Something to Say

Sitting in my bed with my coffee. Ah, after 2 days of instant, the real thing tastes especially good. I am reading in John again. Peace I leave with you. Not as the world gives. There is peace that the world gives, mostly through surface comforts and a sense of well-being that comes from feeling safe. Henry Brandt used to say that alcohol gives peace. or when your work is done and you have some money saved up and everyone in your family is healthy, peace.

Boxes. I don't remember exactly when I first heard the phrase 'thinking outside the box'. But I liked it. Yes, outside the box is where the truth is. Boxes can be very sneaky. You can be in one and not know it. I have broken out of a lot of boxes and I think that is where some of my own sense of well-being comes from. There was a book about finding your niche that had something to do with being outside the box. In our culture we must go to college after high school and pack a bunch of knowledge into our brains and then get a job and use all that knowledge. The time in school is strictly separated from the time working. Was that book where that phrase came from? Who wrote it? What was the name? I think the name was about the box. My memory is not so hot. He suggested there might be other ways to go about it. Working and education being more mixed up. My oldest did a work study program to help pay for college, alternating semesters of school with semesters working in her field of study. She learned by working as she was learning in the classroom. It worked very well.

So, boxes. I was a young Christian and I hated legalism. But I became legalistic myself. It's insidious. [spreading or acting inconspicuously with harmful effect] "Christians do this, and they don't do that. Christians think this way. Really dedicated Christians priority is that, not this." Etc. I inflicted these values on my children. No one is perfect. There were a lot of good values that came from me to my kids. But as they became adults, if they don't know how to think outside the box, they will only have those values because of tradition, not because Jesus Christ is real to them personally.

One of my boxes was thinking that I was not the best Christian I could be unless I was always making talking about Jesus to non-Christians my number one priority. And as a mom, I was not really the best mom unless I was also teaching my kids to have the same priority. But I did not take every opportunity to tell other people about Christ, nor did I try to turn conversations to Christ every time I was with someone. Just writing about this makes me feel waves of guilt lapping at my feet. Go away Guilt Trip!

But here's the thing. Maybe I believed in Jesus because I grew up in America and learned in Sunday School that "Jesus died for our sins." So one of my boxes would be my upbringing. My mom took me to church where they taught me about the son of God. Then there was Weekday Religious Education. At my grade school, a trailer used to come in once a week and most of us went out and had a Sunday school lesson for an hour. I sat in the back and did not pay attention. It was EXTREMELY boring. I got in trouble for not paying attention a couple times. After that I paid attention outwardly but my mind was anywhere and everywhere else except on that religious lesson.

Then I went to a ranch in Colorado at age 15 where they told me about Jesus, only this time the context was FUN and the kids there were COOL and the singing was outrageously enthusiastic and we sounded GOOD! The speakers at the evening Round-ups were mesmerizing and the counselors in the cabins gave real answers. This was NOT Sunday school.

[[Aside: I had a grumpy old lady Sunday school teacher whom I could not stand in about 6th grade. I had a hamster. I had a little purse that was shaped like an oval bucket and it had flaps that folded down to close the top. Once I put my hamster, Pooty, in my purse and took him to Sunday school. While the teacher was trying to teach I was showing my friends what I had in my purse. The teacher noticed and came and asked what was in there. When I showed her, she jumped. (Think cartoon lady up on a chair screaming about a little mouse on the floor.) She got really ticked at me. It delighted me inside that I scared that mean old lady. What an evil child. It still makes me laugh.]]

I think it was the founder of Young Life who said it is a sin to bore a child in the name of Christ. So I was not bored at Young Life camp in Colorado. We got to ride horses, climb mountains, play Wells Fargo (cowboys and Indians: each person had a "scalp" -- a bandaid on the forehead. The goal was to take as many of the other team's scalps as possible.) Four or five girls ganged up on me and I fought with everything I had. I think I may have hurt one or two of them, but they got my scalp. It was such an emotional experience, my first and only real fight, using elbows and thrashing around for all I was worth. I went back to my cabin and cried.)

The camp was divided into teams and each team had a queen and I got to be queen of the "Stogies". they put me in my bathing suit and made me ride a horse and rolled up a brown blanket so that it looked like a big Stogie and made me carry it. Our team ended up winning the week's competitions and that made me queen of the camp. I had to go up front (thankfully not in my bathing suit!) I was shy. This was very, very embarrassing. I did not know what to do. Although I felt honored to be queen, wow, PLEASE let me go back to my seat and dissappear!!!!

We got to take open jeep rides along steep mountain roads, and they would back the jeep up to the cliff and make us all scream with terror. They took us down a silver mine in the dark each of us holding onto the person in front of us. When we were all deep down in the mine they started screaming about bears and made us all panic.

We got to eat great food cooked by Goldbrick, we got to swim at the pool, buy Bibles in modern English that we could actually understand. We met kids from all over the country, got crushes on cute boys from the South with thick Southern accents that charmed the heck out of us. OK, me, I got the crush on the Southern boy, just me.

Anyway, this context .... not to mention the 3 days Tex spent driving us from the midwest to Colorado in an un-air-conditioned van in mid summer....the noise he put up with, the roudiness, the impertinence of teenagers.........he had a special gift.....then he drove us 3 days home as well. (At least we had "gotten holy" during the week.) .... this context of love and fun and caring was the right context in which faith could be born inside me.

FUN. The people who worked at the ranch loved us and gave a darn whether we heard the truth about Jesus or not. And it worked. I heard that Jesus death paid for everything I had ever done wrong. I heard that it was not about "do this and do that and God will approve" (like my parents, maybe). It was more like God loves me and cares about me and is reaching out to me and all I have to do is say yes. So I did. Yes, I believe Jesus, a real person in history, came and lived a sinless life, died to pay for my wrong-doing, rose again from death (impossible) and went up to heaven to live forever, where he is, incidentally, making ready for me to join him. Wow. Yes, who wouldn't want this?

So boxes. This wonderful thing, this birth of Annie into God's family led to me wanting to pass this on to other people. This is not bad, but over the years, especially after I had children........

Oh, there is too much to go into. Legalism crept in. Do this to be a good Christian, don't do that. I didn't use bad words, didn't smoke, didn't drink except for a glass of wine with dinner at my father's house. I didn't lie, didn't steal, I was faithful to my mate. But I think the box that I didn't fit into was the one about make it your priority to verbalize your faith in Christ to everyone you know. Try to convince them to become Christians. Study the best ways to do this. Meet people with the express purpose of telling them about Jesus. The goal is not bad: to share with others the best thing that has ever happened to me. What became bad in my life was the use of formulas, rote things to say, cliches. I began to feel like I was trying to trick people into believing in Jesus.

Jumping to the present. God draws people to himself inside of people where we cannot see. Do you want truth? Do you want integrity? Here I am. Come to me. People who believe in him work on the outside, telling others about God and living a life of integrity in front of them so that they will be drawn to the person. Now I am geting acquainted with the artist and writer and coach God made me. How good He is.

The thought I had while I was sitting in bed reading John: Jesus said "I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe."

The thought was about the boxes. There are boxes and we all are in them. Boxes made out of cultural beliefs, our parents' values, then our friends' values. But Jesus Christ is not a box. The nice little story about a baby in a manger is not all there is to Jesus. He is real and He is God. I have seen his glory and I am sure of this. I have seen his light and only because He chose to give me a glimpse of it.

Jesus also told Martha such things when she complained to him after Lazarus died ("if you had been here, Lazarus wouldn't have died", like, "why in the world didn't you come when we called you?" Mary said the same thing.) When Jesus got around to approaching the cave where Lazarus was entombed, he told them to take the stone door away, doors made of stone designed to be permanent. Martha protested that it would smell. Perhaps she wanted to retain Lazarus' dignity in his death. These are real people with real brains that work just like ours. Martha -- the practical one. Jesus said to her "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?"

We want to see the proof first, and then, we think, we will believe. Well, these people had been watching Jesus prove he was the son of God for a few years. He had been going around validating his words by his actions. Miracles to be specific. They had their proof. They were his closest friends and had seen a lot of miracles. Martha believed that Jesus was God's son. Jesus said to her "Your brother will rise again." Martha said, Yeah, I know when the last day comes, he will. Is she thinking: is this what he means or is he going to raise him up now? She had already told him "I know that even now God will do whatever you ask."

Jesus did what he so often did, and focused her attention on himself in the present. Who He was, not whether Lazarus was going to be saved right then or not. The bigger issue. He said I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies: and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? Yes, she did and she told him so. You are the Christ, she said, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.

As I am sitting here writing this post, which has gone places I never expected, I have become overwhelmed with emotion several times. I have shed a few tears. Now that I've looked up the verse I wanted to talk about, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" I read on to check the details and Mary has arrived along with the mourners who were hanging around "weeping with she who weeps".

John writes: When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled, and he asked them where they had laid Lazarus. They said come see. and Jesus started crying. The Jews decided this meant that Jesus loved Lazarus a lot. Jesus was a man like us, too, in that he got emotional. And, yes, I think Jesus loved Lazarus a lot. He hung out with him and the 2 sisters in Bethany. They were supportive friends. They had been there for him.

Except some of the Jews said "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind have kept this man from dying?" Again, real people with brains that actually work. Logic: he does miracles, why didn't he do one for Lazurus so that he didn't die? Something is wrong with this picture.

John says: Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. Crying again? Is his face contorted? Is he moaning? How do they know he is deeply moved? Doesn't say, but there was apparently some sort of evidence.

When I came to write today, the only thing I knew I wanted to say was: Jesus Christ is not a BOX. We who follow him, believe in him, are given to getting into boxes, most of the time without knowing it. We are "vicitms" some may call it of our cultures and our families. But Jesus is real and He is God in the flesh. If you will, His work involved going around crushing the boxes of the Jewish leaders and teachers, their traditions for tradition's sake, their dead laws and holidays and rituals.

I can't write any more. Now I'm crying again and I have obligations to meet.

I did not intend to be so preachy, but I do not apologize. God is great.