Holding Mangled Hands

I’ve never put very much weight in any of my dreams, because they’re usually pretty whacky, but I think it’s time to reevaluate.

The other night I had a dream that at first didn’t hit me the way I see it now.

I was in a room with a bunch of people. Some people I knew, and some I didn’t; but everyone’s hands were deformed. They were all misshapen in different, unique ways. Some people’s looked normal at first, but when you got close, you could tell that they weren’t. Others were blatantly abnormal.  At first no one wanted to acknowledge this fact, until one man, sheepishly stood up and said something about his hands being weird, and he knew everyone could tell. Then slowly, one by one, people started acknowledging that their hands were also a bit off.  After the first man’s admission, others gradually began to say, “No, I understand, look at mine!” In the dream I got up and walked away for a bit and when I came back everyone was sitting together holding hands. They didn’t exactly know the right way to do it, because everyone’s hands were strange and different. But as they acknowledged their insecurities and imperfections together, they began to share the struggle and encourage one another.

When I woke up, I mostly thought that was another strange dream, and left it at the fact that I have lots of those.

The more time that passed and the more I began to share about my life and God’s faithfulness, as well as hearing about a friend’s testimony having an impact on those around him, I began to contemplate the significance of living life in community.

All summer long I shared my struggles with pretty much anyone who would listen. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to face things on my own. I lived life transparently and showed the people around me my hurt and they biblically carried my burdens with me. It was refreshing, uplifting, and freeing. I never felt like I had to walk into a room full of people and be something I wasn’t. They knew me and were able to love me, perhaps better than if I hadn’t been real with them.

As I walked through a dark valley I was encouraged and blessed by friendship of others, and my openness allowed others to have the same freeness with me: truly a blessing.

Here’s the best part: when God takes you through a valley, there comes a time when he brings you out of it, when your prayers are answered and you spirits lifted. And that time has come for me. My fervent prayers have been answered and now I have about a million people to call and share more of my life with.

Here’s an even cooler part: Now that I have taken the time to share and hold the deformed hands of my imperfect friends, as they held mine, now I can share with them the faithfulness God has shown me. That his promises are as true as he said they would be! The more people you let in on the bad, the more you have to tell about the good when it comes, because it will come. Because I shared life with all those people, and because God is faithful, those testimonies are now impacting more than just me, they affect people, who then affect more people.

We are meant to live this way. At first it might not seem like the best thing to hold out your weary, disturbingly unattractive hand to your neighbor, but as soon as they pull theirs out of their pocket and you see that it’s just as mangled as yours, then you can glorify God together, living life the way it was intended.

Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2

Love Save Us All

Traveling so much this summer, I have been in the car a lot, which has led to listening to music for hours and hours at a time. I’ve listened to the radio, my own music, both new and old. The theme remains constant in much of the music. Love. As I was listening to some familiar favorites on a recent trip to Kansas City, I started wondering: why has love become the pinnacle of our existence?

All the songs and movies we fill our minds and time with are essentially about this search; trying to find that half that makes us whole. If you listen to the pain in the lyrics of a blues song or the betrayal in the melody of a jazz song, it seems that everyone is missing something.

As I thought more about this, it hit me: everyone on this planet is looking for something.  We’re all wandering around, searching for things to place in our lives to make us feel. To feel something. Or anything. We want to find purpose and meaning. If we could just find love, then certainly we’ve found it. Love has become the pinnacle of our existence.

Everyone is walking around as half a person, looking for that perfectly fitting puzzle piece to complete them, and if you don’t find that piece, you have to keep looking until you do.  If we can just find that missing half, that right person, everything else fits in place, and the world makes sense. At least that’s what the movies and songs tell us. Ask any married couple and I believe they will let you know their spouse did not answer all their questions and solve all their problems. 

I in no way am condemning marriage and love; I’m their biggest fan! I cry at every wedding, even if I don’t know the couple, and I love the beautiful picture that marriage paints of Christ’s love for the church. I can only hope to take part in such beauty some day. But, doesn’t it seem that if finding this person doesn’t answer our questions, and solve our problems, that it’s not the best thing to spend our life searching for?

So it begs the question; what should we be searching for?

It makes sense that this is what we feel will make our lives complete.  Amidst all the things we can use to fill this aching void in our life we feel that relationships with others are the most satisfying. 

This is simply because they are the most like the relationship God intends for us to have with Him.

 They are the most satisfying of all earthly things. They fulfill us the most. Relationships are the things that we miss the most when they are gone and that hurt us the most when they go wrong. Nothing can cause us more pain than the people we love.

I was talking to a friend the other day, who is not a believer in the relationship Christ intends for us to have with Him, but even he admitted that having an intimate, intellectual human connection with someone is much more satisfying than any other pleasure or high.  It’s beautiful.

But these beautiful things that God has placed in our life and in our world often become the very same things we try to use to replace Him and our need for relationship with Him.

So if the love between humans can show us something, I believe that it is the love of Christ that we’re all inherently searching for. We can’t help it. We need something to fill that void, and we often settle for human companionship when we could have companionship with our creator.  The beauty of love between humans is enthralling and intended by God, but it and all the beauty of life are proof of God’s overwhelming existence. Timothy Keller, in his book, The Reason for God, would argue that this beauty is one we are all aware of, but simply refuse to recognize because that recognition leads to a necessary sacrifice many are not willing to make.

Let’s recognize the beauty of love, but under the overarching truth that the Lord’s love is much greater and that earthly love and all it's enamoring beauty are a gift straight from Him. Love is not our end-all, so let’s not use a beautiful, yet imperfect earthly relationship to try and replace our need for a Savior.

Messengers Here and Abroad

Upon returning from an overseas mission trip I often find the need to make sense of all the things I encountered. I think it’s important to process. If the Lord reveals Himself to you and you do not take the time to fully think it over, then how will you ever remember the truths He presents to you?

So, I’ve been to India. This year, in fact, I was in India for two and a half weeks. I feel like I experienced the height of culture and the lowest of poverty. I felt confident going to the Dominican Republic would be a breeze. In some ways it was because I had seen some of the things before, yet it was so different. I thought I loved the Lord in India, but man, do I love Him even more now; and the things he chose to reveal to me are so different.

At first I struggled to find purpose in the work we were doing. I believe that loving on children is important, and there are kids out there who need it desperately; but I began to wonder if that was all I had travelled there to do. Was the gospel being preached enough? Was I living with purpose? Was my time there worth it?

The next day, after all these thoughts flooded my mind, we visited a village of Haitian immigrants. Before we got off the bus, our translator informed us that this village had about 5 buildings/homes with about 50 people, not including children, living in the village. They didn’t have anywhere to use the bathroom, so we were supposed to watch our step, because we were stepping off the bus into their toilet. He also told us that these people didn’t get very many visitors. As we exited the bus, people began to gather under an awning coming to see what we had arrived to do.  Having prepared for a VBS, we had to improvise a little with some songs and games as mostly adults had gathered there.

As I looked out on the crowd I saw the faces that are draped across trendy cause-wear t-shirts, television commercials, and news features surrounding us. I looked in their yellowed eyes. I felt their sun-beaten skin and calloused hands. I swated at the gnats flying all around mine and the children’s’ faces while everyone from the village paid no mind. I saw a man donning a shirt that read “sexy queen,” but to him all it spoke was function, for he could neither speak English nor care in the slightest about fashion.

We began to sing. Our youth pastor has made us sing many times, “Singing in the Rain,” where you do the motions and by the end of the song you’re dancing around like you’re a little kid. By the time we were to the end of the song, I glanced out at the crowd and saw an 80 year old man with his thumbs up and his tongue out, humming the tune while swaying back and forth.  As I looked into the eyes of people who lived in homes made of corrugated metal, and wore only clothes that were the cast-offs of someone else, I realized that my daily life, my problems and my fears look nothing like theirs. We have nothing in common. But through song, a translator and mostly, the Holy Spirit, we brought life, joy, hope, and most importantly the gospel to a discarded group of people. We were able to love a group of people whom it seemed the rest of the world had forgotten even existed. It truly felt like something Jesus Christ would have done.

For those that say it would have been better to send money over instead of ourselves, I dare you to look in the eyes of those people, and ask them if that’s what they would prefer.

As I returned home I did become more grateful for the things I take for granted every day. I can go to any water fountain in this country and get water to drink that won’t harm me and I have a toilet and a shower I can use any time I want.

While out during the day, each of us had brought snacks in our bag, and we had gathered them together to give to the Haitians at this village. It was just little snacks, which to be honest we most likely would have thrown away because they got a little squished in our bags on the trip. Each person graciously accepted our cast-offs as a gift. Try giving away your bag of smoshed Lays to the business man next to you on the plane and he’ll look at you like you’re out of your mind.

Though we come home with this grateful feeling, I believe it’s necessary to come back with something more than simply that. If all we take away from such a trip is only to say, “Thank you God for giving me such better circumstances than all those people I met this week,” I believe we’ve missed the point.  Instead we MUST come back saying, “Thank you God, for revealing yourself to me. Help me to simplify the way I live my life and find a way to serve people where I am as much as I did in the time I was away.”

We are messengers of the Good News and I believe if we fail to proclaim that in our everyday living we cease to believe that it’s the answer to all our questions. His plan for salvation has worked, so let’s live life like we believe that. Wherever we are.  

Graveside Poetry

This morning I attended the burial service of a young lady whom I had never met. It was an interesting experience to be able to observe without having any personal history or emotional thoughts running through my head. I was able to watch a family grieving and the process with which they said their last goodbyes. As the family was seated in six folding chairs that formed a semi-circle around the grave, I stood behind them and surveyed the scene; I watched as loved ones hugged and comforted each other as best they knew how. I learned which woman was the mother based on the sound of the sobs that could only be produced by a grieving mother devastated to be outliving her daughter. As she hugged other family members, I looked on feeling like an intruder watching what were most likely the saddest tears this woman had ever cried, hit the top of the fake grass carpets laying a top the grave site that soaked up all her pain.

What really struck me in all of it was the metaphor that the whole experience seemed to portray.

After a time of grieving, the family sat and looked at the box that held the remains of their loved one, unsure of what to do next. They peered around at one another, looking and asking to see if they could find the man they had talked to earlier:  the owner of the cemetery who knew how all these things were supposed to work.  He stood off in the distance. The man was solemn-faced and wearing sunglasses.  He stood behind us, just patiently waiting to be called upon. He said he would be ready when they signaled him. As I watched the family look for someone to help show them the way to properly send off their loved one, I could not help but compare the entire situation to our relationship with God.

The family took their time and grieved, cried and spent time together. The pastor spoke a few words from scripture, and offered a prayer and a few comforting thoughts; but when it came time, we needed the owner to show us the way. He waited patiently in the background until we gave him the signal that we needed his help; and he came quietly over to guide the process. 

The clean cut, brawny young man, lifted up the turf-like carpet to reveal the old wood that created the pedestal that the pure white box had formerly sat upon.  He showed us, that the covering which had provided a nice looking grave site, once removed, simply covered a piece of dry, dirty ground in which a hole had been dug.  As he began to lower the box into the ground, he did not do it alone. He prepared the ropes so that the family could lower the box with him.

I don’t know why, but in that moment the Lord revealed a picture of his wisdom to me. I have been learning to appreciate the poetry and beauty that lies in our relationship with Christ.

We wander around this earth, not sure exactly what we’re doing a lot of the time, or if we’re doing it right. We look around to family, to ministers, to books, and ask to see what we should be doing. Then, we remember there is a man we talked to earlier about things, and he told us that he would show us the way if we would only call on him. When we do, he comes promptly, and removes the carpet covering all the falsities that we’ve believed for so long and reveals to us the bare truth underneath. It’s sometimes something hard to deal with. It is those times when you don’t think you can cry another tear onto that green carpet that holds all your hurt; but when you give him the signal that you need his help, the Lord comes quickly to your aid. He guides you in the process of finally letting go of that struggle, but he asks you to take part in the work. He shows you the way, then helps you in the process. You do it together because he knows that you will appreciate the experience more if you are the one doing it, but he understands you cannot do it alone.

I am amazed at the true wisdom that the Lord possesses and blessed when he reveals even just a piece of it to me in times like this. How great is the Lord on whom we can cast all our cares. He will come and show us the truth, the process, and then help us to our end goal. A somber morning indeed, but the Lord is near. Let us all remember that He is waiting for us to give Him the signal that we are ready for Him to come in and help us heal.

Psalm 145:18 The Lord is near to all who call on him