Friday, September 7, 2007

An amazing article, being old...

Yesterday I did something that is a regular occurrence with me; I picked up something to read. It happened to be the new World Magazine that had just delivered with the rest of the mail to the office just a little earlier.

Now I have this weird habit; whenever I pick up a magazine to read and nothing catches my eye right away on the front - I will just page through it quickly, while making mental notes of articles that interest me then go back later and read them, thennnn after I read those - I go back and read the whole thing throughly. Why don't I just read the whole blasted thing right away? *shrug* Don't ask me. I don't understand myself either.

Anyways, as I randomly paged through it: I took note of some articles about the election next year, skipped over the movie reviews, paged over the music reviews, read a couple of the "quick takes" *random it takes almost 2 cents to make a penny*, glanced at the comics, and then when I reached the 2nd to last article - I found something.

It was pretty much a God thing. After I read that article I was so encouraged. =) I pretty much thanked God directly after reading it for sending it my way. =) Then I read it again. lol

So here's the arti...Oh no wait, one last thing...

When I saw in the election article the words: Labor day 2007 and Election 2008, it freaked me out. I hadn't thought about the fact that next year, you got that guys NEXT year I'll be able to vote...like an adult or something 0_o...I still haven't fully gotten the idea in my head. They seem like such foreign thoughts...voting, 18, adultish, what?!?!...I just kinda sat there stunned for a couple seconds wondering how on earth did I go from a nerdy 7 year old to being a nerdy 17 year old. 10 years seems so long ago and yet...not long ago. ....Then once I'm 18 it's only 2 years till I'm 20...Oh dear...that's just scary. I just pray that at some point here I'll start acting my age and God gives me the grace to mature up. =P lol
I went from 2 to 17...lol I don't know how that happened. =P


Ok, now here is the article... *the stuff in bold is what I absolutely loved; the italic words are suppose to be that way*
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No prowling wolves
Why do we envision a future in which Christ is indifferent?
By Tony Woodlief
Do not worry about tomorrow. This is not the promise of a trouble-free life. It is work-flow management advice (Sufficient for the day is it's own trouble, i.e., you've got plenty to worry over now, buddy). But it is also a command, which implies that worrying is a choice.
This leaves me puzzled and hopeful. I am puzzled because I am fairly sure that I hate worrying. It gives me stomach cramps, and yet it is like breathing to me. I am hopeful as well, because in Christ's command there is the implication that I can become someone who does not worry but is peace-filled, even within sight of the Valley of the Shadow.
As I write this, my wife and I are praying that our baby, Isaiah, does not have a brain tumor. There is something wrong with him, and thought the odds are that he will be fine, we find ourselves defying this enjoyment not to worry, and praying over and over: Please, Lord, not another one. This is what happens after you have buried a child, you see a prowling wolves in every shadow. you hear a mortal illness behind every cough. You worry about tomorrow because today's troubles are nothing compared to what might happen next.
So how did Christ manage it, I wonder, knowing what they would do to him in the end? How was His mind not consumed with the dreadful tomorrow, seeing it as He must have, hearing it's growl from the shadows of a foreordained future? He wept and prayed as the hour approached, yes, but that was practically, if not literally, the day it happened. How did He shunt aside worry all those years?
It must take discipline, this not worrying. I am wary of pull-yourself-up-by-your-spiritual-bootstraps theologies. There must be something else at work here than a steely nerve, because surely the Word who was from the beginning peered into me when He uttered this command. He saw my gut now churning with thick, cold fear, and my heart moaning: I can't do this again. The Lord must have been counting on more than courage when He chose the likes of me.
So what is the secret to not worrying? Perhaps someone has written a book about an obscure Bible verse that promises to protect me from suffering if I chant it like a mantra. Or maybe the secret resides in that scrap of Romans that the non-suffering sometimes throw out to the grieving: All things work together for good to those who love God, as if God's plan is a tidy sitcom, resolving conflicts to our liking and within our field of vision.
The truth is that we suffer, and sometimes we suffer without seeing, on this earth at least, any good come of it. It's hard not to worry, knowing that the world is set against us. It's hard to trust, sometimes, a God who would send His own Son to death. C.S. Lewis was right; Aslan is not a fuzzy pet, but wild, and sometimes dangerous.
And yet Christ, having lived in our frail flesh, knows what we can stand. Perhaps this is at least part of the answer, that the One who carried His cross up Golgotha out of love, the Savior who promises to blot out every tear, the man who wept for His dead friend Lazarus--this is the Christ who whispered, in plain view of His approaching murder: Do not worry, beloved.
Contrary to many popular preachers, Christ didn't promise deliverance on this earth from trouble. As Oswald Chambers noted, Christ promised deliverance in trouble. Perhaps He said not to worry because it constructs a future where He is absent. We imagine the suffering ahead, and not His comfort in the midst of it. We forget to commune with him here, so deluded as we are by an imaginary there in which He is indifferent.
Still worse, worry affords no room for grace. Sometimes the worst does not come to pass. Sometimes as happed between the first and last sentences of this essay, the doctor says our child is fine. All that worry wasted. All this grace ignored. I have over come the world, says the Messiah. Do not worry about tomorrow.

1 comment:

Lauren said...

i think that there is some unwritten rule somewhere that we are not allowed to be surprised by God, 'cause to be quite honest when He does something that "i" would consider out of his normal character i am surprised.

but then reading the old testament and how He "surprised" his people i almost feel like i am serving another God...
My image of God is SOOO distorted.