Foggy Thoughts

I stepped out into a world of white, soupy stillness, as if the very air was holding its breath. I love fog.

Fog to me speaks of mystery, adventure. I love the stories of Sherlock Holmes because of the mysteries and the clever ways that Holmes pierces the veil of crimes and clues to arrive at a solution. But I also love the descriptions of London at the turn of the century, of hansoms rattling through quiet streets, the clip-clop of horse-drawn carriages, and the foggy blanket Conan Doyle often describes London nestling under. Read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot for another wonderful depiction of fog, a yellow fog in that instance. 

Fog always gives me a thrill, for it bespeaks adventure and mystery. I feel like anything can happen on a foggy day. A bloody stranger can stagger up to the door and collapse with a cryptic message on their dying lips. A band of bandits can emerge and bushwhack lonesome travelers. Intrepid investigators can track a criminal through silent streets, each a shadowy threat to the other. No gun fire; fog is reserved for daggers or fists, or a chloroformed handkerchief. Anything can happen in fog.

So I enjoyed the drive to church today, as the world disappeared swiftly in my rearview mirror, and slowly parted to reveal only a half mile in front. I turned off the radio and listened for cryptic messages, wishing I could track a gang of bank robbers or embark on a dire quest. I yearned for adventure, mystery. 

And then I realized that life itself is rather mysterious. The future lays enshrouded in mist, inscrutable as the roads today. Who knows what will appear suddenly? Who knows who shall cross my path a year from now, or a month, or even a week? My quests might not hold the import of the Fellowship of the Ring, but what they sacrifice in romance they make up in realism. 

You might argue that, based on prior events, the future won’t be very exciting. Go to work, go home, veg in front of the tube, go to bed, rinse and repeat until the weekend, with an occasional evening activity thrown in. Certainly my life isn’t a thrill ride at the moment. But here’s where the new life in Christ comes in, because He’s got plans, jobs that need doing, and all He needs are hands and feet and voices and hearts. And we are afforded the wondrous opportunity to be those hands and feet, to speak in His name, to extend our hearts to others by His power and love. If we acknowledge Him in all our ways, He will direct our paths, as the Proverb teaches. 

Who knows where He will direct our path? Who know how He will accomplish His will? What if He puts you in a trying job for three years so that, after months of prayer and wondering, a co-worker asks you about Christ? Could you have predicted that three years of swallowing insults and mockery, of refusing to laugh at a vulgar jest, of remaining honest and true even to your own detriment, would be a brighter witness than the most persuasive speech on the cross and the empty tomb? What if He engineered that car accident and the subsequent injury solely so your physical therapist could see you rejoice in the midst of agonizing pain? What if the transfer away from your friends and church and family that you bridled at initially was used to lead to a ministry that you otherwise would never have known about?

How unsearchable are His ways beyond our understanding! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Well, our opportunity is for the Lord to make His mind known to us, if we let Him. And then, who knows what might happen?

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After church I went out to lunch with some dear friends. As I navigated to the restaurant, I was struck anew by the severely diminished visibility that fog produces. It’s mysterious, yes, but also slightly perilous. Common sense advises you to slow down, peer closely at what lies ahead. On a clear day, the location of the restaurant in the shopping center would have been readily apparent. Even though I generally knew where it was, however, I was driving semi-blind. It suddenly materialized and I had to respond quickly to enter the correct turn-off. 

When your capacity to predict outcomes diminishes, you must be on alert. A lasses-faire attitude can produce catastrophic results, as the traffic accidents during the winter prove. Such is life, no? If we sleepwalk through our day, how much easier is it to be blindsided with disaster! The shock alone has devastating effects, sometimes greater than the actual results of the incident. The first time I was fired from a job came on a weekday, not Friday or Monday. In the early afternoon, I was called into the supervisor’s office and told I had been terminated. They accompanied me to my desk and escorted me to the elevator. No warning, no indication, just a 2x4 across the temple. I was emotionally winded, like I’d fallen down a mine shaft. I’d been lazing my way through the job, thoroughly unmotivated to excel, bored to the nth degree. I haven’t had a full time job since, almost three years now. 

The other effect of driving through the fog, like being dropped in a stormy sea, with waves obscuring your vision, is that you have to rely on something beyond your own abilities. Had I a GPS device, I could have followed its directions to the restaurant today, trusting that it would lead me safely and accurately to my destination. So my question is, In what or whom do you place your trust to guide you through the veil of confusion we blithely call Life? The answer should be obvious to believers, but I wonder how true it really is in our everyday lives. Do we rely on Him to guide us to work each day? To complete our tasks correctly and in timely fashion? To direct our interactions with friends, co-workers, beloveds, and the guy at the gas station?

Because I know I’m tempted to just turn to Him when the visibility dips below my range of vision. For simple things like running errands or looking for books in the library, I don’t involve Him because I don’t really need His intervention, do I? I mean, I’m a semi-functional adult, capable of balancing a checkbook (in theory), buying stamps at the post office, and sending emails to my sister Down Under without bugging Him, right? Why should the God of the universe be bothered with whether I should buy a book online or at a store?

But I don’t get to make the call on what things I need Jesus for and what things I don’t. First, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THINGS I DON’T NEED HIM FOR!! Right? If He is my life, then He is my ENTIRE life. Not just the spiritual parts of it, not just the relationships and the struggles with sin. He’s supposed to be in everything. Jesus, when He walked on earth, didn’t separate His ministry from His everyday life. Even when He was a kid, He thought deeply about the things of God, He walked with His Father. And He is the template, the example we are to emulate, remembering that we don’t emulate Him by our own strength and diligence, but emulate His complete dependence upon His Father, in all things. He alone can guide us through the fog, just like someone looking down upon a maze can guide someone in the maze to the center.

The fog, then, is our opportunity to recognize our plight, that we need to be en garde, our senses alert, recognizing the potential for danger and pitfalls, as well as acknowledging our complete and utter dependence upon His direction in our lives. 

Bet you didn’t know fog had so many applications, did you?

Advocate

I recently attended a faculty meeting at the college where I taught. The occasion for this meeting related to the recent restructuring of the administration of the General Education division under which the subjects I teach fall. We now answer to a new supervisor, the chair of the division, who answers to the President and Vice President of Academic Affairs. Perhaps the main thing I took away from this meeting was the sense of definite structure, of a concrete supervisor and ordered practices that are going to be implemented over the next several months. 

One of the topics discussed was grading and homework submission, and as the discussion progressed, what emerged was that the new chair, who was conducting the meeting, was clearly asserting that she was the authority when it came to disputes with students and administration, that the buck stopped with her. We had to justify our positions and decisions with her, but once we did, she would be our advocate when dealing with students or administration branches. My supervisor, who had helped shape the curriculum as it now stands, cried, “Hooray! We have an advocate!” She was overjoyed that someone was going to take her/our side, and that would be the end of it. 

I was struck by this joy that she and others at the meeting displayed on hearing this truth established and emphasized. But I understood; it’s quite a relief to find that someone will defend and argue for you in situations where your judgment and behavior is concerned, especially when it involves those with power over you. If a student accuses you of acting inappropriately in some way, the worst thing to happen is to have your supervisor refuse to support you. I saw this happen to a colleague of mine, and not only did it render him impotent in terms of his class, handing out punishments or poor grades, but it embittered and depressed him, casting a cynical shadow over his view of teaching in general and the supervisor in particular. 

The lack of an advocate can also spread to those who have not been directly affected. I as a fellow student-teacher now understood that my supervisor would not support me if I got into a jam, and therefore had to exercise greater caution and restraint when dealing with my students, especially student of a different racial makeup as that was the circumstances surrounding my colleague’s fiasco. When you know you are on your own, it causes you to harden yourself, to draw inward, to look first to self-preservation before considering the function you are tasked to perform. The implied lesson is clear: if they are willing to cut out your colleague’s legs, you can expect no different. Apart from souring an environment like an office or collection of teacher, it inculcates cynicism and skepticism in any message of support from a higher authority. It also prevents or at least delays trust in a new supervisor who may claim to be willing to support you and your fellows in times of strife. The lack of a true advocate is a dreadful thing.

Just imagine, then, how much worse it would be if we lacked an advocate before God. If our defenselessness in a work environment acts with such corrosive poison, when the stakes are merely embarrassment, censure, or at the worst dismissal, how much more terrible would be our lives if the advocacy for our salvation and forgiveness rested on our shoulders alone? For we often find ourselves in similar circumstances in our spiritual walk; at least, I do. I find myself mired in self-condemnation and reproach for a sin I have committed, reproach that is aided and enlarged by the forces of darkness and the conscience that rightly notes evil. The offense is real, and must be addressed, but the reaction usually speaks death into our hearts. After all, God is holy and righteous; how can He not reject this sin? And in doing so, reject us? Moreover, aren’t we supposed to be saved, freed from the law of sin and death? If so, then why do we still sin? Something must be wrong. And so the script begins a drumbeat of condemnation and judgment that seems perfectly valid to us. The defendant is guilty, Your Honor, and the wages of sin is, well, you know.

But.

“We finally have an Advocate! Someone who will defend us, argue for us! Someone who can counter the attacks of the Law, the devil, and our own conscience! Praise be to Him!” Have you ever thanked Jesus for defending you before God the Father against the tirades of Satan, whose name means “accuser”? Have you ever collapsed (spiritually) at the throne of grace, weary from attacks on your heart, crying out, “Your grace is sufficient, Lord!”? Have you ever rebuked your conscience, quoting the words of Paul, that we are the righteousness of God, having been freed from the Law of sin and death, now under grace? Jesus is my Advocate; He’s on my side. If you’re at all like me, you have often felt like no one was on your side, that the entire world seems united in condemning you (even if it wasn’t true). How marvelous that we now have a dauntless and tireless fighter in our corner, a champion like the knights of old who defends our honor with blood, sweat, and tears. For He paid the bloodprice that all our sins, for all time, are forgiven; as soon as they occur, they are covered and God remembers them no more. Because the blood of Jesus pleads for you and me before God. And that blood isn’t just the death on the cross that reconciled us; it’s also the life that courses through His veins that we now share, that alone can bring us to life. The life is in the blood. 

Do you believe this? What chains would this truth strike from off your heart and mind if you truly believed this and began to walk in it? There’s only one way to find out…

Game Night Profundity

As I was journeying to Game night, I had a spiritual revelation. I almost called it an epiphany, but to me that term always suggested a purely mental awakening or flash of insight. This revelation, which was undoubtedly from the Lord as I shall shortly demonstrate, came at the heart level, the innermost being. A level, I might add, I am unaccustomed to living on, which added to the impact.

To go forward one often must go back first, and so it is with this story. Without droning on about the numerous troubles and tribulations in my life, a great many of which have, recently, been car-related, let me just say that yet another sizeable car repair was necessary, a bill I was unable to pay. Fresh from that, and the three hour drive from my parents’ house, I noted a noise in the car, which in conjunction with the “Service Engine Soon” light blazing defiantly on my dashboard prophesized future disaster (or at least, inconvenience). And I was tense, nervous as I merged onto the interstate; if the wheel came off, things might get hairy. To be sure, the chances of that happening were slim, but I seem to attract mechanical distress like honey draws bees. 

All of a sudden, a burden vanished.

The tension melted away, and inside my mind came the thought, How foolish can you be, to worry about this! If it happens, it happens. Worrying won’t prevent it; all it does is enable you to roll around in miserable self-pity even before you have cause! Besides (and here is where the Holy Spirit chimed in, if He hadn’t been speaking already), if the car does break down, that just gives God the opportunity to provide for you! It’s a chance to see Him work in your life, in physical, tangible ways! Hallelujah!
 

I chuckled to myself, and had a nice cozy talk with Him as my car hummed along. Upon arrival, I found myself cheerful, an alien state of mind for me usually. I can put on a bold face or fake levity, but the heart normally doesn’t overflow with it. Today it was. 

I was and continue to be thunderstruck at this blatantly obvious truth, that my weakness and desperation are merely opportunities for God to show Himself strong and capable on my behalf. How many times have I said this, and read this, and heard this! I believed it thoroughly, but my heart didn’t understand. Plus, what if that’s the reason so many things go wrong in life? What if God allows or causes mishaps because He not only knows it will drive us to Him, but He loves to show off! Not in a braggadocios manner, like a peacock strutting for a hen, but like a mechanic who drives along roads in hopes of coming upon a stranded motorist whom he can assist. God wants us to trust Him, to rely on Him, and the best way to accomplish this is to create or capitalize on situations where He is needed, to prove Himself. Boys love to show off for their fathers lifting heavy weights or demonstrating a killer karate chop, not out of self-aggrandizement but simply because they want their fathers to be impressed, to praise and cherish them. Girls adorn themselves in beautiful outfits and twirl for their moms and dads, eager to hear how gorgeous and captivating they are. Is there an element of this in God? Does He yearn for our praise and approval with childlike eagerness and innocence? Dare we ascribe such simple urges to the Ultimate complexity? 

We even see this in the reverse at times. A father loves the look of awe and respect in his child’s eyes, and he seeks to earn and deserve that respect, if he is a good father. In the same way, couldn’t the Father of all desire to see our jaws drop in wonder at His work? We marvel at nature and the deep mysteries of Scripture, which is right and proper, but what if He wants our wonder in the everyday humdrum of life? What if He wants us to praise Him because an unexpected bill arrived in the mail a day before an unexpected gift for the exact same amount arrives? And in the 24 hours between the bill and the gift, He wants us to praise Him and trust Him that all will be well?

What kind of a God would be like that? The kind that slips in the back door of Creation, in a manger, when everyone is scouring the landscape for a king? The kind that chooses a backwater country, a backwater city in that country, and a simple virgin girl instead of a seat of power and the lineage of Caesars? The kind that walks into Death’s open arms instead of whistling up legions of heavenly warriors? The kind that recruits fishermen and hookers instead of priests and rabbis? Who takes the ordinary, unimpressive things of life and reshapes the world?

That kind of God might.

Dirty Mirrors and Boiling Frogs

I cleaned my bathroom mirror for the first time in months the other day. And before you comment on the life of a bachelor, focus! I have a different point to make. I was and still am startled at the clearer image that glowers back at me when I face it. It brought to mind a verse from that seminal  thirteenth chapter in I Corinthians: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face” (12). 

Apart from the immediate context of the verse, which declares that the imperfection with which we understand God’s love is temporal and will fade once all things come together in Him, another application occurred to me. Bear with me if this is something that you have heard before; I tend to be a slow learner and it helps to process things. Quite often we don’t realize how dirty things have become until and unless we clean them. Mirrors, toilets, cars, kitchen drawers, garages, and so forth; the list is endless. We think that we are perceiving things clearly, that while dirt or clutter may have clouded our view slightly we’re still mostly seeing things as they are. Then something happens to erase the smudges, silence the din, and clear away the rubble, and we realize just how clouded and crowded our senses have been.

And I’m sure you can relate to this, how the imperceptible accumulation over time can slide under the radar, building in the background. We’re frogs in water that are being slowly brought to boil. If the distractions and encumbrances had popped up all at once, in a headlong rush, it would be simple and obvious to recognize and redress the situation. But, and here is where I truly sense the great Malevolence spoken of so often in the New Testament, circumstances conspire to keep us ignorant of the distractions. The darkness slowly creeps over our field of vision until we can’t remember what it was to look into a clean mirror. That vivid image of ourselves, our Savior, and the world is gradually crowded out, by even the most benign and innocuous events of life. Nay, even, dare I say, by the spiritual laps we run, thinking that we are doing good work for God. Not every glass cleaner leaves a clean image afterward. 

It’s death by Novocain, which the Enemy much prefers to a stab to the heart. We are, like James said, people who look in a mirror and turn away, promptly forgetting what we look like. 

What is the remedy? What is the spiritual Windex to clean the mirror? Well, the first step is recognizing the possibility that the image we’re seeing may be marred or blurry. If we just accept the image as reality, then all else is moot. Second, we must consider what the true image is. Depending on what element of your life is being masked, this answer will vary, but generally whatever strengthens your dependence on and relationship with God are the areas the Enemy will try to distort. 

Third, clean the blasted thing! Quite obvious, no? But it’s sometimes easier said than done. Deep wounds and hidden sins can be both painful and difficult to unearth and even more to correct. But by and large the distortions can be remedied by simply turning back to the Word of God and His Spirit. Seek the truth of what God communicated through the writers, and ask Him for confirmation and affirmation. Be sure, however, to always remember that it is the death of Christ for us that redeems us and the life of Christ in us that is saving us. If you begin to drum up all the check marks in your favor in the Ledger, that will only further blur the image. Cast away all hope of deserving salvation or sanctification (I’m speaking to Christians, mind!), and throw yourself wholly at the feet of the Throne. He is the great Illusion-Shatterer. Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

Fourth, rise and repeat as needed. I mean, rinse. Slip of the tongue.