read Mark 13.  When one of my nieces was five years old, she fell and cut her head.  Before giving her stitches, the emergency room doctor took out an enormous needle and shot her in the head with novocaine, right in the very place that hurt.  Tears filled her eyes.  ”I wasn’t very good at that,” she said.  Her reaction made her mother and I cry.  Why?  Because she was so very good at handling that shot.  She just didn’t realize it.  She thought the pain meant she had failed.

Sometimes the only thing we can do with pain is endure it.  If the pain is bad enough, sometimes just enduring pain is a victory.  But the thing to hold on to is that pain itself doesn’t mean you’re a failure.  Our enemy (and if you’ve been reading this blog or the Bible for any length of time, you will know that the Bible says we humans have an enemy, a/k/a the devil, who tries to destroy our lives, our happiness and our destiny through accusations and lies) tells us that pain means we’re a failure.  But that is a lie.  Pain does hurt.  Pain should make us cry.   Just because you suffer doesn’t mean you’re a failure.  There’s a way have victory, even in the midst of pain.

In the 13th chapter of Mark, Jesus discusses the terrible events that will happen before He comes again.  He doesn’t sugarcoat them.  He says we will experience war, earthquakes, betrayals, hatred, great anguish, false messiahs, and the darkening of the sun, moon and stars. He says no one except God knows when this will happen, not even Jesus.  But when it’s done, He will come again.

Some chapters in the Bible are warm and fuzzy.  Others, like this one, are full of fire and brimstone.  But even in this chapter, God combines love with truth in a way that lights our hair on fire – without burning it.

The key to understanding the beauty of this chapter lies in the analogy Christ makes here to birthing pains.  v. 8.  Birth always involves pain, no matter how strong the epidural.  But you tolerate the pain because you have no choice.  You transcend the pain by focusing on the joy to come.  And when you hold your child, you forget the pain completely.

In the same breath that Christ discusses these unpleasant details, he assures us not to be afraid.  He moves from discussing the “great anguish” to making an analogy with a sweet little fig tree.  He assures us that he who endures to the end will be saved.

The reason Christ could be positive here is because of something that He knew, but that His listeners had yet to see: the cross.  Jesus Christ experienced the worst of every one of these prophecies on the cross, to enable a way for the rest of us to endure them.  Jesus was betrayed.  He was hated.  The earth quaked when he died.  The sun darkened.  He cried out in great anguish.  God turned his back on Jesus.  Jesus was desecrated.  Jesus labored in pain in order to give birth to us.  And like a mother in delivery, he endured the cross for the joy set before Him. Hebrews 12:2.

Christ didn’t just endure the pain of the cross for the Second Coming.  He endured that pain for the joy of being able to have a relationship with us now.  Because of the cross, salvation is available to all of us, any of us, right this very second. All you have to do is ask.

And if you’re in pain right now,  I’m sorry.  So is God.  So is everyone who loves you, and lots of people who don’t even know you.  No matter what you’re going through, watch for Jesus.  You will see the God who loves you in the midst of the pain.  His heart breaks with yours.  He knows how you feel.  He experienced what you are feeling, and more, on the cross so that He can be with you now, no matter what.  You can endure pain and have victory with Christ holding your hand.  In some strange supernatural God kind of magic, if you cling to Christ in your pain, you will find gardens growing out of any wilderness in your life, no matter how desolate things might appear.

posted by Caroline Coleman in carolinecolemanbooks.com on December 19, 2011

Read Mark 11. Perfectionism is a thief.  It steals into your heart, and robs you of your joy.  It tells you that nothing you do will ever measure up.  It preaches a gospel of self-reliance and self-control, and the moment that these twin towers of self begin to topple, perfectionism remains to mock you for your failure.  The same pretensions that mock you, make you try to raise yourself up, despite your weakened state, which, in turns, dooms you to failing even faster the next time.  You begin to doubt and hate yourself, which makes you touchy.  The moment anyone criticizes the smallest thing about you, you snap at them, snarling, like a cornered wolf, and they back away, sometimes forever, leaving you alone in your small, miserable, little world, which only gets smaller by the second, as you go round in the same, downward spiraling circle, until your circles small to the point of strangling you and you give up completely, or kill yourself trying.

How do you cure the curse of perfectionism?

If you are a true perfectionist, you will try to cure perfectionism perfectly.  This approach is doomed.

Jesus offers another way.  His way involves cursing perfectionism and exposing it for the thief it is. Jesus’ way requires a certain violence.   It involves knocking over the tables upon which perfectionism stands, as Christ does to those buying and selling animals for sacrifice here in Mark 11.  It involves destroying perfectionism from the roots up, just as Christ does to the fig tree.  For like the fig tree, perfectionism is nothing but leaves.  It bears no fruit.  Even if you were that one in a trillion person who could actually obey all of God’s laws all the time, you would be nothing but leaves.  Your heart would remain the same as the next person’s.  The fruit would be absent.  You would be empty.

Perfectionism – also known as a “works based theology” – is at the heart of what Jesus came to destroy.  Jesus’ life and death stand as a testimony to the truth that we cannot work our way to heaven.  We cannot climb there ourselves.  If we rely on ourself, we will fail.  Those are not popular words.  People would much rather be told that the Secret, to paraphrase a best-selling book, lies within your own heart.  Self-reliance is the gospel that itching ears want to hear.  Don’t trust anyone but yourself.

Good luck with that one.

Instead, Jesus asks that we have faith in God.  He asks that we forgive other people, so that God can forgive our sins.  He promises that, like the colt no one has ever ridden, if we give to God what He asks, God will return it to us broken in.  He will give us back our hearts in a state that makes them usable.

For the thing that needs breaking in is our hearts.  The heart of man, the prophet Jeremiah points out, is desperately wicked and deceitful above all else.  It is beyond cure.  Jeremiah 17:9.  That’s why perfectionism is doomed.  We are not perfect.  We never will be.  We can’t get to heaven by being good.  No one is good except God Himself.  We cannot buy animal sacrifices sufficient to pay the price of our admission ticket to heaven.

Jesus did the sacrifice for us.  Jesus is God, so He alone is perfect.  His death on the cross was the only sacrifice that could pay the price for our sins.  Jesus’ sacrificial love transforms and changes us.  Believing that we are sinners in need of the cross, frees us up to be people who can forgive others – because we recognize how in need of forgiveness we are ourselves.  This is the new covenant that Jesus came to reveal.  The old covenant is perfectionism.  The old covenant is that we could earn our way to heaven by obeying the law.  That way of thinking – a works based theology – lies at the heart of every other religion or ethics known to man except Christianity.  Only Jesus offers a grace based theology; you can’t be perfect so stop trying.  Kill that fig tree from the roots up. Knock over that table that won’t stand.

Instead, if you accept that God paid the price for us to go to heaven, Jesus will fill you with His love.  He will consume you with His joy.  He will give you His peace.  He will offer you His supernatural patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That is the fruit of the Spirit.  Galatians 5:22-23.  That fruit comes from allowing God’s Spirit to rule our hearts.  Those qualities do not live in the human heart.  Have you ever tried to MAKE yourself be patient?  It only makes you more impatient, doesn’t it?  It’s like trying to make yourself perfect.  It back-fires.

But we will go on trying.  Like the religious leaders in this chapter, every day we will find ourselves questioning Christ’s authority.  Who are you to tell us what to do?  We’re fine all by ourselves, thank you very much.  Like snarling wolves, our desire to be self-sufficient and to earn our way to heaven will rise up to bite us over and over again.

But that’s okay.  Because when we fail, when we batter ourselves bloody trying to scale an impossibly high wall, when we finally give up and admit we can’t ride that untamed colt, Jesus says – hand the reins to me.  I will tame that colt.  I will tame it with sacrificial love.

Oh, we say.  I never thought of that.

And Jesus says: I know you didn’t.  Sacrificial love is My way.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in Spirit.  My yoke is easy, and my burden light.

And from the place of loss, desperation, despair, and humility to which our perfectionism has brought us, we say: “Okay, okay, fine.  Go ahead.”  We discover that the hands that lift us are so gentle, that we are filled with a supernatural Spirit whose fruit is the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and self-control we always wanted but didn’t know how to get.  Just give up your perfectionism.  Leave it battered, bloody and wounded just as it wanted to leave you. Abandon that den of thieves.  You’ll find more waiting for you than you could ever earn or imagine.  You’ll find love.

posted by Caroline Coleman in carolinecolemanbooks.com on December 13, 2011

read Mark 10.   When you visit Rome, you can go to the Piazza di San Giovanni and make a pilgrimage up the 28 steps said to be the staircase Jesus ascended to Pontius Pilate’s palace.  After you climb the Holy Stairs, you arrive at the Sancta Sanctorum, the Holy of Holies.  Like certain places in your life, the Holy of Holies can only be reached on your knees.

I did this 28 step knee climb this summer.  I was not alone.  The steps were filled with pilgrims, all of us on our knees, all of us climbing to the same place.  I had arrived with a to-do list.  I was going to work through every worry in my heart, and hand it all to God, and arrive at the top step with every burden lifted, every worry assuaged, and every care released.

That wasn’t what happened.

As usual with the things of God, all control was taken from me.  What I hadn’t counted on was the other pilgrims.  There were about 60 people ahead of me, all moving up the same narrow steps on their knees at the same pace.  There were people waiting behind me.  No one spoke.  No one looked at anyone else.  But you can sense the people.  You’re aware of them.  You can’t lose yourself.  The moment you slip your knee up a worn step, the person behind you does the same.  There is a rhythm to the ascension.  There is an unspoken pace.  There is a unity.  It was like a dance.

The presence of the other moving pilgrims meant I could not focus in on my planned prayers.  To turn over to God something major takes time.  It takes isolation.  It takes silencing all other noise and being able, to use writer-speak for a moment, to “go there”.  And so my to-do list disappeared, and in its place, only one phrase filled my head.  ”Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  It is the prayer of the tax collector in a story Jesus tells, and one that Jesus praises.  My friend B.J. Weber once told me about using this prayer as a way to reach God, and so I tried it.  I slipped up the next step.  ”Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  The next step.  ”Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Twenty-eight steps.  Twenty-eight times.  Twenty-eight incantations that He is the Lord; that I want mercy; that I don’t deserve it because I am a sinner.  Somewhere about half way up, you begin to weep.  You’re not alone.  You can sense other people crying, too.  At the top, you slowly straighten your body out.  You unfurl yourself.  You knees hurt.  Your back hurts.  And you experience the supernatural peace that comes from accepting truth.

How much energy do we waste fighting the truth?  How refreshing is it to accept the truth? We are not, like the two characters in the Broadway play “Venus in Fur”, based on a play within a play about the Marquis de Sade, handing over the reins to another human being.  We are asking God for mercy.  We are giving God control.  And because God loves us, the very thing that we think makes us the weakest, ends up giving us the most strength.

In Mark 10, the story that strikes me most is that of blind Bartimaeus.  I have already written at length about the events in the rest of the chapter.  If you want to hear my thoughts on divorce and wealth (which, to be honest, was the post on which I have spent the most time), you can click on those words to go to Matthew 19.  Today I want to talk about this blind shouting man.

What impresses and terrifies me is that Bartimaeus was not afraid to look ridiculous.  He was a blind beggar, sitting beside the road.  When he heard that Jesus was nearby, he began to shout, as I quietly did on those stairs, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” The people in the crowd yelled at him to be quiet.  Mark tells us that the crowd’s reaction only made the beggar shout louder, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’”  When Jesus heard him, he stopped and said, “Tell him to come here.” The people tell Bartimaeus to “cheer up,” which suggests that when he was yelling for Jesus to have mercy on him, there was a weeping quality to his voice.  Bartimaeus throws aside his coat – a telling detail about the intensity of his desire to see Jesus, because when you’re blind, if you throw aside your coat in a crowd, you’re unlikely to find it again.  Jesus asks Bartimaeus the question God asks over and over in the Bible.  It’s a question He asks each of us:  ”What do you want me to do for you?”

For Bartimaeus the answer is seemingly simple.  He is blind.  He has an immediate need.  He wants Jesus to fill it.  ”I want to see,” Bartimaeus says.  Instantly, Jesus tells him his faith has healed him.  The blind beggar can see, and he follows Jesus on the way.

The story, like every story in the Bible is true, but it is also told for us.  The way to find the peace and satisfaction we seek, is to throw aside our inhibitions and fear of looking ridiculous, and fear of the crowd’s reaction, and cast ourselves on the mercy of God.  Those are not words you will ever read in, say, the New York Times.  They are foreign words to modern ears.  But so what?  We don’t know everything.  Only God does.  And in going there, in going down into the depth of our desires and secret griefs, we find Jesus.

The only thing that holds us back is pretending we can see all by ourselves.  The only thing that liberates us is casting aside our pretense and casting off our cloaks and crying out, in a loud voice if necessary, until God hears us.

The fascinating thing is that the very act of crying out to God already begins to change us.  It’s not like God asks for our humility for His sake.  He doesn’t ask us to call out to Him so that He can feel better about Himself.  He doesn’t need our adulation.  We need to give it.

So when we say, along with Bartimaeus, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” it brings us up short.  Oh yes, we think, with surprise.  That’s right. We are sinners.  We had forgotten. We are much more likely to think like the rich young ruler, asking Jesus what we can do to be saved.  We forget that we can do nothing.  Jesus had to do it all on the cross. That’s what saves us – the perfect Son of God dying for our sins.  That is what gives us sight.  It enables us to follow Jesus on the way.  And it enables us to look at our fellow pilgrims with love, and not judgment.  If we are saved by grace alone, and not works, then who are we to judge anyone else?  We can react with love when other people sin, just as Jesus did to the rich young ruler when he lies and says that he has obeyed every one of God’s commandments since his youth: “Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him.” v. 21.

God meets our lies with genuine love.  Over time, He helps us see the truth.  If we climb to Him on our knees; if we come to him like a child; He will melt our hard hearts.  He will enable us to love the unlovable.  He will give us hope where we had none.  He will help us believe that He will restore the years the locusts have eaten.  He will help us stand up – for what feels like the first time in our entire lives.  He will meet our weakness with love.  We don’t need to fly to Rome.  The holy stairs are opening right in front of us at every moment.  We can get there on our knees any time we are willing to admit what we really want – we want mercy.

posted by Caroline Coleman in carolinecolemanbooks.com on December 12, 2011

read Mark 9.

Why are make-overs so compelling?  Why do we love the Before and After photos of people whose looks have been brought out by clever clothing and make-up artists. Real make-overs – people who have dropped 300 pounds or exercised themselves into abs – fascinate us.  We love shows about renovations of houses, not just people. Even time lapse photography can hold this kind of allure: we can watch a flower unfurl from a seed.  We can watch a caterpillar liquify until it flies off as a butterfly.  We love to watch a progression of photographs of people who have changed over time, such as the transformation of the shy retiring Lady Diana Spenser into the glamorous beautiful Princess Diana.  The key ingredient in all of these media representations is the speed.  In the photographs, and the time lapse photography, change happens in a heartbeat.

We find this evidence of transformation so satisfying, I think, because every human longs to be transformed into something supernatural.  We want to have the beauty, power and majesty of a superhero, or a fairytale princess, or an angel.  We sense we are capable of greatness.  We feel beauty touch us at moments, and we long for that kind of beauty to be present in our lives all the time.

But beauty is elusive.  Contentment lingers, and then leaves.  We can lose ourselves in a good book, or an autumn stroll, or holding hands on a moonlit beach, only to find ourselves all over again in a traffic jam, a child’s bad grade, or the phone call that never comes.

So why do we want a supernatural transformation if it’s not possible?  Did God make us to be perpetually unhappy?  Are the deepest longings of our hearts just some cosmic joke?

Or is there a kind, true and good God, who loves us, and made us for a transformative relationship with Him?  And if so, are all these stories and sayings we read in Mark 9 part of the clue to solving the mystery of how we perfect this relationship?

The chapter opens as Peter, James and John see Jesus transformed on a high mountain. Jesus’ appearance is “transformed” and his clothes become “dazzling white.” The transformation for Christ seems to be instantaneous.   What did Jesus look like before the transfiguration?  The New Testament never tells us.  But Isaiah prophesied about Jesus: “There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance nothing to attract us to him.” Isaiah 53:2.  I’ve always loved this. Jesus had no beauty to attract us – and yet people flocked to Him.  For once, it seems, people could see past the exterior.  And on that mountain, those three disciples seem to have been given a glimpse of what it would look like if one’s exterior matched your interior. In Jesus’ case, his interior is dazzlingly perfect, and so his exterior, momentarily, became similarly dazzling.

Right now, I’m not sure any of us would want our exterior to match our interiors.  We would be like the portrait of Dorian Gray.  I don’t mean we’d look like Dorian Gray the man, but like the portrait Oscar Wilde imagined him hiding in the attic – the one that becomes deformed and damaged by every crime the man commits.

To a certain extent, our poor choices do reveal themselves in our appearance.   Bitterness deforms our faces.  Worry creases our brows (and even Botox can’t hide a creased brow completely). Hatred curls our smiles into sneers.  Drink turns our skin sallow.  Drugs make our eyes … well, there’s lots of things it does to our eyes, depending on how recently we’ve taken them.  Sunburns harden our hides.   I could go on.  But what about our other poor choices?  Does every sin show right up on our face, like horrible little zits, popping up the moment we commit a dastardly deed?   Luckily, no.  Not yet, anyway. God in His kindness doesn’t make them show as completely as He could.  But while our poor choices don’t ravage our exterior as mightily as they could, they destroy our interior.

So how do we become transformed, as Jesus did?  How can we be cleansed inwardly and shine outwardly, so that we achieve that glory for which we know, deep down, we are made?

The answer, as usual with the Bible, is multi-faceted and yet simple; demanding and yet liberating; rigorous and yet so easy, as the mattress ad goes, even a child can do it.

God gives the answer right here in Mark 9: “This is my dearly loved Son.  Listen to him.”  God wants us to listen to Jesus.  So what does Jesus say?  He says here that He had to suffer greatly and be treated with abuse in order to save us.  He says there are evil powers afoot that want to silence us.  v. 17.  They want to kill us.  v. 22.  But Jesus, through prayer, can cast out the evil.  He wants to spend time with us and teach us, just as he did the disciples.  v. 31.

If we are willing to give up everything to which we cling, we can be free of the tyranny of the desire to be the greatest.  v. 34.  This kind of love for God is hard, because it requires ignoring the desires of our hands, feet or eyes. But this kind of love for God is easy, because it requires the trust of a child.

If we let go and let God; if we stop clinging to our evil ways, and throw ourselves onto the simplicity of God’s way, we will be cleansed.  Our insides will be cleansed by the cross. We all walk around carrying burdens God never meant for us to shoulder – burdens like guilt and shame.  God shouldered those burdens for us on the cross.  Believing that cleanses us.  Trusting God completely liberates us.  This transformation happens in a twinkling of an eye.  The lightning bolt change we long for does indeed happen in a nanosecond – the moment we decide to trust Jesus, we are cleansed from our sin.  The instant we give up being our own bosses, and admit we need a savior, our guilt is taken away.  Boom.  Before – we were dead.  After – we are alive.  The change is that dramatic.  It’s that intense.  It’s that real.

But there is another sense in which the transformation takes a lifetime and beyond.  Becoming a Christian doesn’t mean becoming perfect.  It means accepting we need to be “covered” by Christ’s perfection.  But if this acceptance is real and true and good (to paraphrase Hemingwayesque adjectives), then the rest of us gets transformed as well.

When we allow God to cleanse us on the inside, something fascinating happens to our outside.  We become people who cannot speak evil of Jesus.  We become people who find ourselves welcoming little children.  We become people who bring other people a cup of water.  We don’t give to earn anything.  We give because we have received so abundantly, that the transforming love just flows out of us, naturally.  We feel beautiful on the inside because of our relationship with God, and that sense of completion makes us beautiful on the outside.

And then we run dry, and the process starts all over again.  We cry out, along with the father here:  ”I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief.”  v. 24.  And God does.  For when Jesus says here: “How long must I be with you?  How long must I put up with you?” I think he says it fondly.  v. 19.  For He already knows that He will be putting up with us forever.

He has to.  He loves us.

posted by Caroline Coleman in carolinecolemanbooks.com on December 10, 2011

read Mark 8.     Here is why Marion Dougherty, the casting director who was looking for someone to play Edith in “All in the Family”, recommended Jean Stapleton: “I had not heard of Jean Stapleton.  She came in and I loved her because you could believe that she could love blindly, love Archie.”  NY Times Obituaries, Dec. 8, 2011, p. A36.

There’s something so moving about that kind of blind love for a racist, cruel, belligerent man.  Is it because none of us feel capable of that kind of love?  Or is it because, deep down, we wonder if we’re not so different from Archie Bunker, and we want the impossible – we want someone to have that kind of blind love for us?  We know intellectually that God has that kind of love for us.  But how do we drive that knowledge home?  How do we believe that God is the Jean Stapleton to our inner Archie Bunker?

I think the answer lies in seeing details from God’s point of view.  How do we do this?  The seemingly strange details of the eighth chapter of Mark suggest that God has to break into our world.  The details seem strange because God’s world is strange to us.  God has to literally break us, in order to break in.  Here’s what I mean.

Let’s start, as the chapter does, with the feeding of the 4,000.  Why are there two miracle feeding stories?  As children, we are often told about the feeding of the 5,000.  But in fact Jesus feeds 4,000, after having fed the 5,000.  What’s the significance of the second story?  The disciples ask Jesus how they are supposed to find enough food to feed the people “out here in the wilderness?”  v. 4.  Jesus finds food in the wilderness.  The people eat “as much as they want.”  Then Jesus “sent them home.”  The second story is not so very different than the first one.  God can feed us in the wilderness.  God can take what little we have to give and transform it so that it makes us full.  When we have nothing, God can give us everything.  These are beautiful details.  These are encouraging details.  But we learned all this from the feeding of the 5,000.  Why does it happen again?

Right after the feeding of the 4,000, the Pharisees ask Jesus for a sign “to prove his authority”, and Jesus refuses.  Why?  He’s just given 4,000 people a miracle.  Why not the Pharisees?  The disciples saw the miracle of both feedings, and yet Jesus asks why their hearts are “too hard” to take it in.  The disciples saw a sign but didn’t seem to understand.  So apparently understanding the miracle is not the primary reason for having it happen.  If a miracle, then, is not to give faith, perhaps its purpose is simply this: God miraculously feeds us because we are hungry.  Miracles occur when we are so hungry we follow Him into the wilderness just to be with Him.

Conflating these two stories – the feeding of the 4,000 and the refusal to give the Pharisees a sign – teaches us something about God’s point of view: unlike us, he doesn’t do things just to prove Himself.  He doesn’t need to.  He’s God.  He knows He’s God.  He does things for other reasons.  He gives out of his abundance.  He gives out of compassion. Here’s why Jesus said he feeds the 4,000: “I feel sorry for these people.”  Compassion, then, not proving anything, is the reason to give.

Jesus then heals a blind man in two stages.  The first time he spits on the blind man’s eyes and lays his hand on him, the man can see people that “look like trees walking around.”  This is strange, because there are presumably no people around; Jesus has led the man out of the village.  Who or what are these trees walking?  Are they angels?  Are they indeed trees?  Do trees walk, if we could only see from God’s eyes?  Has the first healing enabled the man to see from God’s point of view?  Is this a viewpoint that would not enable the man to function in this world?  Is the second healing, the one that enabled him to “see everything clearly”, the one that brings him to our viewpoint?

Jesus then asks the disciples two questions.  The first is: who do people say that I am?  The second is: who do you say I am?  Again, we see two contrasting viewpoints: the world’s and God’s.  God wants us to see past what other people say about Him, and see into the only viewpoint that matters.  Because in order to see from God’s viewpoint, we have to let go of what other people say.  We have to be willing to travel with God into our own hearts.  God cares about what we think – perhaps more than we do.  In order to see from God’s viewpoint then, we have to be willing to accept that the person whose heart we have to worry about is no one else’s, but our own.

Jesus then gives a lot of extreme statements about how we are supposed to see from God’s point of view, not a human one.  He says we have to banish Satan.  We can take this command literally.  Throughout the day, whenever we feel arrogance, pride, jealousy, irritability, and condemnation enter our hearts or speech, we can say, out loud if necessary: “get thee behind me, Satan.”  Jesus says we have to turn from our selfish ways, take up our cross, and follow Christ.  Following Christ means being willing to lose everything.  It means being willing to give up everything.  It means losing the whole world, if necessary, without shame, in order to find our soul.  These are Jesus’ famous and strong words.

So how do we do that?  I think the answer lies in the details of all these stories. We need to follow Christ into the wilderness.  We must sit when he says sit.  We must eat when he says to eat.  We must go home when he says to go home.  We must leave the village when he says to.  We must return home by a different way when he says to.  With the simplicity of a child, we must not fret when we find ourselves with nothing.  Childlike trust is the only way to see from God’s perspective.

So forget the human viewpoint that says we have to be worthy to receive a miracle.  Don’t worry if you’re feeling as grumpy, irritable, unloving and unlovely as Archie Bunker.  See from God’s viewpoint where the only requirement for feeding is our hunger.  Believe that God can love, blindly love, even you.  Especially you.

So when you feel like you have nothing, rejoice.  You’re now in a place to have everything.  Don’t fret.  Just trust that trials can make you sweeter, kinder and more humble, if you are not impatient.   They are just one of God’s ways of breaking in.  They are one of the ways God breaks us.  And if God is God, He is everything.  So when you have nothing, you can have Him.  And you will see men like trees walking.  What are these trees walking?  I don’t yet know.  But I know this.  One day, we will know.  And if we can see from God’s perspective, maybe the next time you go for a walk, even the trees will come out to meet you.

posted by Caroline Coleman in carolinecolemanbooks.com on December 8, 2011