golden clay

(Re-posting from this time last year.)

I think birthdays are reminders that the clock keeps turning. It’s grey today, the clouds layered together above the dark brown trees, leafless. I remember Novembers like this and not like this all the way back to when my memory started. Somehow, while I was dragging a sled that was too heavy for me up that little ramp on the farm that we called a hill, sometime when I was sprawled out on the trampoline under a canopy of August stars with my best friend, sometime when I was standing at the top of a mountain trying to reach for a piece of the sky, sometime…it ended and slipped away. Everything is in pictures now or in pictures that we never took.

Tomorrow I turn twenty. I didn’t go to Ecuador and work in an orphanage, but I stayed in Canada and sat on the edges of bunks and prayed with First Nations’ kids before I hugged them goodnight. I didn’t write a Christian book for teenagers that changed the lives of millions, but I stood up with three friends, heart hiccuping, and told my youth group, just thirty of them, how God said He was big enough to use the weak to change the world.  I didn’t go to university right after high school because I didn’t have enough credits, but I went to a Bible School where the Rocky Mountains outlined the sunset, and I realized I could say ‘no’ to sin.

Isn’t this how it goes? God uses our moments in the way we’d least expect.

My list is full and my bucket is empty. Nothing went as planned.

I am perfectly happy.

The last few weeks of November bring a whirlwind of deadlines, like the snowflakes madly flying around in circles outside my window. It’s easy to be blind sometimes. Or when the car won’t start and I really don’t have time to call every auto-repair shop in the city—but I knock on the door of a neighbour who lives a few doors down from me. I’ve never met him before, but he looks through the glass with his grey head tilted sideways, wondering who I am. He comes out into the cold in his giant coat, the hood covering his wrinkled face. He recharges my car’s battery; it’s the best excuse to make a new friend.

All I can whisper is “Hallelujah” as I drive away. The clouds have cleared and the sun illuminates the snow-covered stores, houses, and fields as they fly past the windows of my car. All this light, clarifying to my soul: immeasurable grace.

My parents text me and say that winter has made a guest appearance on their farm, thrown its’ white coat onto the ground and made itself quite at home. I look through the cracks in my blind, from my room in the city, at the green grass and the cloudless sky. The sun glints off the cars driving past. I don’t fully believe them until they text me a picture of the snow-covered ground.

That’s what he says to us that night as we lean back in the squeaking chairs in a basement classroom on the campus of my university; he says that unbelief is the main problem. We all want to see Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead. We want someone to print out a three-pound book of historical evidence that the Bible is true. We want the guy with the letters after his name to sit us down and walk us through the logic for Christianity. We forget that these things have been done and we still don’t believe.

The problem for our doubt is not lack of evidence, but lack of faith. Isn’t it the strangest thing that we can have the truth laid out before us in perfect order and still dismiss it?
Like this…

I doubt that God can answer prayer and then, after much prayer, He saves the life of this girl in the hospital who was at the last stop, or so we thought, before death. And six months later, He saves the life of this man whose heart rate rose above the normal digits. Still, I’m wondering, some mornings, if my prayers do anything.

Faith is not a fluffy notion.

Ephesians 6:16 “Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.”

Faith is a good defense. It’s something on which one can get a firm grip and hold up securely in battle.

God said.

He sends me this video, reminding me of this verse. “Let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). Lately, I’ve been a Christian stuffing myself with chocolate and lattes and then trying to run my fastest 7K.

Encumbrances have specific names. Maybe names like jealousy, lust, gossip, that book that’s garbage, that song that shouldn’t be on my playlist. So, I start writing them all out on little pink flower sticky notes and taping them on my wall, so I don’t forget that it’s not okay to sit around and stuff my heart with unhealthy things, so I don’t forget that I desperately need Jesus.

I want to let Jesus clean my heart, so I can run, run, run faster than I’ve ever run before and farther than I’ve ever gone.

https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/0elhYaESJkY&source=uds

(Last Sunday, a speaker reminded me that God is Truth. A year ago, he shared the same message. I’m re-posting some of my revised thoughts from that time.)

The pressure builds somewhere in my chest and pushes a lump into my throat. My professor points at the sentence on the white board and claims that it revolutionized man’s thinking from belief in a Creator as the source of all knowledge to belief in man as the source of all knowledge. I stare at the board, lines blurring, and swallow hard. Descarte’s statement glares at me: “I think, therefore I am.” Her square glasses outline her eyes as she makes eye contact with each student around the room. She tells us in clear, sophisticated words that this declaration defies the Christian idea that is stated in Genesis 1: “In the Beginning was the Word…” She points her finger at the class and challenges any desire we may have to ignorantly choose to hold onto traditional beliefs and claim Descarte’s statement as untrue.

I look around the classroom, trying to catch anyone who is shifting uncomfortably in their seat, but they all calmly watch the professor, some with their cheeks resting in their palms and eyes drooping. The professor explains that man is the subject of language, the beginning of knowledge, and the absolute truth. Then she goes onto describe how Descarte’s statement can be complicated in that Man does not know what he is thinking and all that he is thinking all the time. She scratches another statement on the board: “I think, therefore I am not where I think I am.” She continues to talk, but I’m lost in thought.

So, the subject of language and of life is ‘I’, is man. That’s the problem with this world. We stake our morals, our worldview on a dis-unified statement. By my professor’s own assertion, Descarte’s statement breaks down into dis-unity. Anything that is not unified cannot be true. The binary opposite of truth is a lie. A lie is something that is crooked, something that is inconsistent, and something that changes. The subject ‘I’ of Descarte’s statement changes based on every person that is signified by that pronoun. Every person has varying morals, different ideas of right and wrong. If we base our lives upon the inconsistency of man’s ideas, our world will fall apart. We DO base our modern world on the reason of man and it IS falling apart. So, where do we get truth?

I remember what he said to us a few weeks ago, over lunch, a bunch of students eagerly leaning forward in our seats, wanting to understand the Bible better. He told us: “Define truth without God.” Silence. The only plausible explanation for an absolute truth is based on something or Someone that is unchanging and is perfect. God is the only Being that I have ever known to fit those criteria.

I don’t have a PhD. I am just an undergraduate student with average grades. I stand confidently on this: I know Whom I have believed.

Sometimes when it’s late in the afternoon and the only progress I’ve made during my three hour study session at Starbucks is one sentence typed onto a Word document, I try to remember what really matters. When its Thanksgiving weekend and I’m sitting in a tractor seat, trying to be a good farm girl, and I make a mistake farmers don’t make, I look up at the stars and let Him bring me back. When my piano teacher tells me I just barely passed that mock exam, I walk out into the cold Tuesday wind and let it tangle my hair and wake me up.

Life is not about what we do. Life is about Him. What we do is for Him.

These words my dad tells me every few months over the phone or in the glow of the kitchen at midnight run through my head and get stuck in my heart. “You only have to please one Person, Kate.”

Life is perfectly simple.

It is right around the time when the headlines are flashing ISIS and Ebola. Everyone is waiting and wondering and watching. The world is going mad. And I’m reading Daniel: prophecies about Alexander the Great and the antichrist.

Daniel asks what we are all wondering. Why why why? “O my lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?” (Daniel 12:8) When I read the answer, I want to sit back on my bed in the early morning light and laugh and cry. “Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined, but the wicked shall act wickedly” (Daniel 12:10).

The world is in labour, its birth pains growing. We’re human and the timeline for the future is foggy. We’ve flipped ahead in the Book and read the end; God wins. His purpose is what it has always been: to purify us for His glory.

The world is going mad and we’re wondering if the scales for the cost of following Christ in North America will tip. Carrying our cross will not be silent treatment at family gatherings for sharing the gospel, but it will be a choice for inevitable death and pain. Daniel gets his answer and I get mine. Christ will refine us no matter what.

Pain is purposeful. Persecution is purposeful. His plans are perfect.

The end brings Hope. Forever.

The two of them return to the campsite, eyes wide.

“The canoe has been moved,” they tell us.

We all stand around the picnic table in the center of the propane lamp’s glow. I grip the fishing knife in my sweater pocket, thinking the canoe could not have moved by itself. I feel vulnerable in the light and my mind starts playing high speed games with the shadows.

We cook the spaghetti nervously, dismissing the subject. She tries to make a lighthearted comment and we all laugh accommodatingly.

We go to bed and I wake an hour later, voices outside the tent. My whole body quivers as my muscles tense. I hear something slide across the end of the tent and I’m shaking her shoulder but she won’t wake up.

Fear has got me in its vice grip.

The voices fade and I remember again the story I taught in Sunday School a few weeks before about the invisible army of angels surrounding the enemy army. God is unshakable and I am in Him. I fall asleep right away.

Fear runs away with his tale between his legs.

I lean back in the swivelling chair, trying not to fall too far backwards. I see Paris in all the paintings, photographs and collages in my professor’s office. He’s a man of the world. I remember what it’s like to be back at university and to restart caring about stacking my personal success and experiences into the biggest tower I can build. “Treasure” gets muddled in my mind.

My professor tells me about his discoveries of a mythological goddess and the feminist ideals she represents. I try to let it go over my head.

We discuss the writing class.

“Do you hate anyone, Kate?” he asks.

“No,” I say.

“You must be a saint then. Writing is a way of taking revenge for many writers.”

My worldview is so alien to him. Forgiveness is a rare concept.

Before I leave, he says, “Try not to be too much of a saint in class.” Goodness isn’t much admired.

“I’m not a saint,” I mumble. Not according to his terms. I remember later that I am a saint because I am sanctified in Christ Jesus.

Darkness hates Light and I feel the pull to join the mob on the wide path because I want to please my professors and my classmates.

By Monday afternoon, I’ve made a decision. I pull open the doors of University College and chuckle to myself. I’ve still got a bit of a rebellious spirit. I’m a saint through the blood of Jesus. I’m going to live like one whether anyone likes it or not.

 

The end of summer creeps closer as the days begin to shrink. God’s faithfulness weaves itself like a thread through each month of the past summer. He was my comfort in May when I held a dying man’s hand. He was my friend in June, blocking the shadow of loneliness. He was my victory in July, fighting my battle with sin. He was my strength in August, lifting my head when I was weary from routine.

He was enough. He is all I need.

Sometimes, though, I feel like a child, palm open and one candy left. I only have this. Sometimes, God is my last resort. I only have Him. As if God can be added to an assortment of other fulfillment when He is all in all. To only have Him is to have everything.

God is not just all I need, He is all I want.

I only have One. My open palm overflows.