Author: kaitpack

It’s always a dangerous thing to pray. Dangerous for the flesh. Dangerous for the enemy.

I ask her to pray for an opportunity for me to be bold. And she does.

It comes on a Thursday night at dinner. They bring up religion. What is heaven like? They speculate. What is God like?

My heart starts pounding. And I sit there quietly, thinking of all the things I should say.

I go back to my hotel room and feel like weeping for my hypocrisy of silence.

I claim His benefits. And dodge the costs.

Sometimes the days of half-hearted closet Christianity outshine the days of courageous, out-spoken faith.

In my hotel room, I flip to the book of Matthew, where Peter denies Christ in one of the most crucial hours of history.

Peter, friend of Jesus. Unfaithful. Afraid of what others think.

Like me.

But I didn’t sign up for hiding behind the dashboards of my blog or underneath my introverted personality label.

And I’d rather stand with Christ while my hands sweat and my voice shakes and my face burns than not stand with Him at all.

I flip to Acts and joy comes to me there.

Because the once quavering Peter addresses the crowds like a different man. “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it,” he proclaims. (Acts 2:32)

Changed after being with the risen Christ.

And I know the risen Christ too, but I’ve been with Him so seldom lately.

I’ve neglected the prayer closet. Maybe that’s the problem.

Because it’s hard to be a closet Christian when there is intimacy with Christ in the closet.

And, perhaps, the start of courage begins behind closed doors in the quiet before the dawn. On bended knees.

She brings it up over the phone when it’s almost midnight and my eyes are heavy. “Would your identity still exist if everything but Christ was stripped away?”

It scares me the way he talks about the Christian life.

Like when we run down to the beach in the middle of March. I watch two of my friends sprint past me and into the frigid Great Lake, chunks of ice still layered across the shoreline.

I dip my toes into the water and watch.

It’s polarizing.

Because I want to jump in the water too.

But it’s frigid.

It scares me the way he talks about the Christian life.

A life set apart. Offered up.

That’s what I want: to be immersed. Fully His. Brought under the water. Raised up to new life.

But the water is frigid.

I want increased sensitivity to His mercy, to His goodness, to His grace.

But I dread the waking up of my senses.

I want closeness with God.

But not the sacrifice of holiness.

I want the Spirit inside me.

But not His whispers of conviction.

I want Christ.

But I also want my life.

It’s polarizing.

Because I forget reality. The path is wide. Or narrow. And I can only choose one.

I’ve made my choice.

And like that, in the middle of March, I charge into the frigid water.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Matthew 7:13-14

(Re-posting: Please be encouraged to make every dot on the timeline count.)

I remember, in my first year of university, studying the timeline of music history.

It’s funny how we put time on a line and scratch dashes through it and history seems small when it’s cut down to two 8.5×11 sheets of paper.

I laugh and tell Mom almost every week, “I don’t remember anything!”

Except for some things.

Almost a year ago, I held his hand while Dad played him his favourite hymn for the last time and the evening sun streamed through the window in the palliative care unit. I remember the deep orange of the setting sun.

It was a point on my timeline that seemed to change everything.

Last month, I walked out of my last exam and read the text that her first baby girl was born. It was that feeling of smallness, like I was looking down from space at my tiny human frame bent over a text, under millions of stars.

Another point.

Every point opening my eyes to the shortness of life.

Why does life seem so short if eternity doesn’t exist with which to be compared?

Ecclesiastes 3:11 “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

My thoughts are black. Evil is the guest of my imagination. And it’s only the first day of the week.

I text her for accountability and remember what she once told me. “Sometimes, Kate, battling sin is the way we honour God in our day.”

She thinks backwards. Like all the Great People.

I’m ashamed that I need to battle. Ashamed that I need to repent.

So, I lay my weapons down as soon the Dragon enters the room.

But failure is not contact with the dragon. It’s the refusal to fight.

I want to think of it backwards like her. That temptation is an opportunity.

An opportunity to pick up the sword. And fight like one who has been bought with blood from the Ultimate Victory.

An opportunity to see the defeated Dragon. No smoke. No mirrors. No special effects.

A chance to say ‘no’ to sin.

A chance to win glory for the King.

“But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.” 1 Timothy 6:11-12

There. On the second floor of the University Community Centre, I told her how I envisioned my life. Like a straight line–like the smooth edge of the horizon against the calm of a Great Lake.

That was four years ago.

Now, I sit on the couch in a house that looks like all the houses beside it. Just off the busiest highway in North America.

Nothing has gone as planned.

A child’s ideal. An adult’s reality. Two incompatibilities.

What did David understand as he cared for his father’s flocks? As a boy, did he dream of a simple life? As a man and a king, did he view his past with amazement?

Or Jonah. Did he plan to be swallowed by a fish and spit out again?

And was it what Paul expected when he was chained to prison walls, confined to house arrest?

It’s a comfort as the fog rolls in on a Saturday and I can barely see the house next to me. It’s a comfort that life is not like the horizon on a clear day. That nothing went as I planned.

Because my plans are like me–flawed, imperfect.

My plans are small. And I cannot think high enough thoughts. I cannot plan big enough plans.

But I know Someone who does.

Who is.

And she asks me what God has been doing in my life. And I stumble to answer.

I don’t know, but I know He’s doing something good.

“For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Philippians 2:13

It’s Monday morning and I’m staring at an endless line of brake lights on a busy 400-series highway.

Stop. Go. Stop. Go.

DREAD: I want to edit the word out of my vocabulary.

It’s only the second week of my new job and I’m saying ‘no’ right out loud.

No to that lump that gets in the back of my throat and makes me feel like I’m going to choke.

No to the fog that creeps into my mind and turns my thoughts into ghosts.

No to the pressure in my chest when I picture the calendar on my work computer–haunting deadlines.

“Lord, I will rejoice.”

I have no choice. I know Someone who had every reason to dread, but He didn’t.

What was it like for Jesus on the last Monday before his death?

As the new year unravels before me. As my new home city rises up in front of me. As I face my first real day on the job, these are the words that replace dread with joy.

Jesus said. “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” (John 12:27-28)

Glorify your name.

A dare for dread to drop to its knees and surrender.

“I really don’t think God cares about us having it all together at church as much as we care about it,” she says to me.

I talk about it with him on the drive to Christmas number three billion, by the time our faces hurt from smiling.

How some of us Christians can’t get out of bed in the morning, can’t wrap our hearts around joy, can’t collect our thoughts. Mentally, we’re scattered and lost.

And others of us can’t contain our excitement in the faith, can’t express our joy or gratitude enough.

But none of that should matter on a Sunday morning when we all walk into church.

Because we are all part of the body of Christ.

We are all the broken and the healed.

We are the beaten and the victorious.

We are in Christ.

“From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” Ephesians 4:16

It’s when I sit alone in the basement I rent on a Tuesday night, my throat itching and my nose dripping, that I realize my limitations.

A plastic bag filled with NyQuil and DayQuil and tea, Vitamin C–every remedy sold in a drugstore–sits on my bedroom floor.

My aching limbs–my limitation.

It’s when I drive home from work at the end of a mediocre week, when I did mediocre work for a solid forty hours. My incapability.

And the future. Hours upon hours gaining speed. Days upon days driving forward. And me: a passenger in the backseat without an ounce of control.

And the struggle with sin, so hard sometimes that I can hardly look in the mirror and recognize myself.

My body, my soul, my flesh, the world, the devil–everything too hard for me to handle.

I feel as if I stepped into life at the wrong moment, someone shook my hand and said, “Congratulations, you’re the Prime Minister and everyone’s counting on you to not screw everything up.”

And death looming ahead–the greatest reminder of our humanity. Our lack of control. Our utter helplessness.

On a Tuesday night, the Villain seems the most real.

But in every good story, the shadow of the villain only serves to highlight the brilliance, the utter magnificence, the solidity of the hero.

“Since then we have a great high priest who passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Hebrews 4:14-15

Jesus.

Who had a physical body and experienced pain.

Who lived inside the construct of time–the hours and hours, days and days.

Jesus.

Who battled temptation–minute by minute.

Who lived under expectations. The scrutiny of the world. The plans of His Father.

Jesus. Who faced death.

Who died.

Who conquered.

On a Tuesday night, in a lonely basement, at the end of a silent dirt road. On a Tuesday night, I know one thing.

Jesus, the Conqueror.

Jesus in me. Hope of glory.

A new body.

A sinless world.

Death erased.

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” 2 Corinthians 4:16