Remembering

Lately it's been hard for me to remember some things.

I think this has something to do with the fact that I've been in school. (Which is, btw, why I haven't been posting...not an excuse, just saying.) I have so much STUFF to remember that my little brain can't hold it all, and something's gotta give. Usually, that something turns out to be, um, milk. Or feeding the dog -- :( And actually, even as I write this, I'm remembering another thing I forgot to do today...RATS.

I said lately it's been hard for me to remember some things.  Unfortunately, though, some things are NOT hard to remember, even if you WANT to forget them. And these things always seem to come up when you really have extra time to brood. Like when you're sitting in the Dunkin Donuts line, or while you're washing dishes, or right before you go to sleep. And that stinks. Because everyone knows the hardest way to forget something is concentrating on how much you don't want to remember it.

To be honest, I'm really dealing with some frustration lately, revolving around past mistakes, past hurts, past......past. I've been tossing around what it means to hold a grudge, and why I should forgive, and why maybe I shouldn't. I've been chalking off a little place in my heart where I have let the frustration live, because to tell you the truth, I don't want to let it go. If you've ever been through anything nasty, you know that letting it go feels like being cheated a second time. And that never seems exactly fair, does it?

Well, I'd love to tell you that I've had a glorious epiphany which I am about to share with you in a very inspiring and encouraging way -- but I haven't. I'm still here, sitting in the dust, a pouty little kid with the chalk in her hand. I still don't want to budge. But what I can tell you -- and what I hope will matter if you're sitting there on the edge of your little chalked territory too -- is that there's still something we can do. As I've been hanging out here for the past few days, remembering the stupid stuff that I can't let go of, God has spoken something to my heart through His word. It's short, and it's simple, but that's what I need right now, and maybe you do, too. It's just this:

"I brought you up out of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness..." (Amos 2:10).

That's cheery, right? Well, yes it is actually. Because this is the thing: I think it's okay with God for us to remember. In fact, isn't He the one doing the reminding here? Now, if you read the rest of this chapter -- in fact, if you read the whole thing -- you'll find out that He has a very clear purpose for reminding His kids of their past. But doesn't God have a very clear purpose for reminding us of ours, too? The thing is, you and me -- we have an Egypt. And probably a wilderness that follows on its heels. And sometimes that thought is so excruciating, you know? Sure, we were thankful to be saved from the old slave driver in Egypt, but we thought the next stop was going to be Disney. And the wilderness that we faced stretched for so long, covering so much, that sometimes it feels like it is just a part of us now. Even when we get to the end of it, the promise seems too big, like it doesn't fit us anymore, and so we just sit down in the sand, and pout, and pull out our chalk because we can't let the past go.

And here I sit, before the Lord, and He says, "That's fine, child, but in all your remembering, remember this: I brought you." Yep, those words are really there, cause I checked -- they came before the other part -- the Egypt and the wilderness that I've been clinging to. "I brought you...and led you..." Look back at the verse and see.  And although I know that though these words were spoken thousands of years ago to someone else entirely, I believe they are still in there for you and me today.  Because it's okay for us to remember Egypt, friend. It's okay to lament the wilderness, and to cringe a little bit when we think back to what's been broken -- just as long as we remember Who brought us.

The God who did that has a purpose, and though I do NOT believe that statement is a band-aid meant to paste over a wounded spirit, I do believe that the thought will bring us peace. I'm not suggesting that we throw our chalk away. I'm not suggesting that we charm ourselves with a good attitude or psyche ourselves out -- that's not true and it won't last. I am suggesting that, as we consider our little territory allocated to pain, maybe we should color in some other memories too. Specifically, the memory of a God who loved us enough to take our grubby little hand in the first place; a God who kept hold of our stubborn heart all along the way. A God who sits with us today in that stupid, pouty place, understanding our confusion. A God who lead us through the fire and the flood -- a God who will be there for us, now and always.

A God who, after all, brought us to the other side.

The Building

Have you ever really thought about what the church is?
I don't mean a location or a physical building.  There are a lot of those :  old, new, contemporary, ornate, minimalist, you name it.  Some churches look like malls -- I mean it!  I actually used to go to one of those and got all kinds of grief from people in my community.  Others look like conservatoriums.  Sometimes people are afraid to walk into those.  Like God is waiting in there to strike them dead, or like an old Sunday school teacher might still be lurking in there, waiting to do another Bible drill.  Present swords!


The thing is, that's not what the church really is anyway.  I, for one, am glad that it's really got nothing to do with the building we see.  People have lots of opinions about those kinds of things, and they might even have some memories that aren't so great or some other kind of hang up about a building's shape or form.  And that's okay; we each have our own a sense of style or pizzazz.  (Yes, we all do, even that tube-socked neighbor who seems to have none at all.)  But it's a good thing that none of that really matters when it comes to being a church.  Look at this:


 So then you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. The whole building, being put together by Him, grows into a holy sanctuary in the Lord.  You also are being built together for God’s dwelling in the Spirit.
 -- Ephesians 2: 19-22


I love the way those verses paint a picture for us of a building -- but not a physical one.  No, the building those verses describe is a verb -- the building together -- of lives, not bricks or stones.  The true foundation for the church that Ephesians maps out for us is much more real than the one you discuss at your committee meeting -- at least I hope it is.  If not, then you've got a much bigger problem than the cracks Brother Maynard brought up.  The truth is,  Jesus must be the rock the church is built on.  If not, we might as well let the whole thing tumble to the ground.


And if Jesus is the cornerstone, if we are all really fellow citizens and saints, then don't you wonder why we spend so much time acting like total strangers? How many churches have you joined up with, only to find yourself in the middle of a cold war?  Why do we allow ourselves to get so divided over a carpet color or the theme of our Bible study?  Why do we glance over at Sister Suzies all over America every Sunday and hope that message speaks to her?  Sic her, pastor!  We spend so much energy reminding ourselves of grudges and distrusting the members of our household that we forget what the church building really is:  the building up of each one, the construction of life together, the partnership we have with the Lord, where we allow Him to fit us together just so, until we are a display of His splendor for the world to see. 


God has been teaching me recently that when I'm caught in the rub, when a fellow believer is frustrating me or offending me the most, it's usually because I have something to learn.  There's something about  truth that makes it a little too coarse sometimes to be easily received.  We feel scratched by its pronouncer.  But if I remember that it's God who's doing the building, laying these stones this way, I can begin to understand that His ways are perfect, preserving the soul.  There's a reason for this discomfort -- and usually the reason, in my case, lies within.


I'm thankful for my church today.  I'm thankful for the building that God is doing -- the push and pull of family life.  I feel a little uncomfortable sometimes, when someone's elbow shoves into my side in the crunch of tight spaces, but it's worth it.  Sometimes the closeness drives you crazy until you learn to love.  We get a little real sometimes, and that can be tricky -- and embarrassing.  It can even get pretty painful.  But God is showing me every week in new ways just how amazing He is -- how He can take so many lives that seemingly have little in common, so many folks who seemingly have way too much on their plates, and mold and meld them together in breathtakingly beautiful unity.  We truly come together when we come in His name.  I would have never believed it, had I not seen it for myself.


"You also are being built together for God’s dwelling in the Spirit."
It's amazing how important the building really is.

Holes

Anyone who's seen the movie "Holes" will remember the creepy old Warden and the fruitless task he assigned the young delinquents of Camp Green Lake: Dig a hole every day. "It will build character," he said. And remember the boy, Stanley? Stanley's family had been cursed a century before and it seemed that the curse had followed him there. Because day after day he was sentenced to dig holes in that barren wasteland, sweating out the hours for nothing but an empty place in the ground. No reward for his efforts, none at all....until he stumbled upon the mystery buried there. That day changed everything. He would never be the same. All because of a few holes.

I've dug some holes myself, you know.

I remember a few of them pretty specifically. A couple of them were only about a foot deep before I gave up and moved on. Some who watched said I was building character as I was digging them and I think I may have been, but it's hard to tell because they're incomplete. They lie back there, solid stares in the bare earth, and I wonder sometimes what would have been at the bottom if I had just kept trucking.

But it's frustrating at times, you know, for people to keep cheering you on for digging your holes. You feel like shouting back, "Oh really? If you're so enthusiastic about it all, why don't you pick up a shovel." But at the same time, you know this really wouldn't help matters. If I know anything by this point, it's that no one can dig your holes for you.

There are some holes that scar the path in a way that I know I was never meant to dig them. They are the holes that I decided to dig myself on some dark and dreary night with some wolf howling in the shadows of that place. They are lonely holes. No one watched me dig those. I felt better at the time, hollowing out those places in the ground, moving dirt around, proving...something...to myself. Maybe to someone else. But looking back at them now, I wish they weren't there. They just scratch up an otherwise decent path to travel by.

And then there are a few holes that established something.

They establish different things. Some of them fit the curve of my road in such a way that I know the place they inhabit would never have been the same without them. Some of them fall along the inclines and lie in the valleys like great panthers, large and black and dense as morning fog. They remind my heart of the labor my back was bent in. The unchanging necessity of hard work at times. The possibility that some holes might be there just to level us inside when we've become to lofty. When we stay too stubborn on the heights. Those holes are the ones that I stuck with, even when the sun was pouring out her fury, even when the water had long run dry. And somehow, those dark empty places have changed me, removing callouses from my heart even as my hands grew those thick, hardened places. And I always knew when to stop, to just close my eyes and know that in all the digging I had unburied something big. Something great. A great mystery you get to at the bottom.

I think Isaac felt that way, digging all those wells in Canaan. Uncovering the earth time after time, only to be driven away again. All those well pirates and thieves coming to steal away what he had worked for -- I'm sure the labor seemed to be useless to him as he walked away from his work, thirsty for yet another night. I'm sure he wondered what the point was. I would have.

It's funny to me that he never really asked God about it in the beginning. "Why do you have me digging all these holes?" "When can I stop?" No, in the most passive of ways he left his shovel in the dirt in pursuit of the next lot. I wonder how many times the promise he had heard passed through generations rung in his ears when he finally tapped water. And then how his heart must have dropped to hear the voices of those who would take it from him. How he must have hated to let it all go. I wonder how many times he wanted to just give up the digging and the pursuing and the wandering. But he dug each one, naming it like a child just before giving it up.

But all the while, God was working.

So the story goes that Isaac laid down one night beside a place with no hole. He didn't even lift his hand to begin another well, but simply slept there under the night sky, no promise in mind. He must have drifted into sleep in that still and lonely place with a broken heart, unsure of his future. Unsure of this God his father had worshiped. And God spoke to him under the stars that night, giving him the promise of his grandfather Abraham. The mystery of ages was once again unveiled.

And Isaac got up. Worshiped his God. And dug a well.

Wherever you are right now, friend, traveling that road or hard at work, digging, hear my voice; I am cheering you on. If you are in the place you belong, do what it is that you are commissioned to do. No matter the heat, the pain or the tears, your work is not in vain. It's not just a big empty hole you are digging. No, it is character and determination and a mystery. It is beauty and blessing and the promise. And when that deep pit begins to fill, it will fill to the brim with the fresh, clean water of the Spirit. It will count for something.

Don't give it up. Keep digging.