the story of choice; or...the choice of the story

      I’ve been watching the DVDs of one of the big popular TV dramas this year. I’m nearly to the end of Season 2, and today I finally cracked. There have been deaths along the way, and those have hurt, because it is such a wonderfully constructed story. And each time something bad has happened, I have accepted it as part of the story. I’ve been sad, but I’ve allowed the story to continue. I’ve allowed myself to continue to be carried along. But today was different. Today two people who I was beginning to care about died. Rather, they were murdered. But that wasn’t all. One of the women who was murdered was beginning to form a relationship with one of my favorite characters, someone who has had a hard time in life and for whom I was thus really happy he had finally met someone. And then, bam, she’s gone. And for the first time I wasn’t just sad, I was angry. And I wasn’t angry at what had happened within the show. I was angry at the show’s creators. I was angry at how fond they seem to be of giving someone a glimmer of hope in their life and then stripping it away like it’s nothing. I was angry at how they can’t seem to let one happy thing remain, to let anything endure. If someone loves their child, that child must be taken away. If someone loves another, that too must be taken away. And I know there have been happy moments, but this time it was too much, and I faced a decision: I can either continue with the story, and accept where the storytellers take me, believe that their purposes will ultimately be good, even if right now it seems dark, or I can just quit. I can stop watching the show, I can refuse to be saddened or frustrated or angered any more, and I can just put it away and leave it for good.

      And then it struck me. We face this same decision every day of our lives on this wretched planet. Every time there is a war. Every time we or someone we love or know or hear of suffers. Every time there is ugliness or injustice or pain, we have a choice. We can blame the author, the creator, the one who allows it to endure; or we can allow the story to carry us forward, trusting that even though at times it seems too dark and terrible to endure, somewhere in those shadows there is hope. We can choose to believe that somehow, though at times it may be far beyond our comprehension, the creator knew what he was doing, knows still what he is doing, and that somehow there is purpose to it all. That somehow, it is good. He is good.

      But it is a choice, make no mistake. And many, perhaps most, cannot endure the pain of hope, and so they choose to let it die. And it is not just for ourselves, but also for them, that we must pray.

Grace

Too many Christians live their lives trying to earn the grace of God; trying to earn that which by its very nature cannot be earned. Let us not count ourselves among them! Let us pray earnestly that the Lord would open our eyes to the reality of His grace, that our love for Him may abound. And in so abounding, that we in turn would act out in love toward the world, not to gain what has already been offered, but to bring glory to what already is. And if we ask in faith for our eyes to be thus opened, the Lord will open them, for He delights to pour out His blessings upon us.

            Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
            Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
            Matthew 7:7-11

            You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
            James 4:2b-3

the privilege of knowing...

Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”
      Exodus 34:5-7

      What a remarkable privilege. That we, the created beings of an almighty God, might be given access to the Lord’s self-proclaimed description of his own nature. I am no biblical scholar, but it seems likely that this passage, in context, is the Lord’s continuation of a few verses earlier, in Exodus 33:17-20, where we read

      ...And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and know you by name.”
      Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”
      And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

      And then comes the Lord’s proclamation of his name in chapter 34, from above. The God upon whose face we cannot even look without being destroyed allows us the intimate privilege of hearing, in his own words, who he is: YHWH, YHWH, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Already, even as he gives the law to Moses for the first time, we are seeing his redemptive purpose, his all-consuming love. And yet, even in the midst of his abounding mercy, he is still just: he does not leave the guilty unpunished. Justice and mercy, side by side. The lion laying down with the lamb. A God uninterested in a relationship with his creations does not bare his nature to them. No, these are the words of a God who through Moses is setting the foundations of a compassionate mercy which He will one day extend to all of mankind through the person of Christ. And he is setting those foundations, not through a cold impersonal means, but through the form of an intimate, knowing relationship in which even as he knows Moses, he allows Moses to know him, just as the same gift of intimacy will one day be offered to us all. Created beings, nothing before their creator, given loving access to the depths of his true nature and being. And that is a remarkable thought.

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