Valerie Hess

I tried to fill the hole

with health and self-discipline

but the emptiness mocked me

despite my buckets full of distractions:

marcona almonds

licorice

chocolate-covered raspberry sticks

cherry coke

leftover vegetable stew over couscous mixed with leftover lentil casserole

smoked mozarella pasta salad

tea

frozen cherries

more chocolate

reading Oprah

checking the Internet for the 30th time

a stationary bike ride–pedaling no where,

not filling the hole that remains gaping and raw,

dug in another time and place.

The hunger is not from my stomach.

I read this book while flying to and from the Middle East. I highly recommend it for anyone who is concerned about the Christians of the East and their communal demise. The East is the birthplace of Christianity; imagine losing a living community of Christ-followers in that section of the world.

In order to understand Jesus’ parables and the Epistles, one must understand something of the way the East thinks. Mr. Dalrymple was very helpful in that respect. As a journalist, he also reports the way many Christians view their situation “under siege” and in some cases, I find myself squirming with those views.

One of the new ideas for me from this book is that Islam is basically a version of the Monophysite heresy of early Christianity. If one looks at the Islamic world in that light, the approach to sharing the Gospel in Muslim countries takes a different approach. If this is true, we are seeking to correct a heresy and not convert from a complete “other.”

I am now praying very differently for my brothers and sisters in Christ who are under so much persecution in the East. And Israel, in their attempt to justify their Jewish roots in the land and therefore their right to be there (according to some of the interviews in the book), is one of the biggest persecutors of Christians today. Imagine going to Jesus’ birth place and seeing only museums and not living communities of his followers!

I encourage anyone interested in a broader perspective on the Church in the world to read this book.

Love

Has anything just stopped you in your tracks? Life is just life, you’re doing your thing, yes a sunrise is pretty, but you are too busy trying not to spill coffee while driving to really stop and pause and spend time with God and thank him for it.

I had this moment this summer where through a completely seemingly ordinary event, I was washed over in the majesty that is around us. I was swept up into a picture of God’s love for me that was so profound that I can’t stop driving people crazy by telling them about it and it continues to be very present today.

I read a book by Susan Casey, called The Wave:  In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Sea.

According to the summary on the Random House website (http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780767928847.html) it is “an astonishing story about colossal,  ship-swallowing rogue waves and the surfers who are crazy enough to seek them out.

For centuries, mariners have spun tales of gargantuan waves, 100-feet high or taller. Until recently scientists dis­missed these stories—waves that high would seem to violate the laws of physics. But in the past few decades, as a startling number of ships vanished and new evidence has emerged, oceanographers realized something scary was brewing in the planet’s waters. They found their proof in February 2000, when a British research vessel was trapped in a vortex of impossibly mammoth waves in the North Sea—including several that approached 100 feet.

As scientists scramble to understand this phenomenon, others view the giant waves as the ultimate challenge. These are extreme surfers who fly around the world trying to ride the ocean’s most destructive monsters. The pioneer of extreme surfing is the legendary Laird Hamilton, who, with a group of friends in Hawaii, figured out how to board suicidally large waves of 70 and 80 feet. Casey follows this unique tribe of peo­ple as they seek to conquer the holy grail of their sport, a 100­-foot wave.

In this mesmerizing account, the exploits of Hamilton and his fellow surfers are juxtaposed against scientists’ urgent efforts to understand the destructive powers of waves—from the tsunami that wiped out 250,000 people in the Pacific in 2004 to the 1,740-foot-wave that recently leveled part of the Alaskan coast.

The Wave brilliantly portrays human beings confronting nature at its most ferocious.”

I don’t love water. I have a reverence for it, but there is so much power, so much unknown, there are so many strange creatures in it… when i am in and around it I am always on guard. I started this book on an airplane, but finished it while in Hawaii, so it kind of started to freak me out. I would go to sleep at night with visions of a huge wave ready to pour over me. Matrix style I would put out my hand and just stay STOP. And the wave would freeze in a perfect arc over my head, just about to crash.

It was a few days into reading this book, learning to surf myself, playing in the water- boogie boarding, whatever, and I realized that this terrifying force of water is made so much more pleasant if turned into an analogy of love. Not seen as some cold waters that are trying to rake my body on the sand when I fall off my boogie board, but instead this visual of mystery of something that is so large and beautiful that I can become completely engulfed. I was praying about this and just feeling blown away by the creation and Ephesians 3:18 came to the surface.

How deep is deep? This ocean is deep…

Starting at v. 16:

¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.

Do we grasp how high is high? Or how wide is wide? Or how deep is deep? It is bottomless- and for as large and all consuming as an ocean feels, or as tall as a mountain reaches into the clouds, or on a much bigger scale, for as large as the galaxy and universe reaches, even that doesn’t describe what is being said here about love. That love surpasses knowledge.

It was like a burning bush, where I was stopped dead in my tracks, taken aback by descriptions of things in this book so big and out of control, yet so relatively small on a cosmos scale. In The Wave, the depiction is that in a sense of being on a boat or an island and facing a huge wave as a harmful force, not a pretty thing- nothing I ever want to have happen. But in the Bible, when you instead use this as an analogy for that vision of love, it sweeps us away.

Going into the Christmas season that really refreshed my perspective. We have a God who crammed himself into a baby’s existence, who came and because he loves us so much died on a cross for us. It was kind of a wow! moment for the shepherds where supernatural jumped out of the ordinary and caught them, washed over them, and lead them to him.

In Ephesians we are told about this love that is different than anything we have ever experienced- it isn’t held hostage by the environment that we are in- it isn’t the product of emotion, or hope, or people or life experiences. It is ROOTED. It is ESTABLISHED, it is in our inner- being.

Not everyone has a positive image of God or love. I can’t even pretend to comprehend this kind of love. But some of us may view God through this lens of unhealthy or hurtful experiences. We keep it at far reach and “God’s Love” for us is that ocean we fear and don’t want to approach, it is a terrible force that rips trees, sweeps villages off their banks, pummels surfers. Or maybe we just understand, like yeah, yeah, the ocean of love, huge- it’s deep, it’s wide, that’s pretty big, I get it, in theory.  But what does it mean to say that God is love and from God comes that love that doesn’t depend on what we do or say, it is not affiliated with something that is going right. It isn’t that when life is good it means God loves us more. Instead these verses are saying there is nothing that can make him love you more, nothing that can make him love you less. Right where you sit at this moment is where it is at. If you really think about it and let it reach your heart, transforming love HAS to blow us away….because it is HUGE!

It is as if Ephesians is a mountain and you are working your way up it to the Apex, which is this text, where God expresses his love. Leading up to it is what we read in the first 3 chapters about his grace and love through his life, death and resurrection, and then beyond that, on the other side of the mountain,  the ways we as a church can actually demonstrate that love.  It is important to continue to remember that apex, however.  The practical ways that we express love are not the starting off point, and we can’t say that his  love for us is in our action or that we can measure love through word and deed. NO, instead, we learn that we don’t know how to love until we know how much we are loved. He strengthens us with his power, through his spirit, which we have in our inner being.  We are rooted and established in unconditional, pure love, and from that, we are called to grasp with all our might, as you would hold to a plank if you were lost at sea, onto how wide and long and high and deep is his love that surpasses knowledge.  And beyond that we are filled, overflowing  and he is at work within us and from that we are brimming with glory for him that spills out to those around it. Paul is praying for all people to grasp this, to be blown away by the sheer magnitude of what we cannot understand. There were pressures in the time to conform to traditions/ways because supposedly that action showed love.  But that was backward, old-order. Instead, here it is saying that overflowing love then translates into action and deed. We need that transformation in our hearts, that agape love, the all encompassing love, or else we are left stuck with a bunch of “should-do” type language/action, all of which are empty. When we are full of life and a knowledge of our own inherent worth, we then go out and transform others…because we can’t help it!

He can use tangible things like people or moments that give us a peak into that mere reflection of trying to understand his love, it is so bottomless. We need to revisit how we approach this understanding of love so that it isn’t us projecting what we think about ourselves onto God, especially as it probably isn’t how he sees us. He just loves us, and genuinely delights in us,  but we need to realize it is out of our grasp. We may not even believe that there is a God to love us, but , he still loves us anyway and all the more wants relationship.

So this is my challenge to myself and to you. How is God speaking to me by the things surrounding me? Is it something as straight forward as a best seller that gets me thinking deeply? Is it through the ways I  see Him at work in my life and those around me, incomplete and imperfect as we are?  I pray that we will back off on our definition of how we think we are loved and instead jump into an understanding from the heart that, no matter what circumstances, things I do, he loves me. Nothing can make that ocean of his love go away.  And I can’t predict or understand those waves of his love, I can only ride them. Life has consequences and that is a different subject, but the bottom line is that he loves me. I have freedom to embrace that and try to know it, though it surpasses knowledge, and share with people in this journey and be in their journey with them, or I can chose to pass.  Susan Casey, the author, said about these surfers in The Wave: “Ultimately, they have to have the willingness to step across the threshold into this element.” It is there, it is surrounding us, and willingness or not it will exist, but I challenges us to plunge in and see what the waves of that love bring.
MAGGIE ROGERS
Snowboarder Guide
Women’s Editor
www.sbgmag.com

Do you want to find yourself being a more radical witness to the goodness of the Kingdom of God here and now? Are you interested in being more effective in living for Jesus but don’t know how to go about it? Well, I have five easy steps you can take to do that.

1.     Live liturgically.

2.     Live without fear.

3.     Be a blessing to all you encounter.

4.     Stay in close fellowship with other Christians.

5.     Live in gratitude.

Let me fill this out a bit.

1.     Live liturgically. Instead of doing holidays on “mall time,” do them according the Church Year calendar. The biggest example here is Christmas does NOT start when the stores start putting Christmas merchandise out. Christmas in the Church begins December 25^th and goes for 12 Days, meaning it doesn’t end in a big sale on December 26^th. The simple subversive act of celebrating Advent for the four Sundays before December 25^th and then truly celebrating Christmas from December 25 until January 6 gets many people’s attention.  Another radical idea is Easter lasts for seven weeks and is preceded by forty days of fasting (a very foreign concept to many) and self-reflection that doesn’t necessarily “feel good.” A truly radical idea is Sunday morning worship is not optional and not dependent on how you feel about it. The question is not “what did I get out of church” but “what did God get out of it”? It really isn’t about you, trust me.

2.     Live without fear. Several times throughout Scripture, angels tell people not to be afraid. The prophets thunder it throughout the Old Testament. Moses tells running Israelites to not do it. Jesus assures frightened disciples after the Resurrection to be at peace. I have been increasingly suspicious in recent years that God means it: DO NOT BE AFRAID. This does not mean we throw caution to the winds and sky dive without a parachute but it does mean that since we know the End of the Story (see Revelation 21-22), we know Who wins. And if we are playing on the winning team, while there may be some significant plays lost here on earth, we can engage the game of life with confidence. Deep-seated confident anxiety-free people tend to get other people’s attention.

3.     Be a blessing to all you encounter. Simply do not return evil for evil, snarky comment for snarky comment. Do not participate in unholy anger, hatred, lack of interest, lack of compassion, or anything else that hurts another person. This does not mean that “tough love” situations aren’t called for, especially with the children in our care or addictive personalities in the family tree, but tough love is still a form of love. Do not stoop to the level that Satan and his minions play on. Play by the rules of Jesus. We know what Jesus would do in every situation (we only have to ask the specifics and not the over-arching principle questions) and it would be the most loving thing. Now if we have trouble discerning what that loving thing is, we turn to number 4.

4.     Stay in close fellowship with other Christians. The idea of an isolated Christian may make sense in a region where people are actively trying to stamp out Christianity and there really isn’t anyone else seeking to follow Jesus but it makes no sense, and isn’t even Biblical, in the region where most of us live. We need each other. So swallow your pride, join a faith community, and remember point number 3. Everyone is fighting a hard battle, despite what it looks like from the outside. Be the blessing to others that you want them to be to you on your worst day. Use their guidance to help you know when you are being loving and when you are being co-dependent and enabling (see number 3). A candelabra will withstand the wind much better than a single small candle.

5.     Live in gratitude. Seek to be thankful IN all circumstances while not necessarily FOR all circumstances. You will exude a lightness and joy that will get many people’s attention. You will also be helping to accomplish point number 3 above.

So there you have it: five easy steps and you are in the category of “radical witness for Christ.”

Disclaimer: These five easy steps are not to be undertaken without first consulting your entire self and making sure you are sold out as completely as you can be for the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ. These steps may not win you friends and may cause you to lose some of the friends and even family members you currently have. You may need to be prepared to take different employment or move to a different neighborhood, city, or country.  Economic changes may also occur. (My lawyer made me put all this in.)