Dangerous.

A while ago, oh I suppose it was a year ago, my dear friend Eliza—you know her, and you can read about some of our adventures here and here--

Eliza and I in the blessed summer.

She said to me “You know, I woke up the other morning and was lying in bed and the first thought that came to my mind was ‘B is probably my fanciest friend.’ And it’s true: you are my fanciest friend.”

Ha. What a doll. I don’t know what exactly it is that she thinks about me is fancy, but I take it as a compliment.

Then, a few months later, I was having a wee dinner party and she said to another friend, “There is a fine line between fancy and dangerous; and B chooses to walk it.”

We all laughed. I still laugh.

But just recently it made me think a new thought. I hadn’t quite understood what she meant at the time but I think I do now.

A few months back I was flying from the desert to Texas (be still my beating heart), and I had an experience that must have been God-ordained, because now I know the meaning of “there is a fine line between fancy and dangerous.”

The story goes that I was sitting at my gate when in walks this woman.

If I say she was 6’1’’ when she was barefoot I don’t think that would be an exaggeration.
And then she had 4 inch heels on.
Along with a leopard print shirt, the most beautiful long blond hair, a big wedding ring, two cute, blond sons…and the most fabulous magenta pants.
Not yoga pants….goodness sakes no. Those will never be described as fabulous. But these really great, capri-type, magenta pants.

And I don’t think it was just her height or outfit or the fact that she was more model-esque than anyone else I had ever seen in person, but if I walked in wearing the following stunning outfit it could not have possibly turned more heads:

 

Not a chance.

And some of you won’t believe this, I know, but the ENTIRE mood of the terminal changed. All of the men didn’t know what to do with themselves, all of the women pursed their lips and straightened their backs and got theses really nasty looks on their faces. People pointed and started whispering to the people next to them, others turned around to look at her again.

And she, well, she just walked in and found three empty seats and sat down and waited with her sons for the airplane to start boarding. Like the rest of us.

I was in the last group to be boarded. I was actually the last person to get on the airplane, if we want to be technical. As I am approaching what I assume to be my seat—seeing that it is the only empty seat on the plane—there is a flight attendant standing right next to it. And who is sitting in the seat next to me?

You guessed it: Mrs. Magenta Pants.
“I think that’s mine,” I said to the attendant.
“Oh good. We have been waiting for you,” she replied in not the friendliest of tones.

The deal was that MMP (Mrs. Magenta Pants) was sitting next to me, but her sons were across the aisle…with a strange woman. They were waiting for me to see if we could all do a little scramble.

Of course we could.
I am not one of those to put up a fight at the airport.
So, alas, MMP sat ACROSS the aisle from me, not next to me.

Shucks.

I was hoping to chat with her.

But I noticed something.

The women who were sitting in the seats around us, especially the other woman who had to scramble her seat, seemed annoyed.
Not an annoyed like, “Oh my gosh this is going to keep me from my connecting flight,” but like an “I can’t believe you are accommodating this woman. This woman who has the audacity to be over 6 feet tall AND wear heels AND have long blond hair AND wear animal print AND magenta pants.”
My face had a contorted look, no doubt. Why all the annoyance? I wondered.
She hadn’t done anything. The airline had separated her from her young sons. Of course she wanted to sit by them. Yeah….hello.

But then I knew. I knew why they all were annoyed or angry or defensive or whatever they were:

Because they thought she was dangerous. She had offended them.
No, not dangerous like she was going to commit some crime on board and not offended like she had said anything nasty, but dangerous like she possessed some power over the other women and would offend them at any minute. A power to make them feel LESS simply by her being there. Being there on vacation. With her sons. In her magenta pants.

The nerve…

Yet, throughout the flight I got to watch her quite a bit (since she was just across the row from me), and by the time we had our drink service I knew beyond speculation that there was nothing dangerous about her at all. I was not offended.

Yes. She was tall. Yes she was beautiful and blond and had magenta pants on. But that was all. She sat there reading a book, being what appeared to be a really good mom, she had really well behaved kids. Her sons seemed to adore her, too, for as we were waiting to get off the plane they started giving her lots of kisses. And they were just giggling and laughing, she was trying to quiet them down so as not to make a scene.

No. She was not dangerous, I decided. She was, in fact, just fancy.

But as I was thinking about this over the last few months I thought, “What a shame. All of those other people didn’t get to see her be a mom on vacation. They just saw this gorgeous woman walk in who intimidated them and they wrote her off. She was dangerous to them….or so they thought.”

Have you ever had a situation like this happen?

Maybe not with a model on an airplane, but what about someone who is in your occupation field and they are better at whatever skill than you—and they walk into the same room you are in and your spine just bristles? Or maybe someone who plays some sport better than you, sings some song better than you, cooks better than you, teaches better than you,  is smarter than you?
Or someone at least that you PERCEIVE to be better….?

Before we even know it we set our chins and straighten our backs and start pointing and whispering to our neighbors.
We have decided in our minds that they are….dangerous.

Not fancy, smart, talented, skilled, well-educated….but dangerous.
Dangerous because they intimidate us. Because we feel they possess a power over us. They make us feel LESS. Like we don’t quite measure up.
I think that is what was happening in the airport that day.
The silliest thing, though, is that she didn’t DO anything that should have made all of us women think she was dangerous.
She just walked in and sat down. Like the rest of us.

Here is the catch, I think, after praying about this for a time:
We all EXPECTED her to make us feel less. We all were waiting for HER to straighten her back, purse her lips, and look down her nose that height-induced distance at US. We were waiting for her to do something, say something, or make some show that clearly said to the rest of us, “None of you are as pretty as me and therefore not as important as me. You know it, I know it, and I therefore am better than you are.”

I’m not joking.

That’s what it is. Plain and simple.
We all thought that she thought she is better than us. And therefore the terminal decided that they didn’t like her.
Why? Because we all assumed she was like that woman in Ezekiel 16:15 who “trusted in {her} beauty.”

See, that’s where the dangerous comes from. From where the TRUST is. Throughout our lives, and this is why we thought this about her, we have all come across people who are good at something, or who are attractive, or fancy, or rich or whatever, and they have misplaced their trust in that thing. And then they go ahead and LORD it over us; look down on us for not being up at their level. We know this, we feel this whenever they are around: they want us to know that they have won, leaving us to feel like failures. In turn, they have become dangerous to us, because they have wounded us with their pride. For whatever you put your trust in your pride will also be found in, I am convinced. Why else would Paul say, and thus set for us the example: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” What was he boasting about? Surely not a pride of salvation! No! He was boasting about the only thing we should: that we are in the Lord, and that being not a work of our own hands or abilities or talents…or fanciness.

So I have to ask you—because I have to ask myself—are there things in your life that you have put your trust in, resulting in a pride of possession which you lord over others? Are you dangerous to others?

Listen, possessing those things is not the problem. You being talented, smart, successful, fancy, whatever is not the problem. It goes back to that gift thing I talked about: if you possess it, you have probably been given it TO USE FOR THE KINGDOM, but how easily we slip from trusting in the Giver to the gift, and lording the gift over someone as if we had anything to do with possessing it in the first place. How easily we cross the line from fancy…to dangerous.

Anyway, it’s something to think about.

Less than Interesting.

I suppose the story goes like it always does: Days go by when I don’t have devotions and I learn something both terrible and truthful about myself.

Ah yes. It’s the old story. I know it full well.

And that is just what happened, by the way.
I don’t know how the ball got rolling, but before I knew it, it had been like five days and I found myself saying, “Lord, I miss you. And I feel like I need to be reminded of how this relationship thing with you works again. I can slip backwards much too fast.”

All that to be said, my very dear friend, Wren, came to visit over the weekend. You might remember her from my most recent trip to Europe. Anyway, she is just the willing subject I needed to put to use for a photo shoot for my business (yes, another one).

 

 

She had never been to my home before, so it was fun to have her here. And always a little nerve-wracking, if I do admit, to have people in your house for the first time. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. My design if very illustrative of who I am, and so…well…I always hope all is met with warm reception.
Anyway. We had a great time, and gracious she is. And I was touched, too, by something she said. But what she said is also what caught me, too. I was giving her a tour of my house when she said, “Oh B, I love your house, all of your little collections all around. If only I had your brain to come up with this stuff. All of those good ideas of yours. It’s all so interesting.”
Gracious, like I said.
I was caught by what she said

A.      Because I don’t think I have great ideas most of the time.

B.      Because I will be the first to admit that I have no idea where any of these ideas come from in the first place, so obviously I cannot take any credit for them

C.       Because when she told me that I was feeling especially….boring…not interesting at all. As in, I hadn’t had any kind of good idea in, well, a number of days, and how interesting is my brain when it has no ideas?

It was that last point that made me stop the most: I hadn’t had a good idea in a while and was, truthfully, feeling REALLY boring.

Then I remembered what I told you: I hadn’t had any real time with the Lord in a while.

And then I put two and two together: Any good idea I have comes from him. And anything about me that is somehow above boring must be from him, too. Because when I take him out of the equation I am just, well, nothing to write home about, and for sure nothing to refer to as “interesting.” Nothing. I cling to worthless idols, I desire nothing above a menial existence, I would rather sit at home with tea and toast than be out braving new frontiers and taking territories for Him. I have no fight in me, I have no vision, I see no possibilities, I believe Him for no big things.

That’s me without him. And I was reminded of how easily I can slip back into being one of those “simple ones, who love their simple ways.” (Proverbs 1:22)

It was a shocking thought, no doubt. To realize that left to my own devices I am just so overwhelmingly…blah.

It proved that verse to me true: “Apart from me you can do nothing.”
Which is really him saying, “I am what makes you…you.”

Do you ever feel like you need him to say that to you? For him to kind of put you in your place? Cut down your pride? Put you back in a spot of dependence upon him by revealing to you your own startling inabilities? Bring you down to reality again so as not to be one of those pots that tells the potter how to make it (Romans 9:20-21)?

It’s good. God’s got to discipline those he loves. I give him liberty to do that in my life.
And I am reminded of just how much he will share his glory with no man.
Rightfully so, for what glory do we think we have that he has not given us?

In getting back in right standing with him I was reading through Ephesians and over and over again was just humbled by how very explicitly he says, “Any glory, any grace, any fullness you possess—it comes from me. For I am the fullness “who fills everything in every way.” (Ephesians 1:23)

Yes. Yes. Be it a truth I know in my heart.

~~~

It’s been bitterly cold here this week. Like, BITTERLY. As in, there were a few days that it didn’t get above zero. I am not joking.

The worst part is that there wasn’t any snow to speak of. Last week it was balmy and warm, which makes snow melt. Naturally.
So this morning when I woke up and saw the snow I was elated, because a lot of us who live up north like I do have the thought of “If it’s going to be this freezing cold there better at least be snow to look at.”

And I was reminded about that verse:

“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease” (Genesis 8:22)

Thank you, Lord, that your order prevails.

 

Snow, and sun. Hallelujah.

 

Dormant ivy, vintage wagon wheel, rock.

My yard's resident deer. On their morning jaunt. 

Hallelujah.

It’s an embarrassing fact I have to admit, but, it’s a fact that I’ve got:

I didn’t realize that the word “Hallelujah” meant “Praise the Lord” until a shockingly short time ago.

I know, I know. I had the same thoughts you did, “Where has she been her whole life?!” “Who does this woman think she is?!” “Has she ever gone to church…like…ever??” “I thought she was a Christian,” “Who do I still read her blog???” “She probably thinks that Adam and Eve were blind and that’s why they couldn’t see that they were naked.”

Wait, what?

Ha.

But seriously. I didn’t know this until maybe like….2…well….let’s forget how long ago it wasn’t.

So yeah, the sorry truth is that I didn’t know Hallelujah meant “Praise the Lord” until quite recently. I was reading in Psalms and came to Psalm 112 which opens up with the great line, “Praise the LORD,” to which my study Bible then enlightened my eyes to the Hallelujah fact.

LIGHTBULB!!!

What did I think Hallelujah meant, you might be wondering? I haven’t the foggiest idea. To me it was kind of like “Amen.” There, but glossed over. It was something my more charismatic friends said during church. That’s all. In my mind it kind of meant the same thing as “Preach it, brotha!” because I heard them used simultaneously more often than not.

If you thought that fact was shocking, wait until you hear this next confession:

I listen to Justin Bieber.

*GASP*

*ROLL YOUR EYES*

*Continue Reading*

I am sighing and shaking my head as well. Trust me. I fought it for so long.

I have this best friend who makes me these mix CDs and she would always jokingly put Bieber songs on them. Obviously I would read what song came next on the play list, see his name, and say, “I don’t think so!” and pass it right along.

But one day…well… I like to think I must have been doing something with my hands full so that I couldn’t immediately fast forward when the song came on, because before I knew it, I had listened to the whole song. It was unintentional, I promise!

The bad thing is that I think Bieber must be kind of like a highly addictive drug: once you listen once, you’re done. That’s it. The damage is there, you can’t turn back.

Now, mind you, I don’t own any of his CDs, I don’t listen to all of his songs. As a matter of fact I really only know 4 of them.

I just happen to put them on repeat and listen to the same one at least thirty times in a row some days.

Yep. No joke.

So that’s how it started and that is currently where it stands. How this whole train will stop, I have no idea, but for now—I’m hooked.

As shocked as you were to hear those two confessions, I was double shocked to be listening to the Biebs one day when I hear a line in this song that just totally caught me off guard. The line goes like this:

“I don’t know if this makes sense, but you’re my hallelujah.”

WAIT A SECOND!!! Hold the phone!!!

“You’re my Hallelujah”?

Now, I know what Hallelujah means, and I know that Biebs does not usually go in the same sentence with that word, so why was this happening to me, and why did I think little Justin was onto something?

Because Wolfies, I think he was on to something. Yes.

Naturally, this was a love song—it was by the Biebs! And naturally this line was being said about a girl.

But I don’t think he is totally out to lunch!

Think about it. If you can believe the song, he apparently loves this girl, so to say to someone you love, “I don’t know if this makes sense, but you’re my ‘praise the Lord’” I think I get it. For who else gives you a better reason to say Hallelujah than someone you love?! After all, didn’t God give that person to you?

Now I am not married, engaged, or currently seeing anyone, but that doesn’t matter; I am not talking about just one of those romantic relationships being the cause for praising God, I am talking about all good relationships! People in all different capacities have caused me, more than once, to say “Praise the Lord,” and might I go so far as to say they are my most common reason I say “Praise the Lord”!!! The whole “Created in the image of God” thing is evident about people deep to the core of us. It makes perfect sense, then, that they would be a good reason for us to know gratitude towards that Creator God. His creation can’t help but make us praise him.

I will take this a step further, too. Of course I will! Family and friends and co-workers and sometimes random stranger are excellent things to draw our focus into one of praise, but what about all of the other little things? How often do we say “Praise the Lord” for those?

In Christian homes it is customary to say a prayer before you eat, but sometimes, and I am guilty of this, it seems a little trite. Like, we do it because it’s routine, because we are supposed to (we are Christians, after all), because we always have. When was the last time we stopped before a meal, to take in the bounty that WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN (for any food we DO have we have been GIVEN it), and to truly say, “Thank you, Lord. Praise you for this abundance.” When was the last time you legitimately looked at your lunch and said, “You’re my Hallelujah. You are my current reason to say ‘Praise the Lord.’ And praise the Lord we will”?

Or what about looking at your house? Your car? When you are taking a hot shower? Drinking a cup of coffee? Having a pillow on your bed? Or a blanket to snuggle under in your living room?

When was the last time you woke up when you were not sick and said, “Body, I don’t know if this makes sense, but right now you are my Hallelujah”?

See, I just don’t know how thankful I always am. Oh sure, I would like to think I thank the Lord everyday for my family and friends, but do I really? And yes, I pray before my meals, but can I honestly say I am so very conscious during every one of those prayers? And if I am not really thankful every time/day about those big things (family and food) what about all of those other things? What ABOUT that hot shower I take every morning because I feel like I am not awake until I have one? What about that cup of coffee to go with my breakfast? Why am I not thankful every day that I wake up and still have electricity?

How do I think these are “givens”?

Because they are not. And the majority of the world lives without them.

You will not get from me a sermon telling you that to be a good Christian we have to donate everything we own and live in a hut. I don’t believe that. And I can get into materialism more some other time, that’s not the point. But I will say to you all that to be a good Christian we have to view everything we have (or don’t have) as a gift straight from the hand of God. And not some gift that we are born into and therefore should expect again every morning, but rather as a gift that every single day He decides to give to us again.

Because that’s what this stuff is. That’s what pillows and showers and cups of coffee and cars and houses and clean water and food and friends and family and clean air and indoor heating is. It’s all gift. A favorite line of mine from a play I was in once goes like this, “What God has given God can take away. And for what he has given: be thankful.”

We have no guarantee that life will always be like this. That abundance is what is due us. And that’s fine. Our life falls under God’s jurisdiction and it is his to do with as he pleases. But for what he has given us, let us be thankful, never expecting, or heavens to betsy, demanding, that we receive the same gift tomorrow morning.

So my charge to you is this: In the words of a very blond, very young, very unwise Canadian singer, tomorrow morning when you get into your shower, when you are eating your breakfast, or when your child wakes up, look at it/them and say from the bottom of your heart, “I don’t know if this makes sense, but you’re my Hallelujah.”

Because that’s what we should say. Goodness sakes, we should.

Different Views. Heard. Photo Shoots.

Yesterday a curious thought caught me.

“Why is it that people have very different experiences of God?”

If you were to say to someone, “Give me some attributes of God…” they would all start out by saying different things. Sure, a lot of the lists might contain the same things, but what things are said first by one might be the characteristics that are said last by another.

And I wanted to know why in the world this was.

 Why did I want to know this? Like most of my thoughts, I am at a complete loss as to where they come from or why I all of the sudden care so much, I just know that once they take root, there is virtually no pulling them out.

Obviously then I thought of little else yesterday.

And do you know what I think the answer is? Why I think people will describe God in different ways?

Because people value God for different reasons. People go to God for different reasons, they look for different things in him.

Like, if someone has had maybe a love-deprived or skewed life up until meeting Christ, they will probably value God for the fact that he has unconditional love. And this will shape the way they see the world. They will see life in terms of loving and unloving. When God does something “good” in their life or in the life of someone they care about…it is because God is love. And to them, that is just who he is. He cannot do anything outside of the realm of love. All is love. Love is the answer. If only we could all love each other.

Or, if someone wants to change the world, then they are probably going to value God based on the fact that God is all-powerful and has given them the power of the Holy Spirit which can… change the world. Their experiences then, and the subsequent stories, will no doubt be seen and told through the lens that God is doing BIG things and God is only interested in big adventures.

If someone is a little more business-like, or concerned with how things are to be rightfully done (which you see this a lot of times in legalistic circles), they will follow Christ because he is a God of order. Life to them will be seen and duly lived in a very organized manner. Feathers don’t typically get ruffled here based on the belief that things done outside of the prescribed order are not how God does things.

All of these different views can leave a person very confused, skeptical, or even a tad judgmental. I know this because I have had all of those feelings. For instance, if I asked someone said question and they responded with, “Oh my, yes, God is merciful,” right off the bat my first thought would be, “Well…yeah…that’s true…but I would probably never describe him as that.” Or if someone else was to say to me, “I follow God because he is Just,” again, I would have to say, “Although true, that would not be in my top ten attributes….” And I can get my head all buzzing and frantic, and, I admit, typically wanting to say to them, “Sorry, your picture of God is a little off” never thinking that if they had asked ME that question my answer would probably make them say the exact same thing.

Do you see what I mean? Do you see how people view God differently? And this shapes your whole outlook on life. It shapes your relationship to people, it shapes your relationship, clearly, with the Lord; this touches everything.

Now, you might be asking, “Why is she telling us this?” and I will answer with, “I haven’t the foggiest idea.”I don’t know what any of this means, I just really think it’s true. And it gives me insight into the human mind. It is a telling sign about why people do the things they do.

And maybe it scares me a little. Maybe this is opening my eyes to the fact that I think we all, no matter whether you follow Christ because he does big things or is Just or loves you unconditionally or is grace and, to you, only grace, we all have a slightly skewed view of God and, most assuredly, a view of him that is too small.

Take me. Do you want to know the first thing I would say to answer that question?

I would say that God is constant. He never goes away. And this is why I can’t help but see him in gardens and movies and stories and dinner with friends and ice on the trees and really sensational outfits. Why? Because I believe that it goes against his nature to be anywhere but EVERYWHERE, and thus, I see him and his hand everywhere, because I am looking for him everywhere. I value, above almost all, the fact about him that he never goes away and reveals himself everywhere.

Raise your hand if you just read that and went, “Yeah, that’s not how I see God at all. She is crazy.” And I will tell you that you are right on both accounts.

But here’s the deal: I think we not only prefer, but would PRESCRIBE, that the world sees God the way we do. We become proud in our view of God. We can tout it as being the “only” way to see him. And this is where the problem rests. God is not only how we view him, he is not only how we prefer him. God is who he is, whether there are parts about him that we don’t like at all or don’t even value at all.

And I think, Wolfies, that he has to be worshipped that way. He has to be worshipped outside of how we like to see him. Because what we value about God WILL be how we worship him. And I don’t think we need to worship just the parts of him that we like, or that suit us best, or that fall into our world view best. We have to view him, in all of his glory, in all of his might, justice, vengeance, love, mercy, grace, truth, and beauty that he is. He is not a buffet. He is a “take it all…or you get nothing.”

Another thought I had, and I have no concrete basis as to whether this is true or not, but I do think we do this because we are all made differently. How we view God will probably be closely related to the gifts that we have been given. There is danger in this as well, though. We get gift-proud the same way the we get view-proud. Evangelists think that everyone should be evangelists. Those gifted with mercy are horrified that someone could hurt somebody else’s feelings. Teachers can’t understand why everyone is not teaching. We all think that how we see life is the only way to see life.

Listen, everybody needs everybody if we are going to make this gospel thing work. Remember that stuff about One Body, Many Parts? God is that all-encompassing. We need to view him as such. His ways are unknown, but we can be sure that his ways are numerous. God is big enough to use all gifts for his glory.

My one caution is that while God calls us to use these various gifts, these various viewpoints, and he calls us to worship him in his fullness, he also has called all of us to MATURITY. Yes, we will see life differently, yes we will view God differently, but we are CALLED to grow on to maturity in our faith, whether you see life as only mercy, or as only justice. The formula is Maturity+Justice. Maturity+Love. Maturity+Holiness. Maturity+Grace. And this maturity is what should be our most common ground as Believers.

Just a thought.

~~~~

On a different note, this morning I came across two verses that struck a chord with me. Let me encourage you with this:

Proverbs 15:29 “The LORD is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayers of the righteous.”

If your life is following him, Wolfies, don’t be afraid. He had heard your prayers.

~~~~

Had a photo shoot for business last week and another in the works.

Oh! girls in white dresses….

 

Slightly Sherlock Holmes-ish, if I do say so myself.

Living Water {Part III}

This concept of En Gedi just won’t shake off me. For the last couple of weeks I see things and go, “Yep, that’s a dead sea,” or “Why am I trying to draw water out of this cistern?! What in the world was I thinking??!”
That last quote especially rang true last week. I tried to do one of those health “cleanse” things. Yeah right. You know, the ones where you eat only fruit for days on end? Anyway, what it appears to me to be is really just glorified starvation. Grody.
Needless to say, I was on track to do a seven day cleanse when on day three I saw my parents and was just….annoyed. I would need to put money in the nasty jar, let’s just put it that way.
“What in the world is your problem?” my mother asked me, to which, in my hunger-induced delirium, I shouted at her, “I’m starving! Back off!”

Well. That was it. I wasn’t going to be THAT nasty anymore.

So I broke down.
Give.Me.Real.Food.Now.
I was ravenous.
And I knew I would be that way. The whole time I was on this cleanse I was thinking “How good is a cleanse if all I am doing the whole time is planning my post-cleanse binge??! ‘First it’s going to be scrambled eggs and toast with loads of butter, then I am going to have peanut butter and jelly, puppy chow, sausage with maple syrup, a whole block of cheese, a loaded pork tenderloin, and top it off with a whole quart of heavy cream, chased with eggnog.’”
I will happily confess to that.

But I will tell you one serious thing that occurred to me while doing this. I have not hidden from any of you that earlier in my life I had some eating issues. And this cleanse reminded me a lot of those. I was strongly reminded of those hunger feelings.

And the whole time this “cleanse” was going on (when I wasn’t thinking about my post-cleanse feast) I was thinking, “WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS I THINKING ALL THOSE YEARS AGO????? How crazy was I??! THIS IS MISERABLE.”
And I was absolutely right. It>was>miserable.
I must have been crazy.

Ha.

Do you know anything about sailing or ocean travel? Pretty much Rule Number One to sailing and ocean life is DON’T EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, DRINK SALT WATER.
Why?
Because it makes you go crazy.

How many of you have ever felt like you must have been crazy to have done something?

If you raised your hand, let me ask you this: How many of you have ever thought that the reason you were crazy enough to do that is because you were drinking salt water?
As in, you were drinking from a Dead Sea.

Did you ever put that connection together? Salt water, dead seas, cisterns….drinking out of those will make you go crazy. Sometimes crazy enough to do something that afterwards you think, “What in the world was my problem?!”

In Jeremiah there is a passage that talks about this. Chapter 2, verses 2-3.

“Go and cry in the hearing of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord: “I remember you and the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me, and you followed after Me through the wilderness, through a land not sown. Israel was holiness to the LORD, the firstfruits of his harvest.”

Wow-ee. This is young love. Do you remember feeling this way about Jesus, maybe from the early years, maybe from recent? It’s this kindness, this head-over-heels, “I will follow you anywhere—I would live in a desert with you,” kind of love.

And I wonder, “Then how does it change? How does it become kind of scared and totally not a “I would live in the desert with you” but more like a “I won’t trust you unless you give me a nice house and a well-paying job”?

When did we start demanding? When did we start going crazy? What made us to all of those salt water-induced things?

Like any relationship, our daily relationship (as opposed to our eternal relationship) with the Lord will have one of three ends:

1.       The end can be a stronger love

       2.       The end can be something miserable, stagnant, indifferent, unhealthy, and all that can    be said about it is that “It’s there.”
      3.       The end can be broken. Non-existent.

 If the beginning starts with the willingness, this kindness, and the end can look like the above, then I wonder, “What happened in the middle?” For, as the Bible says, He doesn’t change (Malachi 3:6). It’s US who change.

 Verses 5-7 Thus says the LORD: “What injustice have your fathers found in me, that they have gone far from Me, have followed idols, and have become idolaters? Neither did they say, ‘Where is the Lord, who brought us up out the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and pits, through a land of drought and the shadow of death, through a land that no one crossed and where no one dwelt?’ I brought you into a bountiful country, to eat its fruit and its goodness.”

What happened in the middle? How did they, how do we, get to this point….to this idolatry, to this craziness, to this drinking out of the Dead Sea? Because I don’t ever want to go there again! I’ve had enough of this hunger/thirst induced craziness. This passage says that he brought us into this bountiful country where we can eat goodness. Think about it! How grand! Him walking us through those deserts (the ones we said we would go through, btw) was to give us GOODNESS! So what was OUR deal?  

How do we get to the point where the Lord asks us “What injustice have you found in me?” Where do we get off thinking HE is the bad guy, that he has, in fact, done some injustice to us?

This passage gives me, what I think, are a few answers.

Verse 8a,c The prophets did not say, “Where is  the Lord?” And those who handle the law did not know me…and [they] walked after things that did not profit.

Ah, I see. We forget. We forget and therefore forsake the “I would live in a desert with you” kind of love; we forget to ask “Where is the Lord?” resulting in us not knowing him anymore. We stop asking and we start not knowing him anymore, which leads us to…..

 Verse 11 Has a nation changed its gods, which are not gods? But my people have changed their Glory for what does not profit.

We change our God. Since we stopped inquiring of where he is, we started thinking that he is like the new god, the smaller god we changed our Glory for, that we went and took hold of. We thought he was something we possessed, not remembering that—no no. The true Glory possesses US. And what happens then, when we think we possess him and he doesn’t do exactly what we think he should? What happens when he doesn’t conform to the mold we are trying to push him into? Well, then we feel as if an injustice has been done to us (“What injustice have you found in me?” verse 5).

Verse 13 For my people have committed two evils: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that hold no water.

Since we then feel an injustice (because he wouldn’t do JUST what we wanted him to do. We found out he wasn’t a genie), and since we have forgotten that he is our oasis in the desert, we forsake him and go looking for another water source. Thereby we find Dead Seas, things that look like they will profit us, for surely all of that water has to be thirst-quenching, it has to be refreshing, doesn’t it? But, alas, after drinking all of that salt water finally makes us go crazy, and do things we never would have done in our right mind we go and, well, we try to build our own cistern.

Our Glory, the one who led us through the desert, maybe he didn’t do just what we wanted, so we classified that as an injustice, which led us to drink from a dead sea.

And then we went crazy.

And now, well…now in this state we will take matters into our hands and build for ourselves a well that is just the exact shape we want. We can mold this water source, this cistern, we think, forgetting the whole time that any time we try to build a water source all we are ever going to get it something broken. Something that holds no Living Water. We are creating our own god, and nobody in the history of the world has ever had satisfactory results in doing THAT.

But all this really means is that we don’t understand the shape of the hole in our hearts, Wolfies! We tried to mold God into a little vase-sized God, thinking he only needs to fill us with some little amount of living water, for surely, our need isn’t that big. But we never realize that our need is actually the size of an oversized swimming pool—much bigger than we thought, much bigger than a vase, much bigger than what a broken cistern can hold!

In thinking that we possess God (because we stop asking him where he is), we become further disillusioned when we realize that we can’t form, calm down, and hold in our hand the Living Water.

Molding an oasis, the En Gedi, THE Living Water, into what we want? We really are crazy, aren’t we? We cannot tame a jungle waterfall. And let’s not consider that as an injustice. I don’t want us to be a people who willing followed him through a desert and then desert him so we can go crazy. I want us to be those who refuse to drink anything that isn’t Living Water, because, while Living Water might not be just what we want, I promise you that it will be exactly what we need.