A Gift Called "Together"

We heave and breathe and pour sweat, and bump fists.
And we chant audacity (in the form of "oh yes you can!") and mouth corners upturn under flaming cheeks. And we cut another minute off the mile, add another mile to the course.

We flop down in green grass and laugh.

And I realize that what I once said would never be, is.
What I always said I'd do only for the sake of relentlessness, I do now for the love of the doing...

Together.
That changes everything, you know?

I soak up blue sky and run fingers through grass while we stretch; listen to the student of strides give us the latest science; quip that we need a team dietician.

And running isn't anything like it used to be.
It used to be heart-pounding, step-sounding solitude where the only one there to believe I could was myself.

But it isn't the love or the running that strikes me so deep.

It's that together word.
That's the gift.

Apart, some are fast, some are slow.
Others never try. Never know what they're made of.

Oh, and don't get me wrong. There's a place for solitude. I was born a loner, after all...

But I've been given a gift I hope to spend the rest of my life passing on to people around me who've never tried. Or who've quit believing.

And I dare you to do the same.
To be the same.

To the lonely soul; To the trembling child; To the one who wants, but is afraid to dare; To the one who would, if one soul would care--

I want to be together.

Because together, everyone gets stronger.

Why Love Always Wins

In that place between wakefulness and dreams I wrestle with the risk of liberty. I ponder the rules of war. I wonder how it is that Love succeeds even when it seems to fail... And then I see it.

.  .  .  .

Upon the slopes of Sinai stand I, eyes on a drama unfolding below. Two great armies fill the plain; meet in the midst in a perfect line. Their commanders sit upon regal horses, men both of great stature and commanding presence. At the first glance, and from my distance, the sides appear indistinguishable.

Motionless stand they, and grave. For I perceived that though the one side cares nothing for the rules of engagement, they dare not disobey them when confronted by this host.

I wonder for what intent they have assembled here. I have not long to wait.

Suddenly a disturbance in the ranks on the left, and the whole force is in motion. With a calm and assurance that breathes of victory already, the great host rightward makes their advance. The clash is tremendous. I assure you, you have never seen a fight until you have watched angels in conflict.

But I see the wonder: there has comes from one mouth on the left a cry I could not hear. Not for my distance, nor for the noise of the battle. But Someone heard it. And suddenly the one Commander stands up in His stirrups; raises a glittering Sword high above His head. And there is a great and terrible silence. It seems as though the entire host on the left is suddenly paralyzed. As though they had every one of them suddenly lost the duel with his antagonist, and now stand at sword-point, desperate, but dumb.

Dumb, except for their commander. Who stands up also in his stirrups and roars unthinkable blasphemies.

And then I see him. The one who'd cried out. Two great warriors cross the battle line, weave through the throng, take his hands and lead him to the other side. Theirs, the only motion in the whole of the plain

A prisoner? think I.

Nay, for behold, he is straightaway given a sword.

I turn to a silent watcher beside me. What means this?

This is a battle for a soul. One soul.

These armies, indistinguishable to the untrained eye--
They are made up of mighty angels, and common people.

And one thing most notable sets them apart. (Besides the character of their commanders.)

The one has gained its every recruit by impressment, imprisonment, deception, and coercion.
The other accepts only volunteers.

The rules of war are in our favor.
When in the midst of battle one of ours defects, he is allowed to go, though chains await him. 
When one of theirs believes, we go in and get him.
That's fair.

And we have the Sword. 
And we have the Lord Glorious. 

They are all slaves. 
We're all loving servants.

Of course Love has the advantage.

Proven Supremacy [Off the Scribbled Page]

Do you know what I learned this morning?...
I've learned we can't leave room for even the smallest infidelity. That to resist accountability in one department means failure to thrive in all others. That the slightest neglect to commit leaves a hole that apostasy will be only too glad to fill.

We can afford no such luxury. (No such villainy.)



Here's what I learned...

The supremacy of God is manifested to the world by the fidelity of His friends.*

So it was when it appeared God Himself had been made a servant to Babylon. For wasn't almost every holy thing from His house now beautifying a pagan temple?

No, actually not. Because the most beautiful things from God's house were the hearts that served Him there.
And some of those hearts stayed true. Even in Babylon.

My God, show Thyself strong in a pagan land, before a pagan people, through the faithfulness of Thy friends...

*See PK Chap 39: In the Court of Babylon

Her Name Was Mary

"Ok, tell me everything you know about this girl."

I'm on a quest of discovery. And I'm after everything my friend might know.

"Well, she's a really pious woman."
                                                "Or... wait."

-  -  -

Yeah. My thoughts exactly.
Almost without exception, her contemporaries thought differently.
For after all, she was the girl who'd been robbed of parents before she was ready to stand on her own, and had subsequently turned to find love where it can never be found. She was the one who, whether intentionally or accidentally, had thrown away her innocence, her youth, her purity, her piety in the crime-soaked business of human flesh for sale. And to boot, seven times she'd bowed to the dark side, and become a currier for the worst kind of darkness.
She was.

But then, then there was that awful day when she was caught in the act... Dragged from the bed to the street, and thrown in a cowering heap before the Lord of Glory.
And there was that beautiful moment when her broken shame, her stripped-bare necessity, appeared in the shadow of the undiluted Love of Infinite Eternity.

And she got it.

She got it.

Of course the pharisees would always maintain that Jesus regularly ate breakfast, lunch and dinner at a prostitute's house.
Of course they'd say that what was could never be fully erased.

Of course, we say the same of others. We say the same of ourselves.
You know, that a crippling past must necessarily have a strong effect on one's usefulness future. That this girl should never know as she might, what it is to trust. Or that, at the very least, it might take a lifetime to learn. And love? Well...

Yes. We often say those things.
And of course, there is an element of truth to them.

But there's a reason this girl named Mary (which name means "Rebellious," by the way) is my new favorite Bible character.

Because her story is the story of the power of grace to overcome, and to turn my past into my greatest advantage.

Let me gently remind the world that the home she shared with her big brother and sister was the place Jesus always came to when it was time to rest. That these were, apart from His very own, His best friends on earth. And that after her turning, this girl gained eyes for things everyone else missed.

Because the brokenness of her past was the richest possible backdrop for the truth about Grace, and the power of Love.

Remember that in the midst of the noise of a traditional Jewish party, while everyone was consumed by the festivities, one girl had the presence of mind to anointed her Lord for burial. That when everyone else was consumed with the protocol, this one girl sat at the feet of the Desire of the Ages, and watched Him, all ears, all eyes, all heart.
Remember that on that dark friday, she was there. When they carried Him to the tomb, she was there.

And let me remind you that on resurrection morning, Jesus appeared to one, and only one friend. And that friend was neither Peter, James, nor John.

Her name was Mary.
And she was a former prostitute.

I can't help but wonder, might it be because she understood something about Love that everybody else missed?
And might that be because God makes "all things work together for good..."?

"Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little."

 "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." Ro. 5:20

-  -  - 

Shoes kiss the pavement over and over. Rhythm of breathing and stride. We push miles behind us one at a time, while the truth is soaked in silence.

And I? I'm so taken.

"So, you see why this story, this girl . . .". . .

The Gospel

It's not just a story.
It's what we live and breathe.

The gift. The giving.

How simple. How utterly, overwhelmingly profound and powerful.

And if I really believe it, then I will necessarily live it out too.

I stand with eyes closed and smile soft as the first rays of the morning sun warm my face, and my office.
And it strikes me that this warmth cost the sun some fuel.

A star's slow death powers life for a race. --for an entire system of whirling planets and moons.

      "...Life to the receiver; death to the giver."
                   "But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."*

The Gospel.
The Giving.
The way God lives.
And for our part, the way of living fully alive.

Of being honored to pass to others, through choosing death to myself,
the very Life of God.

Oh, I choose.
I do.

*Jackie Pullinger; John 12:24; 

When Words Save Lives

I settle into the airway seat while we wail down the interstate. Mental checklists line up like a rabble of elementary boarding scholars waiting for roll call. All set. Light blue latex waits on my lap. (Medium please.)

The radio crackles; they've called the bird. We almost always do on a rollover.

At long last we cross the median to join a parade of flashing lights.
The secondary beat us there by three minutes, but this is our territory.
It's mayhem. The kind of mayhem an overloaded pickup truck leaves on the road when it tumbles.
And it looks like the Army, Navy, Marines, and National Guard are all on scene too. (figuratively.)

We elbow in.

Patient looks remarkably good considering. Ugliness on his hand and shoulder and sticky swelling questionableness on his head, but awake and talking. Just one thing:

"Does anybody speak spanish??"

I've got the head. We load him just in time to escape rotor wash. The bird hot drops a crew and takes off again.

"I kinda do."

Medics from three crews on one rig. And FD and LE orbiting around the outside, circling for turns at the open door, to fire more questions in.

I lean down to hear him. Me, the link between him and the guys that know way more than I do.
I've got the chart too. And I ask him questions, and I ask them for procedures and numbers and assessments. And I put everybody's answers on paper.

Then after ten minutes start to finish, I'm back in the airway seat with my feet up, headed for base.
He'll fly, we'll go back to listening to the radio.

It's in the peace of a quite firehouse that it hits me.

Language.

Love it. Spend almost an hour a day, every day, learning a new one.

But how many times has Heaven come to my rescue, sent down it's agents, stopped an interstate to land the bird,
and been almost entirely unable to give me any real aid at all, because I didn't know the language.

Because I'd never taken time to learn it.

To hear the voice of God is one thing. To understand it is another.

Better Part of Town [Distance between Virtue and Vice]

I hate to tell you this.
Or maybe I don't...

Have you ever noticed that the most despairing realities all have this flip side that makes them cradles for hope when Grace steps in? When you shift enough to give them a look from the other side?

I walk down main street and my American sensibilities are shattered by the irony of this Southeast Asian reality.
Mansion, shack, mansion, shack, shack, mansion. What?

I meander down almost ancient streets in Latin America, find myself striding with purpose (and maybe a twinge of fear?) past one doorway, strolling past the next with perfect calm.

I guess that's how they do it here. The distance between the good part of town and the bad is the thickness of a brick wall.
Seems so barbaric. Here, you know, we insulate ourselves. Our neighborhoods are zoned. And so we can rest easy on our sprawling front lawns knowing that all our neighbors are at least average citizens, and crime of any kind is at least 62 blocks away.

Whatever.

Do you know what has been pressed home to me this week?
Pressed home by the wanderings and returnings of my own heart, and photos of lands I love?

There is only one difference between the greatest bastion of virtue, and the "strongest bulwark of vice."
You know what it is?

"One sin fostered."

They're built on the same street. In fact, they share the same address.

I don't know about you, but that scares me more than a little.
And makes me run to Grace.

Jesus, forgive us.


The distance between the good part of town and the bad is far less than the thickness of a brick wall.

"The strongest bulwark of vice in our world is not the iniquitous life of the abandoned sinner or the degraded outcast; it is that life which otherwise appears virtuous, honorable, and noble, but in which one sin is fostered, one vice indulged. 

 To the soul that is struggling in secret against some giant temptation. . . such an example is one of the most powerful enticements to sin."

It doesn't take long to turn from light to darkness.

But then, it doesn't take Grace long to turn one from darkness into light...
Glory be.

Bound to the Altar

See how his hand trembles, this giant of a man. 

See how it fumbles with soft leather strap, almost inept.
Hear broken sobs, from the given heart.
Watch him blink away tears so he can see what he's doing--
See to bind his son. His promised son.

By some reflex my head turns in real life, eyes squinted shut. As if to say "I don't want to watch this happen."

Amazing love.
But you know what I find almost more amazing?
See how his hand takes those straps, steady and strong.
See how he binds himself, soothes the broken, himself blinking away tears.
This strong son. The promised one.

Amazing love.

-  -  -  -  -

I pull out a second card. Because sometimes on sister's birthday one card won't say it all.

Four words-- This morning I pondered with tears what it must take to stand like a rock, on a breaker out in the tide while the waves crash over. Like lighthouses do... 

Because you, I, we... We're out there, and the sandy shore from whence we've come is washing out, getting ever more distant. Carried away by churning foam while the water around gets deeper. 

I mean, there's the clinging, the scratching, the white-kunckled hold. But anemones and starfish have many more hands than we do. And none of them are permanent fixtures. 

So it must be, that to stand rock-like, we need nothing less than to be bound to that rock by a power outside of our own. Greater than our own. Bound so firmly that neither fear nor fatigue can ever make us ask for release of reprieve.  

Because it's in the midst of the worst storms that the world most needs lighthouses...
Prisoner on the rock. ...to the Rock. 

Bind yourself there. 

               Love you forever.

Live By It [Motto #142]

I already have a motto.

But I write new ones constantly anyway.
Because I live best by truth thus synthesized. And because they come back when I need them when I do.

Seek nothing until you have sought God;
            Seek nothing you cannot seek for God.

Because if what you are after can't be pursued for the sake of Jesus Christ,
it isn't worth pursuing.

The Soldier and the Cross [New Battlefields]

Fatigue propels me towards sleep. Sleep, only so peaceful under these circumstances.
I have only a week left, and as happens every time I am about to return to the "Land of the Free," I have this burning...

I have been writing here. More, not less, than at home in fact. But those words are destined for published page, not the blog. Thus long silence.

In the mean time though, the moments before sleep claims my attention are filled with other things.
Like, this desperation that every friend I have in the great West would come to understand the extent of other battlefields, the importance of other battlefields...

And then I found this. It's not a blogpost. It's raw off of a journal page two years old. But it's 570 words worth of what God will do with the life of every man or woman that claims victory over the battlefield between their own ears, and becomes available to God to go off a bit further...

Oh, make that every one of us, Your Grace...

A splattering of photos. More on Google+ and Instagram. 

20 miles on jungle trails in the foothills of the Andes with these shoes. Happiness.

if only a photo could actually capture it...

hilltops full of Inca ruins...

I have learned that starlight is enough. Leave the flashlight at home.

multiple exposures. learning a new game.

home away from home.

that sky...

____________________________

February 2011:

When a child of the Highest finds himself at the foot of the cross, the first thing God does it to commission him as a soldier.

What do soldiers do? Fight.
And who do soldiers fight? Enemies.

David has a great deal to say about enemies. It seems he had a lot of them. Until recently I thought I didn't have enemies... But now I realize I do.

My enemies are inside me. They seek my hurt. They watch for my life. They wait in the darkness, in the silence, to find a moment of weakness and send me plummenting to my death.

I have enemies alright.

And these I am commissioned to fight.

The first commission given to a soldier after he has knelt at the foot of the cross is the fight against his own selfish heart. The selfish heart is the farthest thing possible from the cross of Jesus Christ. It, (along with its cherished sentiments, pride, vanity, impurity, and a host of others) represents the first battle to be won.

But here is where many fail.
They fail to look beyond the first battle to the endless expanse beyond.

And after fighting the terrors inside teir own breasts, they come crushed to the foot of the cross-- (the earnest ones do)

"I'm done. I'm broken. There is nothing left. I'm tired of being beaten to pulp. I can't stand up, I can't even sit up! All I can do is lie on my face, moan over my bruises, and try to survive. It isn't worth it."

And indeed, such an existence wouldn't be.

But that is not the end of all things.
It is only the beginning.

For you see, a soldier lives entirely between the foot of the cross, and the battlefield.

But as he gets stronger, his battlefields change.
His enemies change.

It is God's intention that the territory farthest from the cross, that inhabited by selfishness, pride, impurity..., should become His. He does not intend that the soldier should always be stuck down in the valley a day's hike from Calvary.

One battle is to prepare the soldier for the next...
The distance between the battlefield and the foot of the cross grows less and less.
Until the soldier is no longer fighting for his life... But fighting for the Cross..

This is what it means to be a soldier.

And as the battlefield changes, so do the enemies. No longer are they demons out solo, trying to crush out one little life.

These are the legions, the best of the best (worst of the worst) and they are trying to uproot the cross itself.

But this soldier is the best of God's best too. He's a "Navy SEAL" of the kingdom of God. And with burning muscles, one arm around the cross and the other armed with his sword; his own blood spattering on the stones around him, he grips, he defends that cross. Nothing but death can separate them.


But that's not all.
There is One sacrifice.
But there are thousands of crosses.

And so God comes to His special forces; those who cannot be separated from the cross and yet live. And looking lovingly upon them He asks for volunteers...

"See this cross?"
"Yes Sir."
"I need this cross planted over there. in the heart of darkness."
"I go, Sir."
"You will spill your blood, and may lose your life."
"But will the cross stand where I fall?"
"The cross always stands. I promise."