He Remains Faithful

I woke up this morning feeling three times heavier than myself.
Dear friends are hurting, there are difficult situations around every corner, and I feel more fully the brokenness of my own body.

But the day must go on, so I got up and went to work.
Work was work; the cafe and its customers were all as normal. 
But don’t people know the world is broken? Why are they buying lattes and breakfast sandwiches when it’s all falling apart?
Right, life must go on.

The cafe started to run out of a couple things. Milk, blueberries, tomatoes. I repeat it in my mind and grab my keys. 
Milk, blueberries, tomatoes. Don’t forget.
Driving to the store.
Milk, blueberries, tomatoes.
The world is so heavy.
Milk, blueberries, tomatoes.
Is this the right turn?
Milk, blueberries, tomatoes.

The sky is gray, and it’s starting to rain. People look sad. The world is heavy.

Milk, blueberries…
There’s one more thing.
The world is heavy.
Milk, blueberries…
Tomatoes, that’s right.

And back in my car. I could cry, but the day must go on. There’s work to do, a cafe to run.

God, you’ve been here the whole time. The world is heavy.
I got the milk, and the world is still heavy–sin is heavy. I should repeat something else.

“If we are faithless, he remains faithful–for he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. 2:13).
If we are faithless, he remains faithful.
If we are faithless, he remains faithful.

I don’t need to repeat that the world is heavy to know it deeply. It repeats itself for us every day.
I did need to repeat my shopping list.
And I did need to repeat God’s faithfulness, even though that also is present every day. I just don’t force myself to look at it every day.

He’s not only faithful when I am; He’s faithful when I’m not–when I’m going about my day, dragging my feet, meditating on everything that’s hurtful and heavy.

If we are faithless, he remains faithful.

How much does this encompass!
When others hurt us and we hide ourselves away,
When we are sick and ask God why,
When our families are broken,
When our church is broken,
When days are long and tiring,
When we are not where we thought we’d be by now,
And in all of this we ask “God, why?”

He calms the waves and says, “Child, why would you doubt?”
If we are faithless, he remains faithful.

The hurtful things will still hurt, but how much more do we know God’s goodness when we know pain. When we are faithless, and she is hateful, and he is angry, and they are divisive, he remains faithful.

This is how we go on about our days, or the heaviness might seem too heavy. Here by God’s grace. Doing the work set in front of us and clinging to the faithfulness and love of God. 

If we are faithless, he remains faithful.

On One Year of Being Sick

A year ago, this week, I drove a couple dear friends to the airport after a few days of eating good food, coffee shop-hopping, and walking the city I now call home. I worked a couple shifts at work. I cleaned up after piling two more people in an apartment barely meant for the four who already lived there. I got dinner with my boyfriend. Caught up on some neglected schoolwork. On Sunday, I handed out mics and worked the sound board, but into the second service, my wrists were throbbing and aching.
Too much typing? Did I fall sometime recently and not remember?
The more I typed and moved, the worse they hurt until I feared they were somehow broken. I drove down to a CVS during the pastor’s sermon to buy wraps to stabilize them, and I finished out the services.
The urgent care doctors said they both seemed sprained and asked me how I’d done it. I hadn’t done anything at all.
Within the week, the pain had spread throughout nearly every joint in my body. My ankles and knees were swollen, and I could barely walk without my hips and knees aching.

A year later, and it’s not much different. I’ve learned ways to manage it, and it hasn’t been as bad as those first few months, but I’m achey, dizzy, foggy, and sick to my stomach, and no one really knows why. Even writing this article took nearly a week, when it would have taken just a few hours before.

I’m sick without a diagnosis.

As quickly as this year has gone (weren’t my first lab tests just a couple months ago?), I’m not sure I would even recognize myself from a year ago. A-year-ago-me was not necessarily immature, but she knew far less about her own weakness than I do today. And that was my first important lesson learned this year:

You are far weaker than you think.

Far weaker. Think of yourself in your weakest state. In the hospital, very sick or injured, at your physically weakest. Or if you’ve never been in the hospital, the sickest sick you have ever experienced—bedridden, unable to stand upright, sinking into the mattress. Or maybe you’ve been stricken down by a mental illness—sent to the floor of your bedroom, no comfort to be found and a debilitating battle in your mind. You know you are weak.
But you are even weaker than that.

Pre-chronic illness, I had been very sick, and in fact, had always considered myself a relatively sickly person. I was always the first person to catch whatever was going around, and I was pretty much sick most of the time. I knew I was “weak.” But once I could not lift my hands to wash my hair and had to have friends put my hair up for work, I felt my true helplessness.
No matter how together or powerful you may feel, your life and ability could vanish in a second.
All the running and eating right and dancing and working out I did did not prevent me from getting sick. The job I had, the car I saved up for, the apartment in the city—those things did not protect me from an outside threat to my life. My spiritual life and the devotions I (at least tried to) maintain—these things did not protect me from getting sick. Regardless of anything I worked hard for or disciplined myself into practicing, I still got sick, and it still has the potential to worsen. Just like none of those things care if you step out into a busy street, none of those things care about an autoimmune disease.

I don’t say any of these things to garner pity; I say them to remind you that nothing you do can build or preserve your power when God plans to display your weakness.

I often get pulled back to Ecclesiastes when pondering these things.
The author tells us that our lives are just a vapor. Here for a moment and gone--he reminds us that we are not nearly as powerful or lasting as we often feel.
“All are from the dust, and to dust all return” (3:20).
Just like my broken body came from dust, one day it will fail and waste away, right back to the dust it came from.
If your weakness hasn’t been on full display yet, one day it will be.

BUT-
He is stronger than you know.

As strong as you imagine God to be, he is stronger than that.
In displaying your weakness, God displays his strength.
He has the power to heal, yes, but also to universally end sickness and death forever—and he will. Not just the one sickness plaguing you, but every sickness in every person.
Cancer, Crohn’s, Celiac’s, Arthritis, Lupus, MS, Lyme Disease, POTS, pneumonia, Covid, Scleroderma, Parkinson’s, dementia, Alzheimers, all the deficiencies and muscle weaknesses, every illness you can find in a textbook, and every sickness that has not even been discovered yet—every last one will be done away with.
He has the power to sustain you through the hardest hardship, the most intense sickness, the longest flare-up, and the darkest valley. Those places are not meant to be solo feats of endurance—they are impossible alone. These are places where God scoops you up off the floor and walks you limping to the other side, so that when anyone asks how you even survived it, you can only say it was him.  

I have found great comfort in the words of David in Psalm 18. In this Psalm, David has just been delivered from the hand of his enemies, and Saul. The psalm powerfully describes the way David was delivered, comparing his situation to “deep waters,” “disaster,” and “the cords of death and the grave.” He describes God in language that would strike those able to visualize it to intense fear. The earth shakes under his anger. Smoke and fire come pouring out of his mouth, and the heavens part for him to descend. He sends arrows down upon his enemies and lays bare the foundations of the world with a mere breath.

But the first line of the psalm is “I love you, Lord, my strength” (18:1).

“I love you, Lord, my strength.”

Though we are in deep waters, quicksand, a mire that sucks us in and holds us hostage,
even though we cannot see our hands in front of our faces, and we are doubled over in pain,
even though our God is so big and powerful that he can shake the earth with a word and split the heavens at a thought,
He is and remains our strength.
And he loves us.

He provides strength to the weak (34), a shield for the defenseless (35), and a wide path for the buckling ankles (36).
He cares about his children enough to meet them on the floors of their bedrooms and hold their aching joints in his hands.
He is powerful enough to send every illness that has killed millions flying out past the end of the galaxy, never to afflict another broken body again.
He is great enough that once we enter eternity with him, cancer and Crohn’s and scleroderma will hardly receive a passing thought, and they certainly will not be the subject of our tears anymore.

So, in a growing realization of my weakness, I have also seen the power of God.
My body fails me daily, but my God does not. The weaker I find myself, the stronger I know God to be, and he is even stronger than that.

I love you, Lord, my strength.

What is the Distance from the Earth to the Moon?

What is the distance from the earth to the moon?
I’ve asked a couple people, and they couldn’t tell me the answer. My fiancé said, “I couldn’t even begin to estimate.”  “But you’ve looked it up before, or someone’s told you the answer?” I asked him. “Well, yes, but I don’t remember.” I bet if it was part of his daily routine to look up or recall the distance from the earth to the moon, he would remember.
By the way, on average, it’s about 239,000 miles away.

Contrastingly, if someone asked me, “What is the chief end of man?” I would respond immediately, “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”[i] Anytime someone says, “This is God’s Word,” I at least think, if not blurting it right out loud, “Thanks be to God.”

I can even remember most of the first question of the Heidelberg catechism:
“What is your only comfort in life and death?”
“That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”[ii]

I haven’t heard these things one or two times, or Googled the answers when I thought of the questions; I’ve heard them repeated many many times.
The church is full of repetitions like this, hopefully the most important things being repeated the most often. We recite prayers and creeds, repeat the same responses, read verses over and over until they’re memorized, and repeat catechism questions with our children until their little voices can articulate that there is one true God who made the world.
I’ve been told by teachers that if they repeat something, it’s likely important. This is also true of the Bible. What God says again and again is what we need to hear again and again. God is the best teacher, after all.

“How far is the earth from the moon?”
“239,000 miles.”
“What is your only comfort in life and death?”
That I am not my own, but Christ’s.

There are a few methods of memorizing by repetition, one being catechization. The act of catechizing is a teaching method that dates back to biblical times. Simply, it is orally recited questions and answers that are memorized. It can be compared to memorizing multiplication tables or English and grammar rules. When these things are committed to memory, the student is prepared to use those rules and become knowledgeable in a subject. The well-memorized student is often a good student. They have committed to memory the necessary tools for academic success.

It is similar for a student of the Bible. The more equipped a student is to recall and articulate biblical truth, the more prepared they will be to repeat truth to themselves in times of darkness, and the more equipped they will be as an evangelist and apologist.
And the Bible with these truths in it is accessible to all of us. We can repeat the same verses until they are stuck on our foreheads and recite the same truths until they ring in our ears, because we are too quick to forget even those things that have never changed in all eternity.
Even some of the verses I have repeated 50 times I cannot remember accurately, so I will go read them a 51st time, and then a 52nd.

“What is the distance from the earth to the moon?”
“239,000 miles.”
“What is your only comfort in life and death?”
That I am not my own, but Christ’s.

Part of the help of a catechism as well is the simplicity of it. If I simply asked, “What is the purpose of man?” and you had not a catechism answer to help you, it might become a slightly complicated question. You might include something about working, glorifying God in work and enjoyment of his creation, fulfilling the path he has set before you, telling others about the gospel, to live and die according to his will. But “To glorify God and enjoy him forever” just about sums it all up. We aim to glorify God with our lives, including our enjoyment of the blessings he has given us. Then, we aim to glorify him in our deaths, having been faithful servants to the end, and be taken on to eternal enjoyment of him. What a beautiful purpose we’ve been given!

Many of the doctrines of God are even simple enough for a child’s catechism.

“Who made you?”
“God.”
“What else did God make?”
“God made all things.”
“Why did God make you and all things?”
“For his own glory.”
“How can you glorify God?”
“By loving him and doing what he commands.”
“Why ought you to glorify God?”
“Because he made me and takes care of me.”[iii]

This is so beautiful and simple that it need not be reserved for children, but to remind adults of the simple faith they hold fast.
Learning these doctrines should not stop at the catechism answers, of course, but simple memorized answers serve as a cue or a pathway to the greater truth of God’s Word.

“What is the distance from the earth to the moon?”
“239,000 miles.”
“What is your only comfort in life and death?”
That I am not my own, but Christ’s.

By these answers, we enter into truth. It is a sort of liturgy in the everyday, where we recall who our God is and who we are. In times of doubt, what we are sure of as true can combat our fears. In times of hurt, the comfort of God’s unchanging nature brings us peace. In our hopelessness, when we finally approach the question, “What’s it all worth? Why am I here?” it answers itself with the truth that we know. We are not our own. God loves us. He is in control.

So, to prove a point: What is the distance from the earth to the moon?

And, far more importantly: What is your only comfort in life and death?

[i] The Westminster Shorter Catechism

[ii] The Heidelberg Catechism

[iii] The Westminster Standard Kids’ Catechism

Our lyres cannot stay put up forever

I walked into work with a heavy heart. Friends have seen family members pass away, I sat under an overwhelming list of tasks, and the world just felt heavy. Among the typical kitchen noise, my coworkers were rejoicing at many new opportunities and exciting life changes. I recalled the words “rejoice with those who rejoice,” but I did not feel even a little bit like rejoicing. Among the heaviness, I felt I could not muster a laugh, or even a smile. The heaviness came at me from every direction like tormentors, and so did the joy. Even from within my own hurting bones and muscles, hurt attacked my soul. Even in the laughs of my friends that I would normally revel in, I found pain.
Within a psalm I have often overlooked, I found fellow mourners. Psalm 137 is a psalm of the Babylonian captivity. The captives wept at the remembrance of God’s land, the land they were taken from. They hung up their instruments, because how could they sing in a time of such mourning? How could they sing a song of the Lord in what feels like such a godless place? They pray they would even forget how to sing and play if they forget Jerusalem, and with it, God’s faithfulness to bring them there. At the end, they call destruction upon Babylon, the nation that captured them. Blessed will be those who repay them for their evil.
There was no people group in charge of my suffering (and even if there were, it would never be to the point of praying for their death), but there is sin that causes my heart to hate and hurt. There is physical pain that causes my joints to ache. There is sickness and death that steals loved ones from people far too early.
  I and the brothers and sisters around me are in a sort of captivity to suffering. We cannot escape it. So there are times where we hang up our lyres (or our aprons, or tools, or backpacks), and we sit down to weep. How can we sing in such a godless place? How can we sing a song of rejoicing when all we want to do is weep?
         Even though the captives cannot sing a song of old, they sing a new song here. Maybe we can’t sing an old song with dancing and joyful cries, but we can pray that we never forget God’s past faithfulness and call on him to destroy death and sin forever. He will. We cry out to him in our need, and he sustains us through the captivity and into eternal glory. We will meet the psalmists there with the songs of old, because our lyres cannot stay put up forever.

Psalm 137

By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
 On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
 For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the LORD’s song
in a foreign land?
 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
 Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!
Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,
down to its foundations!”
 O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
 Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!

Of Psalm 137

At the very end of my ability,
I sat down and wept
Remembering the joy that was.
I hung up my guitar,
my apron, and all my cheerful songs with them,
for there the tormentors required of me songs.
“Laugh, child! Sing us a joyful song!”
How shall I sing the Lord’s old songs
In this place of evil and suffering?
If I forget the Lord’s faithfulness,
Let me lose all my words.
Let me forget how to write.
Let my voice vanish.
Remember, O Lord, how you promised,
“There shall be no death or mourning or crying or pain.”
Blessed be the Lord who said, “It is done.”
Blessed be him who destroys sin and death forever,
And blessed shall he be,
When we enter the new Jerusalem
With the songs of old.

A Poet Persevering

“What is grief, if not love persevering?”

Poets across the nation sit at their writing desks, scratching out intricate rhyme schemes in leather-bound notebooks, or meter-less stanzas on scraps of paper. Words are erased and scribbled out with more fitting replacements, sometimes three or five or ten times. We strive to write something so real that it feels realer than reality—something that communicates truth so clearly, it strikes you in the chest and draws a gasp. We seek those lines that stop us in our own tracks, and we both love and envy those lines written by others. One such line, from an unlikely source, reads “What is grief, if not love persevering?” Ponder it. “What is grief, if not love persevering?”

The internet gasped collectively over this quote, all revering it as beautiful. It is not from a poem, but from the show “WandaVision.” Whatever the source, though, this line is poetic. It is beautiful, communicating a truth of the human experience in such a way that strikes you unexpectedly. It commands reflection. Few people would say this line is not beautifully written. For days, I could not open Twitter without encountering someone talking about this quote, either impressed by it or poking fun at every pastor who would find a way to incorporate it into their Sunday sermon. What does this say about us?
It struck me that such a poetic quote would be so universally loved. We do, in fact, love poetry. Many people love to hate poetry (though I would argue they may not have read good poetry). Many have not been exposed to it much outside of high school literature class or Valentine’s Day love poems. There is so much more to poetry than the color of roses or the dense words of Shakespeare.

Poetry is a type of literature meant to express emotions or ideas in all their true intensity. Often, rhyme and/or meter are used, but not always. Poetry is writing that is arranged for sound and written in a way that is specifically to make you feel, reflect, or think deeply.

There is poetry in the Bible. The psalms are poetry. They are written in stanzas, and they express the human condition. People go to them when they need to feel understood, because they are maybe the most deeply relatable of the scriptures. This is because the nature of good poetry is to capture a feeling for others to understand or relate to. People connect to the despairing soul who felt apart from God and wrote a psalm, because that psalm captures such emotions that they cannot put words to in the same way. The human soul craves poetry because it craves understanding. Poetry often makes us feel understood.

Poetry is also often a meager offering to God. Man has only the words of this earth to communicate what we think and feel. As hard as we may try, there are concepts and feelings so intense or so lofty that our human minds cannot craft the perfect stanza to capture it. Even the best poet has only the words that are. Even so, we use the words we have to make as beautiful a poem as we know how. Even though our words lack the power to speak things into existence or calm a raging sea, they may be able to calm a racing mind or a heart in turmoil. This is all we have to give. As an act of love, we labor over words in an attempt to make just one other person feel understood.

Clyde Kilby wrote, “Poetry makes the half man whole by saying the things which he feels but cannot say.” The poet is made whole in the expressing of those things in the only way he knows how, and the reader is made whole in the reading of those things he does not know how to say at all. From poet to reader, we help each other understand and be understood. It is a universal art.

Poetry is not irrelevant. It is still needed, despite suggestions that it may be an abandoned art. It still deeply affects us today, despite all the changes of cultures and generations. Beautiful words still have the power to take our breath away.
I was encouraged by people’s response to Vision’s words well-written, though maybe I should not have been surprised. A common feeling in well-arranged words got the attention it deserved--If only poetry called poetry got the same universal regard as poetry masked by television. It will take the perseverance of the poets and the reach of readers beyond the books of prose.

Poets, keep capturing the thoughts and feelings few have put words to, and keep in your striving to do it well. Offer your earthly words back to a God who used words to create the earth you reflect on. We writers are reflecting the image of God by doing what it was put in our nature to do.
Readers, do not shy away from poetry. You already encounter it often, but embrace it and seek it out. There are words that understand you, and there are poets who have written to you. Take the time to discover them. Take comfort in knowing that if a poet knows an experience intimately enough to craft a poem from it, you are not the only sufferer. Read and do not be lonely. Poetry will do your soul good.

A Church for All

This morning, 20 people, give or take, walked up to the front of a little church in Harrisburg, crowded together on a stage, and together became members. People from different walks of life and different upbringings stood together in the first of many times of togetherness, under the shepherding of the same pastors, committing to one congregation. It makes sense that we would all become members together.

One by one, a microphone was passed around so that we could introduce ourselves to the congregation and say how we’ve been blessed by the church. I said:

1. The emphasis on the gospel in all aspects of ministry, and

2. The extension of community to people from all walks of life (our name is “Community” after all). It’s a gospel church for all.

Not just this local church, but Christ’s entire Church is a Church for all. Jesus welcomed the little children (Matt. 19:14), men and women, those from all races and cultures (Gal. 3:28, 1 Cor. 1:12-13), the outcasts (Ps. 147:2), widows (1 Tim. 5:3), both the elderly and the young (1 Tim. 5:1-2). What a beautiful bride.

At the end of Romans, Paul greets people of the church he writes to by name. He gives thanks for the members and encouragers, those who serve in all different ways as different members of the body of Christ. All the churches of Christ greet them (Rom. 16:16).

If the local church strives to be a biblical church, let no repentant believer be left out of community. The children growing in the Word and showing a childlike faith in Jesus are a part of the church worthy of gospel teaching and care. The single college student who mustered up the courage to visit by herself should find her home here. The older couple who moved from out of town should be welcomed, looking forward to learning from them. The immigrants learning a new culture should be brought in and loved with every effort to teach them the gospel. The wife cast off should find her encouragement in the care of pastors and loving members. This is the church: men and women of the faith, immigrants and natives and lost children, the weak and lowly and those with scars, the older and the younger with the wisdom of generations, the little children, the single and the married and the widowed, all these and all those in between, united in Christ their salvation. One Savior, one Church, and all the local churches who look to one source as their guide. All these churches of Christ welcome these people. This is the church.

When in the Valley

How does suffering present itself? Does it follow you like a hovering raincloud? Does it stand in the doorway to your workplace? Is it the shadow of a person, or the outline where a person should be? When you take a deep breath and sit still, does it settle in your bones?
         How do you glorify God in a suffering you wish would leave you? How on earth do we suffer well? This question has plagued me for months now.
Suffering, when referring to my life, has always felt like an overstatement to me—still does. When I examine my life compared to martyrs and joyful saints in third-world countries and all those truly suffering for the sake of the gospel, my life seems like a fairy tale. But still, it is riddled with depression, panic attacks, broken relationships, an undiagnosed illness, and an only months-old onslaught of a new physical pain. I am not nearly a martyr—just a sick and grieving girl. But it would be negligent to ignore all these things. They invade every day, from my waking to my sleeping, so in asking myself “How do I suffer well?” I am really asking, “How, here in the valley, do I live to the glory of God?” 

         At the bottom of the valley, we are humbled. This is where we are weakest. We are never more humbled than when we are suffering. We are never weaker than when we have lost something of great importance: our physical strength, mental ability, a person who was our safest space on earth. Suffering drives us to our knees.
God is even there, in the lowest of spaces. He is not distant, even when he feels so. When even rock bottom is pulled out from under you, you fall on him. What a comfort!
In our weaknesses, he is glorified, because he is our only strength. He may not be your only hope until he is your only hope. When all else falls away, his steadfast love never ceases, and he awaits with the open arms of a Father.
This truth about God, his presence in all places and his strength that does not fail, may not be fully known until it is known in this way.

         Now, look around. You are not the only one there at the bottom of the valley. You are in good company, with others crippled and struck down. The church is not made of perfect people, but of us. All of us here, humbled and hurting, all of us for whom Christ is our strength, we now are able to hold each other up. Voices are lifted up together and on each other’s behalf to cry out and to praise. We may be in a valley, but what a beautiful world of people all here to love and serve! I’m so glad I’m here to see it.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:3, 5 ESV).
As blessed as I feel or don’t feel, I surely am.

Now, all of us together lift each other’s heads to look up.
All of us here in the valley, and all of us who will be here soon, should strive to be “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” As wounded, but turning to Christ. As tossed about, but clinging to him anyway. As stricken and afflicted, but looking ever upward.

In book two of Pilgrim’s Progress, the character called “Interpreter” took Christian’s wife and children into a room with a hen and her chicks. John Bunyan writes, “[Interpreter] made them look long at them. One of the chicks went to the trough to drink, and each time she drank she would lift up her head and her eyes to the sky.”

God’s Word, his people, his world, all beautiful things, all the good and kind, and everything that gives us relief from this momentary affliction—it all is from God. Let us look up to him every time. And even when it is most painful, let us look up when we recall the good things and beautiful inheritance that is yet to come. Look up.

Upward and onward we see our destination: an inheritance.
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

We only will suffer a little while until we are finally home where no suffering can reach. We won’t need the reminder to look up, because we won’t be able to imagine looking elsewhere. That broken people will be there, with every ache that ever ached soothed and healed.

 So how do we glorify God here? How do we suffer well? By looking up and pointing others up. Suffering will not have the last word.

Be Here

As I sit here in a chair in my apartment, a cup of coffee next to me, storm clouds rolling in to cover Lancaster City, and a 7-hour shift looming over tomorrow’s calendar square, I am reminded to exist right here, right now.

In March, I sat at my desk at my parents’ house in Missouri with my laptop open to a school email informing students that we couldn’t return to campus. That was when I started sprinting forward. I ran toward the next few months. I ran toward life in Pennsylvania, even if in quarantine. I ran away, to anywhere else.

When I flew back up to Pennsylvania, I was running away from the pandemic—distracting myself, trying desperately to get to the future of post-pandemic life. I was living with a friend, but my mind was elsewhere. I wanted to work, to have coffee with friends, and to hug people.

Even now, my mind runs away from the present, forward to financial security and independence, to working the job(s) that I’m a full-time student for, to when the working I’m doing now has paid off. Not only that, but I often think backward to what normal was, to when church members could sit shoulder-to-shoulder in church pews, and when people could gather together to talk and hug and fellowship. Daily, I run as fast as I can and as far as I can. I put my head down and power through the days. What discontentment I have bred here! I forget that even just months ago, I prayed for this. For today.

I finished reading through the book of James right before I moved from my friend’s house to the apartment I’m in now. Chapter 4 says, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’”

No plans are sure to come to pass except those of God. All we can be sure of is right now, so let’s be faithful with what we know we have. In February, we could not have predicted March. Our plans were uprooted and rerouted. This isn’t what we had planned, but it’s what God had planned.

Living in light of eternity wouldn’t have us sprint away from today; it would have us be faithful with now. If we are to run the race with “endurance,” that includes the mundane tasks and the slow days. I would rather reach the end of my life with memories of long days of faithfully working and thanking God for his provision than having sprinted all my years and only being content at the end, if that.

Now, after I’ve parked my car in the parking garage before each work shift, I pray that I wouldn’t take my job for granted. I pray that I would work unto the Lord and be fully present in that place. I pray that I don’t waste relationships with coworkers or underestimate the value of a kind smile when people come in.
Now as I’m sitting in a comfy chair by the window, I thank God for my apartment. I tidy my room with care and clean dishes with the joy of someone who just months ago thought I wouldn’t have my own kitchen to make a mess in. I bake for the roommates I live with, and I sit and talk to them whenever they’re around, because they’re right in front of me, and what a waste it would be to not care for those relationships too.

All this is temporary, but even in the temporary, be faithful. Hold relationships with gentle hands and cultivate them now. Care for those you have been given to care for. Don’t run away and miss the people in front of you.
Wherever you live, whether it is permanent, or you are passing through—take care of it. Thank God for the space. Notice things about it and let them live in your memory. Be there.
Wherever you work, if it is long-term, or just for a season, thank God for that provision. Don’t waste the connections with coworkers you would not have known otherwise. Work with patience and humility, without grumbling and without boasting. Thank God for hands that can work and a mind that can function through working hours.

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Col. 3:23). Work like your work was given to you by God, because it was. Take care of your home like God gave it to you as a gift, because he did. Love your neighbors like God told you to, because he did, in those exact words.

Be here, now.  

The Night is His

Almost every night of this quarantine, I’ve crawled into bed, gathered the quilt all the way up to my face, gotten as cozy as possible, and lied awake for hours. I am a new victim of insomnia; I lie awake into the night, and if I do fall asleep, I consistently wake up every hour and have to fall asleep again. I’ve tried everything. I toss and turn on every side, try with the window open and closed, have been working out consistently, read before bed, try not to use my laptop or phone too close to going to sleep, and have done everything else I can think of. Still, I get little sleep and roll out of the bed for morning Zoom classes as exhausted as I got in it. Quite a few of my friends are struggling with the same thing, and they’re all just as confused as I am.

Sleep seems to be just one of the things I took for granted before quarantine, and now have to adjust to the lack of. Once eyelids are permanently weighted and brains have a constant fog about them, we realize how much we really need something so basic and so little thought of. It’s one of those basic “hierarchy of needs” things that can drastically affect mental and physical health.

This lack of sleep, though, has been the perfect time to pray, and to pray for things I would never otherwise think to pray for. What better time to pray than when the room is dark, the only noise is the sounds of the night, and we are weighed down by all the remaining worries from the day?

When I can’t sleep, I pray for someone else. The friend I live with has had similar struggles with sleep recently. As we sat across from each other late at night, she recalled how her mom used to tell her and her siblings that if they couldn’t fall asleep, to pray for someone; maybe there’s a reason they’re still awake. In fact, the one good night of sleep I can remember from the last few weeks is the night she told me that she had prayed I’d get a good night of sleep. Now, I’m a little less angry about being awake. Pray for someone you know can’t fall asleep. Pray for someone you checked on during the day, that they would wake in the morning with energy, endurance, and peace for the day. Pray for someone you know with depression and anxiety that may struggle with the long hours of night and the isolation they’ve been facing. Pray for someone with a loved one in the hospital who is awake worrying for their health. There’s usually someone awake at the same time you are, and there’s always someone who could use your prayer. As we attempt to steward our time well, it seems the time spent awake in bed would be better spent in prayer than in frustration.

Another seemingly random thing I often pray for is good dreams, for me and others. I learned this from a friend about a year ago, and was skeptical at first, but similar to my struggle with insomnia now, last year I started having nightmares almost every night, out of the blue. It’s something I didn’t think about until I woke up in a panic every morning when it was still dark out. I went through my days with the last night’s terrorizing memories in the back of my mind. I had never thought to pray for something so simple. It seemed childish, but I felt like a child. Every time I awoke from a nightmare (as an almost-adult for crying out loud) I felt weak and so easily shaken. My friend and I prayed for good dreams and good sleep. God cares even for these prayers. What a sweet picture of God’s children coming to him as just that: children (Jn. 1:12). I can imagine a young child kneeling by her bed, praying for the cares and worries of the day, and then praying for good dreams as she goes to sleep. A childlike faith isn’t too proud to humbly request a small thing. God didn’t have to give us dreams. We could have had nights of total unconscious sleep and an inactive mind, or of nightmares more often than most of us experience, but God gives good gifts to his children. What a sweet gift a good dream is.

The last prayer I pray is of turning the night and the next day over to him. Feel your frailty in those sleepless nights. We have so little control--so little that we can’t even get ourselves to fall asleep. Despite our lack of control, God is in control and preserves us still. The night is his. Just as we submit our plans during the days to him, we should submit to him even our nights.
No matter how much sleep I get at night, “I wake again, for the Lord sustained me” (Ps. 3:5). I am still functioning, and I am still here. God has sustained me. In our sleeplessness, God provides. There is always enough, we get through the day, and if we find ourselves awake again, we pray once more.

God can give us restful nights for us to awake refreshed, or in another sleepless night we can approach his throne and kneel as his humble children. When a small child tiptoes out of her room to ask her father for a glass of water, he gets her a drink, gives her a kiss, and sends her back to bed. She rests knowing she is safe with her father nearby. When a child crawls into his parents’ bed after a nightmare, the parents comfort him and let him know he is safe. He went to his parents knowing that they were comfort and security. Like the children we are, we hold out our requests in the middle of the night to a God who is the ultimate comfort and security. And like the Father he is, he listens, loves, and holds his children close.

Be a Broken Record

It’s a desire of many to come up with something new—an original idea, to “mix things up,” to not sound like everyone else. I’ve noticed this a lot in myself recently. I struggle to write fearing that I’m saying the same thing everyone else is saying, or the same things I’ve already said. I go quiet on social media, because I don’t want to be another voice repeating the same ideas, same news, same observations as every other Instagram and Twitter account. That’s why there’s a retweet button. On a more personal level, I start saving my “I miss yous” and “I love yous” for fear of them losing their meaning. I start keeping struggles to myself so I don’t tire people of listening to them. The friend I’m living with said multiple times when I first came to live with her “I’m so glad you’re here,” and once preceded it with “I know I’ve said this a lot…” as if to apologize for it. I would never get tired of hearing her say that. And I’m sure my friends would never get tired of hearing me say “I love you” or “I miss you.” There are some things worth repeating, especially now. 

Repeat your prayers.
God knows that our days are filled with monotony. We are about to spend spring praying the same prayers of protection for those we love, a swift end to this pandemic, and healing for those sick. Don’t stop doing that. When we were commanded to “pray without ceasing,” it wasn’t expected that we would have to keep coming up with new content. We are constantly in conversation with God, and if you’re anything like me, you think about the same things for a long time and take a very long time to grieve or process. When we approach him holding up our broken words of “Lord, I’m lonely” or “Father, please end this or come soon,” he will not tire of it. It is far better to approach him with our finite vocabulary and pray the same prayers over and over than to only talk to God when we think we have something new to say. We don’t know when we’ll have something new to say, so sing the praises you sing, hand him the same old fears, and confess the same plaguing sins with brokenness over them. He is a long-suffering and faithful God, and he listens to every word.

Repeat your love.
         Have you ever gotten tired of hearing someone you love tell you they love you? When almost all our communication is through screens, tell your friends you love them. Tell them you miss them. Keep talking about how much you miss your church and say you’re thankful for your pastor. Tweet about it. Talk about it. Do it lots of times. I have seen a lot of “I miss my church” tweets in the last couple weeks, and not once have I been annoyed by them. I am always so encouraged and thankful for all the churches across our nation who are loving their people so well that we mourn and weep to be away from the body. There are things worth repeating, and your love for the church and longing to meet again is one of them. Love is always one of them.
Tell each other your struggles too. The church may be separated by distance, but it is still the church. There is so much healing found in talking through things with brothers and sisters and receiving encouragement from them. We are built for community, and our ache in the lack of it is proof of this fact. So lean into them now, and embrace the repetition inevitable in our current season.

Repeat the gospel.
         The Bible is full of repetitions. There are 4 gospels for a reason. There are 150 psalms for a reason. Within those gospels and psalms, lines, themes, and ideas are repeated.
Psalm 136 has 52 lines, and 26 of them say the exact same thing: “for his steadfast love endures forever.” This is what the psalmist wanted to emphasize. When I recalled this psalm for this article, I couldn’t have quoted a single other line from it, but I remembered that “his steadfast love endures forever.” Repetition leads to remembrance, and it denotes importance, so repeat what’s important.
I want to be remembered as someone who repeated the gospel. If people remember nothing else I ever say, I want them to remember the words that aim to lift their head upward or encourage them in love and truth. If I thought anything else was important, I would write more about that, but I want people to know that Jesus changes everything. Plato said “there is no harm in repeating a good thing,” and the gospel is the best thing, so repeat it.

In fact, I’ll go ahead and repeat it right now.
Sinner, Christ died for you. He takes away the sins of the world and has forgiven every plaguing sin you weep over. There is no condemnation for those in Christ. He loves you and is patient with you. The grave could not hold him, and he reigns now at the Father’s right hand. He is coming back, and he is coming back soon. This is all temporary; we will one day worship our Savior for eternity with no more tears, quarantines, fear, or sickness. He loves you so deeply, and nothing can snatch you out of his hand. 

There are things that deserve to be repeated. The church has always aimed to encourage each other and build each other up, but now is the time we need to hear truth from each other and love each other out loud. Now more than ever is the time we need to be encouraged and given hope. We are repetitive because our hope is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and it will always remain the most important thing in our lives. Be a broken record, and repeat it.

Look at Him

I have a box of “treasures” that lives wherever I do. It’s full of photos of important memories and people, letters written by friends, random little trinkets that mean something to me, and various sketches that I’ve held onto. One of my favorite artifacts in this tossed-about shoebox is a church bulletin from one of my pastors’ last sermon at our church in Kansas City. He preached on Revelation 22:12-17:

“Behold, I am coming soon…I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”…
“The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.”

My family went to the first service as usual that day, but being nearly in tears by the end, I stayed for the second service and listened to it again. The second time, I scribbled down important quotes as they came in an effort to preserve them in spite of my terrible memory. That box is locked away in my dorm building right now, and I won’t get to it until at least May, but one quote written on the bulletin that I haven’t been able to forget says, “He commands: ‘Look.’ Don’t look at the dying sun. Don’t look at the collapse of your political institutions. Don’t look at the burning planets. Don’t look at the laws of physics unraveling. Look at him.”

This quote comes in and out of my mind through every disaster and crisis: each time a natural disaster rips apart a town (or nearly a continent), when politics become louder than much else around me, and through the entirety of the world being shut into their homes. 

“Look at him.”

Naturally what we focus our gaze on and meditate on day after day, hour after slowly passing hour, will become our all. It will consume us and turn us into products of itself.
Friends, we are not children of the news, obsessively refreshing pages, listening to the same reports over and over, putting worry and anxiety in and holding it there. It is natural to be worried, and I am no stranger to true unrelenting anxiety, but I admit that I too often feed it and fill myself with more fear-provoking videos and articles than are beneficial for anyone.
We are not children of politics, embracing divisions as our primary identification when, in the grand scheme of eternity (and even right now), it’s not all that important. At least not as important as some make it out to be.
We are children of the King, saved and being sanctified, given new identities, new hopes, a new heart, and a new Person on the receiving end of our worship, meditation, and fixation. He is far more worthy than news reports and Twitter debates to have the majority of our daily quarantine downtime.

So “Look at him.”

He is acquainted with suffering and sorrow. He endured the cross and persecution far worse than many of us will ever know.
But, believer, he is seated at the right hand of God.

Let us set aside our worries, doubts, fears, and sins, and run with all endurance, full-speed ahead toward the finish of the race we’ve been set to run, all the while with our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, seated on that glorious throne (Heb. 12:1-3).

Don’t only look--Behold!

We can behold the blinking red alerts that say “EMERGENCY” and let it deeply terrorize and haunt us. We can fix our eyes on that and live in panic. But what peace comes in beholding our Lord and Savior, lifting our gaze to him now and every day until we see him face to face. What joy will there be, not only to finally close the distance and hug our brothers and sisters, but to end all distance in eternity and bow at the feet of Jesus with our attention undivided, all worries gone forever, and nothing to distract us from beholding his glory. 

What peace is there in meditating on good and beautiful things, and remembering that no disaster or terrible event, not even our response to it, can separate us from his love now or ever (Rom. 8:38-39).
What a worthy and powerful God we love and serve who reigns supreme over all that is in heaven and on earth and still cares about the worries in our hearts.

He is “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
Behold him.

More Than the Sparrows

Being an introvert and a relatively melancholy person, my bent is toward isolation. Sometimes it’s because I just don’t feel like talking; every now and then I need time be a hermit and spend an afternoon reading or writing. But sometimes this isolation lasts a long time.
When unhealthy, if asked how I was doing, I would probably say that I feel far away from everyone and everything. Even in public places, it often feels like if I hadn’t shown up, maybe no one would have noticed.

A few weeks ago, when isolation was in full swing, I got a letter from a friend. (Side note: let’s all start writing letters to each other in 2020. It’s maybe one of the most encouraging things to receive, and a very relaxing thing to do.)
The letter was filled with all kinds of encouragement, but the thing that I recall most often after reading it is a small drawing of a bird at the top, and the words next to it that said, “More than the sparrows.”

It was a reference to Luke 12:6-7:
“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
If God sees every sparrow, He sees you. You are worth more than the sparrows.

Over the last week, I have talked to a lot of lonely people. There are a lot of struggling people, everywhere. Some people are hopeful for the new year, but others are overwhelmed.
One of the biggest questions I face when I’m overwhelmed is whether or not I’m seen, by anyone. Are the mouse-people of the world just bound to go overlooked?
No.
Does anyone even know that I’m here?
Yes.

When we feel unseen, let us run to God’s Word:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
He knows you better than any person could.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar…
Every movement you make is seen, but so is every inner intention behind them. When you look down, not out of tiredness or absent-mindedness, but because you can’t lift your head, you are seen. When you walk as quietly as you can, not because you are really afraid of disturbing anyone, but because you just want to take up as little space and as few sound-waves as possible, you are seen.

Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether…
Every thought and prayer and fear, He hears them, and He sees you.

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?
You cannot walk out of God’s line of sight; no isolated place can hide you away from Him.

If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there you hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. (Psalm 139:1-2, 4-12)
No darkness you walk through is absent of His presence, even when the brightest day you see may as well be the dead of night. He has not turned His face away.

You are seen. You are seen and known and loved by God. He doesn’t leave you alone and take breaks to go deal with other things. He doesn’t need you to be louder; He hears your meekest and quietest of prayers. He doesn’t forget you’re there when you feel disconnected and are wondering if anyone in the world sees you. He sees you. Always.

We need this truth, and we cling to it.

In every sorrow and hurt and lonely day, you are seen.
If God sees every sparrow, He sees you.
You are worth more than the sparrows.

What Would You Do For An Idol?

I idolized a career in the arts for a very long time. My whole life, music has run in my veins, so I spent a few years jumping from singing to songwriting to acting, trying to land on one to start my life on. In my early years of high school, I wanted to sing or act for the rest of my life so badly, it hurt. I did unhealthy things to become a “better” actress and dancer, and I got to the point where I truly hated myself, because I thought I looked and sounded nothing like a traditional musical theatre actress. Give 14-year-old me a mirror for a couple minutes and she could come up with more flaws than there are minutes in a day.

Nothing was going to stop me from achieving this dream, though. If excessive working out, an overly restricted diet, an intense daily stretching routine, braces, an expensive skin-care regimen, and no social life was the way to a successful career, then so be it. 

A couple years later, I realized this wasn’t going to be my career. I felt a calling to counseling and ministry, but agonized over the idea of not spending the rest of my life in the performance world. It legitimately hurt. That is one of the most vivid memories I have of the excruciating pain it is to uncover an idol in all its hideousness and to start to dismember it. It felt like dismembering myself--and it was. This idolatry had taken over like a cancer, but I had been physically hurting myself to protect it.

It may not always show up as obviously as an eating disorder or constant obsession over self-image, but all idolatry is destructive. We are told often, but how many excuses do we make for our graven images? 

“I think this is an idol.”
“No, it’s a good thing. It’s good to love and enjoy it.”
“You sure do love it a whole lot.”
“It’s just who you are. This is a part of you.”
“Should it be, though? If it was taken away, I’d be devastated.”
“It’s just the way God made you.”

There is a whole lot of danger in that internal conversation, and I am certain that I’m not the only one who’s been over this script.

Isaiah 44:12-20 describes the work put into fashioning an idol, and the folly that idolatry is. The men in this passage make good things; tools, carpentry, food, and wood for fuel are all good. The folly is when the things they make become their all. The ironsmith works away at his tool, but forgets to drink water and becomes faint. The carpenter creates and cries out to an unresponsive idol. Men cut down great cedars, work for hours on end, and achieve things, but they end with ashes to eat, no water to drink, and a deluded heart.

When I reached the breaking point I realized that I had spent so many wasted hours cultivating my idol; all the days I missed a Bible reading or didn’t pray often, I guarantee you I spent counting calories, running, and obsessively reading over musical scores. All that work, and I never felt satisfied. In Christ, I am content. When Christ is my all, I lack no good thing (Psalm 34:10). He is worth daily sacrificing all the things I hold tightly and clinging to the cross instead. 

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in his wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace

Our Heavenly Home

Shortly after moving to Pennsylvania from Missouri, I started to get sick. Sniffles, a sore throat, a persistent cough, and a missing voice (not too great for someone studying music) have been a part of almost every day for about a month. A couple weeks in, I realized that it probably wasn’t a long-lasting cold, but that I must be allergic to something in the environment here that wasn’t back in Kansas City. As silly as it sounds, this mild, but never-ending sickness reminds me that Pennsylvania falls short of the perfect home I’ve been searching for. 

Pennsylvania is the fourth place I’ve lived during my relatively short life so far. Each place made up a significant portion of my life, so now, when people ask me where home is, I don’t know how to answer. Each one was beautiful and good, but also had its shortcomings, or even painful things about it. I’ve revisited each place and longed for just one of them to be a lifelong home, but for me and many others, every day offers an abundance of reminders that nowhere here is home. People make us feel out of place. We find ourselves in situations where we aren’t in on the joke (and no one seems to want to let us in). We feel lonely even when surrounded by people. We long for a different environment, a different culture, different weather. 

We spend our lives chasing the perfect home. We settle in different places, hoping this one will fulfill our longing—not just temporarily, but will truly, deeply, and comfortably feel like a forever home.

But every place here is temporary. It’s not meant to feel permanent. We are sojourners on this earth.

“For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding” (1 Chron. 29:15).

Hebrews 11 outlines the “heroes of the faith,” those who, by faith, endured, sacrificed, obeyed, and believed—and they knew what it was like to live as strangers. 

After the fall, Adam and Eve were sent out from the garden, and Abel shepherded flocks in a previously unsettled land. Though the work was hard and it may have been lonely, Abel worked diligently and offered an acceptable sacrifice to God (Gen. 3:23, 4:1-5).

In the midst of an evil generation, Enoch walked with God. He lived by faith, and “God took him” (5:22).

Noah lived in a time of great human wickedness, lived through the demolition of the earth as he knew it, and started life over after 40 days when the ark landed.

Abraham and Sarah were sent out of their land (12:1), and lived as foreigners in an unknown place. They traveled, pitched tents, built an altar to the Lord, and moved on to a new place. 

Hebrews 11 says, 

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

In all of their wandering, toiling, uprooting, and resettling again and again, they were faithful, and that faithfulness was rewarded. For all of us who long for home, who move, put down roots, and work where God has called us, we have an eternal home to look forward to. Christ has gone to prepare a place for us. Where he is, we will be also (John 14:2-3). 

Every time we feel out of place, we can be reminded that our longing for home is pointing us toward our heavenly home. If we chase satisfaction in an earthly place, we will never find it, but in Christ we can be satisfied. “Here, we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). What a city it will be.

But You Are Holy

At my most anxious, when I’m trying so hard to meet every spiritual requirement, my prayer life looks more like a repeated checklist than an honest plea. I pray for suffering people, organizations and missionaries, leaders, pastors, and everything except the things that creep into the back of my mind while I’m praying. And even though those other prayers are really honest, it almost feels like I’m just avoiding the persistent unanswered questions and unhealed wounds that I’m afraid to bring to God. What do I do with the whys and pleas for help that enter my mind?

The Psalmists bring them to God.

David, in Psalm 22, writes,

“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far from my deliverance and from my words of groaning? My God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, by night, yet I have no rest. But you are holy…” (Psalm 22:1-3)

In the middle of his lament, he remembers God’s holiness and all He’s done for his people. This psalm is one of lament and deep sorrow, but it is also worship. In bringing this to God, he is already expressing dependence and acknowledging that God is powerful enough to sustain him through his pain.

God desires us to run to him with both the things that bring us joy and the things that bring us pain. He wants us to sing praises to Him with a strong voice, and collapse at His feet when we are at our weakest. He knows every part of the human experience, so why do we hide away the deepest sorrows of our hearts? When we lament, He listens. When we repent, He is quick to forgive. He hears our prayers, and it is at our weakest that His strength is made even more apparent.

I will still pray through the things on the list in my mind: for leaders and pastors and friends. But when I feel like I have no strength left, when I can’t see God’s plan for the situation I am in, when I don’t understand why friends have to suffer, I will bring it to God and collapse at His feet. He is so much more powerful than I can even comprehend, but He still cares for his people and listens to their prayers. For that, I worship.

Encouraging Openness

One thing common to every believer is suffering. Many people have experienced the overwhelming isolation of some kind of hurt, and depression, whether it’s there for a season or most of a lifetime, can be found casting shadows over the lives of church members everywhere. There could be a person silently struggling sitting next to you on Sunday morning or talking and laughing with you in your weekly small group. Maybe you’re the person who’s silently struggling. One thing that could greatly benefit the collective church and the lives of individuals is openness. There is always a need for testimonials, people willing to mentor and guide others, and accessible people who can share their own story as encouragement to others to keep going. Though it’s often difficult, this openness would greatly build up the church.

Openness brings the church together.

For one thing, it is necessary in order for God’s people to carry out the “one anothers” commanded in the New Testament.

• Through love, serve one another (Gal. 5:13)

• Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2)

• Speak the truth with one another (Eph. 4:25)

• Pray for one another (James 5:16)

• Love one another (John 13:34-35)

In many cases, these things require openness.

How can Christians love and care for one another if they don’t know what other people are going through? How will they know how to pray for each other? How can believers bear one another’s burdens if they don’t know what burdens there are to bear?

People want to be truly known and feel like they’re part of a community, and Christian community is a gift from God! Without some level of vulnerability and openness, believers will continue to live life on the surface. Allowing other church members in to know your needs and to know the things you’ve been struggling with allows other people to care for you in a way they wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

Openness encourages the church.

Being open about various trials can also communicate truths about God. It shows others how the gospel has shaped lives, and it further communicates all the ways God continues to sustain and provide for His people, through the darkest nights and the brightest days.

In Paul’s writings in Philippians and 2 Corinthians, he writes about his own sufferings and what God is doing through him with the goal of building up the churches in Philippi and Corinth (and it now reaches churches worldwide!). Paul was imprisoned, beaten, stoned, went often without food, water, or clothing, and was in constant danger, but he didn’t write about his incredible strength to muscle up and power through it all. Instead, he shared his story to magnify the power of God.

He writes, “Join in imitating me, brothers and sisters, and pay careful attention to those who live according to the example you have in us” (Phil. 3:17 CSB). Paul uses his own life and experiences to encourage the church--to provide an example for them and to offer wisdom rooted in life experience. He says in 2 Corinthians, “If boasting is necessary, I will boast about my weaknesses,” and later writes that God said to him, “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.’” Paul knows that his weaknesses show God’s power, and he knows that the church will be edified by the telling of his story.

It is encouraging to talk to other people who have been through the same things. Hearing stories you identify with reinforces the idea that God is faithful, that He is good, and that He can use people, not just apart from their weaknesses, but even through them, to make much of Himself.

Openness and vulnerability do cost something. They often cost comfort. Sometimes they will cost a certain reputation. But do we really want others to see us as shining images of perfection, or do we want to be known for who we are and loved anyway? Should we desire to be seen as all-powerful, or as weak but saved and sustained by the one who is truly all-powerful?

Openness encourages believers, it cultivates unity and community, and it magnifies the one who is great and greatly to be praised, so let’s take the risk. Let’s share our struggles with one another in order to encourage one another, care for one another, pray for each other, and make much of our God who is far more powerful, faithful, and loving than we can even comprehend.