"To question is not to be unfaithful." -T.S. Eliot

This is most likely my last post from the manor. I have a few more days here but I expect them to fly by. Sometimes I wish I could stay here all term because I would learn so much, but other times I can’t wait to get a rest from the discussions. I want to jot down a few of the things I have learned/noticed/grown to love while I have been here. This is mostly for my sake but maybe you will find it interesting. They are in no particular order.

1. Evangelism may not be about saving people. It may simply be about (1) bringing glory to God, and (2) bringing light where there was darkness. I’m still trying to figure out what all I think about that. But the more I think the more I agree.

2.The story of Noah and the flood, to me, is one of the saddest, most devastating stories in the Bible. It isn’t about the cute animals walking two by two into the ark. It is a story about an all-loving creator destroying his beautiful gift because it was trampled and perverted beyond repair by his own creation. We wrecked the most beautiful gift, an offering of love, and He watched as it filled with water and faded away, all because of our disregard. But he cleansed it and made it new again. I am an artist and I would never have the courage to recreate something that had been so misused and misunderstood. But God doesn’t need our approval. He doesn’t need our praise. I guess the whole idea of the flood makes me ache because I am looking at it as an artist. I wish I wasn’t so human sometimes.

3. We have turned relationship with God into consumerism. We expect back from him exactly what we put into it. And most the time we expect much more.

4. Christianity has become unappealing in the world today because people think they have morally outgrown the Christian God. We are beginning to see God as primitive. He seems egotistical, misogynistic, homophobic. Many feel that He is creating in us a need for himself and then hiding from us. We constantly find ourselves thinking, “I wouldn’t hide myself from a friend in need, so why are you?” We no longer see him as superior. What is the cure for this?

5. Introspection is a disease. It causes us to become locked into self. It crashes our ability to be – to participate outwardly. There are three functions of the human heart that connect us to reality:  thinking, being, and doing. Introspection puts thinking over being and doing. It causes us to only live in the past and future and never the present. (Andrew Fellows lecture in introspection is fantastic. I'll try to swipe a copy before I leave.)

6. The miracles that Jesus and disciples perform in the New Testament have little to do with the actual miracle and everything to do with the character of God. I miss the point when I focus on the miracle’s outcome. I plan to unpack all of this during the remainder of my summer.

7. But...what rocked me yesterday: Jesus knows exactly what its like to feel like you don’t have enough time on earth. When I get crazy about being sick I give myself 10-15 years of health before my liver transplant. And then I usually forget to think about the possibility of life after the transplant. But when I add that time to how old I was when I was diagnosed, I get around the same lifespan that Jesus had on earth.              

He knows what is like to feel like you don’t have enough time. He knows what it is like to be tired and want to retreat to an isolated place. He knows what it is like to be exhausted by missing the point – that it isn’t about healing or miracles. It is about the ultimate miracle of redemption. Alongside the magnitude of the redemption which Jesus brought, what is a weak liver?  

Except with me, I was the one missing the point. The point is the incarnation. Any act of healing is just a minute reflection of the ultimate sacrifice. The ultimate act of love.  

God is so other. I find myself ultimately frustrated my own misunderstanding of his character. Of his magnitude.  

I need to believe that God is enough before I can ask for any type of healing. I have been constantly encouraged by people who love me to have faith like a child and ask for healing. But children don’t doubt that their father is strong enough or loving enough or concerned enough. In their pure, innocent belief they can ask anything they wish of their king. I am starting to see and feel the crushing magnitude of Jesus’ love. Only then will I be able to ask.