golden clay

Gravel crunches beneath my feet as my breathing slows to match my pace. Raindrops sprinkle my hair. The clouds churn themselves into different shades of charcoal. “Amazing Grace” begins to come softly through my headphones, bagpipes slow and stately. Always, at the end of the gravel lane way, I imagine the whole army of saints standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the throne of God. My shoulders are touching George Muller’s. A few rows behind is the North Korean missionary who was martyred for his love for Jesus. We all kneel together, unified under the blood of Jesus. We cry “Holy”.

I flip my finger back and forth under the tap of the bathroom sink. The cool water is warming up slowly. I look at myself in the mirror; half of my face is covered by shadows. Saturday night moonlight. Squinting, I pretend my reflection is a stranger staring back. What would I think of her if it wasn’t me?

I skim through dialogue in my head from when I sat beside her a few hours before. I wonder if he cared that I stepped on his toes during the dance and whether he understood my lame joke. I question the sincerity of her compliment.

If any other human being thought about me as much as I think about myself, they would be labelled and put in a cage. The blog posts, self-help books, and therapists tell us to think of ourselves, take time for ourselves. I’m certain that is already my natural disposition.

I remember when I spent Thursday nights in a coffee shop with her, racking my brain for conversation topics. I remember when I made him lunch and he never said thank you. I remember long talks in a dark car, smiling and nodding and listening and never being heard.

I spend two hours with her. Then, I spend days wondering what she thought of me, whether she noticed my sacrifice, whether I’ll ever get a chance to tell her all about me. “Me” time is stumbling in the dark and not being able to see what He’s doing in front of us, behind us, and beside us. We expect to recharge our low battery by plugging into ourselves. They don’t tell you that the side effect of “me” time is exhaustion; the battery dies without a true power source.

I realize it as I fill my palm with water and splash it onto my face. My greatest selfless moments are the ones I forget or I see in hindsight. They are effortless with Jesus. I am wearing myself out wondering how I can raise my worth in the eyes of others and I am continually disappointed. Jesus is the One who is worthy of our thoughts.

I rub my face with the pink, fraying towel. I ask Him what He thought about my conversation with her. I thank Him for her compliment. Then, I peel my eyes off of my reflection and I pray for Them.

My life in the light of the cross. No one’s going to be distracted by me when I’m standing in the light of His glory, bright and blinding beauty blotting out my reflection in the mirror. It’s like a camera flash in the dark.

I read about it on the plane, stuffed between my mom and the window. The little girl in Mister God, this is Anna said we look at God through pieces of coloured glass. I take off my hipster glasses and rub my eyelid with my forefinger.

We sat on our red couch and prayed for her healing. God is Healer, we said.

Yes.

We sat cross-legged on my bed and prayed for his salvation. God is Saviour, we said.

He is. Yes.

I’ve always envied the owl; the way he can twist his head so far ‘round and see the world without even moving. I can see God in only one way at a time. I put on different lenses. He’s Comforter today, Healer tomorrow, and Judge yesterday. Then, when I really want to grasp His magnitude, I wear all of my lenses at once. Comforter + Healer + Judge = God. Math is limiting. God is not one thing at a time and He is not a sum total of everything.

All these lenses distort my view. I want to know God with the naked eye, see Him in His fullness. One day I will. One day, the glass will shatter.

She said she needed verses on grace.

He said he needed hope.

I’m shoved against Recognition; I need grace too.

When did I start viewing grace as a word we are asked to define in Sunday School? When did I view it as something that I don’t need?

It’s more than words.

Grace is:

A gift.

For everyone.

Grace is:

A Person.

Christ.

I need it bad.

We’re walking down the sidewalk, debris from winter scattered across our path. We’re stringing the week out in words, trying to make sense of all the pieces and fragments that don’t fit.

“I’ve realized that sometimes you just have to realize that no one cares,” she says.

We’re a depressing pair under the grey sky.

“God really has to be our comfort,” I say, realizing that I should apply that directly to my somber mood.

Ten hours before, crying in the dark turned to crying out to God because, for once, I got it right. The church is built with people. That’s why when fears give way to tears, we have to learn to run to the omnipresent One. Emmanuel. God is with us. We simply can’t hold it against humans for failing to comfort our sorrows, if we have not first sought the ever-available Helper.

Even in the hospital room. Even in the middle of the night.

Psalm 56:8 “You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle.

She says “hi” on Facebook and I’m staring at layers of music theory and the dead skin of the eraser I’ve already used that evening. I actually pause: “Do I have time for this conversation tonight, Lord?” I feel certain that I don’t, so I log off. Five minutes later, my roommate knocks on my door and asks me to pray with her; the matter is urgent. I have time for this.

“The Lord determines our steps.”

I e-mail them to confirm when the event will take place on Tuesday night. My hands shake as I type. I’ll have to stand in front of a lot of people and hear my voice projected to double its’ volume in the microphone. They have asked me to do this and I’ve learned to say ‘yes’ to hard things. Then, they e-mail me again to say they have rescheduled the event; I know I can’t do it that night. I’m a mixture of relief and disappointment.

“The Lord determines our steps.”

They want three hours of my time. I’m about to reply ‘yes’ because that’s my default. I pause: “Is this something you want me to do this week, Lord? Please, show me.” A few minutes later, another lady texts me and says she wants to take me for coffee during the same three hours. I know that is the more valuable choice; God has given me a reason to say that I am busy.

“The Lord determines our steps.”

We make life a crisis filled with decisions that we don’t really have to make ourselves. We close our fist on the schedule we think we should have and end up grabbing hold of stress and busyness instead. If we would just relinquish our plans, we could see the way He works in our lives and “determines our steps”.

Are you looking for revival, for stirring, for change? Remember to pray.

Leonard Ravenhill writes in Why Revival Tarries:

“No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit can be a shopwindow to display one’s talents; the prayer closet allows no showing off.”

“The secret of praying is praying in secret. A sinning man will stop praying, and a praying man will stop sinning. We are beggared and bankrupt, but not broken, nor even bent.”

“In the matter of New Testament, Spirit-inspired, hell-shaking, world-breaking prayer, never has so much been left by so many to so few.”

“Dear brethren, our eyes are dry because our hearts are dry. We live in a day when we can have piety without pity. It is passing strange. When a couple of struggling Salvation Army officers wrote to William Booth telling him they tried every way to get a move and failed, he sent this terse reply, ‘Try tears!’ They did. And they had revival.”

Colossians 2:14 “by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”
Saturday evening, I sift through the week’s moments and I add up my record of failure:

-…

-…

-…thoughts I would never blog

The Judge doesn’t even need to tell me the verdict before I know it. Legal demand: death, separation from God forever.

The truth I base my life upon brings me back to joy in this ordinary moment. “He set it aside.”

Substitute: Jesus.

My sin: nailed to the cross.

My heart rests in His perfect peace as He holds back the battles, the voices, and the demons of the week and of next week and of next year.

“It is finished” (John 19:30). He said.

And it is.

We sit there together, bum prints in the snow. His toque is pulled down over his eyes and he leans his head back, holding it in his hands. The river shoots out from under the ice in front of us, curdling the cold water against the bank downstream. I want to tell him how grateful I am that he took the whole day off to spend with his little sister. I don’t want him to know how much I need him. So, I don’t say anything.

A few days later, I pull open the glass door and run up the stairs in the music building; my backpack makes me hunch forward. Too many textbooks. I meet her blue uniform in the hallway. She smiles at me like she does every school day. She continues to mop the floor and I rush past her. I want to say something about her cheerful smile, her hard work. I don’t want to be sappy, insincere. So, I don’t say anything.

Later again, I pile my layers of coats onto my backpack to keep them off the wet floor of the locker room. I stand in front of a mirror and run a brush through my tangled hair. She comes up beside me and borrows the other side of the mirror to dab her face with skin-coloured cream. I want to tell her that she looks really pretty today. I don’t know her. So, I don’t say anything.

We build our own image, not theirs’. We build ourselves up, not others. Maybe we should take a risk and “in humility count others as more significant” (Philippians 2:3).

I try it out today in the cafeteria. I sit beside her and pick away at my salad, wondering if I should say something. Just as I grab my coat, I turn to her, “You work at Tim Hortons here, right?”

She laughs. I’ve seen her laugh before as she’s filling up our roll-up-the-rims. “Yes.”

“You’re my favourite Tim Horton’s lady.”

Then, we talked and went our separate ways, smiling. A day can be made with six words.

One day the ant was troubled.
He trembled.
He claimed it as a trial.
He trifled.
He claimed it as a tribulation.

His friends came to him.
“Why do you fret?”
“Why do you fear?”
“Why are you frustrated?”

“Oh, friends!”
He wept.
“What if I am not in the will of the Giant of Heaven?”
He whimpered.
“What if he wants me to be at a different anthill?”
His eyes watered.

“Dear Ant!”
They smiled.
“You are an ant,”
They said softly.
“But, he is the Giant!”
They shouted.
“Can He not move you?”