DeeAnne & Hannah

I’ve never thought of the act of Christian giving as merciful.  I mean, I have, but only in the sense that when I give to someone, monetarily or by serving, I’M being merciful.  I’ve never thought of how this comment to tithe, this “if you love me, feed my sheep” is a merciful command, seeing as it’s an alternative to what God could require.

 

For expediency’s and my focus’s sake, I won’t even go into martyrdom, which requires your actual life instead of the watered down “daily dying” most Christians convince themselves they’re doing.  I just mean in simple regards to money.

 

God doesn’t NEED your money, nor does He need mine.  He’s not in need of anything, and yet He commands me to give.  He’ll be glorified in my closed or open-handedness, because nothing I do here can diminish His beauty.  But instead of flaunting this absolute lack of need of me, He allows me to participate in what He’s trying to do.  he lets me point to Him in my own feeble way, like a child pointing to the summer sun, like anyone could miss it, feeling useful.

 

So when He tells me in His Word to give back 10%, He’s almost being indulgent, allowing me to feel like I’m helping.  And when He sends DeeAnne, a beautiful woman with eyes like sea glass, I can give her a few meager bucks and stare into the face of the one Jesus loves, His Bride.  He lets me hold her close for a small moment and smell cigarettes and time and feel at home in her arms because we’re both so human and so His.  If He wanted my money to go to DeeAnne, He could take it in all sorts of ways.  Instead He lets me look into faces, hear the stories, hand over money that I feel I downright need, and each time die a little more to me and live a small bit more in Him.

 

How merciful and how striking, this act of giving I so often begrudge. 

 

So I have no freakin clue where my rent’s coming from in the next few days.  Am I supposed to care about this strain when I’ve been given such riches as last night?  Sharing in His glory even though I’ve no right to call it my own.

 

No one can kill that.  No one can dull it or steal it, like every single thing I see around me.

 

I need more of this, because frankly this world sucks in comparison to the glimpses of the eternal He allows me to see.  I’m far too attached to what I feel and see and walk through.  The fact is:  nothing I do matters unless it’s pointing to Him.  Because even though He doesn’t need my help or my not-pure love gestures, it’s those things I do that will matter most and will set me on fire, kill me and make me live, define me and dissolve my self image.

 

He’s the only freedom I know.  He’s everything.

NO HIDING

In church yesterday, the worship team did a song I love but haven’t heard very much before, called “Hold Me Now”, by Hillsong.  It’s about when we reach Heaven, and it’s gorgeous.

 

This is the chorus:

No weeping, no hurt or pain

No suffering, You hold me now, You hold me now

No darkness, no sick or lame

No hiding, You hold me now, You hold me now

 

The thing that hit me most then and it still hitting me now is the “no hiding” part.  I kept getting choked up at that part of the song, had to stop singing and breathe. 

 

I’m not sure what it is, but lately, the thin film of secrecy and lies and trying too hard that’s stretched thin and taught around every person, myself included, has been very evident to me in daily life.  I see it in myself, the ways I try to manipulate how people perceive me, the ways I try to use even God as a means make myself seem less in need of Him.  I see it more so in others, partly because God’s slowly and surely erasing this need in me to be approved of, and partly because I’m a selfish person at my core who sees flaws in others far more quickly than in myself.

 

But it’s starting to actually piss me off.  This ever-present self conscious state people walk around in, this need for approval we’re constantly catering to, the lie that we’ve got it all together even as Christians, the want and assumed need to hide all that’s really important.  It’s all I’m seeing.  I’m looking at friends, strangers, myself, and am acutely aware of the striving.

 

Makes me want to scream:  Fuck this!  The lies and day to day plodding through circumstances, through trivial earthly things, as if they matter in the long run!  None of this matters!  I just want my Savior, here and now.  RIGHT NOW!  Why aren’t You closer!

 

(After reviewing this before publishing, I’ve become aware that the above word choice may be strange, using the f word and longing for a Savior in the same sentence. Sorry.  But not really.)

 

Anyway… I know we’re not only here on earth regardless but that we’re called to make disciples, to “bloom where you’re planted” and such.  Most of the time I really love this world, the beauty, the good, the people.  And this is not really a departure from that train of thought.  It’s a feeling of protection for it, I think.  I’m just tired of the distance I feel between myself and my God, the distance that can’t be overcome no matter how I plead because of the sin that still plagues me on this earth.  I’m tired of the distance I feel between myself and other people, the strange little awkwardnesses and friction, the fact that I can never fully know another human.  I’m tired of the things the enemy tries (and succeeds) in stealing from us day to day, down to our very identity in Christ, which we so easily forget but is so crucial to living at all.

 

I’m a dreamer, not suicidal, I promise.  I guess I just miss my God.  I’m tired today of this sham of a world, subpar and NOT what I was made for.  I can’t get my arms around Him, and that’s all I want.  Everything here, even the most beautiful things, are shadows and many-mirrored reflections of the Good in which I was supposed to and will some day dwell.

 

Ugh.  Ok… that’s all I guess.