Darkness is God's Best Gift to You

In her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor has a chapter about the "dark night of the soul", a term made famous by John of the Cross, a sixteenth century monk who wrote the book by that title during the 11 months that he spent in a monastery prison.

Taylor writes in this chapter about how averse we are to uncertainty and how all of our carefully crafted creeds and doctrines over the centuries have attempted to make us sure about who God is. But John of the Cross says that "one of the central functions of the dark night is to convince those who grasp after things that cannot be grasped."

She goes on to write the following about John of the Cross: "...he says that darkness is God's best gift to you, intended for your liberation. It is about freeing you from your ideas about God, your fears about God, your attachment to the benefits you have been promised for believing in God, your devotion to spiritual practices that are supposed to make you feel closer to God, your dedication to doing and believing all the right things about God, your positive and negative evaluations of yourself as a believer in God, your tactics for manipulating God, and your sure cures for doubting God.

"All of these are substitutes for God, John says. They all get in God's way...God puts out our lights to keep us safe, John says, because we are never in more danger of stumbling than when we think we know where we are going. When we can no longer see the path we are on, when we can no longer read the maps we have brought with us or sense anything in the dark that might tell us where we are, then and only then are we vulnerable to God's protection..."

Taylor ends the chapter by saying that this kind of faith "will not offer me much to hold on to. It will not give me a safe place to settle. Practicing it will require me to celebrate the sacraments of defeat and loss...I think I can live inside this cloudy evening of the soul for a while longer, where even my sense of God's absence can be a token of God's presence if I let it..."

God is Thinking About You Right Now as You Read This

J.I. Packer writes the following:

“What matters supremely is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it — the fact that He knows me. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him, because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me, and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment therefore, when His care falters.

“This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort — the sort of comfort that energizes — in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love, and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based...on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me. There is, certainly , great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow-men do not see, and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself.

“There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.”

For this truth to have practical impact on our lives, it's important to actually embrace it, accept it and practice it; so my suggestion is to pause a few moments during your day (doing this regularly) to listen for the Father's affirmation of you and to agree with Him. One way of doing this is to take these words of J.I. Packer and turn them into a personal statement by God to you, saying something like this: "(Your name), what matters supremely is not the fact that you know Me but that I know you. You are engraved on the palms of My hands, and I never stop thinking about you; I'm thinking about you right now. You know Me because I knew you first and continue to know you. I know everything about you, the good, the bad and the ugly, and I still want you as My friend; I want this so much that I went to death to win you for Myself..., etc."

The Best Investment and the Return on Investment

This week I thought I'd share a simple story from my life that bears out the return on investment that we get with God.

A couple of years ago on Thanksgiving I wrote a very short and simple affirming statement on the back of a business card and gave it to a dear lady who was having dinner with our family that day. I had taken a few minutes to genuinely think about her and the value of her personhood and shared the thought that came to my mind for her.

She was so struck by those simple few words that ever since then, she remembers me with great affection and has a heart to do anything for me if she can.

Think of it! I invested a few minutes of time and care; the return on that has been a friendship, the value of which can't be measured. The best investments you'll make are investments in people, just as Jesus did.

We don't always find out the return on our investments in humans, but knowing how utterly generous God is, we can be sure the return is balanced in our favor. I know you readers have many such stories as well; it's encouraging to pause and remember some of these stories from time to time.

Peripheral Vision - Tunnel Vision

Some time ago I shared thoughts about opening more of the windows of my soul in order to receive greater light about God (Opening the Window Blinds to Let in More Light).

Along the same lines, I will share a thought about the importance of peripheral vision in our growing understanding of God and of all of life. I read the following from an article about 2 Kansas State University research psychologists: "We found that your peripheral vision is important for taking in the gist of a scene and that you can remove the central portion of an image, where your visual acuity is best, and still do just fine at identifying the scene..." (Adam Larson)

It's not unusual for us humans to have tunnel vision as it relates to our particular worldview, including those of us who follow Jesus; in other words, we focus on only one paradigm or way of viewing Him. In order get the whole scene, it's important that we have and practice "peripheral vision" or the ability to see beyond a single point of focus. This requires venturing into the worlds of other people who see things differently and daring to ask questions about our own point of view. This takes courage since often our sense of security is based on thinking that what 'my tribe' believes is THE truth.

When you lose peripheral vision in the physical eye, not only do you miss out on the wider beauty of the scene but there's danger involved since you can't detect movement out of the corner of your eye. Walking and driving, among other things, are dangerous activities for someone without peripheral vision.

And so it is in God; we may think we're protecting ourselves and others by confining ourselves to our favored theologies and ideas, but we may be in more danger by not receiving wisdom and understanding of God from the wider community of faith and even from those who may not share our beliefs about God but who have learned things we can gain by. This doesn't mean we give up our focused vision (that which we see through the tunnel) nor that we adhere to everything others teach; it means we add to the picture all the colors and variety of the larger scene.

A couple of ways to start developing peripheral vision are: first, simply practice putting yourself in the shoes of whoever you tend to react in disagreement with. This takes effort and concentration but produces empathy and a larger understanding of humans even if you may not agree with the person. Another way is to begin to read the materials of others who look at God from different angles.

Here are a few names of many good and real followers of Jesus that I recommend for help in this matter of getting peripheral vision; most of them have blogs where you can find a lot of material:
Richard Beck Experimental Theology
Rachel Held Evans Rachel Held Evans Blog
Brian McLaren Brian's Blog
Peter Enns Rethinking Biblical Christianity
Derek Flood  The Rebel God
Kathy Escobar  Love.Mercy.Peace   

As I have ventured into other ways of seeing God with the help of people who are from other traditions and worldviews, I'm finding the landscape and scenery to be more beautiful and exciting than when I looked with tunnel vision, and I'm thankful.

Pain's Other Name and the Gifts She Brings with Her

I will conclude this small series about the unwanted guest named Pain (part 1, part 2, part 3) by sharing a few of the unexpected gifts that have come along with Pain when she is hosted well. Like the child Much Afraid of Hinds Feet in High Places, we need a lot of help to scale the mountain that takes us to the kingdom where Love rules; her strong helpers were Sorrow and Suffering. The delightful surprise later on in the story is that it turned out that Sorrow and Suffering's real names were Peace and Joy!

I like to say that my visitor, Pain, has another name that I'm discovering, and that is Grace. An outstanding feature of Grace is that she is fully focused on the present, on today. She has all that I need for today, but when I start to focus my attention on tomorrow and fret about how things might be then, she feels neglected and steps aside, making room for Fear to step up and intimidate me.

Grace is about living today as fully as possible, and one of the beautiful things about her is that she has many good gifts that are helping me make the most of each day, one day at a time. Here are a few:

• Dependence - although undesired at times, the gift of Dependence is deepening community for me. I need the friends and family who kindly tend to my needs in a variety of ways, whereas before I could do most of it for myself.
• Expansion - this gift is widening my community. In my case, the many and regular trips to physical therapy and to the YMCA pool for exercise have given me a whole new and different set of friends and acquaintances that I treasure now, people such as Alyssa, Abe, Layla, Natalie, Sadiq, Willie, Herb, Jessica, etc., who I would never have met without Pain's presence in my life.
• Empathy-Solidarity - this has been another big gift which has opened my eyes in much greater ways to see and identify with others who suffer. One experience that all humans have in common is a visit from Pain. The gift of Empathy-Solidarity is enabling me to move past the tendency to categorize people and instead see a person to comfort and identify with; in turn, I find myself being comforted and strengthened.
• Enlargement - a lot like Empathy, this gift is making my heart more spacious, which is a lifelong prayer of mine. I desire to have a heart like God's all-encompassing, inclusive heart that embraces all people no matter their race or gender or status or religion, and this gift of Grace is helping.

These are a few of Grace's gifts. There are more but this will suffice. I can't help but think of the One who because of His intimate acquaintance with pain and full solidarity with all humans, was given gifts of grace to give to humans. May His voluntary experience of pain and solidarity with you make your visit from Pain, not only bearable, but filled with gifts of grace. To Jesus be thanks and praise!