Can a Christian Know True Despair?

Some things should be used rarely and with great discretion. I would say both cilantro and the word "despair" fall into that category.

The Bible seems to agree. Cilantro isn't mentioned even once. (Though its seed, coriander--a vast improvement over the soapy herb--gets two mentions.) And despair--only four times: Twice in the Old Testament and twice in the New.

I was once told by a Christian church leader that "real" believers should never know the condition called despair. (I didn't ask his opinion on cilantro.) The Hebrew word is yaash (pronounced yaw-ASH). It means desperation without any hope. It's as low as you can go. The Greek, which we find in those two New Testament mentions, is exaporeomai (ex-ap-or-EH-om-ahee, if you're brave enough to try it; I just can NOT get the emphasis in the right place). It means the same thing, essentially, though qualified as "utterly at a loss without a way through." No way out.

I think of the Israelites out of Egypt, with their backs up against the impassable Red Sea and the Egyptians bearing down on them. No way out, or so it seems. But is that one of the places in the Old Testament in which we are told someone experienced despair? No. It isn't. Because really, they were not in despair. God was already making a way. He directed them to move forward even though they couldn't see where to go: move toward the sea. That body of water, in his hands, became their deliverance, though they could never have imagined it or done it themselves. Scripture does not record that they felt despair in that situation, even though I expected it might. Perhaps it isn't recorded because in that case, it was not a truthful desciptor.

Three of the four biblical mentions of despair do indeed seem to support my former advisor's position--that those who really believe do not have a personal relationship with utter hopelessness. Let's look at them.

The first occurrence is in 1 Samuel 27:1. David, in the Psalms, certainly shows us that he knows despondency, but what about despair? In this passage, we find him relentlessly pursued by Saul, to the point that he knows Saul will never, never give up until he has David's life. It may seem David is out of options and despair is nipping at his heels, but that's not how the word is applied. David does something that seems pretty unthinkable. He flees Saul, and where does he go? Straight into the camp of his enemies, the Philistines. Remember Goliath, whom the boy David slew? PHIL-IS-TINE. David took out the Lord's enemies' hero, and now, in his desperation to escape his own enemy, he finds the Philistines a safer bet. After all, it was in the killing of their giant that King Saul's heart was turned against David, filled with uncontrollable jealousy and rage that would not relent. David recognizes the full-tilt passion with which Saul desires to destroy him. Saul is nothing short of consumed with intent to annihilate David, and it is Saul who will then know despair as David slips away to the lesser enemy. David's state of persecution is not, to him, a cause for despair. Instead, he says that when Saul can't find him to kill him, it is Saul who will spiral into that state of utter hopelessness. His unsated bloodthirstiness will send him into desperate emptiness, hopelessness.

Score one for my advisor. Under extreme duress, David did not despair. (And by implication, neither should I, right?)

Next we find the word in Ecclesiastes 2:20. Qoheleth is lamenting the ongoing toil of this life and recognizing its futility and frustration. We work and we work and we work, but we can make for ourselves no guarantee that our profits--if any--will move forward in the wisdom and purpose we desire. With his hope set on the work of his own hands, Qoheleth gives his heart over to despair--utter hopelessness. Not even those who work with wisdom, knowledge, and skill can save themselves or redeem their own efforts well, not even one of them, in this life. Outside of the hand of God (9:1) is nothing but despair. But in the hand of God, the only truly wise place to be--a different story altogether. Score two for my advisor.

The third and fourth usages are found in 2 Corinthians, and for the structure of the argument, I'm going to jump ahead to number four first. 2 Corinthians 4:8, Paul, in writing to the troubled church, states that his current state (and possibly theirs as well) is one of perplexity, "but not driven to despair." Things are bad, but still, his hope is in the "surpassing power of God." Sounds like a third point for the argument that real believers persist in faith so that they do not know the actual condition of despair first-hand.

But I would say, because of the last one, that the scriptural evidence is that they do not know despair in these particular circumstances. Because 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 pushes back against that claim that never will a Christian be so deep in the pit that knowledge of despair moves from gnosis (conceptual head-knowledge) to epignosis (personal, relational, intimate knowledge).

"For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death."

Been there? Paul has. I have. I was told I couldn't. I was told I didn't have enough faith. I was told that no physical circumstance could be bad enough to make a "real believer" feel "utterly burdened beyond [his/her] strength" and "despair of life itself." And here is Paul, the very one chosen by God in a blinding flash of light to take the gospel to the world outside of Judea, an eye-witness to the resurrected Christ, one given a vision in the Spirit of all that is to come, one who knew utter transformation in himself now stating quite specifically that he has also, even in going about the very work assigned directly by God to him, known utter affliction to the point of despair. No way out. None. Death upon him.

And there is validation in that moment. I thought I was a vessel of God's wrath. I thought he had to have abandoned me if I could feel so completely hopeless and trapped and anguished. I thought it meant my faith had not been real if I couldn't hold on to peace and contentment in the midst of suffering. Why do we sunshiny believers feel like we have to push this "happiness doctrine" on one another with such force when here, Paul wants us to know that he, too, has been there? Not only ready to give up, but actually doing so. He was done. Beyond his strength. That was reality.

We don't get to know the specifics of the circumstances Paul experienced but it seems from the text that the cause was conditions outside his own heart. This is not just a spiritual struggle. It was something physical, material, that happened in Asia. Persecution? Betrayal? Illness? All of the above, and then some? It isn't just that he got a little case of spiritual influenza and had to pep-talk himself back into the zeal and fervor he's known for. No, something attacked him, and perhaps his angels were delayed in coming to fight on his behalf, but whatever happened, it broke him. Paul too could break. I did.

But praise be to God, who overcomes. He didn't leave Paul there. He didn't leave me there either. Paul came out of Asia. And in looking back, he can see that God had purpose, and going forward, he can tell the troubled Corinthians that they can take comfort and find peace in his experience for their own. "But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead."

He raises the dead. He reaches those in despair. He gives a way out where there is no way out.

The fact that he does so is not evidence that there was no real reason for despair. On the contrary, the reality of despair is the evidence that we need a GOD outside ourselves to reach into our helpless estate and do what we cannot do for ourselves. "On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us AGAIN."

Beloved, it may not be completely over yet. The sea has parted. The clouds have lifted. The blows have stopped. The path out of Asia has been traveled. But what comes next?

All I know is that "On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again."

For now, may I say that Paul was afflicted so that I, and you, could share in his comfort and salvation? Perhaps I was afflicted so that you can share in my comfort and salvation. And if it comes again, remind me of your own story, and that despair is real. But we rely not on ourselves but on the God who raises the dead.

He is faithful.

Why Ascension Matters

It's Good Friday, and last year, the day hit me with just the reassurance and comfort and grace that I seem to stay hungry for all the time. You can read about that here.

While I have reflected again, especially with the morning's anxieties, on the proof of God's love, this year, I can't stop talking to the girls about the Ascension. I guess it's a new understanding for me, so much more rich and personal than I had realized before, and so I want to talk about it, want them (and you, if you're interested) to glory in it with me.

If you've been reading these Contents for a long time, then you know I've struggled with the physicality of my existence and the spirituality of our faith experience. (Some examples of that ongoing wrestling with longing for the physical, walking by sight: Knowing Face to Face; Crying "Abba! Daddy!"; Waiting for God)

That background about my longing to "have a God with skin on" is important for me in understanding why Jesus had to go away. Why couldn't he stay here, eternally, walking with us on this planet? Wouldn't that be better for us, to be able to find him somewhere, even if it meant we had to use Delta to track him down while he was doing some serious Kingdom Building on another part of this little rock?

That time will come. But for now, for me to know, really know, that I am secure, he had to go away. He had to leave so that I could know my future is sealed.

As a kid and even an adult believer, I typically just thought of the Ascension as the event that marked the reality of Jesus' words on the cross: "It is finished." It's done. He went home. Yes, John tells us that he said he was going to "prepare a place for us," and I believe it. That's cool. I'd like a place prepared. A house with many mansions in it, the shade of my own fig tree. Sounds good. Whatever he's got in mind, I'm sure I'll be content with it. But it is so much more than that--the reason he had to leave us!

Think about what happened just last night, all those years ago, in Gethsemane. He wrestled and writhed under the knowledge of what he was about to take on. We can't even imagine it, because we've been steeped in sin and its damages all our existence. But it had not touched him. Not one inkling of it lived inside him, and he dropped to his knees in a garden--harkening back to the place he first put his beloveds, where they were safe and pure and with him in the beginning--and said, "I'll take it, Father. ALL of it, onto myself." Every lie. Every murder. Every act of adultery. Every short word. Every broken promise. Every theft. Every manipulation. Every violation of justice. Every single time his own honor was rejected, discounted, diminished. Every word of slander. Even every stroke of the hammer that would drive the nails into his own flesh hours later. And all that pain that comes from all those things.

I see it like a never-ending thunderhead, rolling black and violent and oppressive, from all four corners of the Earth and being funneled onto this one beautiful, humble man. I know what it is to be as innocent as I can be, and to be blindsided by a kind of unexpected violence that cut me to my soul--but this is me, a sinful woman already, who has caused hurt and damage. And by comparison, the affliction I have experienced is just momentary. It cannot compare to the volume of evil he took onto himself--the words say "he became"--for us. How did he even bear that moment of taking the sin of the world? How did that in itself not kill him?

While on the cross, having become our sin, his Father had to turn away. He had to. It's who God is. It's how bad sin is. It's what he would have had to do to us if Christ had not been willing to be that man who took it all. It's what we deserve. It's NOT what God left it to be, though. But sin is that bad. A God who is perfect in righteousness cannot be where sin is, and certainly cannot be joined to it in unity. It had to go. On the cross, Jesus was our sin, and God had to turn away or else cease to be God. And he did.

He turned away. Forsook his only Son, whom he loved. For you. For me. For us.
But the story's not over.

After he died, he was taken down and placed in a tomb and it was sealed. Why do we bury people? And why are there rules about that burying? It's about purification. Death breeds impurity--disease, corruption. The dead must be dealt with, and burial allows the process to take care of the impurities. The surface is not made impure by a buried corpse, as it would be if the corpse were left exposed. And that's what Christ's burial is--the purification of all that sin. It is taken into the ground and dealt with. With finality.

But the story's not over. The power comes. The very power of the God who creates. It's the same power to resurrect. He who gives life gives life AGAIN, and he does it for Jesus and he does it for you and he does it for me. Resurrection power, after the grave. I've glimpsed it here. A child almost dead, expected to die, returned not only to life but to vigorous life. It's a shadow of what we're talking about here and what is to come for all who believe. Life. I don't think we even truly know it yet, but there it is before our eyes to consider: Life after the grave.

But the story's still not over yet. Because after he appeared to many, and they believed to carry forward the Kingdom work he had for them, then he left. He was lifted up, he Ascended to heaven. And that's so much more than just going away. It's not a "So long and thanks for everything" kind of goodbye. It's not even just a closure on the "It is finished" statement.

Get this: It is our PROOF that his work is sufficient. It's good enough. It's a done deal. The bargain is sealed. Your sins are gone. They are removed from you as far as the east is from the west and they are never coming back and because of that you can and will be with the God who cannot be in the presence of sin. You will be united with him. Because the Father accepted Christ, who had become sin for us, back into his presence.

If even any residue of that sin remained with him, unpurified, hanging on to haunt us all later and sprout again in the new Earth, then God the Father could not have received the Christ back into heaven. The Ascension could not have happened. But it did. And the future is written, and we're in it, with him, perfectly, forever.

The fact that Jesus is not here any longer is our proof. His work was good enough. It is settled. I am his.

Praise!

Happy Easter, beloveds. He Is RISEN and ASCENDED!

What Was Meant for Evil

Did you ever experience something that you know has to be evil, but yet you cannot deny the good that came from it?

Think of Joseph, youngest of 11 sons of Israel, the favorite. His jealous brothers could not bear the favoritism nor Joseph's superior attitude. They did the unbrotherly thing--tossed him into a hole, sold him into slavery, told the father the boy was dead. I can pretty comfortably call that evil.

Joseph found himself in a foreign country, where he is seduced by a married woman. When he flees from her, she lies to save face for herself, claiming he didn't reject her--instead, he molested her! He gets thrown into prison. Deep, dark, dank prison, for YEARS. Years of his life evaporate in that darkness, foreshadowed, perhaps, by the dry well that held him at his brothers' hands. I can pretty comfortably call that evil.

But what was intended for evil, God worked for good. God brought good for Joseph and even for Joseph's brothers out of that sequence of evil events. Joseph became a leader--second in command of all of Egypt. And in that position, Joseph also was used to kind of do a number on the people of Egypt too. He knew severe famine was coming, so he had to plan ahead. He "taxed" the people's produce at outrageous rates to store up for the seven years of starvation. I wonder how they might have groaned over this foreigner--Pharaoh's Yes-Man--taking so much from them now to hold for later, when he would sell it back to them. And so he did. He sold it back to them until they had no money left. He then traded grain for livestock until they had no livestock left. He then traded grain for land until they had no land left. And finally, he traded grain for human service, until everyone except the priests in Egypt were bound to work Pharaoh's land for no pay; only the right to keep some of the produce again to feed themselves. Meanwhile, in Goshen, set apart from the Egyptians geographically, the sons of Israel and their families thrived and multiplied and had enough to eat.

What they had meant for evil, God had used for their own good.

I need to remember this. There is evil all around. It touches everything--even those areas of existence that we still hold up as good. That is what total depravity means: not that everything is completely rotten, but everything is altered by corruption. Evil is everywhere. God does not stop it the way I might want him to. But the testimony is that he uses it for good. All things work for 1) his own glory (Proverbs 16:4), and 2) the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). All things? Even those that are so easy to call evil? That is the challenge to believe.

I had a great privilege this month to interview a bold Christian athlete who completed a grueling and extremely dangerous physical trial at the end of February. The ten-day event afforded him a lifetime's worth of spiritual lessons. Several have stuck with me, but one in particular keeps coming back: the blessing he now sees in darkness.

At one point on his journey, he had to pass through a treacherous Alaska gorge, hauling behind him a heavy sled with all his survival needs on it. Frigid, running glacier water--deep enough to submerge a man, especially one tethered to a sled bearing scores of pounds of weight--flowed below him as he had to creep along narrow, winding, rocky, uncharted, ice bridges and catwalks. And he did it at night, in the dark.

I do not like navigating in the dark. I do not like darkness, as a general rule. I am not talking about the quiet of the evening, under a starlit sky. I am talking about debilitating darkness. Darkness that hinders. Darkness that does not allow one to see the needed steps, the goals ahead. Darkness that oppresses and renders one helpless and even depressed. I want light. I want vision. I want knowledge. When met with darkness, most of us seek to change it. We turn on lights. We use flashlights, headlights, street lights, candles, torches, runway lights, lighthouses. Human history clearly depicts the need to push back against the darkness, to try to set it right. The very opening chapter of Genesis proclaims that this is good and necessary: In the beginning... God separated the light from the darkness. He contained the darkness even then. Let that which God has seen fit to separate, no man again put together.

And here, in that type of debilitating darkness, my new friend had to navigate for his very life in order to achieve the goal of finishing the race. He is on the other side now. The race is over. And looking back into it, he says he can be thankful for the darkness. If he had taken that route in the daylight, he believes he almost certainly would have been overwhelmed by all the deadly obstacles in his path. He would have turned back. He would have given up. The journey truly was too great for him. The darkness hid that truth. But one small, uncertain step at a time, he depended on his Jesus to take him through, without any vision for where he was going. And when daylight came, the terror of the darkness was in the past.

Daylight did come.

And darkness was used for good.

What else might we label blatantly evil, and reject outright in our own unwillingness to let God use it for good?

I have a new counselor. A human one. I think, finally, I have found a good fit. When I mentioned to him that something I have always labeled blatantly evil might, possibly, in God's hand, actually be a gift God uses for good, he did not disagree. He did not shove me backward into my former thinking. Instead, he said I might be on the verge of a liberating breakthrough that will not only be used for my good, but for others' good, and for letting the omnipotent and incorruptible God out of a tiny box I have held him in, so that his glory too may be seen. God is bigger than the evil that is in and around us. That is the point of the gospel. None of it is outside his ability to use for his purposes.

Rejecting Gothard and Recovering Grace

I want to bookmark this testimony here and hope that others who have struggled with legalism and the trickle-down effects of wolves in sheep's clothing like Bill Gothard will find hope in truth.

For the last year of my life, I've had on instant replay a paraphrase of something Charles Spurgeon said regarding discernment. I need to find the direct quote, but the gist of it is this:
The real challenge to a Christian in this world is not acquiring the ability to discern right from wrong; it's the ability to discern right from almost right.

Legalism will use 99% truth to promote 1% of a tiny lie that destroys grace. Discerning that 1% is the challenge Spurgeon was referring to.

This account of one woman's deliverance into grace after a childhood and young adulthood steeped in Gothard's form of legalism gives great hope for all who call on the name of the Lord.

It is for freedom you have been set free!

http://www.recoveringgrace.org/2013/05/from-clear-conscience-to-clear-thinking-journey-from-guilt-to-grace/

Strange Math

I saw myself in a seedling today.

The girls and I keep trying. Keep trying to grow something in the city. We planted some seeds indoors. We put romaine lettuce and celery stumps in water to resprout. We keep trying. But it's winter. The sun has stayed mostly hidden. It has been overcast, skies full of snow and more snow. The light can't seem to penetrate the darkness for long.

So I have some very leggy spinach seedlings, and some romaine that looks branchy rather than bushy.

Today the sun came out. I carried all my pots and loaf tins outside to the deck. Reach! Reach for the sun, little seedlings! Photo-synthesize to your hearts' content!

I expected to come back to find them lush and dark green and robust. But the opposite happened.

After stretching so long and so hard in the oppression of indoor incandescence, they simply wilted and fell over in the presence of The Real Thing.

And I saw me in those weakling seedlings.

As a new believer, I burst forth from the old and into the new with a robust vigor. But life being what life is, it always wants to get in the way of fervor. We blow on a coffee cup to cool it down. Pressure in a balloon rushes to get out, rendering that delightful toy a flaccid remnant of uselessness. And darkness always tries to smother light. I knew it was the Light I craved, and I reached and reached and reached for it, even in life's oppressive darkness that shrouded so much of it from me. So while the seed was strong, I too soon got  covered over, and I couldn't get the Light I needed to grow strong. When tested, I wilted like today's new green did.

When did I thrive? When I was a new believer in the world. When did I stretch and shrivel? When I was a young believer in a closed-off Christian subculture. Christian job. A loyal and beloved but small assortment of Christian-only friends. Very conservative church which emphasized retraction from the greater culture and community rather than engagement of it.

It occurred to me today that like the occasional cold weather out of doors functions to harden and strengthen the young plant so that it can stand strong, so also interaction in the real world strengthens the believer for life's hardships as they come--and confidence to stand and not wilt when they do. 1 Peter 1 speaks of the "tested genuineness of your faith." Testing proves to me that my faith is real. And so, perhaps the "always indoors protection" for the seedling, which lets it sprout and grow but not in vigor and strength and fortitude to survive is rather like the "always protected" covering of the Christian ghetto, never letting one's faith be strengthened with the fortitude to be the iron in the spine needed to face the reality of the Light that shone into the depths of darkness, exposing all for what it really is.

Some years ago, I had an email correspondence for a time with a children's book author named Paul Owen Lewis. He had, by choice, become something like a modern-day hermit, and it was rare, I was told by his publisher's representative, for him to correspond with anyone. But I bought thousands of copies of one of his children's books, a visual masterpiece called Grasper, about a young crab who cannot grow as long as he stays in the shallow water protected by rocks at the edge of the surf. But when, one day, against all advice, Grasper ventures up to the top to look out over the rocks, he finds a magnificent world, full of color and activity and challenge and danger. His friends think he has lost his mind to venture out. But when he comes back, he has grown. He is much, much bigger. They can't understand it! When he risked the outside world, he grew. When he stayed in certain safety, he didn't.

Mr. Lewis said the book was a parallel for his own spiritual journey. He knew he needed to get out of the rocks of his own life, which were holding him back. He knew it was good not only for himself but for others. And yet, his fear was great. So he taught through books what he hoped others would learn and he thanked me for promoting his heartfelt message.

A few weeks ago, the daughters and I went to see the movie Frozen. As a general rule, I dismiss most Disney princess movies, and only endure them because I have daughters, who have friends and dress-up clothes and on and on and on. But this one was different. The character Elsa has a gift that doubles as a curse. In her immaturity, the trait, untrained, unhardened by testing, can be dangerous. But rather than guide her through careful testing toward growth, her frightened parents instead suggest that she simply close herself off from society, from the world, to protect her from judgment and protect others from harm. Much later in the story, when she MUST come out, it becomes clear that she doesn't have the needed strength to function, and things get far worse before they get better.

Testing and being challenged are necessary for real growth. The idea that we should shrink away to live in safety, it seems, may be the very worst thing we can do for ourselves. It is true that "we have this gift in jars of clay." We are oh, so fragile! But our focus is wrong. We say, "We have this gift in Jars Of Clay," and focus on the jar and the clay--me, me, me. I am weak. I am molded dust. I am nothing but dirt with a pretty glaze on the outside.

Instead, however, should we not say, "We have THIS GIFT"? The gift is ours. It is not going to be retracted. What is the gift? Permanent, unalterable, unmerited favor. God's shield for us, against absolutely everything we could encounter that would harm us, from the inside or the out, is his favor. Psalm 5:12 says it: You cover him with your favor as a shield. Ephesians 6 reiterates the power of that shield: powerful to extinguish every flaming dart that is shot against us.

Why do we fear, then? Why do we hide away in our sheltered places, as if anything out there in life's challenges might soil or damage us? We have THIS GIFT: God's permanent favor. We can't mess this up, but if we are to be strengthened, we must see for ourselves how very strong he is, his promise to hold and keep us, to always provide for our needs in the moment of need--in the fiery trial.

I don't want to be a weak seedling, lapsing back into the soil because I could not reach the light when I needed it to grow. I don't want to be a tiny crab, miserably molting but never growing, and missing the opportunities of life more abundant out of self-protective fear. I don't want to cover my challenges so that I never mature to meet them. And I don't want to hide the Light that is in this jar of clay under a bushel so that others too may never know it for themselves.

Funny, isn't it, how in God's economy, so much is upside down and out of what we think the order ought to be? One must lose his life to save it. One must venture out of safety to mature. One must take chances and depend on something bigger than one's own self to know one's self fully.

It's strange math.

Living in the Cross-Hairs

There’s a saying that I’ve been told too many times to count. I clung to it once before, believing it too. It goes something like this: “God will never put on you more than you can bear.”

Those who say it claim it’s biblical. But I can’t find that promise in my Bible. In fact, absolutely everything about the story in that book and my own life experience says the contrary. It’s all more than we can bear.

From the Hebrew people living in slavery, crying out in agony to a God who saw their suffering, and knew, to the sheep without a shepherd, aimlessly lost, weighed down by the insufferable and never satisfied burdens of their “spiritual leaders,” the ones Jesus looked on with pity and compassion. I am here.

Then there is the demoniac in the mnaimion, breaking chains and cutting himself and bellowing in the midst of the dead, unforgotten. Pursued, individually.

Tell me they bore up under the lashings and tossings of this life. I will disagree. I will tell you instead that I believe they broke. I believe they caved. I believe they came to know their own frames, that they, too, were but dust.

I had that break too. I still wonder about it, but I suppose I had to come to know my frame. To think anything other than how very fragile I am is perhaps to make an idol of my so-called strength. Who am I fooling?

Will he let one of his beloved break? Oh, yes. Break, yes. Perish, no.

I once heard that the term “perish” has more than just the connotation of actual loss of life to it. It has more to do with loss of function. The example given was that of a coffee mug, shaped by a potter’s hand to hold liquid and to be held in the hand of a person. Designed for a purpose. But should the mug be tossed onto the tile floor, it will shatter. It is not annihilated. Its parts are still there. But it has perished—broken, it can no longer serve its function.

I’ve been that mug. Once full to capacity with optimism and joy and hope and purpose; then smashed against the cold, hard surface of this treacherous existence, shattered, fragmented, unable to function as I was designed. He let me break, completely.

But so did the Christ—break, completely. For me. For you. Yet he didn’t stay that way. There’s resurrection power in this story. For me. For you. Because of him.

I can glue a cup back together. It may possibly function again at that point, but maybe not. My power is so very limited. But resurrection power—that’s outside of all of this. And that power is his glory. He let me break. For the last year, he has been resurrecting me. I am finding my purpose again, and it’s greater too in the knowledge of my own limitations. Because of knowing that I can break, and be resurrected again—it’s even a requirement in order to receive the full spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

This life is too hard, and we are always living under its attacks. Life in the cross-hairs. Someone really is out to get us. And we often help. We wreck ourselves. We wreck others. Others wreck us. Sometimes circumstances of life cause the damage, even if no one in particular was directly responsible. It’s just a mess. Why would we ever think breakage isn’t likely?

“The bruised reed he will not crush,” we hear, and I do cling to that one. But the crushing, I think, is more in the ultimate sense of perishing. Though I’ve lived it, it’s still a mystery—how this breaking but not crushing works. Perhaps that’s like the burning bush—clearly consumed but not consumed.

Is there encouragement here? I hope so. Because here I am, and not of my own doing. He let me break. He freed me of idols in so doing—good things, things he designed, but things I put too much of my hope in instead of him directly. And now he is mine, even if they never will be again.

I did not perish. But I did break. You may too. I hope I can just tell you though, that it isn’t the end. The one who knows you is also the one who grapples for you, and who will again lift you up and set you on your high place. Fear not.

Is Grace Really THAT Big?

Your friend is faced with a decision so difficult, that while you want to help, you also feel a twinge of gratefulness in your own heart that it is hers and not yours to make.

She's endured to the breaking point. Even beyond. No formula works or even seems to apply except in theory. Sometimes, there just isn't a right answer. Sometimes there isn't a fix. No simple platitude can change the reality. And she has to choose.

She's always been the good girl. She's evaluated the options. She's studied the ideals. Taken the advice too much to heart. But there is no ideal here. And now is the question: Continue suffering as you have been, in faith that the point is the suffering? Or try to exchange the known for the unknown, also in faith?

Whatever is not of faith is sin. Is there a converse to that? When the only options are to stand still or to take a step, both require faith, and both can be terribly frightening, especially for the ones who have been trained that we must be good, choose good, do right always. What if she's wrong? Who or what waits to respond--karma? Or grace?

How big is this grace, then? If she says, "I don't know which way is right, but I'm going to take this step," does grace still cover? Is it that radical? There is no certainty. There is only very little confidence. The term doesn't even seem to fit, that's how uncertain this is.

Is it really true that nothing can separate us from his love? Nothing? Is a step into the utter unknown, when done in faith--because at this point there is absolutely nothing left but faith--covered, even if in some mysterious cosmic scheme, it was "wrong"? Or maybe even only slightly more wrong than the other wrong. Where does grace fit in when the only options are two evils?