I Believe He is the Christ

      Straight rows of paper-clipped perfection. Tucking the stray page back in line, I turn and smile. House perfectly clean and now lesson plans done, I saunter down to the chapel in a flowing dress and gold earrings because I am celebrating. Finally, for the first time since June, I feel victorious. Everything is okay because everything is done and I am good.
     The children are singing. I was off copying and stapling and glorying in self-made perfection and they were singing. I rename conviction foolish tradition and slip late into the pew's end.
    "But you are poor, pitiable, naked, wretched, and blind."
     I feel my beautiful dress and my gold earrings and I don't feel pitiable this morning. And I have been pitiable before and for all my toil don't I deserve one day to feel like I've got it all together? Must I always be crushed to the floor?
    Quietly creep in the memories and I remember that my own goodness is always a fraud. I remember the fallout, remember the pain as the flesh I trusted implicitly failed. And I see, cold and without sorrow, that I am like Israel who Yahweh calls a whore, that I only worship the true God when my household deities let me down.
   I know it is coming. Sin, exile, repentance, deliverance. Over and over I live the Judges story and I do not want exile again. But nothing in me repents just yet. I plead for soul hunger as I sit feeling self-satisfied. Either I must bruise to know the worthlessness of my frequented shrines or see something of the glory. I am weary of bruising. Show me Your glory.
       Our campus minister stands in the water and following him is dark braids and skinny arms and bright-shining eyes. The long tee shirt envelops her third-grade tinniness like an angel white and I hold my spine to the pew, remembering.
       It was a different church (ours lacked a baptismal) and everything was strange and new and I floated in Daddy's white tee shirt like the angel dress from the Christmas play. Crouching beside the pool he shared my third-grade testimony, my assurance that I was stupid and dumb and lazy and needed Jesus so very badly. And on the basis of that confession in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost I by water died and by water was born into a family that sang of following Jesus with no turning back.
      And as I pray for a vision of His glory my Ethiopian sister affirms that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Death under the water dies and new life is born up into the joy of God's household. The minister, also her hall parent, wraps her shoulders in his big hands and we her family sing over her of following Jesus with no turning back. I see the glory.
       The breakings still do come for me. I fail and flounder and get what I prayed for, a vision of myself as the lump of clay in need every moment of Holy Breath. Someday I will have a vision of God big enough to give Him glory when all goes well. For now I stay down near the floor with no glory to give
      To return to your first love you must remember the height from which you've fallen. I remember the dripping third grader I saw and the one I was and I affirm the truth again. I believe He is the Christ--the Messiah, the One Who saves--because I agree I need a savior. And He's the Son of the Living God. The rescue won't be partial; the salvation cannot fail. Death stingless lies in a victory-deprived grave. And the same power that defied death to pull Jesus out of Hell will bring all who will out of our dying and into Him Who is the Life. For third graders everywhere, yes. For idolaters whose household gods have failed, certainly. For the self-assured, unaware they are poor and pitiable and naked and wretched and blind, even them. In His light we see light, and we have no where else to go.
     We have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back, no turning back.
       

No Words

"That's what you do, ma'am. That's what you do."
        I am staring at my fourth-grader, trying to discern what planet he just left. My understanding of little-boy world was Daddy-wrestling and a pinata with the neighbors and chasing the fireflies through the dark.

"When you get to Parker One, that's what you do. You try to figure who could beat everybody else up."
His buddy nods, eyes solemn.
       Of course their hall parents would never allow violence. But in the hallway across from the bathroom my heart breaks for my serious-eyed boys, because no one should feel like he has to hurt others to prove his worth.
    I worked hard and read lots and tried so hard to learn. But nobody's education program covers "Reshaping the Culture of Cool Among Elementary Boys 101."

       "That's just like a guy, right Ma'am?"
        She means the movie line about no man ever really wanting to get married because it destroys his chances to sleep with so many women. And I want to turn off the whole thing off, kibash all movies preaching love-lies.
        I asked questions about dating and read books and considered the "courtship" phenomenon for myself. Never picked one up about convincing my tenth-grader that some men actually love forever the girl in the white dress for whom they promised to forsake all others.

      "I really felt like you were undermining my authority all afternoon."
       I press my lips, hope my jaw doesn't fall to the floor. What on earth?
       No one told me that my efforts to reach a frustrated child could be considered the undermining of authority.

      And I wonder why I am here, why I went to college that early, why I didn't just go get my masters like a normal nerd. School is easy. Research the right answer, contribute to the discussion, find the textual evidence. If you fail, the only things lost are time and money.

      But now I am an adult and on a mission field and the absent answers don't mean one failed test. They mean less truth, less light in their eyes. They mean someone walks away feeling unloved. I know answers can mean the world turned upside down and I who long to give the Great Story away have no words.

    "But ma'am, they never liked me since I got here! They hate me and I'll never forgive them, never!"

      I look at another of my little boys, his sweet brown cheeks streaked with tears. He shakes his head and I know the story in his downcast eyes: I am tired of being rejected.

     Jesus. My preschool Sunday school class is right. Jesus is the answer, always, forever. And I know He stands right by the swings, loving my sobbing child.

    I know because of the greatest relationship in all of reality, the one love between the Father and the Son and the Spirit three, Jesus felt a loss. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus knows rejection. And in His greatest loss we gain, in His pain we are healed, in His abandonment we are brought home.

     I know because I was unloved once too and because I decided I would never forgive them, never, never, never. Because I became hard and angry and hurt for ten years before I believed that I had a friend again.

    I still am shaping poor words, trying. How do you share the Gospel that saved you from suicide with the boy on the swings?

   "I am so sorry. But if you don't forgive them, love, then you will become hard and angry and I don't want that to happen to you."

   "But ma'm, ever since I got here last January those girls have always hated me! They'll never love me!"

    "I'm so sorry. I love you."

    I haven't even given a theological answer, never said that God loves him. I am exhausted with the weight burning inside and I only want to swing and forget the world. He offers to show my the Parker One highly classified trick for achieving awesome new heights on the swings. We rock back and forth from earth to sky.

    "You're my friend, right ma'm?"

    I think about how everyone warns you not to try to be your child or student's friend, to be their authority above all else. I decide I don't care.

    "Yes, I think you're my friend."

    We swing our toes up to the patch of darkening blue beyond the mountains until the Parker One boys are called home.

    He goes off laughing and I run inside, because tears are for sadness in the elementary world and I haven't time to explain that tears are for happiness too and also relief and ten years' story of walking in the dark.

    Someday I will have those apples of gold in settings of silver to offer. Someday I will see a fuller picture of what the Artist has been making with the tessarae of heart-shards, theirs and mine.

     But for now I only swing with my children and fumble for words and glory in the answer Jesus.

Dechomai

" And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them: and when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them, 'Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me.'"
                                                             ~Mark 9.36-37 


      The Greek word for "receive" here is dechomai, which has the following meanings:

1) to take with the hand

a) to take hold of, take up

2) to take up, receive

a) used of a place receiving one

b) to receive or grant access to, a visitor, not to refuse intercourse or friendship

1) to receive hospitality

2) to receive into one's family to bring up or educate

c) of the thing offered in speaking, teaching, instructing

1) to receive favourably, give ear to, embrace, make one's own, approve, not to reject

d) to receive. i.e. to take upon one's self, sustain, bear, endure

3) to receive, get

a) to learn

  

     My dad stood silhouetted in the doorway, saying something. Fifteen years of cranial dust has accumulated over most of my mental pictures from childhood, but not this one. Lights flicked off, quiet dark.

    What did he say? Something about Heaven and Hell, something about forgiveness. Oh, and I needed forgiveness. Scarce over half a decade in the world and my heart was angry and selfish and so dirty.

    One might note my developmental inability to comprehend the complexities of soteriology, the consequences of a covenant, the magnificent scope of redemption. You could argue I hadn't a clue what I was getting into.

    Except Jesus wasn't asking a theology expert to come articulate how He works. He wasn't surprised when I later wanted out. He didn't desire an international leader to make the world new.

        He wanted me. And I knew I could be wanted, loved, dechomai-ed, because I had watched His children receive me and one another over and over. Watched them wrap their arms around a family that had to put their baby in a box. Watched them dole out coloring sheets and stickers and genuine smiles. Watched them forgive and listen and laugh and love.

       So on my knees before the blue cargo couch, I asked forgiveness. I received Jesus. And somewhere beyond the living room couch and before the stairs, I knew.

                 Yes, I had received Him, but far, far greater, Jesus had dechomai-ed me. He took hold of my hand, received me into His friendship and family, embraced me, made me His own.

               And, far more than I knew, He took me upon Himself. He sustained me, bore me up, endured me.

      
      Fifteen years of story later, I'm still not a theology expert. I still don't know how much following Jesus will cost. I will never be involved in the full extent of what God is up to in the world. But Jesus loves me. This I know.
      So I'm journeying to a dot on the map in the middle of the mountains to join a community of Jesus-lovers who take children whose own families cannot keep them and receive them in Jesus' name. Because when my flesh for a moment quits roaring for all it's worth, I cannot help but hear the heart of God beat to dechomai all His lost children, to bring them in, to lead them home.