Repost: The Sacrament of Life

 Almost 18 years ago I wrote the post below on my wife's birthday. While certainly things have changed in those quickly passing years (although today is again her birthday), there is truth in the post that I need to share again today. Our beloved pets (cats, dogs, and bunnies) are no longer with us, but their memory makes me smile. My children are no longer "kids" in age, but their laughter still makes me smile. Nonetheless, the reality of the post below is just a strong today as it was when I first posted it. I hope it blesses you! 

I don't have a lot to say today, and I'd rather let two authors whose writings I respect speak for me. I want to say, however, that I have been thinking a bit today about how life is sacramental--how all that we experience can be full of the holy awesomeness that is God. Remember, Jeremiah said that God's mercies were new every morning, just like the morning dew. Today can be full of the sort of radical presence of God as to overwhelm us. In 1999, Ray Bradbury gave the following view of life:

"It is neither all beautiful nor all terrible, but a wash of multitudinous despairs and exhilarations about which we know nothing. Our history is so small, our experience so limited, our science so inadequate, our theologies so crammed in mere matchboxes, that we know we stand on the outer edge of a beginning and our greatest history lies before us, frightening and lovely, much darkness and much life."

This description of life sees our existence as awe inspiring and frightening, and such it is on many occasions. Storms come and blow and bluster against us, threatening to undo not only our homes, but our very lives. As Bradbury said, life can be frightening and lovely at the same time. For the child of God, however, life has a more sacramental flavor. Oh, we may not "feel" it every day, but the truth is (as the Greek Orthodox say) Jesus' very life has in some sense sanctified the mundane daily experiences of human life. His birth sanctified the birth process, his childhood sanctified childhood, yes, even his teen years consecrated those experiences in our own lives. As Frederick Buechner said:

"[C]hurch isn’t the only place where the holy happens. Sacramental moments can occur at any moment, any place, to anybody. Watching something getting born. A high school graduation. Somebody coming to see you when you’re sick. A meal with people you love. Looking into a stranger’s eyes and finding out he’s not really a stranger. If we weren’t blind as bats, we might see that life itself is sacramental." From Wishful Thinking.

I like that last part--"if we weren't blind as bats, we might see that life itself is sacramental." Yesterday God spoke to me in a silent moment, today I seem to hear his voice in the mundane. As Paul reminds us in Romans, God's very nature and character are obvious to us in nature, but of course we must take the time to look and listen. We ignore the very evidence that surrounds us, we brush it aside and pretend it isn't there. We make a god out of that which is natural and wonder why it doesn't save us in our time of weakness and great need.

Today God spoke to me in the simple things of life--celebrating my wife's birthday, playing with the bunnies with my children, feeding my dog, petting my cat and hearing his gentle purring, watching mindless cartoons and hearing the voice of God in the laughter of my children.

God is here, and he is not silent. He speaks, sometimes in whispers, sometimes with a strong voice, but as he speaks he changes our lives; no, that's not right, he changes us. We become a type of living embodiment of the grace of God. Our lives become (in a sense) sacramental. As Messiah invades our existence, his sanctifying grace creates holy places in our simple lives. Our lives become his, and by being intertwined with him we find something beyond ourselves.

Life is sacramental and sacred. Don't take it for granted.

Enjoy the sacramental wine of your life, drink deeply from the grace of God in the everyday.

You won't be sorry.

Thanks for reading!

The "Absence" of God: He is There!

Today I met with a couple of my students, and inevitably the conversation turned to God.  Being a seminary professor, that is certainly an occupational hazard!  What was not expected is how both conversations seemed to focus on God's "absence" during hard times.  We know (theologically, at least) that God never leaves us.  He is "omnipresent."  We also understand Jesus' words when he says, "Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."  We take that to mean that God never really forsakes us.

Yet in our moments of trial, in times of despair, we tend to live a lot more in Psalm 22 ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") than in Psalm 23 ("The Lord is my shepherd, I will not want.").  That little reality caused me to think of Psalm 139 and God's continuing and never failing presence.  Here is what the Psalm says (in part):

CSB Psalm 139:1-12 For the choir director. A Davidic psalm. "LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I stand up; You understand my thoughts from far away. You observe my travels and my rest; You are aware of all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, You know all about it, LORD. You have encircled me; You have placed Your hand on me. This extraordinary knowledge is beyond me. It is lofty; I am unable to reach it. Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?  If I go up to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there. If I live at the eastern horizon or settle at the western limits, even there Your hand will lead me; Your right hand will hold on to me. If I say, 'Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light around me will become night'-- even the darkness is not dark to You. The night shines like the day; darkness and light are alike to You."

Those of us who claim to be Christians (or even Jews and Muslims, for that matter) typically claim that God is everywhere always. That is, he is right with us even when we don’t think he is, and worse (perhaps), when we hope that he is not. He is there. I think Francis Schaeffer wrote a book entitled The God who is There. At any rate, Psalm 139 reminded me of all the times in my life when God was present (like he always is), even when I tried to overlook that reality.  I can't shake the reality that he is present.  He is here.  He is in this place.  I may overlook him, but there he is nonetheless. 

Sometimes I notice God there on the fringe of my experience (kind of hanging around like a brother who wants to be involved in everything you do).  Sometimes I respond with a sense of comfort (Oh good, he is there!). Other times I respond with fear (Oh no, did he see that!). Other times I am complacent (Oh, it’s just you, huh?). Still some times I am overwhelmed (Thank God you’re here!). I think of the Jews wandering in the wilderness and camped at Mt. Sinai. God showed up on the mountain, and they begged Moses to make it stop! “Don’t let God speak directly to us again, we can’t take it!” The acknowledgement of God’s presence frightened them, maybe it made them a bit uncomfortable. Maybe we respond to God in the same way.  We know he is there, but we wish he'd "tone it down" a bit.  We wish he wouldn't "make so much noise" in our lives.  We wish he'd kind of fade into the background just a bit.  We want God to be silent on occasions. 

When we reach that point, however, we find ourselves desperate nonetheless.  We try to turn on white noise to drown out the sound of God's voice or we paint with vivid colors in an effort to keep him from showing up in our portrait so clearly.  Yet as we try to silence him, we begin to fish for "God substitutes" to give us some kind of comfort.  We look for something (anything?) to give us the comfort of God's presence.  Annie Dillard addresses this problem when she says:

“It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. . . . We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. . . . What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn’t us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are they not both saying: ‘Hello, is anyone there?’ We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we’re blue.” From Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard 

Our fear of God’s omnipresence causes us to turn off a switch in our minds and souls that helps us to recognize this fascinating (and sometimes frightening) reality. We simply pretend he isn’t there. We even ignore his obvious appearances. We close our ears to his persistent whisper, his incessant voice, his ongoing speech to us.  We ignore the God of all, then we claim that we didn’t know he was there.  As A. W. Tozer notes: 

“. . . If God is present at every point in space, if we cannot go where he is not, cannot even conceive of a place where he is not, why then has not that Presence become the one universally celebrated fact of the world? The patriarch Jacob, ‘in waste howling wilderness,’ gave the answer to that question. He saw a vision of God and cried out in wonder. ‘Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.’ Jacob had never been for one small division of a moment outside of the circle of that all-pervading Presence. But he knew it not. That was his trouble, and it is ours. People do not know if God is here. What a difference it would make if they knew.” From The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer

We “know it not” because we don’t like the reality that God’s omnipresence makes us face. That reality is this—when we fail and sin, he is there. When we succeed, he is there. When we need him, he is there. When we think we don’t need him, he is there. Even when we don’t want him to be, he is there.  The Psalmist understood this when he said: "You know all about it, LORD. You have encircled me; You have placed Your hand on me. This extraordinary knowledge is beyond me. It is lofty; I am unable to reach it. Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?"  We try our best to escape God, knowing all along that escape is simply impossible.

He is there.  Whether we like it or not, he is there.  He is not asleep, he has not grown bored, he has not diverted his attention.  He is in the midst of all of it--the beauty, the horror, the victory, the tragedy, the highs, the lows.  He is there with us.  He has not forsaken us, in fact, he CANNOT leave us.  He is there because he is God.

One of my pet peeves is to hear a preacher talking about Jesus’ cry (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”) from the cross and say something like, “At that point, God turned his back on Jesus because he became sin for us.” Think of the ramifications of that idea—God, the omnipresence One, turning his back on his only unique Son. God, the merciful, overlooking the sacrifice his own Son Jesus is offering. Can you imagine it? God, forsaking his Son! It sounds ridiculous because it is. God did not “turn his back on Jesus” (look in the text of the Gospels, it does not say any such thing). No, God was watching the brutal fact of it all with tears in his eyes. He did not forsake Jesus, and he does not forsake us. He endures when we pretend he is absent, but he is there. He loves Jesus, even when Jesus became sin for us, God lovingly watched his Son. God lovingly watches you as well. 

He is there, and he is not going away.

Scary, ain’t it?

Thanks for reading!