Ready, Set, Wait.

As someone who has spent the majority of her walk with God single, I have heard some variation of “Don’t worry about (insert disappointing situation here), God has someone so special out there for you” thousands of times. Usually in response to frustration about a failed relationship attempt or unrequited crush. I myself have been guilty of saying it to other people, and for that I’m feeling all kinds of convicted right now. (Very VERY important side note: if you have said it to me recently, I am in NO way judging/upset with you. It didn’t even occur to me as something I shouldn’t say until about 40 minutes ago, and I am as guilty as anyone. If anything, I hope this causes you to question it and seek for direction from God about saying and thinking this Christian Colloquialism!)

On the surface, this is a great thing. It has roots in trusting that the Lord has better for you than you would willingly choose for yourself. I think this is absolutely, completely 100% true. God always has and always will choose better for me than I choose for myself. But shouldn’t my response to both good and bad be “the Lord has better for me in all things. Better for me right now, better for that guy, better for my life and heart and future” because Jesus and following his will is ALWAYS better for me, not because there is some mystical guy who will be the best guy I’ve ever met that the lord has been hiding in a room I have yet to discover? That is entirely too much pressure and hope placed on this poor guy who I hope is not putting that much pressure and hope on a future me.

The point is, in all situations, I want to respond with “your will be done, Lord”. Not because some guy, somewhere, is better for me. But because the Lord’s plan is always better. I don’t want to, in even the slightest capacity, place my hope in the existence of a “better” guy. I want, I need, I was created, to place my hope in the fact that God is best, and he loves me and wants best for me. 

Because honestly, even if said perfect-for-me guy exists, my hope and faith in God and his plan will still be vital long after I’ve met Mr. Perfect. There will still be frustrations and hurt and disappointment, even with someone like him in my life, and I don’t think I could ever be satisfied, even with someone tailor made for me, if I didn’t have a heart that longed for the will of God to be done in my life. This idea that something better lies ahead, again, comes out of a place of truth. We, as people who love and follow Christ, are headed for the best possible place after we leave this life. But we are not guaranteed better in this life. And I don’t want to hope or long for better in this life if it distracts me from following the Lord and ensuring that as many people in my life as possible get to be with the Lord as we leave these bodies.

I want to be a Ruth, in my willingness to follow God, I want to say “where you go I’ll go, where you stay I’ll stay, your people will be my people”. If that means that there is no better career, better house, better man, better “life”, so be it. I don’t want the temporary comfort that comes from trusting in something that is found in this life. Because, as I fail constantly at loving Jesus, so too these earthly, leaky comforts will fail me. I’m not called to live for the “better things” in life, I’m called to give myself and my life away and trust that God will bring the best things without needing my help in the least.

I hope this and things like it, that have become common-place church talk, begin to make you uncomfortable, as they’ve been making me, so that you and I can both continue to be stripped of all hope and worth not placed in God.

Have you ever had a moment where you were faced with a misconception you didn’t even know you’d formed? When, faced with the truth, you have the wind knocked from you, feel your world tilt and get knocked down for a bit. This was a fairly accurate description of my week this week. I had a tough conversation with a friend on Tuesday, and she opened my eyes to a very large blind spot I’d had for awhile. I don’t think she even realized she was doing it, because we weren’t talking about this topic at all, but I had a nice large cup of insta-conviction, and have spent almost the whole week holed up at home. In part, hiding from the fact that I’m going to need to rediscover what my walk with God looks like, and in part processing that I’ve managed to get it so wrong. Again.

I am a goal oriented person by nature. Some call it tenacity, my mother calls it stubbornness that I apparently got from my father, in either case, I have been known to be pretty relentless when I want something or get an idea in my head. I make lists, I check them off (or at least push them off until tomorrow). I’m great at breaking down huge problems into smaller ones until I can accomplish whatever it is…I often feel like I’m trying to be the little old lady in that Shel Silverstein poem that managed to eat a whale, one bite at a time.

This has served me well, but it has also provided many a opportunity to attempt to become goal focused with Jesus and my walk with him, when I’m called to live in the present and surrender my goals for my day and my life. I’m fully aware of that fact. What I wasn’t aware of was how distorted my view of relationship with Jesus had become. I let my goal completing nature convince me that I would, at some point, become “fixed”. I would surrender my dirty, broken and crappy to Jesus, and then some day would come, and I would just always live in him, and not be broken at all anymore. Beyond that, I would just be healed of all of my struggles and never struggle with them or be faced with temptation again. I misconstrued the viewing of the beautiful tapestry Jesus longed to make my life into with false-comfort that I could one day achieve beauty on my own. If you can find that in the bible, please let me know…because part of me would love for that to be true.

Unfortunately for that part of me…I can’t find any biblical basis for that. Nowhere can I find that after loving and living with Jesus, you become perfect and are the single person in the world who doesn’t struggle and fail. At least not on earth anyway…and yet, I think I chose to see the redemptive beauty of God and that role in my life as a list that needed to be checked off. Struggling with lust-check. Fear of relationships and that I would turn away from Jesus like I did before-check. The desire to please people and find worth in their opinions of me-check. Broken relationships with people and family-check. Fear of money-check. Broken self-image-check. That once I checked them off, I had hit a check point. Do you remember the old Sonic video game? You’d be running around, completing the mission, and at some point in each level in the world you were in, you’d hit a check point. If you died or failed after that checkpoint, you didn’t have to start all the way over, didn’t have to face anything that fell before that point, you just started over there. I attempted to apply that same principle to my walk with God. I let myself believe that because I’d surrendered things and Jesus had taken them and beautify them, that I couldn’t dirty them again.

Don’t get me wrong…once you are healed of something, you never have to live in that again. But that does not mean that you can’t wander back into it and pick it up. It’s the beauty and horror of free will, we can always pick our sins and our dirty life back up…but with Jesus we have the freedom that allows us to not have to pick it up, ever again. With that freedom comes the knowledge that in my own understanding, in my own pattern of responses, I will pick dirty pretty much every time. It’s only through surrendering me, my scars and pain and my tendency to choose poorly, to Jesus, and let him lead me and change my heart, that I ever pick the good, the right option.

I think that the peace and comfort that comes from knowing that you have been freed from that sin, from that hurt, from that lifestyle should be enough that you don’t fear falling into that trap at every turn. But only because you are looking to Jesus and how live in constant relationship with him, and want to live your life in a way that brings him glory. Only because you accept your brokenness and let it pour out of you as humility and awe of God. If you’ve been healed, claim your healing! Live in the freedom that Christ brings, but never at the expense of realizing that you will, even with all the striving in the world, never come to a place of being “all-fixed”. After all, if we ever could be all-fixed, why do we need Jesus? That reduces him to little more than a self-help plan…and that is a shamefully insufficient identity.

It’s a bit depressing to think about. That I will never come to a place when I can cross everything off the “Things needing attention in Hannah” list. But it also means that I don’t have anything to “live up to” but Jesus. There is no true standard of righteousness we can ever strive for on earth, but him. I recently had a conversation with my sister, in which she expressed a fear of disappointment that she would strive to be “good enough” and be religious enough, and not make it. She worried that she would never come to a place of having the right answers or measuring up to what we as christians have defined the standard of our paltry attempts at holiness to be.

I had the audacity to tell her that I would never be disappointed in her for trying to live like Jesus and failing. I honestly thought that I meant it, but I don’t know how I could have held that up when I had come to view my own salvation and restoration from the Lord as an attempt to reach that standard. To be the perfect person who needed no more help. 

Lord…I am so sorry. I love you so much, and I am so undeserving of relationship with you. Forgive me for ever seeing any part of my walk with you as a means to end. I genuinely desire you above all else, but I am sorry that I was blind to the ways my heart and my mouth were differing. Abba continue to reveal to me the ways I am blind to my wronging of you. I long to stop grieving you, and if that means that I get to be heartbroken with the awareness of my own oversights, so be it. Forgive me.

I can’t help but wonder if the call to surrender our life and our possessions is more for our benefit than simply “Christian Duty”. Some of the most generous and sacrificially loving people I know are the people with next to nothing. Have you spent much time in homeless communities? In my experience they are some of the most generous people, making sure that though they all have little, no one in their circle has nothing. In the New Testament, the poor woman who gave her two coins was regarded as more generous than those who gave extravagantly but with a showy heart. I wonder if by being willing to give all that we have to other people, we get a taste of true community, true generosity and learn how to really love like Jesus. 

If we are told that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend, and we hold life in much higher standard than possessions (or at least our own lives), shouldn’t we be giving our money, our stuff, our time, our food away without a second thought? 

When we let that generosity be tainted with a sense of duty, have we wandered into 1 Cor 13, when it says that I can speak in tongues, I can give all I have to the poor, but if I don’t have love when I’m doing it, I’m not doing anything?

I want to be generous when it hurts and costs me. I want to live in community full of people willing to lay down their possessions, their time, money, and very lives for people Jesus loves. I am so tired of a life and a culture based on furthering me, and making myself richer, smarter, prettier, funnier, more appealing. I long to love in a way that makes no human sense. I want Jesus to invade my every moment, my every decision. I want the church as a whole to want that. I want to walk wholly in the will of God. I want the Spirit to blow my mind in the way that he moves, and I want to cease grieving him. I want to live and love so radically for Jesus that the only explanation is God and his working in my life. I want to want all of this even more 20 minutes from now than I do right now. I want to share this hope and weird optimism with the world. I want people who feel they have no hope and nothing better in life to realize that Jesus is hope and longs for better for them. 

I don’t even care if I end up in a dietetics career, if I get into a good internship, if I land that perfect job with a “perfect” husband, my “perfect” christian children, and my safe little bubble. I want to love Jesus, and love people he loves. 

Can I really have come to a point in my own heart, in my own walk where I truly desire Jesus above all else? 

What heights of love, what depths of peace

When fears are stilled, when strivings cease

My Comforter, My All in All

Here in the love of Christ I stand

Abba help me to never lose sight of this place for very long. I know I will lose sight of it at times, I will pick up my striving and you’ll lovingly pull me back to here, but I don’t want to leave for long, for here I find myself in constant awe and peace in your presence. I am so overwhelmed by and undeserving of you. 

I was raised in a Pentecostal Church. If you’ve ever experienced the charisma first hand, you know just how much emphasis is placed on the Holy Spirit moving, and frankly, how freaky it is. I’ve been raised in an environment that not only encourages the spirit to move, but waits in expectation, and yet I’ve been a skeptic. Oh sure, the presence of God can fall, and I love when it does, but I have never seen the spirit move like this or prayers have such power until recently. Oddly enough, it wasn’t until I left the Pentecostal church and started attending a Covenant with Presbyterian influence church that I have begun to embrace the power of the spirit.

I’ve recently been surrounded by community that surrenders control to the Lord in ways I have never experienced. And it’s convicted me to surrender control in ways I have never before. And pray harder, seeking God’s will instead of my own selfish ends. To be aware of God and the Spirit in ways that six months ago I would have raised an eyebrow and politely nodded at, all the while assuming that these people were crazy and had let God focus take over just a little too far. 

Can I stop for a moment and be horrified at myself? Sure I don’t think I would have ever admitted I thought people had let God in too far, that they had surrendered too much, that they followed with too big a trust. I just didn’t intend to participate. I am shamed by the stark and painful truth in those words. And so here I am…on the other side of the “doing crazy things because I’ve been “led” by the Lord” fence, and I am utterly disappointed in days when I do what I want instead of surrendering the day completely. 

I see the fact that prayer is powerful. Surrender is powerful, the moving of the spirit in ways that I can’t even comprehend can move mountains, strike people dead and raise them up from death. Have I limited God to only being able to answer prayers that are naturally logical and in ways that I follow and quantify? Have I come to the mountain that I want and need to move and began to unpack my own tool kit of demolition tools? Where did I begin to ignore the fact that the same power spoken of the New Testament is more powerful than any force of nature or all of the laws of physics? I tried to make God logical, justifiable by human standards, solvable, horrendously simplified. If I had faith at all, it had to be a starved, minuscule version of what it can be. I’m curious why I couldn’t see how wrong this was before, and I can’t help but think it’s because I created an us and them in the Word and the Church.

Sure, they have to give up every thing and follow Jesus. Sure they couldn’t bury their dead rather than leave everything and follow him, they could raise the dead, cast out demons and afflictions, and heal the sick. We can be comforted by the palatable Jesus. We can be redeemed to look all shiny and pretty up on the shelf of “Fixed by Jesus and on display”. We can conveniently fit the whole church service into 90 minutes. We can have a private faith,  we can save the speaking in tongues for people who are charismatic and not us. We can hear the stories of the moving of the spirit and be skeptical if it can really happen. We can pray for huge things, and then do everything we can to make sure it happens. We can trust when situations fall within normal and logical.

Oh Abba…I am so sorry. I know that heart is not of you. That is a pharisee heart. The heart of one who will come to the edge of the boat, but lacks the trust and faith to step out on to the water. The heart of one who knows enough of the bible and of you to feel secure, one who imagines that coming to a place of letting you in too far even exists. 

I want…I need, faith that defies human standards and logic. I desire a heart that never knows “enough” of you, or of surrender to your will, scary as it may seem. I want to have consistently less of my logic and more of complete surrender, complete faith, complete humility and trust. I want your Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

Last week I re-read Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. The ways I could rave about C.S. Lewis are too many to count. The man was brilliant and came to know and love God in the face of too much worldly intelligence, knowledge and skepticism. I read Screwtape as a young teen, and wasn’t at a place in my worldly knowledge or in my walk with God to fully appreciate the depth and wisdom behind his words. This time around, I had a pen in hand and was “amening” and underlining in just about every chapter.

As I was reading, a quote struck me and convicted me. To preface, you have to understand that this book is written from one demon, or tempter, named Screwtape to his nephew, who is also a tempter, about his nephew’s “charge”. So it’s a bit reversed logically, in that when he says “the Enemy” he is talking about God, and when he says “Our father” he is talking about the devil, and that all of their “plans/desires” for the human race are to our detriment. So, Screwtape is writing to his nephew about God’s plan for man and the present, past and future. 

“To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too — just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the morrow’s word is today’s duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present. This is now straw splitting. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do. His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him.

But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future — haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth — ready to break the Enemy’s commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other — dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.”

I often find myself hoping for and looking to the future as though it has answers today does not. I want to believe that everything that I don’t like or understand about myself or my world will be made right in the future. I’ll feel prettier, more loved, be wiser, kinder, more gracious, more “ideal southern belle” in nature. And yet…is that of God? C.S. Lewis seems to think not.

So, as I’m reading this and preparing, or more honestly, realizing at the last minute, that lent is about to begin, I was faced with a difficult conviction. I live too much in the future, and as Lewis has pointed out, that is least like the eternity God wants me focused on. Can I live within the confines of what God has for me today? Can I trust that this act of surrender will mean that God gives me time to get everything I need done in the space of 24 hours and then some, and that if I don’t get through all of my to-do list, the world will not stop spinning? Why not? 

This is definitely not the typical “no chocolate/no tv/no Facebook type of lent season for me. I’m not even sure if I can do it, but I know that God can, and that if this is where God wants me to go, he will help me train my heart and mind to be focused only on what God wants me to do today. Obviously, this means that I still have to do things like go to work/class/study etc. And I don’t think that this means that I can’t make plans beyond today, but I can’t live there. I can’t daydream or hope or long for future children/spouse/career/house/pets/me. I also think it means that I can’t procrastinate, because what I’ve been given has been given to me today. That kind of eradicates the “I’ll do it tomorrow” mindset.

Basically, this lent season is about killing the very basic nature of my flesh. To long for a better tomorrow and to avoid the parts I don’t enjoy about today. No big deal right? I hope this lent season is as difficult for you as it is beautiful, and I would love it if you’d pray for me as I embark upon this flesh killing adventure. 40 days of being present….merp.

“Then he looked at me though tears in his eyes and said, ‘I wonder at some points if I’m being irresponsible or unwise. But then I realize there is never going to come a day when I stand before God and he looks at me and says, ‘I wish you would have kept more for yourself.’ I’m confident that God will take care of me.’ When God tells us to give extravagantly, we can trust him to do the same in our lives. And this is really the core issue of it all. Do we trust him? Do we trust Jesus when he tells us to give radically for the sake of the poor? Do we trust him to provide for us when we begin using the resources he has given us to provide for others? Do we trust him to know what is best for our lives, our families and our financial futures?” - Radical by David Platt

Does that hit as close to home for you as it does for me? If you want to have your comfort and sense of security that comes from money in the bank and plenty of things at home robbed from you, I recommend this book. But be warned, if you are truly reading it with an attitude of humility and are willing to have your eyes opened, it will make you sick to your stomach, and will force you to question your priorities and the difference between true necessity and luxury. I’m currently battling this desire to give away everything I own so that all I have is Jesus. If you know me and know my love of shoes, and of teas and of other material things, that should surprise you. It definitely came as a bit of a shock to me.

I’ve spent the last year and a half releasing things to God on, what has seemed to me, a really large scale, learning to trust him in things that are scary and unknown, but I have omitted this call to care for the poor. I have so many shoes, shades of pink nail polish, scarves, and other lovely things that aren’t necessity, and I can’t help but ask myself how many people I could have shown the love of Jesus to with that money? I’m by no means saying that buying things for yourself is bad. But buying things for yourself and even people you love at the expense of caring for the poor you are privileged enough to not have to regularly coexist with? (Please re-read that before you get offended on the behalf of the poor man…we are blessed to have housing and means so that we aren’t living on the street or in the projects near the impoverished. It is a privilege) That’s wrong. And it’s been me, for pretty much my entire life.  

I grew up giving things I didn’t need or want anymore to thrift stores and to people who needed it, but I can’t really think of a time in my life where my generosity really cost me. I support through compassion international, and it meant that I didn’t get to spend quite as much money eating out, or that I couldn’t go to see quite as many movies each month. If I felt the belt tightening, it wasn’t by very much. And I was able quiet the call to give generously and radically to people who couldn’t, in and of themselves, be a benefit to me. I’ve been a goat. (Matthew 25: 31-46) I’ve paid my tithe, I’ve given my offering, and I’ve scratched the surface of Jesus’s call to extreme generosity and called it good. And I’m horrified and, honestly, more than a little disgusted at myself. How on earth have I been able to claim that I love and follow Jesus when I have ignored his loudest and simplest call? To love my neighbor as myself. 

We hear this preached constantly in churches. But we must not be listening. Because I was not, and I think the American church in general, has not been obeying this call. My heart aches at the pain Jesus has to be feeling on behalf the overlooked, the oppressed, the heavy-hearted…and his frustration with people who love him, or who claim to love him, that aren’t willing to stop overlooking. Does this mean that we need to live beyond the means God has blessed us with, by continuing to spend in excess on ourselves, and then appease our guilt by upping the amount we give to others as well? It can’t. This transition has to be hard. It has to cost us something. We have to, I have to, stop looking at the money in my possession as mine. This money is no more mine than my life is, once I decide to surrender to God.

And yet, I’m in a position where I can’t give it all away. I can definitely give a lot more away than what I have been. I can cut down to necessity, and put myself further down on my priority list. But I currently have no option but to spend obscene amounts of money on finishing with schooling. I ache at what else could be done with that money, and yet I know it would be foolish to jump with both feet into this concept and call of loving others recklessly if I’m not listening to God as I’m doing it. I’m grateful but not relieved that God doesn’t call all of us to give everything away. I’m glad that he loves us enough to give us excess and comfortable seasons in life, and entrusts us with the tools to love the least of these. I’m frustrated that I’m not being given the call of the rich man to give everything away and follow Jesus with nothing more than the clothes on my back. Most importantly, I want to be seeking and searching for God’s will in all of this. For the ability to live in a country and place that is so blessed, and to live freely in that blessing, but to live even more freely in the overwhelming generosity of Christ.

I want to truly love like Jesus, and I never want to respond like a goat again.

The last 24 hours have been some of the strangest of my life. I thought I knew fear before yesterday morning, and then I heard that people had been shot at my old high school, and that I couldn’t get ahold of my mom or my baby sister who were both on campus. It was the most helpless, horrifying, bone-chilling moment of my entire life. 

For the first time I truly understood the need for the holy spirit to translate my aching groans and cries, because I literally could not form words. My only thought was that I needed to get home, needed to hold my family tightly. Thankfully, my family wasn’t harmed physically, and those who were are expected to make a full recovery, but I will never forget yesterday. Or how I literally felt my heart sink as I walked out of class at 10:00 and saw that there had been a shooting. 

As I struggle with anger and this sense of numbing apathy for the world, I am reminded and comforted that my joy and my strength do not come from my surroundings or my situation. They both come from a God so much bigger than all of this, a God who orchestrated so many little things about this. Ensuring that students and teachers and staff knew what to do in the case of an intruder, and were instructed and trained the very morning of the incident. That three men would be selfless and brave and help the injured while talking down an angry and hurt young man, that no death came out of this incident, that reason could eventually reach the young man with a gun, that my little hometown would come together in an unbelievable way to love and support each other. 

I am astounded at the grace shown by my sister and other students who were on campus yesterday, and see evidence of God’s grace everywhere, even when I don’t really want to look for it. Even in the face of human brokenness, there is love and beauty and redemption, shining their bright lights into the darkness. I wrote a post a few months ago about wondering if the need to be right was worth the cost, and I am convinced more than ever that loving whole-heartedly, both our families and those around us, is far more worthy than winning any argument or making any point. 

Abba, please continue to show me the evidence of your holiness, goodness and grace, even when I’m not sure I want to see it. Lift up the families on both sides of that gun, bring peace to the halls of the high school, and the homes of everyone affected.

The Christian Doctrine centers around the fact that a man named Jesus, who we believe is the son of God, lived 33 years, 3 of which he taught about God and a change in focus (that is, to still focus on God, but to leave the quantifiable righteousness behind in favor of accepting Jesus and his message) and direction for his fellow jews. During this time he performed many miracles, changed lives, and was eventually made to die a demeaning death on a cross. Three days later he rose, lived among the disciples for awhile longer and then ascended, sending the holy spirit in his place. We then believe that through loving and trusting Jesus to live through us, we are made a new creation in Christ.

Except that sometimes, I think we choose to be an old creation that’s had some work done. An old thing with a face-lift if you will. I know I do. I let God have this and that in my life to make new, let him transform me, though not without struggles, one thing at a time. I am still me though. I may pick up new spiritual gifts, and areas I am gifted and not so gifted in, but at the end of the day I still tend to react certain ways, am still comfortable and competent in areas that I’ve got pretty well mapped out. I have always been good at school. I’m analytical and tend to be really great at manipulating the system in my favor. I’m opinionated, and frustratingly stubborn, I tend to spend a decent amount of time with my foot in my mouth, I love to read and learn and cook. But I think I forget that to become the new being in Christ Jesus the New Testament promises me, I have to let the old thing I was die.

As in, really and truly die. They don’t define or describe me in the least. I can’t just repress some bad things, and highlight some great things about me, or become more benevolent and open my mouth less, even though when I am tired or distracted I am often just as cranky, to the point and talkative. That is not becoming a new creation in christ! That’s going on a Christian diet. I recognize that to become more like Jesus I have to cut out the bad in my life, to be healthier I have to be disciplined and focused, letting God bring out the beauty and repair the broken. But at the end of the day, I’m still me with the same old things I’ve always had, if I don’t let Christ make a new being, a new Hannah out of me. 

It reminds me of my childhood home. In the last two years, my parents have consistently been having issues with the galvanized pipe that was put in when the house was built. It’s something that has always been here, and for a long time seemed to work pretty well. Then life threw some unexpected things and earthquakes and unseasonably cold winters at it, and it’s sprung leaks in 4 or 5 different places. And my parents had to cut out the broken parts and fix pipe the first time it broke two years ago. And the issues seemed resolved. On paper, things looked right, and what was broken had been repaired. And then last november, the pipes broke in several more areas, leading to what amounted to over $50,000 in damage and repairs in nearly half the house. And my parents decided to rip out the old pipe, and to put completely new stuff in the parts that had broken, because it seemed pointless to attempt to salvage the broken and obviously inferior pipe. And then over the summer, a part that had been working just fine sprung a leak. My parents were able to cap it off and have plans to go ahead and replace the galvanized pipe that is left in the house. 

How similar that is to my brokenness and letting God have it! I let him have the things that spring a leak, things that have been causing damage. And then when he, in a way only He can, deals with it and puts me to right, I assume I’m okay until something else happens and I spring a leak again. Though my parents were able to change some things about the house that they had been wanting to after 15 years, can you imagine the heartache and stress they would have saved had they just went ahead and ripped out all the galvanized pipe to begin with? Sure it would have been painful, and costly, but it would have been a new creation, and would have saved them what has been nearly 3 years in repairs. Those pipes definitely had upsides, they were inexpensive if any repairs needed to be done on the pipes themselves and they were existing already, meaning they were free to us, not to mention, they carried water quite well. The old me too, there were things I did really well. There were a lot of things I didn’t. Death of the old me means surrendering the things I didn’t do in a way I should have, as well as the things I did right!

How much more do the things that were broken that Jesus fixed outshine the things I did right on my own? Repaired relationships with my family and my God, a love for God that I didn’t understand, friendships with people I never would have met had God not fixed the way I loved people, the people I’ve been able to be blessed by and a blessing to because I was willing to follow God. These things when compared to a few A’s, and a couple of caustic arguments won by wit, overwhelm completely. My broken in Jesus is infinitely more beautiful than my victory in me.

And yet, it’s easy for me to let God have the things I know I’m broken in. Its my victories in me that I struggle with. I should be great in school, the old me knew how to get the grades. The old me also placed her worth and value in how much other people admired and appreciated those grades. The new me has infinite worth in Christ Jesus. The old me equated love with A’s, and the new me recognizes that I am not loved for what I do, but simply for being me. I struggle with the grades I receive in college, with the thought that I am better than what I’m getting. But is that because I’ve been telling God, “I know you want to make a new creation out of me, and I thank you for that, you’ll find a list of what I want made new on the table. These things I need help with, but everything else I can do on my own. I’m good at those, and there’s no need to make them new when the old thing has worked decently well. Thanks though!”? How foolish am I?

Abba, make a new Creation out of me. Remind me that I am not the old me, in my strengths or in my weaknesses, and that to walk this faith journey with you I lean not on my own strength and understanding, but on you and your infinite wisdom.

I recently heard a talk that a friend of mine gave talking about Jesus’s call to love the least of these. I had been with her earlier in the week, and she was feeling pushed beyond her limits. And then pushed some more. She had toyed with the idea of not giving the talk, saying that she needed rest, and just didn’t see how, in the midst of the chaos, she was supposed to give this talk. I completely identified with that, being someone who, as my mom recently surmised, becomes faced with a do it all or do it nothing scenario and will try to do all of everything, every time. God has been doing a lot with me to get me to just stop, breathe and take a quick minute to check in with him before agreeing to do things, that always saying “Sure, I can do that” can be as detrimental as saying no to everything. So when, less than a week before she was supposed to get up in front of 50 people and be eloquent, educated and led by God on a topic she didn’t feel like she had the time to master, she was having some serious doubts, nearly everyone supported her in her decision to just not give the talk and rest. 

Well…everyone but God. Just as she had come to this conclusion, we met for a weekly bible study, where the topic of study, lo and behold, was in Romans. Romans 4 to be exact. The same chapter that says that Abraham was made right with God by his faith, his faith in the fact that God would make good on his promises, despite Abraham’s shortcomings. The faith that God would be who he said he was, do what he said he’d do, in this case make a 100 year old Abraham the father of many nations. Except that he and his wife Sarah were long past the point of child birth years. Abraham believed God would be faithful, even in the face of impossibility. By scientific standards, by the world’s standards, it was physiologically impossible for Sarah to have any children, and by default, impossible to have a nation created from their union. And yet, Abraham clung to God’s promise.

I think every person at that bible study got hit with that message in a unique way, but at the end, my friend spoke up and, with a heady sense of peace coming from her, said that she would believe God in the face of the impossible. That during the study, God had been telling her that she couldn’t take this week off, that he was calling her to give that message. It didn’t matter if she was the most eloquent or had perfected her content and delivery, what mattered was that she was willing to be faithful in the face of chaos and do what God had called her to do. 

I had gotten a different conviction from that study. I’ve recently been struggling with finding my place in my community. I’ve outgrown some roles that were really comfortable and routine for me, and I hadn’t found exactly where I was supposed to be plugging in. I was frustrated and disheartened by God’s apparent silence for weeks, until about a month ago, when I felt like he was calling me to love and facilitate the community I had come to treasure so much. On paper, that sounds simple. Love people and hang out with them…I do that anyway, check in that box, ready for the next task God. Except what once was my tight-knit community of 30 people in Catalyst, has grown to anywhere from 60-75. I work 20 hours a week, am taking 16 units of pure upper division science, with labs, and still try to find time to do simple things like laundry, see my roommate, clean the bathroom, and call my mother every week.

How on earth am I supposed to love all of these people? I get tired just thinking about it, and here God was, placing this frustrating desire in my heart to pour out love and gracious community with no end in sight. Hadn’t God just been working with me to not try to do all of everything, every time?  I must be misunderstanding God and what he is trying to tell me, because I don’t see how this is possible, and surely he wouldn’t want me to invest myself beyond what I could possibly keep up with my schedule, I don’t have the patience, the stamina, the time, the effort for that. And yet, every time I mentally went on this rant…all I heard was God saying “Trust me. I do.” To which I would reply, God I do trust you, I just don’t see how you can use me like that. “Trust me. I do” But God, have you seen my schedule? Don’t you know how I tend to get in over my head and melt down? “Trust me. I do.” Seriously God, something so big? I thought you had a plan for me that involved taking on less and less of the big roles, so that I could focus on loving you. “Trust me. I do” If you are like me, that goose-bumped you several times over. After 2 weeks of God saying, “Trust me. I do” I finally came to a point where I said, okay. God I have no idea how you plan to use me in this, I have no clue how it will look or how it will happen. But I want to want to trust you whole-heartedly, even in the face of the impossible.

And wouldn’t you know, that next week had 7 days full of, God I can’t possibly get everything done on my own, I need help. And I got everything done, even though it seemed totally impossible. And then that wednesday, I went to a small group, and talked to a good friend of mine about how she was feeling overwhelmed and didn’t see how God could be calling her to give a message she didn’t feel she could prepare for. And then we both were hit where we sat by God’s working to orchestrate that exact message at a time we both needed it. The following Monday, she gave a talk on Jesus’s love for the least of these. And she was eloquent and peaceful, but she was also letting God have control. And God used that faithfulness to be able to “put my finger on” what had been eluding me for weeks. 

She said (paraphrase here, I can’t quote someone exactly to save my life) that we read this call to love the least of these, and we look at a broken world full of the least, and we get so overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of it. We recognize that even if we could reach them all, we can’t fix them all, and we get discouraged. We miss the fact that God is calling us to love the person in front of us. Not the crowd beyond them, not millions of people who are less fortunate in means than us, but the person God has brought before us at this moment in time. And then, when we’ve loved them like Jesus loved us, we will probably go our separate ways, we may never see them healed or restored, but it isn’t our call to fix them. Our call is love them. To show love to the broken as if we were loving Jesus himself. When we have loved that one person, look to God for the next person he brings in front of you, to show this nonsensical love, and love them. And the next and the next and the next.

It was the most beautiful depiction of how Jesus loved I think I have ever heard. And I felt the lightbulb go off over my head. God wasn’t calling me to love my entire community at the exact same time. He’s calling me to love and encourage and spend time with the person in front of me. To show love and help them connect and immerse themselves in this community I love so much. I may not be the person who ultimately makes them feel like they want to stay, or get to be the very best of friends with every single one of them, but that isn’t my call. My call is to love them like Jesus loved them. 

That kind of love is contagious and it’s beautiful. Thankfully, none of it depends on my own strength and ability to be loving and generous, it rests solely on listening to the father in the face of full calendars and impossible situations. To hear your own “Trust me. I do” and believe that he will. 

With the start of November comes more Christmas anything than I know what to do with, really cold mornings (which means I can load up on scarves and wool coats and adorable hats, I really really really love fall), and the knowledge that Thanksgiving is around the corner. A few years ago, my family started being intentionally thankful for something every day of november. Initially, I took this concept for granted and half-heartedly found things that I was kind of thankful for, and posted them to facebook. As I’ve learned more about God and me and the way that I’m supposed to be a medium for God’s love to be shared, I’ve found that the most meaningful interactions and moments are intentional.

That sounds counterintuitive, because God is often spontaneous and serendipitous, but I’ve found that it’s the moments when I am intentionally letting God have the run of my day and my to-do list that I end up in those situations where I can love and be loved the best. God, being who He is, finds ways to bless me in the days when I am not intentional in my surrender too, but the more of my life that I release, the more aware I am of Him, and his little nudges alerting me to my every-day role in the Kingdom.

I’ve had seasons of my life where I have not been intentional. I’ve had friends because we were neighbors/classmates and we generally got along. I’ve cared about people and things because they were close to me currently, and they didn’t anger me too often. I’ve worshiped God when I was in a place of worship, conveniently turning off the desire to be in communication when I wasn’t in a place deemed Godly. I’ve told people I loved that I loved and was grateful for them when I felt like it or when they had done good things for me. I have given forgiveness because I was feeling generous, and withheld it when I wasn’t. I’ve shown kindness sometimes and anger others. I’ve been respectful when in a good enough mood to remember and feel like it, and I’ve honored people in authority when they weren’t asking me to do anything I didn’t feel like doing. I’ve been thankful when I felt guilty for having more and when others were being openly thankful, and I’ve been begrudgingly-generous when it hasn’t cost me anything. I’ve let God have control of things that weren’t all that important to me, because I didn’t really want to have them anyway. I’ve been, for much of my life, very un-intentional.

Being un-intentional is easy. You do things when it’s convenient, you love people when it’s convenient. You don’t really have to go out of your way for anything, and it’s really easy to be selfish and self-absorbed. You also tend to attract people who are equally un-intentional. The concept of true community is foreign, it’s pretty much impossible to grasp the love that Jesus has for you and for the world, and you end up being lonely and un-fulfilled. You are the one stranded version of the new testament concept of a three stranded cord, vulnerable and easily broken. 

Depressing right? And yet, for much of my life, it didn’t seem worth the sacrifice. I went back to Taft a few months ago and met with my high school mentor. I spent over an hour just talking with him, talking about where my heart was, the changes in my views of God, my family, my world and myself. He at one point made a comment that I used to be an expert at keeping people out, and that I thought I was preventing them from seeing my brokenness, when all I was really doing was cutting myself off from people who wanted to love me. Being intentional with community and people in my life, means that I’m vulnerable with them. I’m open and laid bare, with the knowledge that they have the option of hurting and rejecting me, but they also have the ability to accept and love and embrace me. It means that I can’t pretend I don’t see the hurt and the pain in those that I love and the world Jesus loves and not want to do something to help. I can’t be a friend of convenience and expect a community of love and support. I can’t withhold my thankfulness, my love and respect and honor of my family and those in authority; I can’t hold back my forgiveness when I’ve been forgiven of so much more.

Living that way means that I am constantly inconvenienced. By Jesus, my friends, my family, my community- interacting with them means that rarely am I able to stay in what is comfortable and easy. It also means that in moments of heartache, frustration, and even joy, I am able to inconvenience them too. And that’s precious to me. I wonder how much more meaningful our relationships would be if we acknowledged and were grateful for our inconvenient friendships. As the holidays are quickly upon us, I am finding that a year of this kind of friendship is so much more impactful than a shiny gift on December 25th.

This year, above all else, I am thankful for my inconvenient God and the people in my life I am blessed to be inconvenienced by.

A few months ago, I watched a video in which the viewer is instructed to count the number of passes between a certain group of people. A gorilla walks on screen in the middle of this, and because the typical un-prepared viewer is busy counting passes, they completely miss him. Completely miss a giant dancing human in a gorilla suit.

This weekend, I went on retreat with my fellowship. I’ve been struggling with a sense of disconnectedness, and wondering where it is I belong in the new group, and so I anticipated retreat being the solution of all of these problems, I would get to know new people and build similarly wonderful relationships to last year, and then BAM I would no longer feel disconnected. Except that I spent the retreat with a sinus infection while being in charge of meals and trying to make sure people were fed and willing to cook and clean up afterwards. Don’t get me wrong, there were definitely fun parts, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was still very much disconnected. Both in that the message wasn’t something I felt like I was totally convicted by, because God has spent the last year working on me with it, and that I just am at a bit of loss as to where I fit in in this group. I came home really bummed, and feeling like the weekend just didn’t quite live up to my expectations. My focus was on how God was going to use others to bless me this weekend, and I was disappointed when I didn’t see any evidence of emotional high and renewed vigor for my faith-community.

Except that while I was busy watching for metaphorical passes, God was bringing a giant dancing gorilla right in front of my face. After leaving the retreat, I discovered that several people I had had conversations with throughout the weekend had been encouraged and convicted in one direction or another, partly due to something I did or said. Their responses to me were a bigger blessing and conviction than anything I could have gotten from a speaker at a retreat. I was frustrated that God didn’t use something in the messages delivered this weekend to spur me to growth, and in typical God-fashion he used my own oversight to teach me a difficult lesson.

How often do I look at a situation God leads me to and expect him to act in a certain fashion, only to discouraged when I don’t see his actions play out in that path? Have I been saying, Your will be done, as long as it looks like this? How many giant dancing gorillas have I missed, because I’ve been expecting God to move in a certain way? How many blessings and convictions and lovingly-given teachable moments have gone completely over my head, because I had too narrow a focus when it came to God?

Don’t misunderstand, I know God can do anything. But I forget to remember that God can do anything through me. I use my own obvious inadequacy as a standard for what God can do through me. It’s easy for me to look at the night sky, or at the beautiful shores of Lake Tahoe, and marvel at what God can do. To look at my own healing brokenness and be amazed at the wonder of God’s restoration. But it is an entirely other matter to look at me and marvel at how God uses me to bless and convict and encourage people and then uses that to bless me. Even to type that feels conceited. But if I really know that God can do anything, with anyone, it stands to reason he can use me in the same way he can use a Egyptian Palace run-away with a speech impediment to free a nation or a shepherd boy to kill a giant.

If you have followed my blog much in the last couple of months, you know that I have recently entered a new season of my life. A time where things that used to work beautifully don’t quite fit anymore, and I am transitioning from the Hannah I used to be, to the Hannah that God has planned for the present. I have been at a time where I needed to look at the people in the white shirts, and count the passes, even if it meant missing the gorilla. I needed to be involved in communities where I was being fed and challenged and grown in a very straight forward manner and had very distinct areas of pouring myself out. Except that in this new season, I was still trying to use my old perspective. I knew that God had spent the last year of my life blessing and speaking to me in a certain manner. That was wonderful and quite comfortable, but it doesn’t quite match up with this new season.

I recently went in and got a new pair of reading glasses. I’ve had reading glasses for as long as I can remember, and over the years my prescription has changed minimally, meaning that most all glasses were interchangeable in terms of use. This year, my prescription changed pretty drastically and if I try to use the prescription from one or two years ago, I get headaches and tire my eyes. I’m trying to use a prescription that used to work perfectly with the way my eyes used to be, on eyes that aren’t in that same state anymore. I’m trying to use “glasses” that were made to see passes, in a time of my life when I need to be seeing the gorilla. My perspective of God’s filling me and pouring me out fit for the way my life and season used to be, but trying to use it now is leaving me disconnected and frustrated.

Thankfully, perspectives and seasons and reading glasses aren’t necessarily permanent. I’m sure once I get used to seeing the gorilla, God will reveal something else I’ve been missing, and I will once again be faced with the choice of changing perspective or feeling frustrated. 

“You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of dust

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of us.

You make me new, you are making me new

You make me new, you are making me new”

As I was having my quiet time this morning, I flipped ahead for a minute to see what was coming next, and I saw that I am less than 20 pages from the beginning of Matthew. I set out to read the whole thing, from start to finish (well, from the start of the New Testament and then through the Old), because I felt like I couldn’t really tell people the good news if I hadn’t read it all. 

I look back at the growth I’ve seen in myself in this last year, and I can’t fathom how God managed to do it all, with the majority happening with next to no help from me, and often without me even realizing it was happening. I’m also struck by how much my perspective on the faith has changed. I remember when I first rededicated my life to loving Jesus, I identified so greatly with the sinners, the people who knew that they had nothing to offer and were amazed that Jesus was willing and wanting to love and die for them anyway. I catch myself feeling so much more like a pharisee these days. The messages that convict me and hit me the hardest are usually those that Jesus aimed at the people who had grown comfortable and filled with a sense of mediocre self-righteousness in the Jewish community.

Where I once felt like the prodigal brother, coming home in desperation, I find myself feeling like the older brother more often than not. It’s not that I don’t want people who are lost to come to faith, either again or for the very first time, I just get so wrapped up in me, I forget to feel the joy of the Father.

Last week in my bible study, we discussed Romans 3. (Unlike my Jonah post, I won’t rehash it for you, but if you aren’t familiar with this passage, you can read it here .) In Romans 1 and 2, Paul has stated, several times, that the gentiles have fallen short of God’s glory, and in the end of 2 has started to turn focus to the Jews. I’m sure that the Jews in Rome had to be thinking, “Well of course they do” up until this part of his letter. Then, he shifts focus, and tells the Jews that they have all fallen short of God’s glory too. That not one of them is good or righteous or truly wise. That the same God that has loved and redeemed them time after time is also the God of the Gentiles, and that Jesus’s sacrifice covers it all.

I’ve read this chapter, I’ve read this entire book, more than a dozen times. And yet, every time, I have not made the comparison between myself and the Jews who had been doing all they were supposed to to fulfill the law’s version of righteousness. I’ve definitely heard the “all have fallen short” part of the sermon, and knew it applied to me. But last wednesday, I heard, and really pondered, the part of the sermon meant for those who were trying to quanitify righteousness. Do we, do I, as people who are confident in our salvation, forget that grace is sufficient and try to supplement our own “safety net” with good works? Works are great. I think that the more we love Jesus, the more we have this insatiable desire to live and love like him, but it is all too easy to try to fulfill that desire by doing things that can be measured, both by us and the world around us. We pick up our crosses of “Christian Duty” but forget to remember that Jesus’s yoke is light, not because it isn’t full of hard things, but because he tells us we don’t have to do it alone.

When I first became a Christian again, I had so many things that would pop up every single day that forced me to turn to God and cry out to him in desperation. It wasn’t a matter of laziness or lack of wanting, it was simply that I could not face my mountains alone. There was so much of my life that looked like Mountains, I had no choice but to look to God, to beg him to hold me tightly through the paths that were steep and scary and looked to me like they couldn’t be crossed. But eventually we crossed those paths, and there were less and less mountains in my life. And I had fewer and fewer occasions that forced me to cling to God.

[Side note: It occurred to me the other day, that in my life, the faith required to move mountains often shows itself as the willingness to keep walking on a path God has put me on, regardless of mountains that loom, and trust that God will either move that mountain before I reach it or will move it/deal with it/break it down upon arrival] 

I’ve talked about child-like faith before, wondering if child-like faith looks like being in awe of God in all of the little ways that it’s easy for adults to miss, like the trees and the stars and all of the things that can fade into the background. But I think that it has to also be an apt description of the behavior we should show here. Children rely on their parents, whether they admit it or not, to reach things on the top shelf, to drive them to their various commitments, to protect them and keep them safe, to guide them through hard and scary events in their lives. A child (to a certain age anyway) doesn’t ask themselves how their parents are qualified to lead them, or if their parents will lead them into danger. They just trust that their parents are able to keep them from falling, and when they do fall to pick them back up and kiss the pain away. Then we grow up, and we learn that we have to be self sufficient. We have trouble switching between the self-sufficiency that normally comes with age and maturity with our parents, and with our Abba father.

I have recently been having consistent issues with one of my teachers, and I find myself getting more and more frustrated with her. I have used just about every technique I know to keep my mouth shut when I don’t feel like it, and to attempt to fulfill her requests. I come closer to rage with her than with any person in my life right now, and I have run out of ways to remain respectful, let alone show the love of Jesus to her. Yesterday, after a particularly bad interaction, I was nearly in tears and had called my mom to vent and be frustrated, and I finally started to talking to God about it. I have often complained to him about her over the last few weeks, but yesterday, I came to a place where I said “I trust you. I trust you to be who you say you are, and that you’ll love me and still make something beautiful from me, even if I don’t make the A I want in this class. I trust that you’ll help me get through this, and do so with a grace that goes far beyond what I feel like showing. I trust that you are bigger than this, and that I will emerge victorious, even if that victory isn’t what I think it should look like.” The peace that came was instantaneous. I had felt so keyed up and stressed and frustrated for nearly 3 hours, and just the act of telling God I trusted him did away with it in less than a minute.

I have this little “bag of tricks” that I use with most people and situations. And they usually work for me…but it gets really easy for me to want to use these tricks instead of exercise that simple and difficult act of faith that is trusting God in the midst of the storm. It’s easy for me to trust God when I see a storm brewing, and to trust him when he’s brought me out of it, but I find myself leaning on me all too often in the middle of it.  And it’s this admittance of behaviors that forces me to recognize just how much I play the part of Pharisee. I, like the ancient Jews, have behaviors and practices that get me through the day to day and leave me feeling righteous. It’s easier for me to carry the burden of “Christian (or just Righteous) duty” than to respond with trust and faith. The prodigal’s trust that the father would welcome him back, even if only as a servant, is far greater an act of faith than my older brother yoke of duty.

I am overwhelmed with gratitude that the God of the gentiles, the God of the sinners is also the God of the self-righteous, the pharisees and the God of the older brothers in the world, and that his gift of grace is still just as sufficient and free now as it’s always been.

The story of Jonah and the whale is one I heard often growing up. If you didn’t, I’ll give you the run down of the childhood version. Jonah is a prophet in the old testament. God tells him to go to Nineveh, where the people were committing absolutely atrocious acts of sin, and tell them that unless they repented, God would wipe them out. Jonah, feeling a dislike of Nineveh, didn’t want to go there, and jumped on a ship in the opposite direction. God is not pleased that Jonah is running away from God’s direction and sends a huge storm that scares the sailors manning Jonah’s ship, and they freak out and ask Jonah who he is running from. He admits that he’s running from the Lord, the creator of the wind and the rain, and they throw him overboard. He is swallowed by a giant fish, three days later he is spit up on land. He goes to Nineveh, tells the people God’s words about their behavior, they all repent and lament and worship God. Jonah leaves and sits under a plant in the sun. The end.

It’s a great story, and is quite popular with children’s ministry. You are able to teach that God does miracles, that repentance is necessary, that he protects those who love him, and that sometimes, doing God’s work is hard and requires you to do things you don’t really want to do. But then you read it as an adult. And, if you’re anything like me, the emphasis is no longer Jonah being swallowed whole by a big fish, and staying alive (which as a science major, with basic understanding of digestive systems, is baffling to me) for three days, instead it becomes a lot more about Jonah’s attitude throughout the whole story.

The adult version leaves me a whole lot more convicted and, yet again, recognizing how very similar I can be to the pharisees. The story starts out matching up pretty well with the children’s version, Jonah is given a word and he runs. He gets on a ship, and God sends a storm. This storm is threatening to overtake the ship he is on, and the sailors are all praying to their respective gods, Jonah is sleeping down in the hold, and one of the sailors comes to where he is and basically shakes him awake, reprimanding him for sleeping through such a storm and telling him to pray to his God, in the hopes that they’d be saved. On the deck they are casting lots to see who sinned and caused the storm, the lot falls to Jonah. He confesses what he did, and tells the sailors that to stop the storm they have to throw him overboard. They refuse and try to fight the storm even harder, only to be brought to the conclusion that they have to throw him overboard, but pray to God to not die for Jonah’s sin and to not be held accountable for what they deem Jonah’s unavoidable death. The storms stops, and the sailors immediately repent and believe and worship God. Jonah gets swallowed up by a fish, and there’s almost an entire chapter on his prayer to God. He repents and tells God he will serve him in whatever he asks, gets spit up on the beach and is told to go to Nineveh again. So he does. He gives the word, the whole town repents and God changes his mind, withholds the wrath Jonah spoke of and instead gives mercy to the people of Nineveh. This is where the adult version deviates from the child-friendly version. After God spares the people of Nineveh, Jonah gets totally ticked off that God withheld wrath. He rants at God that he would rather die than have what he predicted not come true, and that he avoided Nineveh because he knew that God was eager for redemption and would withhold the justice they deserved. He then plops himself down on a hill outside of the city, waiting to see if they’d be destroyed. (Hello adult temper-tantrum) Because the sun is hot, and Jonah is making himself miserable by sitting around until they get destroyed, God causes a plant to grow that gives him shade. Then the next day, God causes the plant to die. Jonah gets so hot and angry and fed up that he, once again, says that he’d rather die than live like that. The story ends with God asking Jonah why he feels he can be angry for the death of a plant, and not expect God to want to spare the lives of over 100,000 Ninevites. (Paraphrased Jonah 1-4 NLT)

So much of this book smacked me in the conscience and the heart. When Jonah jumped on the ship to run away from God, he brought other people into his mess with him. The sailors should not have had to face the brunt of God’s frustration with Jonah at all, and yet they were put in a place of danger because he ran away. Then, once they were told of what they had to do to make the storm stop, they didn’t feel they could just throw him out, so they fought harder. Finally, they knew that if they didn’t try it, everyone would die, and prayed that they wouldn’t have to die for what he did and that it wouldn’t be their fault if he dies. How often do I do this? Do we, when we run from what God wants for us, bring other people in that have to deal with the mess we made? We leave them with the option of going down with us or having to turn us over the consequences of our own actions. These sailors hardly knew Jonah, and they couldn’t stomach the thought of throwing him to face his own troubles, so how much harder would it be for someone who loved him? How much hurt do we, do I, cause the people that love us when we resist God? And how on earth have I not recognized that I can hurt people I love while I’m so wrapped up in avoiding God?

The one that hurts the deepest though, how often do I have Jonah’s attitude? Do I look at people who don’t know Jesus and, in the deepest parts of my heart, feel reticent to share the Good news, because I know that grace is sufficient and that they can be redeemed? Jonah’s attitude is appalling, but I’m not sure it’s all that uncommon. I admit that I often look at behavior of others that angers or annoys me and comfort myself with the knowledge that they will get what is coming to them. Isn’t that what Jonah did? I kind of think it would be like looking at Hitler and his Reich or Stalin and the KGB, and having the chance to share the love of Jesus. Would you really want them to have the same sufficient grace that covers our sins? I think we hear about the atrocities they commit and take unfortunate comfort in the thought that they are rotting in Hell. But what if they aren’t? What if they heard a Nineveh word and turned from their sins before death? What if we get to Heaven and see Adolph Hilter talking with Jesus? The thought of that makes me angry and a little sick…so it’s not hard for me to understand where Jonah was coming from. 

I also noticed that Jonah gets angry with God because God called him to give this big, harsh word that he didn’t really want to give, and when he finally gave it, it ended up not coming true because the people repented. Jonah got angry because he felt he’d done a whole lot of hard work for nothing? How many times have I felt called to plant a seed, to say something or do something for someone, only to feel like nothing came of it? I grumble because I had to go out of my way and my comfort zone to do this stuff God called me to do, and it didn’t even make a difference. I just looked stupid. And I’m embarrassed…teach me to ever talk about what God wants me to talk about. That scenario sounds really childish…but I think if we are being honest, we can easily think that way too.

Once again, I am amazed at the enigma that is my Abba father. A God who will cause a storm and being eaten by a fish to get one man to follow his calling, is the same God who desperately wants redemption for all people. A righteous, often wrathful, yet indescribably loving God. A God that loved a whiny, childish prophet, a handful of loyal men with simple faith, a city of broken sinners, and brought teachable moments out of the smallest things. 

A God that is willing and wanting to do the same for me.

School has started for me, and it’s been interesting trying to balance work and school and labs and still see the people I love and call friends from time to time. I feel rather lame for feeling like my plate is so full, because I’m pretty sure people have been balancing hefty school schedules with part time jobs since the dawn of time…or at least the beginning of college, but this is the first time in my life I’ve ever had to work consistently while going to school. And, like many new things have been for me in these last few years, it’s rather hard. Most days I love it. Some days, I just really really really really really really REALLY miss sleeping. And laying on my couch watching 30 Rock or Paula Deen marathons with my roommate. 

It’s these days that I’ve found myself prone to some whining. Several days ago, I woke up, at an hour that I firmly believe should not even exist for anything other than slumber, and I was not happy about it. I was not happy that my time with God meant that I had to awaken an extra half hour earlier. I was not happy that I didn’t have coffee made yet. And lo and behold, my devo that morning opened with. “I know you have been traveling up some steep hills lately, and you have been coming to depend more on me. This pleases me. What doesn’t please me is your tendency to complain. This complaining can be become a black hole, tainting your very being. When you are unhappy bring your complaints to me, and let me work through them, allowing me to shift and redirect your focus.” Well hello God. Nice to see you this morning. Quite a wake up call for a random tuesday morning, I assure you.

The more I think about this, because it not only hit home hard initially, it stayed there, the more I realize that I am not good at complaining to God. The whole cry out to God thing…not my forte. Sure I can do it when everything is falling apart and I look and feel like a giant blubbering mess. But when my life, by all measurements that I can see, is so very blessed, I don’t feel like I have the right to complain to God. Who am I to complain, when girls in the news are being killed for things as seemingly simple as speaking out against injustice? Who am I to complain when I go to a great school, live in a nice apartment, have a job that puts money in the bank, and people that love me a lot? So I try to grin and bear it…and find myself complaining to the world about silly things.

I forget that God is big enough to deal with my complaining, and he doesn’t judge my frustrations based on my social standing in life. He does not ever look at the problems I face and tell me, “Oh well…you really need to stop talking, people are starving and you only have to pass some classes and wake up early.” He asks me to let him have my problems, my anger, frustration, sorrow and fear and offers to bear the burden I so willingly heap on myself. But can I really let him bear it, if I am constantly telling myself that I have it so good that I have no reason to be upset? How can I ask him to deal with something I refuse to acknowledge as real?

I find that in my moments of bringing my frustrations to God, he helps me to see them in a different light, or to take peace and rest in the fact that he is God and leave the dealing with of future problems to the future Hannah and the present God. His resolutions of things don’t involve putting my problems down as unworthy. If he doesn’t do it that way, why do I? By putting those things to a lesser “level” of importance, am I really telling God that my every day is too mundane for him, and that I’ll handle it on my own? (Ironically, the same devotional just had a devo about 4 or 5 days ago that talked about the harm in the desire, whether consciously done or not, to separate my life into things I think I can handle, and things I want God to handle. And that real trust means letting him in on it all…mundane and otherwise) Since when is anything too low for God? I mean really…I’m too low for God, and since he obviously wants in on the lowliness of my life, I imagine he’d want in on all of it.

I have come to a point where I want to just pretend these problems don’t exist. I’ve already told God about them, often, and I’ve asked for him to take my care and want and concern of these things away. So if I keep bringing it up, I’m impeding that. And that could be true. It could very well be a situation where God has already got the pieces of that puzzle lined up, and is waiting for the time he has in mind. But it could also be something like that of the Apostle Paul when he asked God to remove the thorn from his flesh. And God didn’t. There was a purpose there, and pretending it didn’t exist would have meant that Paul didn’t reap the benefit (no matter how thickly veiled the benefit may have been) of that trial, of that hardship. Trying to pretend that we aren’t broken with God is useless.

And yet…isn’t that exactly what we do, every time we tell ourselves that we can’t be upset because someone else is worse off? Someone else is more broken than me, so they have a right to be angry and hurt. We are refusing to be vulnerable and bare with God. And if we don’t show him the broken parts, can we ever let him in, let his love, that fixes and heals and perfects, in to the dark places?

One of the things I love about that devotional was that it said that by bringing my complaints, my heartache and frustration to God, he is able to change my view of it. Not that he’ll fix it on command, or that it will magically disappear, but that I will begin to see it, see God, see me differently, when I let myself groan and complain to the one who made me, and knows exactly what I need. And somehow, I think that’s enough.

Tonight, I came home from class and saw the 10 ever-darkening bananas sitting on my counter and decided that I should just go ahead and turn them into banana muffin/bread dough. I pulled out my recipe book and skimmed it, but I’ve made these muffins so many times I think I could make them in my sleep. I had found ways to substitute some variations in for part of the butter and the sugar, and was feeling pretty competent as a baker and proud of my skills in general. I made them relatively fast and went to scoop them into muffin containers so I could bake them, even more pleased that I had not only rocked the muffins, and healthified them; I’d gotten them done in record time. I was nearly finished with the scooping and I got some on one of my fingers and as I was on my way to wash my hands I just decided a little raw egg probably wouldn’t kill me, and I tried some. Only to find it was super salty. I had forgotten the sugar! 

I bake all the time. This is beyond a rookie move, and should have been one of the first things I added. So I spent the next 5 minutes attempting to scoop everything back into the main bowl so I could add appropriate amounts of sugar. What would have been perfectly mixed muffins (No tunnels in my bread!), ended up being over-worked and unevenly sugared…all because I became really confident in my own skills as a baker and forgot to use the instructions I’d been given.

How similar this is to my walk with God. I get into places where I feel like I’ve been doing this long enough, I should be able to muster some small stuff from scratch. I don’t need to pray about that before deciding, I don’t need to consider the Word, I have done this stuff a million times, I could do it in my sleep. Except that sometimes I think I may be more accurate in my sleep…and I end up forgetting really fundamental things like generosity or forgiveness. I forget the “sugar” in my everyday life too!

I am so blessed to have a God who can teach me to trust him more through banana muffins, and that he loves me enough to still make them taste delicious, even with the tunnels and uneven sugar! Kind of like he’ll still use me, even after I end up having to go back and do a poor job at salvaging situations in which I forget to add the sugar to my interactions with people he’s called me to love.