A response to Tim

Is salvation easy? For a long time, my dear friend Yoko insisted that it was TOO easy, and that was why she could not accept it. It made no sense to her whatever. Surely so great a something required a much greater action than the simple humbling yourself before God and asking for it. But oh how hard it is to humble yourself and admit you need it. She found out, after a prolonged and noisy fight with God, that it was indeed that simple. And that hard. And so incredibly worth it! We won't any of us know exactly how worth it salvation really is until we are in the consummated kingdom, but we get some pretty good tastes of it here.

Following Jesus can also be difficult, but it isn't nearly as hard as I once thought it would be. As a new Christian I tried dutifully to read the Bible, only to find that I was horrified by what I found there. Turn the other cheek? Go two miles for each one asked? Love people as He loves them? It was too much! I couldn't possibly do any of those things, and some of what was asked just didn't seem reasonable at all. This is what Gary Delashmutt calls the backwards wisdom of God. God says all sorts of things and asks of us all sorts of things that just seem foolishly backwards to those of us who grew up in the "real" world, having our minds set like concrete by its standards. But a funny thing happens to those who walk with God for very long--they find their perspectives changing. I certainly did. I won't claim that I see things through God's eyes on a constant basis, but I do it more than I used to, and I hope that I continue to understand the world more and more like He does.

One problem is that the world is full of counterfeits. I understand that Tim Keller has written a book about this recently, and I'll have to get my hands on it some day, but Philip Yancey wrote one years ago called "Rumors of Another World" that expressed it very well. Yancey focused on a handful of big things in life that originally showed the hand of God clearly, but have become subtly and thoroughly corrupted by the world. God's design is still there, but it's hard to pick out, like you picked up the wrong pair of glasses and everything is blurry. But wear those glasses long enough and you begin to adjust so that things look right to you.

The thing I find hardest in the Christian life is spending time with people outside my own household. When I am in a group situation, the biggest thing on my mind is when I can go home again, which is possibly a minor form of agoraphobia, but is much more likely just sin. I want to go and surround myself with books and papers and my own loved ones. I just want to read and research and write and periodically teach, and while these things are undoubtedly useful, they probably aren't enough. They have nothing to do with loving others, and everything to do with what interests me me ME. I do go to gatherings, and meet with other believers, because I know I should, and I have to admit that I do frequently enjoy people--at least for a while. Mea culpa.

The older I get, the lighter I find the yoke. Some days I find it heavier, when I realize how little of it I am bothering to bear and suddenly take the full weight upon myself. That can be fatal, and is thoroughly unnecessary, but I do it anyway. But things that I once considered impossible are now comparatively natural and easy a lot of the time. Brother Lawrence has helped, with the little book "The Practice of the Presence of God". He had such a simple way of looking at things. Just fix your eyes on God and do everything you do out of love for Him, and all the worries melt away. I wish I could say it's that easy for me, but there have been days when I have been able to function this way, and then the yoke is light as air.

A lot of it boils down to trust. When the yoke starts to chafe and feel unbearable and circumstances threaten to choke me, I fall back on the trinity prayer. I realize I'm dragging in yet a fourth author, but I have to do it. I encountered the trinity prayer in a fiction book by Elizabeth Goudge. It consists of three sentences of three words each: "Into Your hands, Lord have mercy, You I adore". While I have little use for formulaic prayers as a general rule, I have yet to find the circumstance that this prayer does not apply to, and when I pray it from the heart, that yoke gets so light it almost floats away.

The road is narrow, and I know I need good company to walk along with me. And the more I make sure that I have asked God to be the one closest to my side the more He polishes those glasses for me so I can see the way.

Love, Spud.