Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Rainy Sunday Mornings

It was 7:30 a few Sunday mornings ago, and I had to get ready for an early church service. The problem:  it was pouring outside, so staying in bed seemed like a more and more appealing option as the minutes passed. Nobody was banging on my bedroom door to get me up. I was on my own, my dwindling will power versus the comfort of sleeping in. It's a pretty frequent struggle for me. 

You see, I've never been what you would call a morning person. For about the first twenty minutes after waking up, I look like an extra from the Walking Dead, minus the blood and gore (usually). I start feeling like a real human being shortly before lunch time, only thanks to a few cups of coffee and a gradual de-fogging of my brain. I've always admired people who can wake up and immediately be cheery and aware, but my attempts to become a functional person in the morning have generally ended in failure. For many years, especially as a student studying late into the evening, I had a propensity for forming grand plans to go to sleep early and get up early in the morning when (I would convince myself) my mind would be fresh. Nine and a half times out of ten, I only woke up when I absolutely needed to e.g. to go to work or class. My mind tends to go to great lengths to fabricate any number of thought processes or sets of reasons why leaving my bed is a terrible idea. 

And yet, I did get up that Sunday. I got ready and drove to church, albeit arriving there a little late. It ranks high as one of the most difficult things I did all week. I'm aware that that I'm probably making a more dramatic deal out of it than I should. Lots of people have trouble getting up early on the weekends; I'm not unique in that. But on my way out of church, feelings of gratitude for how much my relationship with God has changed over the last few years washed over me. When I was a kid, my parents usually forced me to go with them to church (which I'm thankful for). In college and grad school, it wasn't something I needed to worry about, since I was agnostic for most of that time. But now, as a single adult Christian, it's purely up to me whether I go to church or not. 

Thank God, that decision is now an easy one to make. The truth is that Sunday mornings are the part of the week that I look forward to the most, in spite of what my “early morning mentality” tries to convince me of. Like exercising or eating well, it's a choice that I know I'll be glad I made later on. My Sunday morning routine goes a long way in helping me survive the upcoming week, making whatever challenges and drudgery I encounter much more bearable. After an early service and three Bible studies, I return home at one o'clock feeling renewed, inspired, and closer to God. 

That feeling of closeness to God is both the cause and a main result of the way I choose to spend my Sunday mornings. For most of my life, God seemed like a far-away entity. I viewed him as something we should worship because he's the creator of the universe,  sometimes interfering in life down here via miracles but otherwise distant and inaccessible. I got my first taste of how intimate a relationship with God can actually be through talking to Muslims about how the five daily prayers had enriched their lives. At times, I could observe the positive effect it had on their very faces, for those few moments during and after prayer seeming as if none of the cares or evils of the world could touch them. It was as if, in the act of lowering their foreheads to the floor in submission, they had touched God and were now under his complete protection. But no matter how hard I tried and how persistently I prayed for that feeling of connection, I could never get to the point of proximity to God I had witnessed in other people. Only when I came to know Christ and was marked by him as his own did God grant me a glimpse of the kind of peace He can bring, as well as an awareness of the kind of close relationship He wants us to have with Him, a relationship made possible through the gift of His Son. 

I'm convinced that a constant feeling of connection to God isn't something that we can really achieve in this life. It waxes and wanes, since at heart we are fickle and imperfect creatures. Nor am I naïve enough to think that a church service is the only time we can feel His presence, or that going to church every week is an absolute necessity for being a “good” Christian. But that weekly morning worship goes a long way in maintaining and renewing that connection, that relationship, and helping me to realize how much my life has changed day by day because of Him. God has given me everything, more than I can ever begin to pay back. The least I can do is wake up early on a rainy Sunday morning. 

Sunday, May 19, 2013

God's Spirit, God's Promise: Pentecost and Today

In difficult times, when I'm feeling lonely or in need of guidance, I sometimes imagine that Jesus is physically there with me, perhaps with his hand on my shoulder. It gives me a sense of peace and warmth when such things are badly needed. When I first started imagining him, I thought, "This is crazy. No one's there. This is pointless." Against the doubts in my mind, I repeat the promise that Jesus made to his followers after his resurrection:  "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matt. 28:20) If holding onto a mental image of him, even with the knowledge that he probably wasn't as tall, as blond, and as fair-skinned as I picture him, helps me feel his presence even a little bit more, I think it's worth trying. 

For a few months, I've taken up a similar practice when confronting situations where I know I will need the kind of strength that can only come from God. I repeat a short prayer for the Holy Spirit to help me get through a tough day, or to succeed in a challenge, or to resist doing something I know is bad for me. And the funny thing is, I can feel it working. More often than before, right words seem to fall into place during important interactions with people, and I find myself more confident in doing what I need to do.

The Spirit is, to put it (probably too) simply, God's promise to be with us in our daily lives, and especially in difficult times. It was this Spirit that led the Israelites through the Wilderness as they escaped from Egypt, as a cloud by day and a fire by night. It was God's Spirit that dwelt in the Tabernacle of the Ark of the Covenant, and later in the Temple in Jerusalem, the place where Jews flocked to offer prayers and sacrifice and receive forgiveness. If anywhere could be described as the place where Heaven and Earth met, it was the Temple. And yet, when the Babylonians destroyed the building centuries before Jesus' birth, it seemed that God's Presence had gone with it. God's determination to not abandon His people was fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, who would become the source of true forgiveness and healing, and a reflection of divine love for which the Jerusalem Temple was only a signpost. To the shock of all around him, he was Immanuel, "God with us," the place where Heaven and Earth met in a way and degree that no one could have anticipated.

However, Jesus knew that God's Spirit could only truly dwell within His people after he had died. Then, it could come as "counselor" and guide, enabling the disciples to accomplish tasks that would have seemed impossible for them. Before his ascension, he told them:  "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." (Acts 1:4-5) On the Day of Pentecost, God's Spirit was poured out on many of Jesus' followers, allowing them to preach Jesus as risen Lord to an astonished crowd. God's law was written on their hearts, as it is on ours today.

God's gift of His Son and His Spirit goes against all perceptions of Him as a "clockmaker" god, one that created the world and everything in it and then stepped back from it to let people fend for themselves. It isn't just that God is with us and listens to our prayers, although this is true. But it is when we are at our lowest, when we feel so lost that we can hardly articulate our needs in prayer, that I believe God's Spirit is most active. Our hope for eternal life, Paul says in his letter to the Romans, drive us to persevere through suffering, hardship, and persecution. "Likewise," he adds, "the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words." (8:26) Let that sink into your hearts. This is our God. The Creator and Sustainer of the universe. The Spirit who intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. The Son of Man who wept publicly near the tomb of his beloved friend Lazarus. This God, who cares for us more deeply than we care for ourselves, is within us, within our churches and communities, rejoicing with us in our triumphs and showering His compassion upon us in times of distress.

"I can do all things," Paul famously wrote, "through Christ who strengthens me." (Philippians 4:13) It's a statement that seems incredible or even laughable at times. All things? Really? Aren't some things, like alleviating world hunger, simply impossible? They would be if God were not the God who walked with Abraham, who guided Abraham's descendants in the Wilderness, whose presence continued to dwell with them in the tabernacle and Temple, who became a man of flesh and blood, and whose Spirit He gave to Jesus' disciples on Pentecost. Thousands of years later, those promises to be with His people remain steadfast. Let's try our hardest to accept those promises, to take God at His word. Not for our own selfish gain, not to be able to say "God is on my side, not yours," but to persevere and to do His will on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The Call of God

I was an enormous fan of classic rock throughout high school. I can remember the very first time I heard a Led Zeppelin song. By the end of it, my jaw had dropped while I sat in amazement and realized that, within 4 minutes and 34 seconds, Led Zeppelin had become my favorite band. My love for Pink Floyd came about in an entirely different way. They were one of my brother's favorite bands, and I was practically forced to hear the Wall and Dark Side of the Moon over and over again because we shared a bedroom. At first, I disliked the band, but the more I listened to them, the more I came to enjoy the music. Over a series of months, almost imperceptibly, Pink Floyd went from being an annoyance to a band that I have loved for several years. 

The two ways that I came to love these classic rock groups can act as general models for how we come to accept and embrace Christianity. (It is, of course, a very imperfect analogy.) Of the two, the “Led Zeppelin” way is given much more attention and is generally more valued. We tend to uphold dramatic conversion stories like Paul's on the road to Damascus, or the calling of some of the 12 apostles, as the ideal way of becoming Christian. These are the stories that we tell time and time again, stories with a distinct moment of repentance and transformation.

Several evangelicals I've met have said that unless you can remember the exact moment that you accepted Christ in your heart, then you're not really a Christian, in which case you should make a prayer to do so officially right now. While studying in Israel, I became friends with an elderly American woman who described herself as a born-again. During one conversation we had, she explained how she had come to Christ. She had been an atheist and was the wife of a wealthy man. When she was in her sixties, she was diagnosed with a rare eye disease that doctors told her would lead to blindness. Soon after she found out, she had dinner with a good friend who was Christian. Right in the middle of dinner, her friend told her that she had been praying to God about the eye disease and that God would heal her. At a hospital appointment the next morning, she listened in astonishment as her eye specialist told her that she was inexplicably healthy. She became a Christian that very day. After having several dreams telling her to go to Israel and the West Bank, she divorced her atheist husband and made the trip. When I met her, she had been living in the Middle East for seven years.

Part of me is jealous of her experience of coming to Christ, her ability to distinctly recall the moment and be able to retell it to others. For me and, I think, a majority of today's Christians, there is nothing comparable to a “Eureka!” moment. Many of us were raised with Christian parents who consistently encouraged their children's faith. As a result of a religious upbringing and a conscious decision to continue in the religion of their childhood, they remain Christian. Others, like myself, come to accept Christ over days, weeks, or even months, a period of prayer, contemplation, and many discussions with friends and family. How are these ways of coming to Christ any less valuable than a single “Damascus” moment? 

Regardless of how we come to God, what matters is that when we hear His call we should be willing to put aside all of our assumptions about reality, about what God is like and what He wants, and simply listen, as hard as that may be. More than that, every day afterwards we can make a conscious decision to walk in the path that He has laid out for us. We know that our God is a god of transformation, of rejuvenation. He is pleased when we do our best to live up to His love, rather than being content with how we were before we knew Him. When people encountered Jesus and his miracles, he didn't tell them, “Keep on sinning and living as you have been.” No, he wanted them to be as much transformed by his forgiveness as his healings, to live in newness of life in him, and with the aid of the Holy Spirit to sin no more. 

The fact remains that, whether we come to know God's grace in a single moment of dramatic revelation or over a longer period of time, every day provides another opportunity for us to try to love Him more with our whole heart, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. God never promised us that this would be easy. Like any relationship, this requires a lot of hard work on our part. God doesn't want us to have a shallow relationship with Him. He doesn't want us to turn away from Him because life isn't perfect, because He doesn't seem to be doing exactly what we want. He wants us to grow, to mature, to accept fully His love and His desire for us to be His children.

We know this god. We strive to be in a relationship with Him. And when we are worked over and transformed by His love, we should want to share the story of God with others. Whenever I come to like an author, band, or artist, one of the first things I do is talk to as many friends and family members as I can about them. I want other people to know how much the band has changed me and enriched my life, with the hope that others will come to feel the same way that I do about this new, amazing thing. This is, for me, the right basis for evangelism. 

When the apostles preached the Gospel around Palestine and the Roman Empire after Jesus' death, they did so with the strong conviction that the people they were speaking to needed to repent and be saved. But the emphasis of their speeches was the wondrous things that God had done and would do in and through Jesus. They were excited; they couldn't stop talking about Christ. We see the same thing in Paul's letters, where Jesus is continually on Paul's mind and in his heart. The apostles saw in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection all of God's plans coming to fruition. So should we. Imagine sitting a friend or family member down and telling him the story of the Bible, the story of how God saved (and is saving) us and the world. Get excited about it, knowing that if we're passionate about anything, it should be the God who created us and has given us the gift of His love.

No Going Back


“You should get into writing more. Like, start a blog or write a book or something.” It wasn't the first time my best friend had suggested that I write. When I was in grad school a few years ago studying Middle Eastern history and languages, he suggested I write a book about my thoughts on Islam, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some historical topics, etc. When I started becoming more involved in studying Christianity and writing articles for my church's newsletter, he urged me to write a book on a religious topic. But now, sitting in his backyard with a good friend of ours on a beautiful afternoon, I had a different answer than my usual one. “I do have a blog,” I said almost sheepishly. 

"Really? You started a blog?" my best friend said, a bit surprised. 

"Is it like, private or something? How come nobody knows about it?” our friend asked. 

And I explained why. Explained how most of what I have written consists of short, sermon-type reflections on God and scripture, and how my main deterrent was knowing that some of the wonderful, kind Muslims I had befriended over the last several years might read the blog and realize that I no longer believe in their religion. (I was a Muslim from 2010 to 2012, something I'll probably be writing about from time to time.) Those people changed my life for the better, sharing hours of their time for guidance, fun outings, and thoughtful conversations over coffee or a meal. I was afraid of the initial reactions of disappointment and concern of some of those people regarding the choice I have made to follow Christ. 

On top of that, I tend to be a private person at heart. And while I suspect most of my entries will be about God (and food on occasion) rather than the minutiae of my personal life, it will be the first time that what I write will be out there for anyone to see. I've always harbored a bit of hesitation about sharing my writing with people other than close friends and family members.  

In the last few weeks, several conversations I've had with people have convinced me that I should try to overcome these hesitations. The most influential conversation occurred last weekend, when I met a young woman who had grown up Catholic, become a Buddhist for several years, and then came back to Christ. I found our situations to be very similar, so I appreciated that she was willing to go into detail about her experiences, particularly her “coming out” to her close Buddhist friends that she had converted to Christianity. She told me about how difficult it had initially been, how they had tried to dissuade her from her decision for several hours out of concern and friendship. It was hard for her knowing that she would never again have that bond with her friends, that bond formed through sharing spiritual and moral beliefs with another person and developing together in those beliefs. But she knew in her heart that there was no going back, no hiding her love for Christ and no way to deny him with a clear conscience. 

Was my hesitation to share what I've written tantamount to denying Christ? I doubt it, or at least I hope not. But even a brief recollection of the persecution faced by the early Christians, of the lengths they were willing to go to in order to witness to the Gospel, is enough to put my reluctance into perspective. Those Christians, and many today in areas of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, are willing to lay down their lives for God's truth.  What is a blog in comparison with that, really? 

My sincere hope is that my words and experiences might be of help and/or interest to a few people out there. If you have any comments or (preferably constructive) criticism, please don't hold back. Thanks for reading.