Inheritance.

                                                                                                                          Days before you came, 2010


I live in a city that has not fully developed into a total urban area.  There are small clusters of woods speckled throughout.  Often times I will be driving home late in the evening and suddenly deer or other creatures dart out from trees and streak across my path, confused to find themselves suddenly on hard asphalt, blinded in my headlights. I am always saddened by their existence, trapped in ever shrinking pockets of safety. These wooded retreats are too small and insufficient for them to thrive. They are imprisoned inside small forest islands, surrounded by an ocean of man and all our deathly creation.

I am nothing but one of these.  From the very moment I wrestled my way out of the mother bed I grew in, pushing past the cloth of her own flesh that formed me and my eyes blinked and my skin was touched by air and light, I was a creature destined to live as such.  Aren't we all?  Is this not the cruelty of sin? As now a mother myself I look at my innocent children and I know without any doubt that they too are just as I am. Since the teeth of our oldest ancestors sunk into the knowledge that the garden too was just a tiny island, we have been trapped within a space too small for the bodies in which we were created.

 And yet, as all good stories go, there was hope. A seed was planted in a  virgin woman and it grew into a man. Because He was fully man, He too was given to this world in which the frame of our bodies holds the only promise for safety and joy.  Yet He overcame the world, the trap, the perimeters of damnation. His life carved out a path to grace, and we have been invited to the feast of His sacrifice, to live somewhere outside the curse. His death gave us a new heart, and it is this new heart that is our promise. When we choose to submit it to God, our soul garden has the ability to stretch endlessly outward.  He pulls at the corners and propels the doughy ball of our spirit in His giant god hands. He rolls it out, and it spreads across the broken landscape.

The greatest challenge in this "real estate" war, the constant staking out of the ground that is our inheritance is submitting ourselves back to the creator.  To have true relationship with God, I must pursue Him without the hope of receiving a single thing, other than the extending of my own spirit temple.  Beyond even this, to be willing to seek Him out knowing the probability that it is in His plan to remove  every bit of the strongholds I have created for myself.  I have called upon God for many things. I have cried aloud, but if I am honest, each of these prayers have been in hopes to find ways to reach what I have simply created in my own mind. What I see as home.  Have I truly been willing to leave these tiny wooded prisons and seek the great and unknown forests, the uncharted God lands that I know nothing of?

The habit of creating my own dwelling is the very way that I allow myself to be robbed from the power of His joy.  I can only submit myself again and again, letting God's hand stretch my soul ever outward, so that just as Jesus spoke as  He went to His own death I might be able to say..."the ruler of this world cometh, but he has nothing in me" (Jn 14:30)  When I become broken to my own will, I am fully accessible to the Lord alone, and finally able to see the eternal spaces in which I might call home.


The painting below was completed a couple of years ago. It was created during a time of great turmoil and sadness in my life.  It was entitled, "Together, Alone."  I have often wondered, though I wrote the title, why I had chosen it.  It came to me as I witnessed these fearful, trapped animals bound across the pavement, searching for a place they were created for, but have never found . I have seen myself in their struggle, and I know that there is a greater place to which we are called.  There is a home within, and for me to find it, I may be stripped to nothing, but I am willing that I might be there with Him, never alone.

                                                                                                                    Together, Alone   2010

The Beauty of What Remains.

"The man who renounces himself, comes to himself." Emerson

     

    If we choose for ourselves to be open to marvel within the mere day to day drone, then how much more might we be enlightened by the rare blasts of furious light, seldom caught spaces in which we unmistakably stare directly into the face of God? The delicate occasions, the distant whisper, the slow growing and shrinking of light and shadow...these are the moments to prepare our sight for the brief flashes of blazed wonder.   

      More often than not, these small miracles pass us by without notice, a slight movement in our peripheral that we habitually ignore. As I have begun this experiment of keeping the eyes within open, I am finding the voice and instruction of God everywhere.  Each rustle of leaves in my spirit that I choose to recognize are in fact startling clues to look upward. And without fail, with my gaze lifted I will find extraordinary glimpses of the tree of life.   

     

     

       Painting, being my trade does not always exclude me from these mundane daily rhythms.  Though in essence it is a creative job, there are still deadlines and to do lists that seem unending.  Often times I am obligated to repeat a particular painting method time and again, and the assignments can become as prosaic as any other form of work .  

      If it were not for the recent opening of the eyes in my chest, the ones that recognize the insides of things, rather than the outer arenas of shape and color, I would have once again passed over this secret.  There, right there, in a process I have performed on countless occasions, I caught a brief look, a glimmering speck of God. A piece of His hair perhaps, or a slight movement of His hand.... and I was astonished to realize just how well He breaths through everything.  

      The process is begun like any other. Thick coats of paint are placed on the chosen surface, creating a completed background.  At this juncture, the next natural step would be to continue building color and shape, forming through additional layers of medium a final product.  This is where I take a different route.  Instead, after the foundation is complete mineral spirits are then poured over the painting in a desired shape and composition. The thinner essentially eats through the pigments, congealing into what looks like mud on the surface. Then I wait, and slowly,  with a rag, wipe away the filthy mire to reveal the image waiting beneath.  

    Oh God!  I see! I see you there, rising out of the wet layers, revealing who you are to me, and I want to taste this revelation.  I want to hold it in my dirty, paint doused hands. I want to eat this morsel of truth. How often I have smothered your voice by choosing to stack these blankets of self, never stopping to hear your plea to simply remove.    

    There is so much to squander in my excess. And I do not mean objects and purchases, though they too can become dense coverings, reshaping our identities. What I am speaking of are the intangible additions, the portions of self we create to communicate who we are.  How often I camouflage my soul with shrouds I think others might find attractive, or wrap myself in choices that I believe will make me complete.  How my words alone are deadly brushes, painting images that cover the God within. 

     And yet He still sees me as His father sees me.  Which is the most romantic of all notions, as it is by the very emptying of His own life that He might behold me as spotless and clean. He drained His  body of breath that it may fill up in splendor, the most beautiful painting ever known.  The wiping away of His heartbeat was the only saving grace I might have to live.  How muddy it appeared to those that were there to witness it. His friends, His own mother watched and wondered, wept as the sky turned into coal and death over took Him.  And they waited.  They waited, they doubted, and they lay, surrounded by the dark filth of the unknown.  But then death was obliterated and  He rose to the fullness of every prophecy and was glorified. Yet still I am afraid, still I wrestle against consenting to let His spirit pour over the places inside of me He has asked me to remove.  

     I have begun to see, and with that I have found that the way I have seen is my very problem. In fear of trusting Him I continuously build layer after layer, thinking I might be finding truth.  I take His brush into my own grasp and blindly splatter paint over His plans.  "Plans to proper me and not to harm me, plans to give me hope and a future!" (Jeremiah 29:11)  Are my own agendas better than this? How could they be? And so, today my hope is this..... that I may find the courage to grab hold of this love, the hem of His garment dangling out before me, and with it wipe clear the glass I have fogged, that I might see the glory that waits beyond.  

    It is  His great affection that woos me to kneel, to offer up the hands I have used to build my own towers. I will lie down with the hope that He might tear them away. And when the dust settles, I know, I trust that I will witness the God soaked beauty of what remains.  

This Is Grace.

   

 A fraction of a second and a spill can cost you a months income.  A mere moment I did not pay attention and the wine was splashing over the entire face of my keyboard. I could almost hear the belly of my computer drowning in a crimson bath, soldiers being sucked beneath the closing Red Sea.  I swabbed up the fuchsia puddle and buried my laptop in a huge tub of rice, hoping, praying that this white grained grave would not be its last resting place.
     I lay in bed that night, replaying the moment over and over. If only one frame of my day had been different, a second delayed or pushed forward. One decision holding a different weight or time frame and this never would have happened. Self hatred and anger pulled its ugly mask over me as I drifted off to sleep.  My only hope was in my desperate prayers to God that I would wake up to a functioning computer, merely sleeping in its rice bed.  I almost felt it God's obligation. He saw that it was an accident. He has seen how difficult my life has been these past two years. Surely He would have a little grace on my circumstance. Mend what would be so easy for Him to mend.  I dreamt of broken wine glasses and the inside of grapes, red and flowing, seeping into the floor boards.
         The computer did not even do as much as heave a final breath. I pressed the on button over and over, a gentle push turning into an ugly jab, ending in what made the knob look a bit more like a punching bag than a power source.  I felt the anger burning in my chest climb its little ladders into my eyes, escaping  down my cheeks. Of course God wouldn't fix this.  Why on earth would I begin believing that now??   After all the broken experiences of my life, the split second calamities  that have bled all over everything else in my heart, why did I believe that God would fix this damned computer?  And greater than the computer, were all the memories now locked forever behind its black, lifeless screen.  Every photo of my children's precious lives imprisoned by my one slip of hand.  Even more guilt filled me as I thought of the many times I had written on to do lists reminders to back up the files on my computer.  The sudden realization of the worth  of these visual reminders of my life, my children's lives far out weighed the thought of hassle or strained finances.  My pleading for God to fix the computer changed. I did not care about the cost, I cared about the images that would be lost forever. "Lord will you salvage the heart of this machinery. It's true worth in my life, no matter the price?"
       The computer itself was doomed.  The technician opened the back, took one look and formally closed the coffin.  He asked me to wait up front while he checked to see if perhaps the hard drive had somehow dodged the flood, though he seemed doubtful.  The front of the Apple store suddenly felt like a waiting room in a hospital.  As I waited I prayed for grace.  The cost of replacing the computer was so distant to me now.  I felt I could almost laugh at this little annoyance, made into an insignificant bump by the grave reality that I might never see the fresh bud of my child's new lips, a tiny flower peeping out from white lenin cloth.  I might never again be able to pull my eldest son in my lap and flip through the photographs of his first birthday parties, retelling the stories of each one. Hearing his laughter fold around me,   his white hair tucked beneath my chin. Every tiny shell collected and stored, waiting to be reexamined and adored by the ones that found them. These were the treasures that held any worth.  This was the source of fervor in my renewed prayer.
      And then, as I waited I was compelled to ask myself a question. Perhaps the loss of things is the only way that the Lord can communicate to us what our hearts already know but cannot see?  Could it be that it is by His very grace that He breaks the glass around our hearts, and forces us to give way to these spills? That His own blood pouring over us might drown out what is not important? Washing away the insignificant so that we may finally know what is? Are these lessons worth it? Worth the hassle and the expense that we might be filled with true thanksgiving and fervor to keep alive the deep abundance of the soul?
      The darker parts of my mind, the prideful greedy sects that roam the streets looking for someone to blame would like to say no.  Can I not be enlightened without paying this cost? Why must I lose time and money, experience  heartache and misfortune? The braver mercenaries of my thoughts know this answer.  They march around the walls of doubt and wait for these very signals to attack the enemy stragglers. To take over the cities of my heart, and claim them for the Father.  My clenched fists, holding fast to meaningless objects are freed by loss. I can open up my hands and receive from Him a taste of that which holds true importance. It could not come any other way. I have had these gifts all along, but could not see them.  I knew not love until I thought it taken away.
        All is for grace. Every instant, both exciting and tormenting is existing that we might empty out our cups and make room for the only thing that will ever fill us up.  This is true for every moment. It always has been and always will. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. All I can do is give thanks when I am awake enough to see why, to not let it pass me over by choosing to see the experience alone.  And in those precious occasions that we can see, truly see, we are for a moment tasting lasting joy.  And we know it is true, because it is against every natural instinct or reaction that we have previously bowed low to.
 
      "How we look determines how we live...if we live." -ann voskamp


    The computer technician made his way through the shoppers, and I braced myself for his verdict.  "Good news!" he shouted over the tops of their heads. In his hand was the only remaining piece of my computer.  Everything else had been deemed useless, but the small square metal in his hand was now all that mattered.  "Everything else is lost, but your hard drive was left untouched. It is in perfect condition and can be switched over to your new computer without a problem."
         My hand had slipped and I had watched in slow motion as the glass tipped, opening up its mouth and swallowing everything I owned.  I had tried to clean it up and dry it out, but I was surrounded by death. Only what was dying was never my true life source.  It was by his grace that the encasing be ripped away and for a moment I might hear the good news. For the first time I held the insides of my heart in my hand and it was still alive, untouched by the flood that had wiped away the landscapes that had hidden it. To see it there, outside of its secret places, to be able to hold the unseen, the truly important was worth every penny I had.  And to know that it was unharmed, untouched by my own accidents and slips. The very spill I had cursed myself and God for was instead the opportunity that allowed this moment to occur. This is grace. This is love.  This is God.
        My hard drive was converted over into a new laptop. A new home. Every time I see my computer, something I started out imagining to be a curse is now a priceless reminder. I am once again filled with the hope of joy and all things made new.

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." -Ezekial 36:26