Revolt Towards

...Except You Ravish Me.

2009-11-09T11:56:33-08:00

Ever since meeting John Donne in high school, I have always been in love with his poetry and particular, his poetic reflections on God. Below is his Holy Sonnet XIV:

HOLY SONNETS. by John Donne XIV.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

I was sharing with my friend Maggie on Saturday how sometimes, we get so in love with Jesus because we know he is right there, interacting me us and it's easy! But other times, those feelings need to be chased after, sought after and fought for. Like any relationship, there are ebbs and flows. Sometimes you feel close; intimate. Other times, disconnected and far away.

The Song of Songs gives us a glimpse of this. The beloved waits for the Lover to come, only to find that He was gone...But a pursuit ensues.

I arose to open for my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the lock.

I opened for my lover, but my lover had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure. I looked for him but did not find him. I called him but he did not answer.

O daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you— if you find my lover, what will you tell him? Tell him I am faint with love.

What we see here is that it is the beloved that must also take action and go after the Lover. I looked but did not find him. If you find my lover...Tell him I am faint with love. We have to be active in our pursuit because He wants to be chased too. Maybe some of you are like myself, where you know you love God and will never stop that belief, but you also know that isn't enough. You need something more. You need more than biblical theologies. You need more than a good who lives in a book. You need more than philosophies and fairy tales. You need Someone real.

So invite Him in. If He feels absent from your life and you feel absent from Him, invite Him into whatever you have going on in your life. I have invited Him into my times of song writing and simply said, "God, I don't know how all this works, but I want you here with me as I try to write these lyrics." Maybe your a mother or father—invite Him into your parenting. Maybe you are at work and have a problem to solve—invite Him in. Tell Him He's welcome into your circumstances! Just like anyone boy or girl being wooed, He too gets excited and giddy when we include Him into our lives.

Thing is—He will never force Himself on us. That is not love. Just invite Him in. Just say today "Would you come?" Because as Donne wrote so long ago with the same cry:

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Dive!

2009-11-07T08:44:40-08:00

Check out the trailer for the new film, Dive! It's all about dumpster diving for wasted food!
(I think someone I know is in the trailer. Weird).

Justice Isn't About Me

2009-10-23T13:17:01-07:00

So yesterday I was driving home and I got off the 101 when I saw this woman holding a sign that said "Pregnant. Please help!" While I've come across signs like this before, this one was different. This woman was holding her face with her free hand as tears came streaming down her face. Through my thin car windows, I could hear the groan of her sadness and the reality of her situation made me reach for my wallet. Only I was too slow and the light was green and I'm praying, "Jesus, should I go back!? What should I do?"

All I heard was, "Joel, this one isn't yours."

Out of all the times I've helped people and given my change, here was a woman whose tearful moaning still had my ears ringing and I was ready to do whatever it took, and all I hear, or what I think I hear is, "This one isn't yours, Joel."

I was pissed! As I continued driving, I wanted to cry and was completely frustrated inside.

That was when He spoke.

"Joel, my justice isn't about you."

But I was ready to sacrifice anything! Go anywhere! Do whatever it took to help this woman!

"It's not about you, Joel. It never was or will be..."

"My justice on the earth has nothing to do with you feeling good about yourself, but justice in her life is as much about you as it is about her. Justice, the kind of justice I'm looking for, is ultimately an issue of worship, Joel. My justice for you right now is to be obedient to me because your obedience—your worship by listening to me—is better than your sacrifice. This one isn't yours to tackle. This is where you trust me—an act of worship—that I'm big enough to take care of her and let justice come."

Of course, I was floored. Mad, but at the same time, taken aback at this revelation.

It's not about me. I wanted to help, but my help and action can't supersede listening to the King. If I were to have acted on my own in this situation and enacted my own sense of justice and my own sense of Joel's righteousness in the situation, then who knows what ramifications that would of had. Am I worried about the ramifications of me not helping her when I had the means to do so? Well, while something like this had never happened before, it doesn't change that Jesus quickly was teaching me to trust Him. To trust Him that me not acting doesn't mean I was inactive. I prayed for her the rest of the way home (and even wrestled with my own believes that we need to become the prayers we pray). But frankly, I would rather be pissed off at God for being obedient (because He can handle it), than to have missed this lesson all together because I just blindly acted on my compassion.

Hebrews 1:8
But about the Son he says, "Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom.

If I enact my own sense of what I think justice is, then I play God. I put myself as the one holding the scepter of justice. But I don't hold the scepter—only the King does and we are all subject to him. I do believe this only applies to us who call Jesus our King. The Red Cross, Oxfam, FEMA, UNICEF—they will all call their own shots. But as people who "proclaim another King", I want to make sure I also never go to the frontlines on the battlefields of justice without knowing what my King is doing.

It's about His justice, not mine. It's about His righteousness on the earth, not mine. And both those things mean that bringing His righteousness and justice ultimately comes down to worship of Jesus and not our own ideas, plans and the best-laid intentions.

If the pursuit of justice ever becomes about our own glory, we might as well be making a golden calf from the gold found in our lofty, compassionate pursuits. True justice on the earth from the One who sees and knows all things and all scenarios, is never about me and never will be—it will always be about Him as long as I (we) let Him have His way.

Follow Up

2009-10-15T12:59:22-07:00

So when I was in New York, or rather, Brooklyn, I wrote a blog (I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For) after an afternoon spent at Prospect Park. I wish I would have wrote this followup a few weeks ago, but it never happened. But something awesome did happen on my day there in the city.

I was Sunday, September 27 and my last day on the east coast so I wanted to make the most of my day. I really wanted to go to Central Park at some point, but my prayer was that my time in NYC wouldn't be in vain (ie: just to see U2) and that something would happen that day to conclude my time there.

A few different things happened that day (encountering a drugged-out woman on Broadway and Spring; spending time at Grace Church while the girl's choir practiced singing Isaac Watts' "When I Survey the Wonderous Cross"; and being able to walk through Central Park after the rain), but it was in the evening at my friends' church, Trinity Grace, that everything made sense.

I walked into the church that night with Nathaniel while their time of worship was going on. While they sang songs I didn't know, it wasn't hard to sense that they knew why they were there and wanted to encounter God. After worship, this woman came up to give the teaching for the night. What would you know, but it was all on the dunamis power of God.

She talked of us being a people who live for the renewal of all things by being people who pursue the power of God. She talked about how embarking on this means we have to repent for not pursuing it actively before. She talked about how this is what the world needs, what New York City needs and what the church needs.

She spoke from Act 17 where Paul and Silas are preaching in the city and they get accused of "turning everything upside down" and for "proclaiming another king" other than Caesar.

Acts 17:6-7
And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; Whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus.

They turned everything upside down! They proclaimed another king!

If we are honest, when was the last time those who follow Jesus were blamed for turning everything upside down? Maybe during the Jesus People movement of years past. But not lately. Not even our justice movements within the Church have gotten blamed for such a thing.

I think a key to understanding the power that can transform families, homes, cities and nations is that we have to proclaim another King. And if we aren't proclaiming another King, in whatever we do (work, play, social justice, church, ministry) then we truly do need to repent.

...Because God is waiting for us to join Him in the renewal of all things.

Van Gogh on Fear...

2009-10-14T08:00:00-07:00

"I tell you, if one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm – but that's a lie, and you yourself used to call it that. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity. Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, You can't do a thing. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all.

Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be,the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily. He wades in and does something and stays with it, in short, he violates, "defiles" – they say. Let them talk, those cold theologians."

- Vincent Van Gogh (who did not pick up a paint brush until he was 30 years old)