A Fragrant Offering

 

 

Oh dear.  I just got home from a family rest time during spring break.  So wonderful.  I had down time – actual true down time so had asked for book recommendations from friends.  I’m a fiction girl primarily – needed a good story.  Got some good recommends but as I had a lot of time, I ran out.  Luke and I went to a bookstore to pick up a couple more each and after reading the cover, I bought, “The Girl Who Played with Fire” – the sequel to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”.  Not about vampires or witchcraft or werewolves…a mystery…a spy novel it said.  OK then.

 

Oh dear.

 

About  thirty years ago, our pastor gave a sermon warning us about the dangers of television.  He was saying that watching just anything on it was like opening up a sewer pipe right into your home.  THIRTY years ago!  And what is it like now?  When sex scenes, same sex scenes, murder, witchcraft, reality shows that manipulate and oh ….it’s getting worse.

 

Ok, back to the much hailed, NY Times bestseller book.  Well written  - yes.  Godless – yes.  But even worse.  At the beginning of the book the young 25ish woman heroine has a sexual liaison with a 16 year old boy for about 6 weeks.  This is presented as a neutral thing.  No, a good thing.

 

Then the book turns to be about uncovering a sex trafficking ring back in Sweden.  We are supposed to be shocked about the girls brought in for prostitution – ages 15 to 20.  (We are shocked.  Grieved.)  But wait…what?  It’s okay for a 25 year old woman to have sex with a 16 year old boy?  What if it had been a 25 year old man with a 16 year old girl? 

 

The book continues…she meets up with an old girlfriend.  Girl friend.  And though the author does not go into sex details – they have their affair.  Or maybe he does go into details.  I don’t know.   This is the point when the much hailed book went flying across the room.

 

What are we reading?  What are we watching?  It MATTERS!  What has become normal to our depraved, godless, searching, deceived, aching, fallen world?  What has become normal to me?  To you?

 

Our last night away, our family went out to dinner to a hibachi restaurant.  John had spent much time online researching a nice place to go and had chosen this.  I was a little surprised.  I think they’re fun and all but wasn’t so much in the mood to have dinner with a group of strangers.  Hibachi restaurants are the ones with the grill in the center and the cooking, chopping, grilling is done miraculously, entertainingly in front of you.  We were a party of 3.  We would be sharing our table.  (OK, sharing a table can be fun but honestly my last time at one of these restaurants was a surreal experience having been taken there by my well meaning aunt just hours after my mother passed away.  The erupting onion volcano was lost on me.  But that is another story.)

 

So, we get there and are ushered to our table.  We sit down.  We are joined after a bit by a family of 5.  The daughter sits next to me (18 years old),  her fiancé next to her, then the younger brother and around the corner the parents.  Hellos are exchanged.  Then the fiancé and the girl begin to make out.  Not just kiss.  Make out.  I mean it.  At the table.  In front of us.  Did I mention the parents are sitting right there?

 

Oh dear.

 

We are stunned.  What does one do?  Say?  John jokingly suggests they get a room.  He then proceeds to engage them in conversation every time they begin to make out.  Lots of conversation.  We are looking forward to the food being served so they have something else to do with their mouths.  John talks with the Dad about Wild at Heart…the evening progresses.

 

I spend a bit of time talking with this little engaged girl with chipped blue nail polish on and she begins to tell me about a book she is writing.  It’s about the end of the world.  Well, not the end of the world, really, no.  It’s about forgetting.  People have all forgotten.

 

I’m wondering what have they forgotten?  Mores?  Manners? Propriety?  Holiness?  ACK!

 

Actually, I found the idea very interesting.  Biblical even.  Later, between embarrassingly long kisses…she confides in me that she thinks the world is getting worse.

 

She’s 18.  It is getting worse.  But I’m kind of surprised that she has noticed.

 

So, we hurry through our dinner…and when we get up to leave, John goes over to the parents…words are exchanged, book titles written down and the girl gets up to hug me good bye.  Hug me goodbye?

 

Just a snippet of our time.  Just a few moments shared.  Just me shaking my head and asking God, how am I supposed to live? 

 

And all at once I hear him.  As salt and light.  Being in the world but not of the world.  Being intoxicatingly different.  Fragrantly alluring.  Unafraid and unabashed ofnot fitting in with the world and not sliding down the slippery slope but seeing it, recognizing it and offering a different way.  Offering The Way.  Offering Love.  Offering Jesus.

 

I need a new book.

Body, Soul and Spirit!

The pace and the demands and the cares of life really seem too much for a person to handle; too much for me to handle.   At least to handle well.  Is this a new development, the fruit of living in a high tech, instant messaging, be connected with everyone, take the freeway, drive thru, microwave world?  Or is this a fact of the human condition?.

 

Both I think.

 

We need Jesus.  People need God.  We always have.  We always will.

 

The pace and demands and cares of my life keep me from staying current with friends, bills, blogging, laundry and toilet paper.  Yay that God is always, ALWAYS present and current and more than enough for all of us.

 

I’ve been thinking  about so many things lately, it’s hard to choose what to write about!

 

How about the importance of realizing that we are body, soul and spirit.  Each part matters.  Intrinsically.  Deeply.  To God.  To us.  When we as people focus on one aspect as being much more important than another, we get stuck, we miss out, we get out of whack.  Which means that we are usually, to some extent, always out of whack.  Because we are continuing to grow in our wisdom and understanding and  that is a very good thing!  So hooray for grace.  For ourselves.  For others.  There is mercy.

 

Some in Christianity focus primarily on the soul.  To the neglect of the spirit.  Some in Christianity focus on the spirit to the extent that they diminish the soul.  Some focus primarily on the body – and really get into trouble.

 

Our bodies are vitally important.  They are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  Our bodies are God’s instrument of choice to bring himself.  Our bodies matter!   Our health matters.  Our vitality, our strength, our rest, our taking care of ourselves.  Our bodies are a great gift to us! 

 

Our souls matter.  Our personalities and style of relating and emotions and minds and wills.  God is transforming us.  We want to cooperate here!  We need to be self aware which is quite different from being self absorbed.  God loves people.  He likes variety and gave us emotions and laughter and love and desire and the ability to seek him.  Our emotions are not meant to rule us nor torment us but they are a part of us!  I like being happy much more than I like being sad but I wouldn’t give one up for the other.  We are alive!  This is the realm of friendship and relationships and the working out of our salvation!  Does not God care immeasurably about these things?  We do not want to neglect our souls!

 

The spirit is where we are most connected to God in the Heavenly realms!  We hear the voice of God, feel the nudging of the Holy Spirit, worship, pray, experience his presence and power in and through our spirits!  We live in the natural realm but we live in the spiritual realm as well.  The spiritual realm is the eternal one!  The battle we are in is a spiritual one.  Our spirits need to be quickened, awakened to the constant presence of the Holy Spirit – so that we can bring the Kingdom of God to this world of ours!  How vitally important is that?

 

Oh, there are many books to be read and written on this.  We are an odd people, we humans.  We are mysteriously made.  Wonderfully.  Beautifully.  And God does not despise our humanity.  He loves it.  All of it.

Limping

I’m walking the dog this morning, trying to pray, when the memory comes suddenly and powerfully to my mind of being deeply hurt and misunderstood by a friend.  And as if that isn’t enough, there is also the memory of deeply hurting her.  This is an old memory.  Here it comes again.   Sheesh.  Now there has been healing and forgiveness here and Jesus is the Lord of both of us.  But the work is not yet complete.  I wonder, will it ever be?  Or is this sorrow just part of my story now, an addition to my already visible limp?  Yah, I think it is.  I will carry this with me.  I pray to learn all God has to teach me through this experience and to know his healing and freedom even more deeply than I do today.  And honestly, I know it more today than I did even last month!  God is so very good, so very faithful, so perfectly trustworthy.

 

I believe more healing is available.  I believe God can and will remove the sting of death from every memory, from every painful experience.  But I also believe that ultimate, total, complete and perfect  healing will not come until I see Jesus face to face.  And that’s okay.  It causes me to lean into my King.

 

In the meantime, I have a choice to make.  Daily.  Oh, more than daily.  And it goes beyond the choice to forgive myself and others.  It is a choice to love.  Or not.

 

I think of a friend whose deep betrayal by her ex-husband has dealt a merciless blow to her ability trust men.  Make that to trust, period.

 

I think of God, who was betrayed by the angels when they chose Satan over him.  How badly did that hurt?  I think again of God who gave us the free will to choose against him and the countless millions of times we all, beginning with Adam and Eve have chosen against him; betrayed his heart.

 

And yet, God continues to love.  To stay in.  To pursue.  To offer.  To invite.  To desire.

 

So, is that just because he’s God and God is Love and he can’t help himself?  Well that would make it easier for him wouldn’t it?  Isn’t it easier for him? 

 

But then I thought about how mad he can get.  And how really, you don’t want to get him mad.  Think volcanoes erupting and fiery hailstorms and Jesus returning with his robe dipped in blood.  And I remembered that Abraham talked God out of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah unconditionally.  How God says himself that he has changed his mind.  Many times.  That he would like to react in anger sometimes too, but then, thinks better of it and chooses to stay in.  Chooses to love.

 

And so, because I am his and he is mine and because the resurrection is real and Jesus can and will and does live his life through me, I can choose to love again too.  I can risk friendship and being hurt and misunderstood.  I won’t walk around expecting it to happen but not be doe eyed shocked if it does.  I will entrust myself to God.  I will grow in fully trusting Jesus, my truest Friend.  And  I can choose to trust those God tells me to trust.  I will limp.  But I will limp, with God, and by his grace, choose an open heart.