite often while driving without knowing what it is.

Anyhow, it got me thinking. She was singing of God and His love for us. It runs back to the old question of “why didn’t God just create us good and in love with Him and avoid all of this sin nonsense?” But I think the quote above really captures the essence of the answer to that question.

When you love someone — truly love them — and when you ask them to love you back, it is only love when they can say ‘no’. Imagine if this person didn’t have the option. It wouldn’t be very satisfying, would it, to know that they loved you only because they had to. When the person you love has the option to say ‘no’, it is a huge risk, for… what if they say ‘no’? Yet it is truly most satisfying this way, for imagine if they have the option to say ‘no’… but they say ‘yes’?

God risks so much everyday in loving us and asking us to love Him. But He does so because that is the kind of love He wants. He wants true love. He wants us to have the option to say ‘no’, but to tell Him ‘yes’ instead.

There is risk on our side, by telling Him ‘yes’, but I’ll get into that at another time (or perhaps in the comments?). For now, I just want to dwell on the beauty of that idea.

What is love without much risk?

God loves us so much and He has taken great risks to show us that He does. How beautiful and how deep is His love.

because He has always loved me

The stories that resonate most strongly with me are those of transformation, specifically, of rebuilding. But it makes sense, since that seems to be a primary narrative in life. Every significant change in my own life has come through rebuilding. Every significant change in myself has come through rebuilding.

This morning in church, the pastor said,

God’s salvation is not about renovation.

Renovation projects are always based on the assumption that the overall structure of the building is sound. General improvements and modifications are made to the appearance of the building, updating it or simply changing it. But as soon as the structure is touched, it is no longer about renovation. It becomes a question of rebuilding.

God is not interested in renovation, because He knows something that we would choose not to, if we could. He knows that it isn’t just a facelift, a tidy-up, a superficial improvement that needs to be made; He knows that it is the very thing we have built our lives upon that needs to be dealt with.

I have written about this before here. God doesn’t come in to fix cracked tiles or to replace a water-damaged ceiling. He comes in to level the foundation that is causing the tiles to crack, or to fix the structural imperfections that are causing water to leak through.

The entire course of my life has been, and will continue to be, about rebuilding.

It’s actually really cool. Looking back on certain situations and certain times in my life, I can see where God has come in and completely demolished something. At the time, I would be really annoyed or really hurt by it, but after much stubbornness on my part, He would finally convince me to trust Him. And what He put in its place was always amazing. It is always amazing to see Him rebuild. For me, anyway, I usually can’t tell that He is rebuilding until He has almost finished, and it is incredible to see the difference.

There are also times where He knows the heart and soul I have put into building something of my own. I can’t build very well, unfortunately, so He still has to come and make changes, but in those times, He is so gentle with me. Knowing how much of myself I have poured into it, He does not come with a bulldozer. He comes with just Himself (and more often than not, with a brother or sister in Christ), makes Himself comfortable and spends the afternoon talking with me, about everything and anything, and in among that, about why the wall I’ve built needs to come down. And He spends as long as it takes (days, weeks, months) for me to trust Him yet again, but in this case, I have to trust Him enough that I remove the first brick.

In the first scenario, with the bulldozer, it is a construction that should be there but has been built improperly. In the second, it is usually a building that shouldn’t be there at all. In the first, the lesson is in construction, thus the destruction happens quickly, and most time is spent on learning how to rebuild. In the second, the lesson is a lot harder, for it is learning how to take apart something and to let it go. It is a lesson in deconstruction, thus the destruction is what takes the most time. The same amount of self and effort is put into both buildings, but since the second won’t be coming back, there is a great deal of gentleness in the removal of it.

“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland.”

Isaiah 43:18-19

related post at StuffChristiansLike

PB & J

I discovered this today, scribbled on a scrap of paper in with many other notes of a similar kind:

I’ve learned that strength and dignity are not lost through displays of weakness.

A silly example is when I confess to a friend that I cannot open a jar of jelly. I feel… laughably weak doing so, especially when this friend takes the jar and in one motion, twists off the lid. But to use this as a metaphor (ah, metaphors), in a very simple way, this is how the Body of Christ should look. I am strong in some areas, but I am also weak in others. If I readily display my strengths, but hide all of my weaknesses, two undesirable things happen. First of all, assuming everyone else is also hiding their weaknesses, my strengths become completely irrelevant. As far as I can tell, there isn’t anyone who needs what I have to offer. No one is weak, so what does it matter how strong I am? And the second problem is that we have all sorts of weaknesses, frayed threads, weak links, crumbling walls (whatever other image you’d like) and none of these areas are being addressed. No one is saying, “hey, I’ve got a leak in the dam over here, can anyone help me patch it up?” and so it continues leaking and eroding, growing weaker, spilling over, spilling out, and eventually breaking, sometimes in catastrophic ways. But when we confess our faults to one another (a trusted one another), when we admit our weaknesses, we find people who are strong in those very areas.

“Yea, I can’t open a jar of jelly, but I can whip up a mean grilled pb & j sandwich.”

And my friend says, “I can certainly open a jar of jelly *twist*, but grilled pb & j? I have no idea how to make that, but I sure am hungry.”

And there we are, filling each others needs, complimenting each others’ strengths and weaknesses and building each other up. When that is how we seek to live, our lives become inextricably intertwined, balancing each other out and becoming greater than we were just as ourselves.

Hopefully my metaphor can carry the point I am trying to make, despite being (as I’ve already admitted), a rather silly example

And just for the record, grilled pb & j is for real. And mighty tasty, especially if you’ve got a sweet tooth. If you can help me get this darn jar open, I could be persuaded to make one for you

Grooved pavement

The problem with being an English student and a writer is that you cannot help but see metaphors for your life in everyday experiences. Everything means something. Everything matters. Or maybe that has nothing to do with that and everything to do with my idealistic tendencies. Either way.

I was driving home from a friend’s birthday party last night (Happy Birthday, Sarah!). I tend to develop habits pretty quickly, and the one I’m talking about right now is how I drive to and from my University town. I used to always only drive country roads there and back. This summer, because I’ve been finding myself leaving my University town late at night (say 10 or 10:30), I tend to drive there using country roads, but back on the highway. Should something happen to my car, I guess, I’d prefer to be stranded on the side of a well-traveled highway, rather than on some back road somewhere that few cars travel.

So anyway, a couple of months ago, I was in town for an old roommate’s wedding (which was delightful, by the way). It was very late by the time I left, so naturally, I chose the highway to head home. After being on the highway for probably an hour and a bit, I noticed a sign on the side of the road: “Grooved Pavement”. I didn’t really know what it meant, and in fact, didn’t pay it too much mind until I was suddenly traveling over this grooved pavement. I guess they were in process of fixing up the road. The tires rubbing over this grooved surface made a load loud whir, and the whole car vibrated as it passed over each section of grooved pavement. It was a frustrating experience. I was tired, and this I found to be consternating. And it didn’t stop. I would travel over a section of pavement and once I was back on the old surface, I would breathe a sigh of relief and settle in again, only to be jarred when the car hit another patch. The journey was like this for probably 20 minutes, but it felt much longer.

Since that wedding, I’ve been back in my University town several times for different events, and coming home has always been the same: entering the highway, forgetting about the grooved pavement until the sign and then feeling frustration for that part of the journey.

Finally, this last trip, I think I had gotten used to it. I was heading home and I saw the sign still up, and I mentally sighed. Oh well, I thought. I was used to it by now. I’d just have to go through that frustration for a little bit and then forget about it for the rest of the journey.

I cannot even describe the shock it was when I drove over the dark, blissfully smooth new pavement that had been placed over the grooves in the highway since the last time I drove it. I didn’t believe it at first. I thought maybe that segment of new pavement had always been there. But as the journey continued, and the road switched back and forth from old pavement to new, I was convinced. They had finally re-paved the grooved segments of the highway. And not only that, the old pavement that used to be a relief when there was grooving, was now noticeably bumpy and uncomfortable compared to the new pavement. It was incredible.

The hardships in our life feel like that most of the time. When they first hit us, they are surprising and frustrating and anxiety-inducing. We can’t understand why they’re there. Perhaps at first, we can believe that they are there to fix what was wrong in the first place. But as the days, weeks, months go by, we find relief in what has been left alone. This area of my life is fraught with difficulty, but that area is ever as it always was—ah, relief.

And every time we encounter those difficulties, it hurts and baffles us. Why? we ask. Was it not fine the way it was? And eventually we drift into complacency. Not a happy complacency, but a dull one. Yes, this is hard, we acknowledge, but I am so tired. We learn how to survive, how to get through the hardships while remaining intact emotionally, even if the only way to do so is to dull ourselves to the pain.

And we believe that the pain will always be there. That part of my life is always going to be this way, always grooved and difficult, ruined.

But that isn’t God’s plan for our lives.

I don’t know the purpose for the grooving of the highway, but I understand that it is part of the process of repaving. It is necessary, even though it is inconvenient, frustrating, etc. And even though the grooving seems to be there indefinitely, eventually new pavement is laid. The plan is never to leave the grooving there, but the grooving is an essential part of making the road anew.

That’s the way it is for the pain in our life. The plan is never to leave the pain there, but it is an essential part of refining us. God must tear down the parts of our life that He wants to remake in order to rebuild us the way He wants for us to be. I think we look at those areas, just after He has started working on them, as having been just fine. “You could have left them alone, you know?” we cry bitterly. “They were fine just the way they were.” But at the end of it all, the difference is incredible. The new is better than the broken, obviously, but it is also even better than the old. But to get from old to new, we must go through the process of brokenness. But the result is incredible. It is better than we could have imagined.

Keep traveling, I say. He will make all things new, in His time.

Meditations

What separates the good from the great is discipline.

I was watching this video (yes, I’m a little enamoured of TED talks right now…). I used to play the violin. My teacher complimented my ear and my tone. I was able to produce a clear tone in a very short period of time, and, since there are no markings on the violin separating the different tones from each other, it is very important that the musician develops a good ear to know when they have and have not placed their fingers in the correct position. I watch this video of a child who is half my age, and I wonder, if I had continued with the violin, could I ever have achieved this kind of mastery? My first impulse was to make a throwaway, yes, of course. Strange first impulse… but my reason for making it was that I understand the hours and hours of practice that must be behind her playing, the years of dedication to her instrument (7 years), and let’s not forget the support and probably the assisted discipline, shall we call it (ie, “It’s time to practice!”), from her parents. I had the ear and the ability to achieve good tone from the instrument, but I lacked the passion for violin playing. I love listening to the violin (especially live), but playing the instrument does not stir my soul. I also lacked the discipline for the hours of practice that would have been required each week, and the fortitude to stick with it for years and years. And that is the difference. I was good, or could have been good, but what this eleven-year-old has that I did not is passion and discipline.

And I think that’s a lesson to take with us. For anything we want to achieve or become skilled at, it requires discipline. For an instrument, we can’t play cavalierly an hour a week and expect to improve. I casually play the piano. It was mostly during the school year, and mostly to take a break from studying and to relieve stress. Since the summer began nearly two months ago, I haven’t touched the instrument. Even when I did play regularly, I probably played less than five hours a week, and I was not enrolled in lessons. I did not expect to become a master at the instrument, and would not consider myself good enough to play in front of others. There were two pieces that I learned at separate times, pieces that I spent hours and hours practicing over the course of several weeks, and these pieces I played in our residence coffeehouses, but I wouldn’t ever sit down in front of the instrument and expect to dazzle an audience. But should I choose to improve, should I decide that I wanted to develop my playing, I would invest in lessons, I would actually play above 1-3 times a week, I would devote my time, energy, thoughts, etc. to the instrument.

And that, my friends, is discipline, and that is what we need to develop to achieve mastery. This is when you hear talk of people waking at 5am for early morning practices or spending every spare moment they have engulfed in their subject of choice. I have several friends who do this, and I honour their discipline and their knowledge and skills that have developed out of it. I also envy it . I acknowledge the importance of maintaining balance, and also of being aware if it is starts to become a burden, but discipline in anything we do is something that is important.

Discipline is the difference between good and great, between one who browses among the daisies and one who digs down to investigate the roots. One acknowledges the beauty of the flower, the other truly understands how it works. Actually, that isn’t a bad metaphor, because it also emphasizes the importance of balance. If you spend too much time engulfed in learning the mechanisms, you forget the beauty that made you want to explore it in the first place. And your enjoyment of the beauty is enhanced by understanding the internal beauty as well as what is on the surface.

And that, I guess, is a challenge for all of us, to examine our lives and to improve our self-discipline and our balance.

In my Father’s house are many rooms

(title from John 14:2)

I was thinking about this the other night, that we really don’t like God mucking around in our lives, and I was trying to understand why. So here’s the thing.

We have cracked flooring. In our houses, we all have floors that are damaged and cracking – maybe they were once beautiful, maybe they have always been this way, but regardless, they are now in rough shape. So we cry out to God, begging him to come in and fix our flooring. And this is where the problem lies, for God does not come in and say, “Okay, great, let’s get to work on those floors.” He comes in and says, “No, actually, the problem isn’t with your flooring; the foundation isn’t sound. What we need to do is go in and level the foundation, otherwise the floor will just keep cracking.” The reason we don’t like God in our lives is that we ask him to come in and fix “this” area, a small squared-off portion of our lives that we don’t like the look of, but God has never really been into whitewashing things. He is interested in the deeper issues, that which is causing the dirt or the brokenness. We want God to come in and pull a rug over the broken tiles, or splash some new paint over the water stains on the walls and ceiling, but God wants to fix the reasons. Why are the tiles being broken? What is causing the water stains? He wants to fix the underlying problems. When we ask God to paint over the water stains, he comes in to do more than that. He comes in to fix the leak that is causing the water stains. He comes to straighten the foundation that is causing the tiles to crack. It is more work than we bargained for. And I think the deeper issue is that, before God fixes things, they feel like our things. But after, they belong to him. The truth of the matter is that they have always belonged to him, but I think when he demonstrates how perfectly he knows the house and how deftly he can fix a problem that has been vexing us, it is an incredibly tangible reminder of his kingship.

We don’t like God in our lives because we want to be in control. But when we’re in control, we’re content with new rugs and new paint. Easier and faster initially, but in the long run, we wind up with irreparably uneven floors and deteriorating walls.

You’re doing it wrong

“You’re doing it wrong.”

Probably the single most destructive phrase in a dance relationship.

I must include my qualifiers and disclaimers before I go on. If it is a dance relationship in which both parties know, respect and are comfortable with each other, saying, “you’re doing it wrong” usually comes across quite differently than when it is said in the middle of a 3-4 minute song where you have only just managed to commit your partner’s name to memory.

In the course of a dance, especially when the lead is in the beginning stage of learning, it is very easy for mixed signals to occur, and so the follower sometimes does something other than what the lead intended. As a follower, there are two moves that, if not led strongly enough, are easy to confuse: the circle and the swing-out (in this video, the first three moves, when the couple goes from open position to closed position are: the swing-out, the sushi roll and the circle. Notice in the first move, the swing-out, that the lady leaves the gentleman’s arms. In the sushi roll, the second move, she spins as she leaves his arms, and then in the third move, the circle, she remains in his arms). If the lead hasn’t quite figured out how to lead those moves, the follow (ie, me) is tempted to leave his arms for a swing-out, when he was intending a circle, or to stay in his arms for a circle, when he was intending a swing-out.

I experienced this confusion once with a partner who was eager to learn and to figure out why the moves weren’t working properly. And so I explained to him that his lead for the circle and the swing-out felt the same for me. He thought about that, and when we tried it again, his lead was much stronger. Not overbearing, but when he was intending a circle, he kept his arm strong enough so that I knew he wasn’t about to let me go into a swing-out.

I have experienced it in other scenarios where the lead was convinced that I was the problem. And in a sense, that is true: I was the one misinterpreting his intentions, but by the same token, he is the one leading the dance, and if I do something wrong, it isn’t altogether my problem alone, it is a matter of miscommunication. In a lead-follow dance relationship, any problem that arises is a result of both members of the couple. She didn’t follow his lead well, but he did not communicate it in a way that she could understand. He did not lead a move properly, but she wasn’t paying enough attention to follow it as he intended. When it comes down to it, no matter what the problem is, or where it is arising from, it is a problem for both people and both need to work on improving communication.

I was clicking through a dance club website once, and read through their page on dance etiquette, and they suggest ways for fixing miscommunication problems. They suggested a helpful phrase. When there is a break down in communication, there should not be blame (ie, “You’re doing it wrong!”), there should be a desire to understand and improve, both self and other. They suggested this phrase: “I don’t think that move worked out correctly, what do you think we can do to make it better?” This leaves your partner ample room to suggest the problem they are facing in the dance, without criticizing their dancing or placing blame.

Shall we philosophize by making this a metaphor? Oh, I think we shall.

We can broaden this and look at any relationship between people. Most fall-outs are a result of miscommunication, followed by determined blame-placing, fault-finding and criticism. Perhaps, rather than seeking to place blame, we should seek to understand where the breakdown in communication is happening. I have to believe that relationships would go a lot smoother if we made the effort to determine why the other did things the way they did. That isn’t to say that all pain would dissipate, or that there wouldn’t be any more fights, but it is to say that at least then, the lines of communication would be open. Even if there is still pain crossing the wires, at least then they could talk to each other about it and work towards some kind of resolution.

What do you think?

Bitter/Sweet

I’ve been reading Isaiah for the past several nights. A few weeks ago, I found some verses from Isaiah that I had planned on sending to a friend in my drafts folder. It was from almost a year ago (why did I have drafts from that long ago?). I sent the draft, but since then, I haven’t been able to get Isaiah out of my head. It came up again last weekend at a friend’s house, and so I decided to start reading. I’ve never read the book all they way through, just chapters/verses here and there, so this is a bit of an adventure for me. I did find a very interesting verse in my reading this morning. It’s from Isaiah, chapter five, verse twenty:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

It isn’t a terribly cheerful sentiment. Basically if you’re doing something bad, but calling it good, well, that’s not good. It is self-deceit, essentially, but that isn’t what I noticed.

In sermons that I’ve heard, and various metaphors I’ve read, evil has always been equated with darkness, and good has always been equated with light. It is old news, and an image that, for me anyway, has lost its potency by familiarity. But this next part… bitter and sweet. I have never heard that comparison before. Evil is being likened to what is bitter, and good is being likened to what is sweet. I think that when we only focus on the light/dark analogy, we miss out on another aspect of what good is. The sweet/bitter analogy adds new depth to our idea of what good and evil are. Good is not a two-dimensional object, easily defined by one concept. I like that added level, and I like that, even though I’ve been a believer most of my life, I’ve never heard this concept. I like making new discoveries, especially in God’s Word.

Ready to be done… and (not) counting down

I officially acknowledge blogging as an addiction with this post. Instead of doing any last minute preparation for my two exams today, I am writing a post. Truth be told, I know the material for my first exam quite well. Not cold. I won’t say I know the material cold, but walked past the fire, slightly warmed, microwaved for 10 seconds or so, I know the material. The material for the second exam would probably require about a minute and a half (maybe two) in the microwave, but at this point, I’m not sure that any further reading, studying or contemplation would lower that time at all. The professors for both exams like my writing style, and I like both of the professors (which means I paid attention a lot better in their classes). My mom has always coached me when I expressed a dislike for the teaching style of a professor to therefore pay extra attention in class and work extra hard, because she’s known since I was a little sprite that if I didn’t like the teaching style of the professor/teacher, I would tend to let my mind wander during lecture, meaning I didn’t do as well in that course. All of this to say that I liked the professors, meaning (I think) I absorbed information pretty well in the classes. Plus I read (most of) the material before the lecture discussing it and re-read/caught up with a lot of it after lectures ended (these past two weeks). In other words, I am realistically confident in my ability to perform in these exams. The first one especially. And I think at this point, I am just ready to write them. I’m actually kind of looking forward to the second exam. I think it will be an good challenge. The first one I know will be very interesting (that professor always has interesting and thought-provoking questions), and the second one, because I don’t know the material quite as well, will challenge me to think harder and (hopefully) to write better to achieve personally acceptable exam essays to hand in.

As far as the second part of my title goes, I certainly am (not?) counting down. Of course not. No. Indeed… There are seven and a half hours until my exams are done. But I’m not counting down. And I move out in just over a day. But I’m not counting down. It’s probably good that I’ve started assigning number values to this. It forces me to acknowledge that I am, in fact, leaving. But at the same time, a day? Really? When did that happen?

Well, I am off to do a little bit more review and eat a quick and early lunch. My meals are going to be strange today. I have just enough time between my exams to dash home from the first and have a quick bite before dashing out to write the second. And then supper. And then packing. And then hopefully a movie or dancing or a walk… or maybe all of the above. Okay. I’m going to stop procrastinating… Now… Ciao.