Where We Reside

After sitting through a highly convicting sermon last night, in which I felt totally bruised, I wondered again why I have wasted so much time in the shallows.

My life is composed of spelling lists and shoe-lace-tying lessons, when I have spent many times wondering if I should not be in another country, serving the kids of Russia who have been abandoned to an institution (детский дом, a children's home), not through parental death but outright decision. These are the "social orphans," ninety percent of whom still have at least one living parent: children who were labeled too inconvenient or costly to be reared by their own family.

The waves came crashing in last night. Why do I sit here occupied with parent conferences and paper correcting? What is the point of teaching kids how to use prepositions and protractors? Why I am swamped in the trivial, the superficial and the meaningless? 'Why,' in other words, 'this waste?' (Mt. 26:8).

It was at about 1:00 PM today, as I sat in what I thought would be a customary meeting with a parent, that God addressed the questions. The mother, wanting to apprise me of her child's physical and emotional challenges before the school year began, explained that her youngster has been making good strides. While number sense is coming along slowly, there has been some notable growth in reading.

Yet, as I sat there with the most recent diagnoses laid out before me in ten-point font, I was hardly taking mental notes on how to make classroom accommodations. Instead, I was mulling over God's exceeding intentionality. For the child He was presenting me was adopted from Russia; left for the first fifteen months of her life without forming any attachments; and is still, all these years later, recovering from the fall-out of her infancy. She was one of the ones for whom I'd been praying...

All that time, when there'd been a pressing need to intercede for those who had been relinquished for selfish or desperate reasons; when there had been a dire sense of needing to "do" something, now He was lending to these hands an avenue by which to act on all that He had inspired.

I cannot help but marvel at how masterfully He weaves His purpose with His design. Nor can I do anything but faithfully rejoice that He, fitting together the impending need to act, with the firmly-defined sphere where He's had me reside, should now merge the restlessness with reprieve.

He alone is the One to answer our striving with the sufficiency of His planning and pleasing. And we are left to exult in Him with grateful worship:

"'For I proclaim the Name of the LORD;
Ascribe greatness to our God!
The Rock! His work is perfect...'"
Deuteronomy 32:3-4

In the Tedium

Spent part of yesterday afternoon enjoying some time in a fabric store, looking for a pattern that would fit well with the teal print I had just purchased. Yet what caused me to marvel in gratitude was my company. For, as I perused the pattern books that were sprawled across the table, I was surrounded by friends who would never have voluntarily chosen to be there on their own: one, who admits that the closest she's come to sewing patterns was in using her drafting tools to sketch her own skirt; another, whose sewing teacher had berated her so much that she was turned off to it entirely; and two, who avoided the craft store for as long as they could with a trip to the nearby bookstore. To see them lounging around the table with me as I pored over photos of empire waists and cowl necklines meant a great deal, not only for their patience, but even more simply, for their presence.

How much God values that kind of undying loyalty though. He commands in Proverbs 3:3-4 that we are to 'let love and faithfulness never leave;' that we are to 'bind them around our neck, write them on the tablet of our heart,' and thus, will 'win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man.' How much it pleases Him when, having the opportunity to walk away, yet we remain, even in the 'tedium' or costliness which would drive us away.

For He Himself pioneered and forever epitomizes that kind of unswerving endurance, not counting it too costly a task [Heb. 12:2] to come to us in our sinfulness, to enter our sphere and take on flesh (Ph. 2:8) for our sake see (Acts 3:26). We are forever changed by that kind of love, which willfully volunteered to insert Himself in the fallen circumstances which entrapped us. For Christ to have set aside His own desires, His own comfort and glory and honor; for Him to have intentionally taken on the ridicule and scorning and torture, the weight of guilt and shame rightfully ours, we can only behold with unutterable wonder the implication: that faithfulness is more highly concerned with obedience (Ps. 54:6; see also Gen. 22:10, 12) than the losses incurred.

And it is then, when we desire intently to honor the Father, that He empowers us to convey devotion as He has. For in Him alone is the power to 'love at all times' (Pro. 17:17); and from Him alone comes this longing to display, as He first did, that - even when it means 'swearing to our own hurt' - we will not change (Ps. 15:4).


"A faithful man will abound with blessings" (Proverbs 28:20).

The Final Destination

With the recent church building renovation, I've been brought the decidedly sweet recollection of home. Somehow the familiar scents of plaster and primer immediately return me to the contented nostalgia of growing-up years, in which nearly every house knew Dad's masterful hand of renovation.

Yet 'home' has always seemed such an elusive concept. I can remember being asked one time the name of my hometown, and could only muse, "I don't know." Were home defined by birthplace or origin; were it determined by where one feels the most content, or familiar with surroundings; or perhaps - most ideally - were it predicated on the notion of where one belongs, then I could think of at least a couple of places which I would name home.

But the reality is that our true home outstrips every paltry perception we have if we only look at it as the object or end to our needs. It is an easy trap to believe that there is anything worth chasing in this life that could actually leave us 'settled,' at ease (see Ecc. 2:11). The more we walk around on this globe, the more we sense our own foreign-ness (Ps. 119:19), as well as the pointed discontentment with all this world has to offer (Ps. 73:25-26).

And while, as Christians, we long for our eternal home (Heb. 11:13; also Ph. 1:23), perhaps we are backwards to surmise that home is the place that is 'made for us.' Perhaps, instead, the very reason it is even recognizable to us is because home is the only place for which WE were made.

Meditations on Forgiveness

Perhaps on of the most helpful "words" I have ever heard is 'unforgiveness.' Until that point, I had always counted failure to forgive as a lack of the good thing I'd ought to aspire to; not the grievous presence of bitterness and malice that it was. The fact that Paul refers to it as a stumbling block within the Enemy's schemes against us [2 Cor. 2:10-11] ought to make us all the more eager to be rid of it.

In fact, 'unforgiveness' creates an interesting juxtaposition:

Where unforgiveness encourages us to nurse our wounds, and grieve in self-pity over the losses and injustices
...forgiveness demands that we forfeit our pride, our clinging to our rights, and our concerns with what we gain or forfeit in this life (see Heb. 10:34).

Where unforgiveness presses us to dwell repeatedly upon the nature of the injuries and the malice of the offender
...forgiveness leaves the hefty fees of another's selfishness and pride unrecorded (1 Cor. 13:5).

Where unforgiveness contents one with the ploy that retribution is sweet
...forgiveness leaves room for the omniscient One to take vengeance (Ro. 12:19) with the accuracy and perfect justice which repays 'every transgression and disobedience' with 'a just penalty' (Heb. 2:2).

Where unforgiveness insists upon being relieved immediately, and determines that nothing is so grievous or deplorable as what has been endured
...forgiveness looks wide-eyed at the cross, with unfathomable wonder at how the only One blameless (1 Pe. 2:22; Lk. 23:4, 14, 15, 22, 41, 47; Is. 53:9) could absorb to Himself the 'scorn of soul' (Ez. 25:15) and malicious intent which have defined the human race.

Where unforgiveness longs to be rid of the affliction, and cares only about relief from the venom
...forgiveness waits patiently, suffering with closed mouth, and a deliberate submission to the One who judges righteously (1 Pe. 2:23).

Where unforgiveness sees the offenses, and can look no further than the losses and calamity
...forgiveness 'peers past,' beholding the one at enmity as a creature in need of vertical reconciliation, and relief from misery (Ju. 10:15-16).

Where unforgiveness would mete out its own valuation of justice, would relinquish nothing except forcibly, would clamor for every reproach to be "undone"
...forgiveness surrenders to the nature of a God who created a people who would rebel against Him; and seeks to be included, caught up in the participation, of being an ambassador for His Name's sake (2 Cor. 5:20).

Where unforgiveness cannot see, does not wish to perceive, the like nature in itself
...forgiveness recognizes: 'it is all level ground before the cross' (see Col. 3:13).

Where unforgiveness fights and impedes the flow of grace, restricts the gift of mercy (see Js. 2:13)
...forgiveness offers that which has freely been received (Mt. 10:8; also Eph. 4:32).

Where unforgiveness drives us away from God, and enlarges itself through a hatred it justifies
...forgiveness lessens the "self" with a follow-through of sacrificial living, and a refusal to squirm off the altar [Ro. 12:1].

Where unforgiveness makes one more caustic, and self-righteous, and rigid
...forgiveness softens us with the knowledge that we are fully unworthy of the pardon we have been shown (2 Tim. 1:9).

Where unforgiveness belies the nature of the one offended as being holier, purer, truer
...forgiveness whole-heartedly recognizes that there is no merit by which relief from shame was ever reasonably granted (Titus 3:3-5).

Where unforgiveness buffers our pride, and satiates our vain displays
...forgiveness reminds us of and reconciles us with our place: that we are not greater than our Master (Jn. 13:13-16), who knelt down to cleanse the feet of him whose kiss of betrayal would spit in the face of faithful, unconditional love.

Where unforgiveness drives a disdainful wedge between us and the purposes of God
...forgiveness aligns us, with a penitent spirit of submission which sooner wills to see the unmerited grace we've received made manifest and available to others, who are equally as desperate and hopeless apart from His saving intervention.

Where unforgiveness works destruction and demise, a petulant stronghold which refuses to be put off or dismissed
...forgiveness works restoration, life itself, even when the giving of it means the death of the one through whom it is offered [Jn. 15:13].


"...so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan,
for we are not ignorant of his schemes."
2 Corinthians 2:10-11