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The Godward Life

How The Pursuit of Self-Reliance Nearly Ruined Me

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What many of us want most, self-reliance, is the very thing that will ruin us. We think self-reliance will leave us happy, but its pursuit leaves us both hungrier and more unhappy. It wasn’t until I had nearly ruined myself in the pursuit of it that I learned what I really needed: to be alone with God.

My health collapse several years ago was largely biological and psychological, but I suffered a spiritual death in my soul at its hand. Besides chronic fatigue, I developed tremors throughout my body that came and went at their leisure. One day they were bad enough that my head started lolling to the side and my hands curled into my body, useless.

I gestured for one of my daughters to grab a chair and take it into the backyard. The ground had a hard dingy crust of snow, but the day was pleasant. Honestly, I just wanted to be alone with the tremors. So I sat on an old red chair and followed my invalid thoughts in a circle.

My mind was collapsing into greater and greater simplicity.

Within a few minutes, the circle in my mind was microscopic. Bewilderment covered me like a suffocating sheet. I couldn’t seem to hold onto more than three words at a time.

Those words slowly took the form of the words that came to me as a kid, drowning in some stranger’s pool: God. Help. Me.

As I sat in the crusty snow, the sense of isolation expanded inside me. I couldn’t even lift my hand out of the water anymore. The undertow dragged me to the bottom of myself. Sitting alone in the chair, I had no strength to compose elaborate prayers. I was sapped. My soul could catch no breath. I had strength only for three words: God. Help. Me.
Over and over and over and over.

God. Help. Me.

God. Help. Me.

God. Help. Me.

Nothing noble. Nothing complex. Nothing astute. Nothing but me and my need put as simply as possible. Nothing but me, naked before God.

And I was empty. Not simply an empty vessel, I was a broken, empty vessel.

God. Help. Me.

With my head bobbing and my hands limp on my lap, with quiet all around, I pleaded like a child because I was a child.

The truth is, I’ve always been a child and my needs have always been a child’s.

I think that’s one important reason why we call God, “Abba” or “Dad.” We need Dad’s help. All the time. I certainly do.

I’ve come to realize that our frailties are not so much things to ignore or bury. They’re not even things just to be solved or cured, although sometimes we can. Frailty is an opportunity. It calls our bluff and leaves us vulnerable to the intrusive presence of God. I’ve come to believe that “God help me,” is not only the most child-like prayer, but also the most elemental of all prayers.

Perhaps “God help me” is the most indispensable form of any petition. It is prayer purified to its most fundamental state, communicating most intensely and truly our human condition. We are destitute. Every other prayer of petition that escapes our hearts, certainly mine, takes some form of this one.

 

<a href=”https://plus.google.com/u/0/101682939517488858639?rel=author”>benpalpant.com</a> – life re-imagined

The Key To Avoiding Life’s Forklift Disasters

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I’ve solved the Humpty-Dumpty conspiracy. There was no second gunman. No one pushed him over. Blind self-confidence was the nudge that sent Humpty-Dumpty over. He did it himself and has no one else to blame for his broken back.

I should know. I’m his grandson.

If you don’t want to end up like Humpty-Dumpty (or me) then you’ll want to keep reading these posts over the next few weeks.

I worked at a lumber yard one summer when I was in college. Customers often made massive orders which we subsequently loaded on forklifts and transported to trucks. There’s a trick to transporting twenty foot long boards on a skinny forklift: keep the forks low to the ground. One dude, a cocky, bubble-gum popping, drop-out, threw that trick out the window one day.

I was standing in the main building with the customers when I saw their faces turn pale. Their mouths gaped open as they stared behind me. I turned and saw a forklift loaded with lumber that extended to the left and right of the forklift by a good ten feet. He had those forks lifted as high as they could go, twelve or more feet, as he drove between the rows of parked cars. He was just trying to avoid hitting the cars, but the higher the forks, the more those long pieces of lumber danced.

We all saw the imminent danger. The customers certainly did, each eyeing his own favorite vehicle, but gum-popping employee was clueless. He eyes were fixed on the ground to make sure his wheels didn’t hit a car. His wheels! They were hardly the threat, but he had no idea.

It’s not flattering, but I’m just like that guy. I carry my load through life doing my very best to convince myself and others that I’ve got it all together.

I don’t have it all together. Not even close. But I’d rather evade the truth than face it.

The brief history of my life is the story of one guy’s search to maintain the illusion of independence.

I have gone to great lengths to assure myself that I am not needy. Even when life events made it clear I was a moth drowning in candle wax, I pretended otherwise.

There’s a simple reason for this evasion. Facing our limitations, our frailties, is humiliating. It’s not just our pride that takes a hit either. We actually feel bewildered during these frail times because it’s reorienting our vision.

And here’s the key take away: Those of us living the under the illusion of self-reliance throw all our weight into leveraging life for what we think we need. We think we need stuff. We think we need a change. We think we need the weekend. But we’re misguided.

We’re watching the wrong things, distracted by the tires when they aren’t even the problem.

The bigger problem is our own self-reliance. When we realize that truth, then our prayer life will change. The nature of our requests will change; in fact, our requests themselves will be almost an after-thought because we know that “what you should want most is God’s kingdom and doing what he wants you to do. Then he will give you all these other things you need” (Matthew 6:33 ERV). Our prayers will be more fitting to our situation. We’ll pray, “God help me,” because we actually need his help.

Remembering who we actually are (dependent), not what we pretend to be (independent), will shape the way we see ourselves, each other, and our day to day lives in important ways. More importantly, we’ll avoid the Humpty-Dumpty syndrome: we won’t get cocky on the ledge of life. How hilarious, actually, to just imagine his situation. He’s an egg on a wall. How helpless and small, but his imagination was too colored by the illusion of self-reliance. How embarrassing.

If you’re wondering about the dude with the forklift, you can rest easy tonight. He made it. He didn’t have far to go. I suppose that’s how it is. We might make it the short distance. We might. But the chances of disaster increase the farther we’re going. Life is long for most of us and we should plan for the long haul. Go ahead, jettison the illusion of self-reliance and see how freeing it is.

Coming Attractions:

Next week I’ll explain why the prayer “God help me” has come to be so important in my life.

 

<a href=”https://plus.google.com/u/0/101682939517488858639?rel=author”>benpalpant.com</a> – life re-imagined

What I Learned By Drowning

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I’ve come to believe that nearly every prayer can be distilled down to three simple, dynamic, and passionate words: “God help me.” The next few blog posts explore this powerfully shaping prayer and how three simple words can make all the difference in the world.

There have been a few times in my life when I prayed these words with urgency. The first time was when I was seven or so. Swimming pools were a rare event in my childhood, but one particular pool stands out in my mind. A party was in full swing, adults flung all over the area, lounging or talking. Kids were largely left to their own devices.

With no formal swimming lessons, I was commanded to stay in the shallow end. Which I did. Sort of. Even then I knew that “shallow” is a relative term so I held onto the edge of the pool and inched along it. Some might call it pride. Girls were probably involved. I was nearly to the ladder at the far end of the pool, the deep end, when my hand slipped. Just the one, but as I surged to re-grip the tiles, my remaining hand slipped. Just like that, my head slipped below the water’s surface.

I remember straining, kicking, wracking my body to climb the water that seemed to pull me down.

But what I remember most clearly is sticking my hand out of the water as high as I could. I was pleading with all my being that my dad would see me, that someone, anyone, would save me. As the strength drained from my body, my arm gradually followed me into the depths. First the elbow. Then the forearm. Then my wrist. My knuckles. I remember distinctly noting when the water finally covered the last tip of my longest finger. I gave my soul to God in that moment. I remember thinking, “This is it. I’m dying young. Alone at the bottom of a pool.”

Suddenly I wasn’t praying that my dad would save me. I was praying that God would save me. I didn’t know how. I didn’t honestly care, but my whole being was fixed on him. “God help me!”

My prayer was frantic, determined, at first. But as I sank further, my prayer drifted slowly into something more feeble. My tiny lungs were collapsing under the strain as was my little prayer. Mine was a mouse’s prayer. Still, it had the same form: “God help me.”

I survived. Obviously. At the last desperate moment I felt the surrounding waters seethe. Strong arms lifted me against the water’s pressure and onto the pool’s edge. After I coughed up the swallowed water and terror, I opened my eyes and saw Dad, beleaguered but relieved, fully clothed and dripping wet.

I didn’t feel any strong arms when I was 33. I suffered a health collapse so rapid that within a few short weeks, I could barely read, speak, walk, or eat. Nearly overnight, I developed unexplainable Parkinson-like tremors in my hands, head, and torso. No one knew why. It was like God plunged me into the waters and then he turned his back and walked away. He took with him the hills, the songbirds, and the sunshine slung over his shoulder. I was left alone in the dark. Dead.

I’ve since decided that drowning is, perhaps, the best thing that ever happened to me. It might be hard to believe, but I think it could be the best thing that happens to you, as well.

My suffering showed me who I really was. Stripped of my ambition, professional preening, and basic animal functions, I discovered my neediness.

If you’re anything like me, you have suffered too. Like me, maybe you tried to ignore it, or get through it, or conquer it. I was under the false impression, the fantasy, that I was in charge. I’m not. You’re not.
Thank God.

Suffering helped me see, finally, what God sees all the time when he looks at me:

  • I am a frail man.

  • I am a needy man.

  • I am a destitute man.

    It’s time we imagined reality the way God sees it. As we do, we’ll notice a new kind of peace invading our thoughts, the kind of peace that passes our understanding.
    You want peace and joy and hope just as I do. I found them at the bottom of the sea. I found them when I embraced my neediness. Ever since then my prayers have been a variation on a simple theme: God help me.
    That’s a prayer for the destitute. That’s a prayer for you and me.

Coming Attractions:

We’ll keep visiting this simple three word prayer next time and learn to embrace our limitations. While you’re waiting for that post, shoot me some stories of when you prayed this prayer.

How To Get Your Teenager To Like You

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This post would not be dedicated to the truth if I did not begin with a caveat: the goal of parenting is NOT to get your children to like you. The goal of parenting is to lead them to Christ every day, all day; therefore, good parents say and do things that kids would rather avoid. Still, people usually follow others they like and I think its possible to have the best of both worlds. Parents can say and do hard things and still be liked by their kids. So here’s a helpful way to re-imagine your relationship with your child.

If you want your teenager to like you (and I’m assuming you do), then you must like him.

Let me explain why you must like your child, teen age or otherwise, if you want to be liked and I’ll provide some ideas (certainly not an exhaustive list) for fostering like-ability.

A dog is not always a boy’s best friend. I heard of a boy and his dog who hated each other with an everlasting hatred. I don’t know who disliked the other first, but it was shortly apparent that ill-will was mutually felt. One Saturday morning, the dog pawed at the boy’s door and whined until the boy, wondering if perhaps the dog had a change of heart, opened the door. The dog trotted past the boy’s legs, found an over-turned baseball cap, and deposited a fresh pile of processed breakfast in it. There would be no armistice after that.

We’re often like that dog, acting out our feelings toward other people. And kids are no different. In general, parents who like their children usually have children who like them.

Remember, kids do unto parents what their parents do unto them.

Kids who enjoy being around their parents, usually obey their parents and want to be like them.

Many of us made a wrong imaginative turn and imagined that our children are like Pez candy dispensers: put sweet things in and only sweet things will come out.

Maybe it’s time to re-imagine our children the way God made them.

They aren’t machines made for our convenience. Like us, they are complex characters in a God-propelled story. When we start imagining our children as complex characters in a God-propelled story, then we start treating them that way. Here are several steps to help you learn how to like your children.

  • First, repent. God gave you children as a gift. If you don’t like the gift, then you’re simply ungrateful. If you don’t like the gift, then watch the One who liked them enough to make them and give them to you. What might he like about them? See them as God sees them: a divine gift. “Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward” (Ps 127:3-5 NAS). Be grateful for the gift and embrace all of it’s quirks.

  • Second, learn the elements of a good story by reading good stories. Read a few of my blogs on the topic or any others (see Donald Miller and N.D. Wilson). Once you’ve done that, then you’ll be better able to assess yourself and your children in narrative terms.

  • Third, study your children to see where and who they are in the story. Is he the victim, the unsung hero, the spoiled brat? and where his story seems to be heading (redemption, tragedy, climax). There’s nothing scientific about this process, but the imaginative habits you’ll build are invaluable.

  • Fourth, study your child’s love language: what fills his tank? We like people who take the time to know us really well and then use that knowledge to bless us. What if we put that kind of effort into our own children? And money isn’t necessarily required. Just get to know each child such that you know the nuanced causes of their happiness, sadness, anger, and contentment.

Notice: I said nothing about bribes. Flattery and a raised allowance will achieve only temporary gains and the kids will see right through it. We want to be liked by God and by other people, maybe even by the dog, but the desire can’t trump obedience. Discipline, for example, must continue. Kids who know they are liked, not just loved, and who are faithfully disciplined will have hearts whose soft soil is ready for whatever seed God plants there. Mighty Oaks can grow from those tiny seeds.

Coming Attractions:

Next week I will share a great quote from Paul Tripp that has far reaching imaginative implications and then I will share some important imaginative mistakes we parents can make and tools to avoiding them. Thanks for joining me on this journey. I’d love your input. How can we re-imagine our kids? How has your imagination impacted the way you see your children?

Commencement Speech at The Oaks

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For those of you wondering how long this will be, the title of my speech is, “14,000 Embarrassing Things Levi Could Have Said, But Didn’t”….and it will still be shorter than Mr. Reidt’s farewell speech this morning.
Thank you, Levi.
Would you pray with me?
O, sweet Jesus. You hold all things together. We live and move and have our being because of you. We give this evening, our words, our laughter, and especially these our sons and daughters…these loaves and fishes…to you. Multiply our offerings so they might serve your kingdom mightily. Intercede on their behalf before the Father, the author of each story seated up here on this stage. And send your Spirit to walk with them, comfort them, guide them, invigorate them, and sing over them. And we pray these things in your name, Jesus the Christ, Amen.
As Tevye and Golde sang so beautifully, “I don’t remember growing older, when did they? When did she get to be a beauty. When did he get to be so tall?”
Welcome, family and friends, to a celebration of the swiftly flying years, one season following another, laden with happiness and tears. Welcome to that moment between chapters when we turn the page, remembering the last good chapter and anticipating the next. Welcome, graduates to “The Last Time”: this is the last time you will EVER have to sit under the teaching of an Oaks teacher. So let’s cut to the chase.
We all know what you want. We wanted it too. You want freedom:
Freedom to build a new reputation, meet new people, or explore the buffet line at the food court at all hours of the night. Freedom to do any noble or wonky thing you want. Today, you must tuck in your shirt and wear socks. Tomorrow, who knows? Tomorrow, you can play ping-pong all night with some guy who traced his lineage back to the Brandybucks and who showers, on principle, once a year according to the Shire Calendar. You can change the face of Western Civilization by collecting Mountain Dew cans and stacking them into the largest pyramid on Baylor’s campus. Or you can fulfill your life long dream of resuscitating words long dead like “gnarly” and “bodacious”. You could even hold burping contests without getting cuffed over the back of the head or ride a unicycle to class with your clothes inside out. Yes, it’s true Brian, your secret plans are not so secret any more!
One thing is certain: you will have the freedom to choose. That freedom is a weighty thing, indeed, it comes with responsibilities, but your choices are actually quite simple. Like the man in Frank Stockton’s short story The Lady , or The Tiger? you, too, are entering an arena and must choose between only two doors: a lady behind one and half-starved tiger behind the other.
There’s a whole lot resting on your choice. Door #1 or door #2.
Door number 1 is, statistically speaking, the most commonly chosen door by college freshman. Its brass door knob and bright decorations lure even the cautious. They choose it because it looks, to some of them, like a door to love, or a meaningful life, to power, or to a name, even to happiness. Painted over the door frame in gold lettering is this quote from Nietzsche: “For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself.”
It is a bright and beautiful door with a wide, paved path lined with hand-painted aluminum flowers that whisper in unison the gospel according to Katy Perry (feel free to embarrass yourselves by singing with me): “There’s a spark in you? You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine ’cause baby, you’re a firework. Come on, show ’em what you’re worth. Make ’em go, oh, oh, oh as you shoot across the sky…y…y.”
And if you lean your ear against that polished door, you’ll hear the pulsing intoxications of blind youth, a party on the other side, straight from Pitbull: “Ask for money, and get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice. Ya’ll call it a moment, I call it life. One day when the light is glowing, I’ll be in my castle golden. But until the gates are open, I just wanna…feel this moment.”
Or you’ll hear something “fun” like this: “Lay your clothes down on the floor, close the door, hold the phone, show me how. No one’s ever gonna stop us now cause we are, we are… shining stars. We are invincible.”
I think the proper Latin response is Phonus Balonus.
And for those of you who didn’t recognize a single one of those song lyrics: God bless you, everyone. May that be the first and last time Katy Perry, Pitbull, and FUN are given airtime at an Oaks graduation. Can I get an “Amen”?
Their tunes may be new, my friends, but the lyrics are old and worn out. Every house of cards since Babel has been built to the rhythm of the same bad poetry, proving that age old maxim: “all that glitters is not gold.”
If you choose door number 1, you will trade eternal gladness for temporary pleasure, divine wisdom for human precept. Although it all sounds like good times, spring songs and free love and hope; and although the tiger you glimpse through the key hole paces with regal power and eye-popping beauty, promising you the same; though he’s smooth, baby, so smooth! I promise you that behind door number 1 is a slow death by strangulation. That’s how tigers kill their prey, they clamp down on the victim’s throat until it suffocates to death. And although tigers commonly kill small game like wild pigs and deer, they have been known to kill pythons, crocodiles, water buffaloes, and even rhinos so I don’t care who you think you are, if you open door number 1, then you’re a dead man. And you’ll probably look your enemy in the eye as he strangles you.
But enough with door number 1. None of you is stupid enough to squander your inheritance and your life story on mere show and empty promises. As Augustine said, “For they that have their joys from without sink easily into emptiness and are spilled out…and in their starving thoughts they lick their very shadows” (Confessions, book 9).
Door number 2, on the other hand, is rather an embarrassment. Unpainted with rusty hinges, it has scratched into its frame by a dull knife the following verse from Psalm 40: “I am poor and needy, yet The Lord thinks on me.” And if you lean your ear against it, you might get a splinter and nothing else. No cheap tricks here. No aluminum flowers. No cranked base. You can take her or leave her, but the woman on the other side of this door will not sell herself and she will not lure you with expensive perfumes. She wears the garb of the poor and sits quietly waiting so even with your ear to the key hole you will hear only silence, but those who choose door number 2 always seem to be singing. Strange folks choose door number 2. Many of them lack the refinement and prestige so paraded by those who chose door number 1. Like Tolkien, they know “all that is gold does not glitter.” They are a ragamuffin bunch, bent backed pilgrims who prompt unbridled hilarity from the world just as little Dagonet did.
Ah, Dagonet: one of my favorite forgotten characters in all of literature. You will find him tucked in the back pages of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Dagonet arrived at The Round Table late, long after the knights had debauched that symbol of nobility, virtue, and justice by living fast and loose. Tristram, that rival to Lancelot in every way including good looks and the girls, found Dagonet dancing in the hall and reminded poor Dagonet that only fools dance when there is no actual music. And Tristram took down his guitar and strummed some angst filled love songs he’d learned from John Mayer…but Dagonet stood stock still with one foot in his hand.
Tristram was indignant: “Why don’t you dance, fool?”
Dagonet looked him right in the eye and said, “I would more willingly dance to the broken music of my brains than any broken music you can make.”
“What music have I broken, fool?” asked Tristram while all his buddies winked and nodded.
But Dagonet did not shy away. “Because you chase the passions and pet your personal pleasure, you are now more beast than man. And all you can play, all you can sing, is a broken song.”
Come,” cried Tristram, “you are crabbed and sour. Yet I call you swine, for I have flung you pearls and find you swine.”
And little Dagonet mincing with his feet said, “Yes, I WAS a swine. I have wallowed, but I have washed and thank The Lord I am now the king’s brother. The king who loves the unlovely and transforms swine into men and strangers into brothers.”
“And down the city laughing Dagonet danced away; but through the slowly-mellowing avenues and solitary passes of the wood rode Tristram toward his mistress.”
You see, Dagonet knew what Tristram did not; namely, that Jonah 2:8 is and forever will be true: “Those who follow worthless idols forsake their own mercy.” He recognized in Tristram a hungry man dreaming of food who would awake still hungry. Or a thirsty man who dreams of drinking, but awakens faint and thirsty still just as Isaiah foretold (Isaiah 29:8). And so Dagonet chose door number 2, knowing that behind that door was the most beautiful of all women: Wisdom herself. And he was willing to be counted a fool by the world’s chuckleheads, so that he could claim a reward that would never perish.
Many are the Tristrams, my friends, but who can find a Dagonet?
As the good book says, “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matt. 7:14). Who will show me a man or a woman who loves the King of all kings more than life itself. More than a good name or a good time or good car or a good college or sweet abs or two thousand Facebook friends? Show me the one who counts all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of christ Jesus our Lord and I will show you a rare and happy man: a man after God’s own heart. Are you willing to be so in love with Christ that others will say of you, “There goes a God-intoxicated person!” If so, then you have already chosen door number 2, you have wisdom, and your heart is filled to bursting with a love for God’s wisdom which is foolishness to man.
Where you go, we cannot follow, but we know that you will find many who are like Ephraim in Hosea, chapter 5, “oppressed and broken in judgment, because he willingly walked by HUMAN precept.” Human precept has a short reach. Divine wisdom? Well, what can compare? In the long run, human wisdom is a short-sheeted bed. Those who share that bed with Ephraim will toss and turn, cramped, all night. Ephraim will choose door number 1, but if you look closely, there are some still willing to choose door number 2. Follow them. Ephraim will choose to do common things, but Dagonet will do that which is uncommon.
The Dagonets amongst you will choose the humble and, therefore, hard road. The Dagonets amongst you will find an old person as a mentor as soon as possible (and 25 years old doesn’t count). The Dagonets amongst you will invite yourselves over to families in the church and cook a meal for them and share life together. The Dagonets amongst you will go to bed so that you are refreshed, ready to claim the day God has given you in more than just your mental pajamas. The Dagonets amongst you will read old books while others fizzle out watching Pretty Little Liars in the next room. The Dagonets amongst you know that a happy life is characterized by far more than simply how fun it was. A happy life is characterized by gratitude.
Look, I know what I’m asking. I know that it would be no small miracle to have 100% of you choose purposefully to live as Dagonets. So I dare you. I call you out and dare you to live uncommonly, to live like Dagonet and choose the door of the humble and the needy.
Door number 1 or door number 2: There’s a whole lot resting on your choice.
Door number 1 will deliver you a yacht full of momentary pleasure, but a small country’s worth of regret. Door number 1 will provide you a limo full of human precepts, and though you’ll be riding in luxury, you’ll be riding down a blind alley. Even if all your frat bros are at the same door, remember this: they are not your people. Your people are God’s people. God’s people are different. They choose different doors.
They do not dance to the world’s broken music and neither will you. They do not promise peace when there is no peace and neither will you. But you will be a Joseph to the world: a foreigner in a foreign land filled with men and women tormented by bad dreams. By God’s grace, you will be their interpreters, speaking into their nightmares a new and living way (Hebrews 10). And you will be like Esther, born for such a time as this. And you will be like Nehemiah, who built a city with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other. And you will be like Anna, declaring to the world the arrival of their only sure hope, the Christ. And you will be like Noah who built a boat to save the world, though all the world giggled glibly. And you will be like Hannah, pleading with God on behalf of a barren world. And you will be like Boaz, sowing fields of grain to feed the refugees who flee a life of sin.
Today is tomorrow’s yesterday. What you sow today, you will reap tomorrow. The present is the future’s past and the past, my friends, CANNOT be erased. What you do now, even now in these moments between chapters, will likely dictate the outcome of your story. Your decisions can NEVER be undone, not even by the blood of Jesus. They can be covered by the blood. Thank God they can be covered, but they can never be erased from your story. “So choose this day whom you will serve for God has set before you this day life and good, and death and evil, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live” (Deut. 30:15 and 19).
Some say that college constitutes the best years of your life. I hope not. There is SO much life to live AFTER college. Live with THOSE years in mind. Remember your children and your grandchildren. And when you are old and grey and some idealistic freshman asks you what were the best years of your life, you won’t say, “college!” You’ll say, “ALL of them!” For you lived your days out in the light of God’s only Son and you opened door number 2, above which is carved, “I am poor and needy, yet The Lord thinks on me.”
If this hard-fought education has taught you anything, it better be this: “The works of the Lord are great, studied by all who have pleasure in them” (Psalm 111:2).
We have taught you, from the cradle until this very hour, to join Job, saying “As for me, I would seek God, and to God would I commit my cause, who does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number” (Job 5:8-9).
Go, my Dagonets. Freedom beckons. Go with our blessing and our love, but come back as often as you can. You are family and we love you as family; in fact, we’ve bought a lot of stock in you as family. May that stock only rise. And may the world know, with no uncertainty, that your lives serve as a fork in the road declaring to each person you encounter this truth: “choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).
May you forever seek God who has lifted you from out of the pit, out of mud and mire, and who has set your feet on a rock and given you a firm place to stand (Psalm 40:2).
“May you seek God and rejoice, being glad in Him; may those who love His salvation say continually, “Great is the Lord!” (Psalm 40:16).
You have a tremendous task, an absolutely monumental task with generational impact ahead of you: it’s called “Life”. This life is sweet all the way through eternity if you choose door number 2. But life cannot be done with one eye on each door.
Make a decision: The lady or the tiger.

A Quote from Michael Card

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“Through the eye

They must always believe a lie

Who see with and not through the eye

With and not through the eye.”

                                                                                -Michael Card, Through the Eye

These Pilgrim Ways

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Russel Conwell, in his famous lecture Acres of Diamonds, describes our spiritual  inattention very well. It seems a young man in Pennsylvania owned a farm many years ago and wanted to sell it. He tried to secure a job collecting coal oil in Canada for his cousin before selling the farm. His cousin refused until the farmer knew more about the oil business.

            “Well, then I will know all there is to know.” And immediately he commenced studying the whole subject beginning with God’s creation until he knew the business inside and out. He understood pumping and refining and finally wrote his cousin to prove this depth of knowledge. His cousin invited him to join the company and so the farmer sold his farm for 833 dollars.

            The new owner of the farm went out to water the cattle and found a plank thrown  into the brook that ran behind the barn. The plank’s purpose was to send a dark sludge over to the opposite bank so that the cattle would not put their noses into it when drinking. The man who went to Canada had been damming for twenty-three years a flood of coal oil worth a hundred million dollars at the time. Some years later, state geologists declared the find worth a thousand million dollars at the time of Conwell’s lecture.

            Many of us live like that poor farmer. Blindly, unimaginatively, we overlook what God places before us. He reveals his fingerprint in his timing, yes, but we must live attentively so that our spiritual vision might be anointed more and more with the Holy Spirit.

            Second, the imagination restlessly sees what is not presently before the eyes. It recalls the past, it anticipates the future, and it interprets the present. This is where we can do more to sanctify the imagination. While it is true that only God can transform the imagination, just as only God can transform our life stories, he uses means to do so. The means by which he shapes us are myriad, but there are three that particularly impact the imagination: prayer, people, and perspective. Our imaginations become more aligned with God’s when we pray imaginatively, when we walk with fellow pilgrims whose imaginations are pointed in the right direction and who can perform surgery on our imagination, and when we look at life from a more eternal or spiritual perspective. 

            Finally, I think one of the most helpful things we can do to sanctify the imagination is to foster in ourselves a serious case of spiritual discontentment. Loitering or aimless wandering are unacceptable to the pilgrim intent on reaching a destination. A pilgrim is perpetually discontent, unsatisfied, until that destination is reached and we should embrace this brand of discontent. Paul tells us to learn contentment as he learned contentment, but he was not against all forms of discontent. Indeed, Paul expressed his discontent when he said, “I press on to reach the goal so that I might win the eternal prize that is set before me” (Phil. 3:14). How do we foster this good discontent? How do we press on and fix our eyes on the destination of our pilgrimage? At least one way we press on is by assessing our stories and our imaginative vision. If we really want every aspect of our lives to fall under the Lordship of Christ, including this formative gift called the imagination, then we must ask ourselves some guiding questions that prompt self-assessment. These questions fall under four categories: parable, pilgrimage, people, and principles.

            The first question we can ask ourselves is, “What kind of parable is my life story?” We are the epiphany of God, the spoken stories of God. We are his parables. The question remains whether our parable teaches others a lesson of faith, hope, and love or whether it teaches others a lesson of the self-life.

            The second question we might ask is, “Am I living like a pilgrim?” Christians are pilgrims, but many of us refuse to embrace the pilgrim’s ways. We would much rather live like we are home than live like we are aliens. A pilgrim has an entirely different mindset, trajectory, and equipment. His mindset is as one who is homesick. He sees a glimpse of home wherever he can, but refuses to trade temporary sweetness for eternal satisfaction. His trajectory is always away from self, away from the tin of this world, and toward the eternal garden-city of Paradise. The pilgrim presses toward the calling voice of God. What is the pilgrim’s equipment? Very little is needed for a pilgrimage. Food, water, and a compass is all one needs because a pilgrim always travels light. Scripture is our food, the book we are to eat (Rev. 10:9), Christ is the living water (John 4:10), and our compass is Truth (Psalm 86:11). 

            The third question to ask ourselves is, “What kind of people are shaping my story?” Bunyan’s Christian, in Pilgrim’s Progress, met many fellow travelers along the way. Some waylaid him, others jilted him, and several led him astray. But Christian had some traveling companions who kept him pointed to his ultimate destination. We are like Christian, we are like Pinocchio, in that we must choose our traveling companions. The judgments we make here often define the rest of our pilgrimage. We waylay ourselves and jilt our own souls when we choose the wrong friends.

            The final question to ask is, “What principles guide my actions?” Vaguely moralistic principles will not do because they lack backbone and our fractures deserve much more than spineless attention. The principles with spine are imaginative principles based on the imaginative virtues—Faith, Hope, and Love. We find those principles expressed in many different ways in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, but we also find them expressed in the shadows and derivatives of the Christ. Shadows of Christ are those stories of antiquity that predate Christ and, very often, point forward to him. The Greek mythology and tragedies, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, to name only a few, are shadows of the myth come true: God put on flesh and blood to save his people. Derivatives of the Scriptures are those books, movies, and music that point back to Christ in some way. Examples abound, but the works of Walter Wangerin, Jr., the works of Dostoyevsky, and of Tolkien to name only a few, give us incarnations of Christ. These expressions of Christ are only derivatives of Christ himself, of course, and so pilgrims must remember that our aim is Christ, not the derivatives. Nonetheless, we can find in these examples, imaginative tools that inform our Faith, renew our Hope, and energize our Love.

            Still, any real life application that brings about lasting change is painful. Only the Lion of Judah can change us and he seems to prefer painful methods for transformation. Our bones must be re-broken to be reset. Only God can remake the spiritual feet that we have bound; it is not a change we can self-will.

             Our situation is even more dire than that. We are dead in our sins says Colossians 2:13. Still, we are given new birth, not through our own re-birthing, but through Christ (Ephesians 2:5). For this reason, we are mendicants, beggars, waiting on God to transform our lives during our pilgrimage. All we can do is ask for more faith, nourish our feeble hope, and love what God loves. He has set us on our way, and he shall surely bring us to our destination, so we can only wait and trust him to heal our bound and broken feet.

            With Job, we cry, “All the days of my struggle, I wait for my change to come” (Job 14:14).

A Watch Out Of Tune

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Allow me to return to a different metaphor for the imagination. Remember the tomato plants? Let’s imagine that we are plants. Let’s imagine that what we do and feel every day, all day, is the result of the nutrients fed through the tap root. The tap root of our very essential being is the imagination. So what happens when the tap root is sucking up foulness? What happens when we are living destructive cycles because the tap root has no alternative from which to drink? Obviously, the plant must be uprooted and replanted in fertile soil, but the plant cannot uproot itself. We need community, we need others to uproot us and replant us in better soil.

            The problems we face are very concrete, very real, and persistently pressing: Children who kick the hornet’s nest, corporate scissors that cut us loose, infections that set up camp and put up the Home Sweet Home over the door of our body are not theoretical problems. How does the imagination see through these kinds of circumstances? Finding a solution is more than a schoolboy’s exercise and the sum to these problem will not be had by copying the teacher’s notes. What makes it worse is that we see, when we do, only in part. We do not know ourselves well enough to fix the problem. Only God knows us that well. Jeremiah Burroughs, in his classic, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment provides an analogy for this poor self-understanding. “When a man has a watch and understands the use of every wheel and pin, if it goes amiss he will soon find out the cause of it; but when someone has no skill in a watch, if it goes amiss he does not know what is the matter, and therefore cannot mend it. So indeed our hearts are as a watch, and there are many wheels and winding and turnings there. And we should labor to know our hearts well, that when they are out of tune, we may know what is the matter.”

            That is why this discussion about the imagination and its import in our lives is not simply an exercise in theoretical piddling. We have thrown the wheels and windings of our hearts out of gear and there is much grinding as result. If most of us have spent a lifetime perceiving poorly and living a story not worth the peanuts we pay for it, how then do we break the cycle and start living better, more meaningful, stories? How do we align our vision with God’s imagination?

            For starters, we desperately need other people to help us live more meaningful stories. God uses other people to align our vision with God’s imagination. Throughout this book, I’ve suggested that we need not something to do, but new eyes by which to see. That’s not completely true. There are some things we can do to get those new eyes. There are things we can do to help sanctify the imagination. We’ve spent the time requisite to explore the sanctified imagination. Perhaps it’s time we discovered some means by which we can claim it for ourselves.

            Let’s remember that the imagination has two key qualities: first, it is the storying faculty of the mind; second, it is the seeing faculty of the mind. As a storying faculty, the imagination perceives the various parts of our lives and works night and day to synthesize those parts into a coherent whole. Whether or not that coherent whole story matches the actual story God is weaving is besides the point for now. What matters is that we understand the imagination’s restless activity.

            As the restlessly seeing faculty of the mind, the imagination is able to see what is not presently before the eyes. I can remember the time I ate fried ants as a kid even though those fried ants aren’t presently before my eyes. I can also anticipate, or imagine, a future that includes ocean side property and endless hours to write. That future, obviously, is not presently before my eyes but that fact is no barrier to my imagining it. This activity of the imagination is almost always on hyper drive. I have no stats to support my instinct, but I’m sure we spend the majority of each day imagining either  the past or the future. We might be tempted to suppress this particular activity of the imagination because it smacks of nostalgia or fantasy, but that is besides the point for now. What matters is that we realize this second restless activity of the imagination.

            The question posed a short time ago was, “How can we align our vision with God’s vision?” Which is to say, “How is the imagination sanctified?” Those questions assume that we can align our vision with God’s: an assumption we just spent time to undermine. We have already addressed the very real matter of our incapacity to deliver ourselves into the new birth and we have come to understand that God uses other people to do so. How then can we turn around and suggest that we have any active role in the process of aligning our vision with God’s? If our actions depend so much upon the author of our life story for change, then how much of our activity is our own?  John Piper answers this dilemma well because he does so briefly: just because we know that every breath comes from God, does not mean that we have no obligation to breath (When I Don’t Desire God). So it is concluded that only God can shift our spiritual vision, and yet you and I are responsible to make those shifts ourselves. How to make those shifts remains the question: a question can only be answered by dealing with the activities of the imagination—storying and seeing—separately, so let’s do that.

            First, the imagination restlessly conceives a story of the parts of our lives. The goal of our lives is to conceive a story that matches well the story that God is actually weaving. Only God, through the Holy Spirit, is capable of revealing to us a glimpse of his larger story. When he does, we usually know it. The convergence of a thousand threads of possibility on a single point of actuality leaves us gasping for air. In that profound revelatory moment, we suddenly know in fact what we only theorized; namely, that we are part of a much larger and more complex story.

            God has given us his Scripture for that very purpose. The Scriptures give us a glimpse of the larger story of which we, believer and unbeliever alike, are a part. The Bible gives us God’s promises, people, and principles that all act upon our imagination. The promises of God, as already stated, inform our faith and help us to see what is not presently before our eyes. The various characters of the Bible are living mirrors by which we see ourselves: I am like Peter today and like Gideon tomorrow. The principles provided in the Bible are the directions for keeping our stories free of moral complications. So, when it comes to the storying, synthesizing faculty of the mind, the imagination has the Bible as a guide for storying well, but it needs the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s larger purpose in our particular life stories. These revelations come in God’s timing and all we can do is pray for more of these insights and remain attentive for the moment when God passes them before our imaginative vision.