on revenge and forgiveness: Romans 9

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Caroline Coleman

We hate everything about bullies — the bullying, the being bullied, and the standing by silently while someone else is being bullied. The bully feels helpless in the face of his own senseless rage. The victim feels oddly and wrongly ashamed, as if something in their very being invited mistreatment. The silent bystander feels in some ways worst of all, both victim and victimizer, complicit in guilt and yet deemed worthless enough by the bully to be subjected to watching their crime.

I once heard a Vietnam vet describe the concept of what he called “third party forgiveness.” He said we need to forgive not just the things others have done to us; or the things we have done to others; but also the things we have seen others do to other people.

That’s a lot of forgiving.

The problem is there is something inside all of us that prizes revenge. ”I hope that man that incarcerated those three women for ten years DOESN’T get the death penalty,” someone said to me yesterday about Ariel Castro. ”I hope he is put in a prison where others mistreat HIM, so he experiences the same thing he did to those women.”

Holocaust victim Elie Weisel said something similar about Bernie Madoff. Weisel should know better. He wrote in his memoir Night that when the Nazis treated him like an animal, he found himself behaving like one. And yet when Weisel lost most of his money to Madoff’s ponzi scheme, Weisel wrote that he hoped Madoff would spend the rest of his life in a prison cell with a video running 24-7 of his victims. Weisel said this before Madoff’s son committed suicide. I’m not sure if Weisel still feels Madoff needs a 24-7 video after that kind of a consequence.

Why do we want bullies, criminals and other people who have maimed us to experience the hurt they inflicted? Why do we want to exact an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? What is it in us that has an automatic revenge button that gets triggered the moment someone hurts us?

Is it possible that we each have a sense of divine justice? Are we humans so made in God’s image that we automatically know that a wrong must be punished? Do we have God’s laws written on our hearts, as the Bible says of our consciences? I can’t think of any other explanation.

And yet when we talk of exacting revenge like this, we forget the most important thing. If our sense of justice comes from God, why do we find it so hard to trust that same God to exact justice in the best possible way? That is part of what Paul is trying to get at here in Romans 9. He’s saying who are we to argue with God? God is the potter. We are the clay. Part of peace comes from recognizing that the potter has the right to do whatever He wants with the clay. Romans 9:20-22.

No one could read about the hell house those three victims of Ariel Castro lived in without weeping. The policemen who released the women were crying. The women saw the sunshine twice in ten years. We feel the pain of those three women, even as we know we can’t even imagine their pain — and that, too, is part of our pain. We are the bystanders who want to suffer for others but can’t.

Luckily for us, we have a God who did suffer for us. The potter could have broken every one of us clay jars. Instead, God became clay Himself. He was broken for us. He suffered the pain of hell so we wouldn’t have to.

Because His justice was satisfied on the cross, God forgives us, but His only condition is that we forgive each other. He wants us to forgive the things we see others do to others. He begs us to let go of hurts others have inflicted on us. He longs for us to receive His forgiveness. He says it’s the only way to heal.

If someone really needs to see a video 24-7 of all the wrongs they’ve inflicted on other people, God can do that, too, by playing it on the screens of their minds. Maybe that’s already happened to Madoff. Who knows. But maybe not, because we humans don’t really know what kind of spiritual torture other people deserve. We don’t know what kind of suffering their consciences have imposed on them. We don’t know what kind of suffering their hard hearts have given them.

There is nothing more painful than having a hard heart. Hard hearts condemn us to live in a world of hate, rage, suspicion and loneliness. All crimes come from hard hearts. No matter whether we are cruel to others, indifferent, thoughtless or actively malicious, everything evil we’ve ever done comes from the same source: a hard heart.

A hard heart can only be broken with softness. God has a soft heart toward us that offers us only kindness, sweetness, love and mercy. We don’t really understand mercy. It’s not our natural response. But while we may not understand it, if we go there we discover it’s the best place to live. It’s a tender place. It’s a vulnerable place. It’s a scary place. And it requires knowing we need mercy. It requires letting go of justice and the law and “well I did THAT so maybe I didn’t do THAT but you did THIS and I deserve THAT.” It lets us instead focus on God’s forgiveness for us, not on focusing on what others have done wrong. Only when we accept the need for mercy can we love others – all others — even the bullies. Even when we have met the bully and he is us.

posted by Caroline Coleman in A Chapter a Day

on loneliness … Romans 8

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Caroline Coleman

“It’s so lonely I can’t bear looking at it,” John said to me. We were on our third date looking at a Hopper painting. He winced as he said it. And he never called me again.

Loneliness is odd. You can feel lonely even when you’re with someone else. Sometimes being with other people only accentuates our loneliness. To be honest, it wasn’t “Christina’s World” that caused John to make that comment. I just put in this version of “Christina’s World” because when I’m with a lonely person, I often feel like that silly man waving my arms and legs, trying fruitlessly to get their attention.

The Hopper painting that made John feel so lonely was this one, “Morning Sun”: The interesting thing was, John had already told me that he LOVED spending time alone. He said he spent days on end completely alone. He glanced at me when he said it, as if evaluating whether I’d be able to handle that. He was a scientist. His work involved the kind of uninterrupted thinking time that all artists, inventors, philosophers and creative types of every description not only require but crave. It’s like a hunger in us. We run dry after a while if we spend too much time in the company of others. We need time alone. So why then do we fear the very thing we love? Why did my scientist date recoil as if he’d been BURNED when he looked at this Hopper painting ? After all, the woman is looking out of a window. She is presumably looking at something. And there’s more. She isn’t really alone. The artist is there.

To John, however, in that moment, the woman was terribly and awfully alone. Edward Hopper the artist managed to make John the scientist feel her loneliness. Hopper affected John’s emotions, the way all artists aspire to do. Harrison Ford spoke on Charlie Rose last night of why the script for the Jackie Robinson movie grabbed him. ”I’m still ambitious,” Ford told Charlie Rose. ”I’m an actor. I’m not happy unless I’m working. But I don’t get to work enough because I’m picky about what I do. I only want to do scripts that interest me. If I can’t be a leading man anymore, I’ll be a character actor. As Ben Kinglsey told me, ‘when you put on a mask, you can tell the truth.’ But there aren’t even enough interesting character actor parts. The script for ’42′ wasn’t talky. Talky is bad in a script. A good script makes you FEEEEEEEL something.” Harrison Ford’s eyes gave his trademark serious yet yearning twitch. I felt something just watching him. The years evaporated. I saw Indiana Jones on the screen in front of me. Ford is a gifted actor, just as Hopper is a gifted painter. And Harrison Ford was right. In ’42′, when a pitcher HURLS a ball at Jackie Robinson and it SLAMS into his head, the entire audience ducks and winces. We literally feel his pain. That moment is more effective than any 3-D special effect, because it’s not a special effect. It’s an actor, in this case, Chadwick Boseman, empathizing so deeply with his character that the audience empathizes, too. The movie implies Jackie Robinson was the loneliest man on the baseball pitch, and yet ironically at the same moment the movie brings us all into the loneliness of his world and thereby expands it.

Which brings us back to loneliness. What IS loneliness? And if we actually like being alone sometimes, is it even really loneliness that we call loneliness? Do we have the right vocabulary? Is there another word, another language, another world that truly evokes and explains and heals the feeling we call loneliness?

It’s not an abstract question. Loneliness can drive even the calmest most rational human to extreme, dangerous and even violent behavior. The press is full of speculation that loneliness was a driving force behind the Boston marathon bombers, the Columbine massacre and any number of other violent acts. See e.g. “The Teenage Brain May Have Driven Tsarnaevs to Violence.” The lonely brain is susceptible. A lonely person will sacrifice what she knows to be right in order to satisfy her hunger. A lonely person can become what we call desperate. He will do things that are backwards. In fact, we usually do. When we’re lonely, the more we cling to others, the more we tend to drive them away. We behave in ways that achieve the opposite of what we crave. Murder, for instance, isn’t calculated to give us friends. Or we accept bad relationships because we lie to ourselves that they’re better than nothing.

Loneliness can also compel us to erect walls around ourselves. Sometimes, we’re so afraid of being hurt, we build walls to “protect” ourselves, which prevents us from finding the kind of restorative relationships that can end our loneliness. What is wrong with us? And what is this beast called loneliness? What will truly feed it, satisfy it or starve it to death?

Romans 8 is a long and beautiful expose on what it truly means to be a Christian. It opens with the claim that there is “no condemnation” for the person who is “in” Christ Jesus. It moves on to claim that “all things work together for good” for those who love Christ and are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28. This is a verse that many people cling to with every bone in their body. They call it their “life verse” and trust that God has a purpose in even the most seemingly meaningless tragedies. The chapter ends with the promise that “nothing” can separate us from the love of Christ. We may understand intellectually why never being “separated” from Christ might have something to do with satisfying our loneliness. Our heads can understand the concept that if we believe in Jesus we get accepted into His family. We might see how the kind of forgiveness Christ both offers and calls us to might relationships and bring healing to our wounds. But how do we truly believe that? How do we take it into our lonely hearts, not just our heads? I think the answer lies in Paul’s opening statement that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. But what does condemnation have to do with loneliness?

Everything.

Because I could tell you that when Paul says everything works together for good for those who love Christ, it was good that that scientist John never called me again. I could speculate that I never could have handled dating such a loner. I probably couldn’t have. I could further tell you that John closing the door, opened the door for me to have a much better relationship with a man much more suited to me. And right now, that would be true. But what if that had been MY LAST DATE EVER? What if no one ever called me again? It happens. It happens all the time. There are many people in this world who are sick, dissatisfied, old, drug addicted and alone. Where is the good in that? How can God satisfy our desire for companionship in a world where sometimes we ARE desperately alone?

I would suggest that it’s not being alone that’s really the problem. I think a much deeper, and often undiagnosed problem, is this issue of condemnation. The real problem is guilt. We all fall short of other people’s expectations and our own, and our instinct is to hide. Witness Adam and Eve. The moment they bit into that apple, they lost their fellowship with God and hid themselves. They felt naked. They felt it keenly, as if it hurt them. As with Adam and Eve, our inadequacies cause us shame. When our marriages fall apart, for instance, we are embarrassed. We feel like we’ve failed. We want to hide our failures, even though the only way to heal them, of course, is to share with others who can say to us. “Don’t worry, dude, been there. Done that. We’ve all failed. And we come through. It’s okay. I still love you. Maybe your spouse will never love you again, but it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.”

Actually, it kind of does. There’s an even better answer to our inadequacies, hidden in plain sight in this opening line of Romans 8. There is “no condemnation” for those in Christ even though we ARE all guilty. No one is good. Don’t hit the toggle switch. At least not yet. I don’t mean we’re not lovable. We are. I don’t even mean we’re awful. We’re made in God’s image. But none of us live up to the standards to which we aspire. Even if we’re moral relativists and we’ve bought into the (philosophically untenable) notion that there is no right or wrong and the only standards which matter are the ones we set up for ourselves, none of us live up to even those. Pastor Tim Keller once said that if we wore a recording device around our necks for a week which recorded every standard we say OTHER people should live up to, none of us would live up to even that code. Listen to ourselves. We condemn others all the time: ”I can’t BELIEVE he did that. Can you IMAGINE? I NEVER would have done that. I NEVER would have treated anyone like that.” Of course we all have. We just forget.

So what Paul is talking about here is that when we are “in” Jesus Christ, there is no more of this condemnation. Because Jesus took the punishment we deserve, He accomplished what all of our “trying harder” never could. When God looks at us, He sees Christ’s record. Christ lived the life we all aspire to but never can, and then He took the consequences we deserve. When we are “in” Him, there is no more condemnation. There’s no more shame. There is no more unremitting guilt. There is no longer any need to hide. We don’t need to put on a mask to tell the truth. In theory, being a Christian SHOULD mean the end to hypocrisy. We no longer have to pretend we’re perfect. ”Sh*t,” we can say. ”I just f*cked up again.” And then we catch ourselves, grin sheepishly, and realized we’ve just done it again.

Because perfection is like walking on water. It’s something a human can only do in that moment of suspended time when we’re lost in prayer with the God who loves us, made us and died for us. The rest of the time, we fee like we’re sinking and struggling not to go under. We all have negative and critical thoughts. We are hypocrites who condemn others with withering glares for the very things we do all the time. We present ourselves as perfect. We engage in not just these covert sins, but overt ones. Most Christians like to talk about their sins as something in their past that God has “saved” them from. And that is true – but only in a sense. The Christian journey is one in which we go from “glory to glory.” Yes, sometimes God lifts us out of chemical dependency, sex addiction, dishonesty in the workplace, and a whole host of other behaviors which will guarantee an empty, miserable lonely life. But sometimes we fall right back into the same behaviors. The author of the famous Hound of Heaven poem, who so movingly describes God pursuing him as relentlessly and passionately as a bloodhound, is supposed to have died a lonely miserable death in the slums of London, falling prey to the same opium addiction that caused him to celebrate God’s victory.

So where is the victory there? Where is the hope? Where is the joy? Where is the end of loneliness if we find ourselves sometimes doing the same old same old? Why should anyone even want to be a Christian if the Bible doesn’t promise a pain free life?

The answer is all around us. It’s shimmering in the air. Romans 8 is quivering with it. The answer is that no matter what happens to us in this world, whether it’s our fault or that of others or a mixture of the two, we have only to reach out and beg for God’s help. We need only ask. We need only crash through the walls of pride we’ve foolishly erected around our wounded hearts and cry out for the living breathing God: HELP ME!!!!

And He will. He does. He is longing to. He adores us. He has every right to condemn us. He, more than any human, knows everything we’ve ever done or thought. And instead of condemning, He suffered for us. He felt our pain. He didn’t feel it in His imagination, the we we do when watching a movie like ’42′ or when looking at a painting like ‘Morning Sun.” He did it in reality. Jesus really suffered the eternal consequences of sin for us. He really did. And then He rose again, and holds out his hands to each of us, without condemnation, only love.

That’s what Romans 8 is singing about. That’s why Paul writes about the joy of those who live “in” the Spirit. We become united with Jesus. We become one with Him. We live “with” Him. We can never be “separated” from Him.

How does that play out in real life? What if we fall back into doing something we know is wrong, and find ourselves unable to dig ourselves out of the pit of our own making? What if we’re not sorry yet – at least not sorry enough to stop? Right here, in the unrepentant yet still believing heart is where grace and truth meet and dance. It’s here where the believer lives. How can God say through Paul that there is “no condemnation” for us even when we sin again and aren’t quite ready to stop?

All I know is this: no matter what we have done, continue to do, or will do, all we can do is hold onto Christ. We can beg for more of His Spirit. We can ask to drink from the river of life. We can keep on crying out. We press in. We cling. We ask, seek and knock. We lean in – a phrase from the Bible not Sheryl Sandberg.

And if we sense that we don’t feel sorry, we can ask for the gift of guilt. Because guilt, real guilt, isn’t a bad thing. It’s a gift of God that is meant to spur us on to be sorry. And from that place of sorrow, God can lift us up into the beautiful place of forgiveness. Condemnation comes from hell. It says we can never be free. It’s a lie. Godly guilt leads to sorrow, repentance and new life. 2 Cor. 7:10 (“the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death.”)

A world based on forgiveness rather than condemnation is a beautiful place to live. It’s a world that gives us the sweetness of God’s presence, and it has nothing to do with our behavior. We’re “free” from the law. We live in the Spirit. All we need to do is groan from our hearts, and the Holy Spirits translates our groaning into the most beautiful articulate painting of a prayer ever imagined or created. Romans 8:26.

And somehow in that world of freedom, it’s all going to be more than alright. Somehow, we leave sin behind the way people on a rocket ship see earth getting further and further away until it’s a distant blue ball. Somehow the more we recognize our weaknesses, the bolder we become. Our poverty opens the door for the sweetness of relying on Him.

God’s ways are not our ways. But they’re better. In His world, we are never alone, no matter what we’ve done. The artist is always there. He sees us. But what we forget is that He is watching us without condemnation. He is watching us with love. He is, perhaps, more like that silly man photoshopped into ‘Christina’s World’ at the beginning of this post that we realize. He’s doing all He can to get our attention. He wants us to stop hiding from Him, lift our faces to Him, and enjoy the warmth of the morning son.

Because He LOVES us. So yes, maybe loneliness is the right word for that painful ache we can feel at the most unexpected times. We are all lonely for unconditional and undeserved love. We feel alone in our pain, alone in our guilt, alone in our condemnation. ”I feel lonely,” we think, and the pain presses deeper. Sometimes we feel guilty for feeling lonely, as if there were something wrong with us for being alone. But loneliness is a gift if we use it well. The pain can spur us on to seek the sweetness of the relationship we were created for. Maybe we miss the mark because we look to this world to solve our loneliness, when we need to look to the source of love first. We are already loved by the one who made us. We are already forgiven. If we look out THAT window, we will find the most beautiful view of all. We’ll find the acceptance we’ve always hungered for.

God’s love so fills us to overflowing, He enables us to give to others. He helps us take our minds off ourselves and love others – and in that kind of math, loneliness dissolves. We discover we no longer think the words, “i feel lonely.” So no matter how many people never call us again or hit us on purpose with baseballs or hate us sometimes even with good cause, we can keep on giving, keep on loving, keep on holding our heads high, because the more people take from us, the more room in our hearts there is to cry out to God and allow Him to fill us to overflowing with the thing we most want. We are called to the purpose of helping Him love the world. That’s what Paul says here in Romans 8 – we are the first of many to come. We’re to give others the same helping hand Christ gives us. And even when we fail miserably at that, there is no loneliness in our failure. We can admit it, be deeply sorry, be deeply forgiven, and keep on engaging in God’s world, a world full of morning sun.

For as Paul says: if the only perfect one doesn’t condemn us, who can?

posted by Caroline Coleman in A Chapter a Day on May 7, 2013

how to be the fastest runner: Romans 7

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Caroline Coleman

For anyone who anxiously studies the best way to do things, the New York Times ran a heartening article last fall on the best way to run. A highly scientific study concluded that there is no one best way to run. Myths of Running, October 15, 2012. Hallelujah. Just knowing that is liberating. We can take one anxiety off the check list of our brains when we run. We no longer have to worry about whether our heel, midfoot or frontfoot is striking first. Because I don’t know about you, but anytime I go running I’m constantly trying to outsmart myself. I’m trying to trick myself into going faster just a “little” longer; or in sprinting just to the “next bend”; or telling myself to at least try to pass that 100 year old woman who is walking faster than I can run….

But when we engage in those kind of mind games, how can there be two parts of our brain? It’s the kind of interesting dichotomy brought to life so well in The Inner Game of Tennis. We have an inner self who is condemning and judgmental and who makes the performer in us freeze up. And then we all have a self who can just let go, who performs far better. Fine. Great. Got it. But how do we use our “self” to let go of our “self”? We know there’s a jolly happy relaxed self who could beat Federer. But how do we use our jolly self to outsmart our inner Cruella deVille??

It seems paradoxical to just try harder. I mean, how are you supposed to “try harder” in order to get into the zone where we stop trying??

Here in this famous chapter of Romans 7, Saint Paul leaps straight into the heart of this paradox. His despairing cries about human nature suggest that trying harder only backfires. Here’s what he says about himself: ”I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate… I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.” Romans 7:15, and 18-19.

I love his honesty. Most people like to say they’re good. They like to say all you have to do is try hard to be a good person. They say that’s enough.

But I don’t think they believe it. Why else do so many people overdrink, overeat, procrastinate, pop anti-anxiety medication or focusing medication or anti-depression medication; hate their to-do lists, ignore their children, be rude to their parents, obsessively collect mailboxes or car tires or baptismal fonts? What is behind all the nonsensical crazy things we know other people do – and therefore have to admit, in our heart of hearts, that we must do also since it’s logically impossible that we’re the only person who doesn’t act a little crazy sometimes? Maybe we don’t thieve from the tills at work. But we all have our stuff, the things we want to do but just can’t seem to do. For Paul it was coveting. He says it’s as if there’s this dark power at work inside of him and the moment someone tells him what is right to do, the dark power tells him to do the opposite. He says there’s a war going on inside him, and he feels buffeted by it. More than that, he says he feels like a “slave” to the dark powers inside of him – as if no matter how hard he tries, “inevitably” he can’t make himself choose the lifegiving ways of, for instance, not coveting.

I think King Solomon put it best when he said the hearts of people are full of evil and there is “madness” in our hearts while we live. Ecc. 9:3 (NIV). What else but evil accounts for exploding bombs at the finish line of a marathon? Solomon’s words cut through the age old debate of whether evil people are crazy. He just says that evil IS “madness.” It’s “mad” to want to hurt others – of course it is – and yet we’ve all done it. Our mouths act like bombs sometimes, going off when we least expect it and maiming all within earshot. Or we might tell ourselves not to EVER worry again – whether because we are starting to trust God, or for the practical reason that we’ve figured out worry doesn’t help anything – and then we immediately find ourselves worrying over the dumbest things. ”Stop worrying,” we order ourselves in frustration, only to realize that now we’re worried that we’re worried. Trying harder can just make us feel miserable.

It’s enough to make us cry, along with Saint Paul, o who can free us from all this?? Romans 7:24.

The answer is not to trick ourselves into obedience – like my friend who likes to imagine scary evil people running after him to make himself run faster. It’s not to say God or our mother or our neighbor will hate us if we don’t tow the line. Instead, Paul is talking about a way of living inside of the zone. It’s a zone of acceptance. It’s a place without condemnation. It’s a land of joy. When we accept the truth of Saint Paul’s riff on human nature – that evil and madness are within our hearts – we can give up. We can stop pretending to ourselves and others and instead surrender to God. That’s when we get to do what Paul calls “living in the Spirit.” We get to live in the land of grace. We live in the joy of God’s love, a joy based not on our performance but just on existing. It’s the joy of knowing we belong to Him because He made us.

The key to receiving all this is admitting we need it. Admitting our wayward nature opens the door for God to do the work. He did it on the cross. We don’t have to try harder. We let go, and God does the rest. God cannot work with us when we’re pretending we don’t need Him. A doctor can only heal someone who knows they’re sick. We have to be willing to swallow whatever medicine God gives us. And if we are finally willing to give up trying harder to be good, God comes in and fills us with His love instead. He paid the price for all those times even 100 year old women walk faster than we can try to sprint through life. We stop trying to be full of “good deeds” that fool nobody except maybe ourselves, and then only on a good day, and instead we ask for mercy.

Mercy is a beautiful thing. It looks weak but it’s strong. When we receive mercy – God’s undeserved love – it fills us with joy. It fills us with strength. It gives us boundless energy. We lose our anxiety. We can focus on the task at hand. We can live in the moment. Jesus is “the answer,” as Paul concludes here. Romans 7:25. He’s the answer to every problem, to every issue, to every time we try harder only to have it backfire.

Our response to mercy is to be thankful. Being thankful makes us feel like we’re running so fast we don’t even notice if anyone is passing us. It’s like going for a long run with our i-pods set on All Songs. No matter what comes next, it’s always a song we love. We don’t have to try harder. We can relax into it. After all, when we let go, God carries us. There is no paradox. It only seemed like one because we thought it was up to us. But when we surrender, God can finally take care of us the way he has always longed to. His love makes us move faster than any runner on earth because in His arms, we fly.

posted by Caroline Coleman on April 16, 2013 in A Chapter a Day

walking on water

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Caroline Coleman

The day after Easter I woke to one of those dawns that has to speak for itself.

It started slowly.

I was longing for coffee and room service hadn’t opened yet. I thought the dawn was over. So with nothing else to do, I kept watching without expectation. The sky pinked.

Entranced, I kept watching. Beams of light shot out from behind the clouds.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, the light triangulated. I looked around. Was I the only one watching this? I began to get overwhelmed. Was God putting on a light show for me alone? Come to me, God promises, and I will show you great and wonderful things you do not know.

The sun kept moving in the sky, and the lightbrush moved with it.

I stopped texting phone photos to daughter and boyfriend and kept my real camera fixed on the light. It was changing by the second now, and if I’d taken my eyes off it I might have missed something. I drew closer.

And then closer.

The sunlight was walking on the water.

The heavens were telling the glory of God.

Who am I that thou art mindful of me?

on the love that blossoms in caregiving: Romans 6

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Caroline Coleman

Romans 6. I used to fear about a thousand and one things in life. Breast cancer was my deepest dread. Actually scratch that. It was about a billion and one things I feared. I was haunted by everything from being attacked by wild birds, Hitchcock-like, to failing on my exams, to saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, to losing a limb, to losing my teeth, to, well… you get the picture.

And then something strange happened. I discovered there were all these things I thought I HAD to have to be happy. Yet when I got them I was kind of like, well, … yawn.

That kind of revelation can cut many ways, right? You can start to think you don’t want anything. That’s a zen life. It’s a letting go of all desires. But who wants to live without desires? It’s like being a zombie. Desires are the lifeblood of our existence. So maybe instead, we have to figure out what we REALLY desire and hold the rest of our lives lightly. Maybe we have to learn not to “set our hearts” on things we don’t really want. But how?

To answer that, it might help to walk around inside something we think we DON’T want, something we fear, which for many of us is caregiving. I mean real caregiving – feeding, bathing and bandaging someone who is messy sick. A few people are gifted in that area. But most of us fear it. When my Dad was sick, I left the true caregiving to my mother and the nurses. I was happy to sit on the arm of his chair and entertain him. And if there had been no other caregivers, I’m sure I would have rallied. But I wasn’t jumping into the fray.

I shouldn’t have feared it. Because I had already learned something curious about caregiving that came from having children. Before I had my own, I didn’t “get” babies. What were you supposed to DO with a baby? Aren’t they boring? And who in their right mind would want to change a smelly diaper?

Everyone told me you had to wait until you had your own baby to get it. They said you find your own babies beautiful and fascinating. They were right, of course. But like most things in life, you can’t really understand that until you experience it for yourself.

When my son was born, they popped him straight into the ICU. He was healthy as a clam, but they wanted to make sure because he had been born with a cleft lip and palate. So he lay on his little side wearing the blue and white striped hat that New York Hospital slips on every baby’s head. I sat on the other side of his incubator and watched him. He had the sweetest most contented look on his face you’ve ever seen , and BOOM. I fell in love.

We brought him home, and he kind of just sat there. ”He doesn’t do anything,” I complained to the baby nurse.

“Look at his hands,” she said.

I looked. He couldn’t move. His cries were the volume of a baby eagle’s. But his little hands were waving in the air as if he were conducting music only he could hear. I was entranced. I discovered I could watch him for hours.

When you look with eyes of love at another human, EVERYTHING they do becomes endlessly fascinating.

But there’s something even more fascinating about babies. It happens as a result not just of watching them relax in a cute hat or wave their tiny little hands, but when you look after them. There’s a love that blossoms in caregiving. There’s a depth of passion that arises only from bathing, feeding and changing them at their messiest.

And if your child has a medical need, you discover that the deeper their need the more your love blossoms. The doctors told us that newborn skin is almost as malleable as foetal skin. So the moment my son was born, the doctors at NYU Medical Center crafted a moulding plate for his gums and nose to help his features grow in the right direction. That meant I had to glue bandages on the delicate skin of his cheeks, rip them off twice a day and reglue them back on no matter how blistered and sore his little cheeks got. I wouldn’t let anyone else do it, even though it killed me every time. He had two operations before he was a year old. In the grand scheme of things, my baby’s medical issues were nothing. And at age eighteen now, he looks fabulous. He’s having what will hopefully be his last surgery this summer, an enormously complicated jaw surgery, and he seems as completely relaxed about it as he is about most things. His calm gives me permission to be calm. But eighteen years ago, when he was my first baby, ANYTHING that went wrong turned me into a tense mess.

“This too shall pass,” that same baby nurse told me, every time my baby screamed.

“Right,” I thought, sarcastically.

She was right. I didn’t know it then. But the more I fussed over him and tended to his ripped skin and wept over his little bloody stitches, the more my own love grew. The deeper his need, the more I loved.

It’s this kind of deep love that arises only from caregiving that Carol Mithers wrote about so movingly in the NY Times recently:

“I wasn’t one of those women who went all dewy-eyed with love the second she gave birth. Within two weeks, though, I was transformed, flattened by a passion I had never even dreamed existed, and it was the grunt work of motherhood that did it to me, the holding, touching, watching, feeding, smelling. I had always imagined that you put up with the job of caring for a baby because you loved her, but for me it was the unfathomable, slightly terrifying intimacy of caregiving that brought the love.”

“And with my old people it was the same. Just as it is with a baby, your job is tending, and the comfort you bring is simple and physical. You come to know the precise texture of thin, dry skin, the kind of touch that pleases, the small things that bring a smile.” New York Times, Tuesday March 26, 2013, “Suddenly They’re All Gone.”

Mithers is right. It’s the caregiving that brings the love. And yet, we fear being needy. We don’t want to let anyone take care of us. We resist asking for help. We shouldn’t, of course. It’s our neediness that can allow the love of others to blossom. And isn’t one of our deepest desires to be loved? But apparently we have an equally strong contrasting desire, which is to be independent.

So we all seem to have a built in mechanism that prevents us from getting the very thing we most want.

Luckily for us, the one who created us already knows this about us. His sacrifice bridges the gap between what we want and how we act in a way that prevents us from getting what we want. His tender passion for us on the cross, a passion that will be spoken about, re-enacted and sung about this Easter weekend, is the deepest act of caregiving of all. He cared for our deepest desire, the desire for unconditional love. He took the physical, emotional and spiritual wounds we deserve, so we can be healed of our spiritual sickness.

We resist hearing that. We don’t want to be dependent on anyone, especially not God. We don’t want to be beholden. We don’t want to have to obey Him. We want the seeming “freedom” to do our own thing.

What we fail to realize is that dependence on God is what we were made for. We’re at our happiest and most fulfilled when we swim in the waters for which we were bred. The more we need God, the more we rely on Him. And only when we are utterly dependent on Him, can He use us for His purposes. When we rely on ourselves, we are wandering in mazes lost.

That’s the truth we get to walk around inside of for the rest of our lives. And what we discover when we do that is that God’s love IS the desire that thrills us: “In Him, we live and move and have our being”. Acts 17:27. St. Luke’s words almost shout their way off the page. We LIVE in Jesus. We have our “being” in God. We breathe in His breath. That is our deepest desire. And the more we begin to trust Him and His love, the more we can face all our fears with peace.

My son’s baby nurse wasn’t quite right. Some things in this world don’t “pass”. Some diseases are terminal. Some limbs can never be restored. We’re not glass lizards, able to regrow our own tails. Everyone has a crucifixion to undergo on this earth, and some are far worse than others. But there is one crucifixion that releases each of us. It happens when we “die” to ourselves and our ideas of what we need. Usually it happens because God allows the things we thought we had to have to be ripped from our hands, and we feel like we’re dying. Yet if we turn to Him in our need, He cares for us. In His hands, we discover a love blossoming that is greater than anything we’d ever known or imagined. It’s through this process of discovery Paul describes here in Romans 6 that we decide we no longer want so strongly the things God says are bad for us, and we decide we want Him more. Romans 6:6.

And as we grow in trust, and begin to feel God’s love blossom inside us as we allow Him to care for us, God opens our eyes to the truth that the things we dread most can bring us the greatest joy of all.

posted by Caroline Coleman in A Chapter a Day, on March 27, 2013

the gift of feeling useless: Romans 5

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Caroline Coleman

read Romans 5. Some days we don’t feel ourselves. We feel blechy. Our bodies don’t want to function at their peak capacity. We need a vacation, but the only thing outside is a grey sky. We feel restless. Feeling useless can feel almost like hunger, but eating doesn’t make it go away. We wonder what’s wrong. Usually we can bounce out of the feeling by achieving something. But when we feel less than zippy, it’s hard to achieve anything. Those are the days we feel our worst, and yet they’re the very days that can be our best. Why? Because those days are opportunities to explore what it means to be just us.

Who are we when we’re not achieving something? Who are we when we – gasp – don’t get to brag about anything because we can’t think of one thing we’re good at? Who are we when we don’t have the energy to remind ourselves of what separates us from the crowd? Who are we when there is no crowd?

We just are.

And that’s enough. Except we forget that. We thought we had to prove ourselves not just to other people, but to ourselves. But really? What exactly are we trying to prove? Who is the one setting up this standard? Where does our idea of perfect come from?

Perfect comes, by definition, from our perfect God. And we somehow get it all backwards. We think WE have to be perfect, but the truth is, He is the only perfect one. And in His perfection, He loves us no matter how useless we are or feel and He longs to cover us with Himself.

That’s why those days when we feel under the weather are blessings. Those days we want to crawl right back into bed are opportunities. Those times when we don’t want to work out – or work – are gifts. Our weaknesses are a door. They’re a way into a place we would never willingly go on our own. The more we are stripped of our own gifts, the more we are forced to ask for God’s help. To ask for help means we don’t have it all in ourselves.

That was true all along. We just forgot.

If we ask for help from the one who loves us just because, we discover that our weaknesses open us up to the world of grace. They unlock the closed barren places in our hearts that can only blossom in the presence of unconditional love. We move from the emptiness we feel when we can’t achieve, into a fullness we couldn’t have even imagined. We discover a new joy and a confidence that “lasts”. Romans 5:2.

It’s this kind of experience of learning to depend on God, I think, that informs these seemingly difficult words of Paul about how we “can rejoice… when we run into problems and trials.” Romans 5:3. It’s not just because, as Pink sings, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It’s that the strong you discover when you rely on the Lord, is the most beautiful strong of all. When Paul here talks about endurance, strength of character and hope, he’s not using these words the way we usually do. It’s not a white knuckle grip on our humanity. He’s talking about enduring anything in God’s presence; about a strength that comes from relying on God’s strength instead of our own; about character honed in the furnace of humility, where we yearn for a godly character and discover how short we fall; and a hope in God rather than in a change in our circumstances. Romans 5:3-4. This is not the mantra of self-reliance or a muscular kind of Christianity. It’s the tearful grateful joy of the one who relies on the cross alone.

We often think the cross is a symbol of condemnation. Paul reminds us it’s really a symbol of how God loves us even at our weakest. God died to restore his “friendship” with us when we were “helpless.” Romans 5:6, and 10.

So our weaknesses are an opportunity to walk more closely with God. They’re an opportunity for us to let God do what He longs to: ”to fill our hearts with love”. Romans 5:5. We discover in our helplessness something glorious. We find the power of our “wonderful new relationship with God.” Romans 5:11. It’s the power of a love based only on God and not on anything we’ve done.

Knowing that lifts our heads up high. It restores the light to our eyes. It puts a new song in our hearts. It makes us smile from the inside out. We start to realize that just being WITH God gives our lives the sense of purpose and destiny we’ve always longed for. Worshipping Him and being thankful to Him lift our spirits higher than the heavens. So we start asking not whether we’re being “useful” but whether we’re in God’s presence. And THAT is a question we can always answer in the positive.

Always.

posted by Caroline Coleman in A Chapter a Day on March 13, 2013

a stranger in a strange land no more: Romans 4

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Caroline Coleman

Read Romans 4. In WAVE, Sonali Deraniyagala writes of losing her two sons, husband and parents to the tsunami in Sri Lanka because she chose that day to vacation by the sea: “I can only recover myself when I keep them near. If I distance myself from them, and their absence, I am fractured. I am left feeling I’ve blundered into a stranger’s life.” As usual with extreme situations, Deraniyagala has tapped into a universal truth. We all feel at times like we’ve blundered into a stranger’s life. Even though for most of us that fractured feeling remains exiled to the shadowlands of our lives, we can feel its presence. It can haunt us, especially when we feel it pressing close. Sometimes, the fractured feeling springs out of the hinterlands and confronts us head on. It stands in the middle of our roads and refuses to get out of our way. Because there are times when we all feel like a stranger to our own lives. When that happens we remember almost with homesickness what it felt like to belong to our lives. Why? What’s going on? And how do we fix it? How do we feel at home in our lives no matter what the circumstances?

The first and most likely cause of feeling “disassociated” from our lives is the one Deraniyagala writes of: grief. When tragedy strikes, an automatic coping mechanism is denial. When something too awful to contemplate happens, we just don’t contemplate it. We shut off the valve. We are, therefore, in a very real sense not at “home” in the reality of our lives in that moment. Sometimes real life is just too difficult to inhabit. It’s a healthy short term coping mechanism, in the same way that when you first break a limb you have to immobilize it. It would be silly to wear a sling if our arms were fine. It would be silly NOT to wear a sling when we break our arms. It’s part of the way we heal. We bind the broken part of us up; we stop it from moving; we can’t, don’t and shouldn’t use it the way we normally do.

So if grief is the cause of our feeling like a “stranger” to our lives, the first solution is to normalize our feeling of disassociation. We can remind ourselves that we are in denial. We can tell ourselves that the sad thing that has happened will automatically make us feel “strange”, as well as sad, because we are going to have to process it in little pieces. Our brains will have to “chunk” the information. Bit by bit, the truth will begin to “sink” in. At least we hope so. Because, of course, denial is never meant to be a long term solution, only a short term one.

Eventually, we have to face the truth. We all heal at different paces. We are never to judge any one else’s healing process. But when looking at our own grief, there comes a time to ask ourselves: am I being courageous in the face of this tragedy? How can I integrate the grief with the rest of my life? How do I face the reality of who I am in the light of my changed circumstances? How do I accept this grief so that I can move on? How do I avoid my desire to Miss Havisham this tragedy?

I wouldn’t presume to answer that question for someone who has lost a child. But I can say that any divorcee with children knows the disorienting feeling of living two seemingly compartmentalized lives. We’re a swinging single one minute and a harried parent the next. If our children are teenagers, it can feel even more fractured. One minute we’re lecturing our child on the dangers of friending strangers on social media, and the next minute some mustachioed stranger is sidling up to us in a darkened bar and asking if we come here often. We’re tempted to respond: “Buddy, I don’t even know who I AM so I how do you expect me to answer the question whether I come here often… because I MIGHT have been here before, and I may have even gone out with YOU before – you look oddly familiar – or is it just that you look ODD – but the thing is, it wasn’t really ME that came in here because I’m a MIDDLE AGED MOM and we MOM’S don’t DATE!!!”

As you can imagine, that’s not the kind of response recommended by the dating books. But it’s the one we’re sometimes tempted to give. The dating divorcee dilemma is just one instance of another larger cause of feeling like a stranger to our own lives: we get that “strange” feeling when our lives don’t look like what we thought they should look like. This can be just a different face of grief. We grieve the loss of our dreams. We impose oughts and shoulds on our lives, and when the two don’t match up we feel strangered.

But dreams were never meant to be oppressive. If we wanted four children, should we really be sad we “only” have one? Think about it. We can never really fully know another human being. They will always surprise us. So viewed that way, one child offers us infinity. Or if we always wanted a spouse, should we feel like a stranger to a life where we get to go out and meeting interesting people every singel day? Similarly, if we pictured ourselves as being married forever to the same person and growing old together, we will disassociate from a widowed or divorced life. But we can we reframe that, too. We can instead open ourselves to the chance that we might meet someone even more suited to us in middle age than the person we met in our twenties. Or we can open ourselves to the idea that we can explore new worlds, both near and far, in a way closed to us when we were committed to caring for just one person. And as for the compartmentalized feeling that arises from dating strangers one minute and then lounging comfortably with our children the next, we can start to see our lives as mosaics. Or as an editor friend of mine put it last night, we can start to see ourselves as walking around in different “rooms” in the homes of our lives. For some of us, our homes seem to include not just threadbare sofas in t.v. rooms but also exotic new landscapes.

In other words, when we let go of the “shoulds” of our lives, we open ourselves up to the “what ifs.” It’s a lovelier way to live, and ultimately more satisfying.

But on a deeper more existential level, what’s going on under all this disassociation? Why do we even get this “stranger in a strange land” feeling? Why should denial of reality be a coping mechamism? What is it about this”I don’t belong in this life” feeling that even emulates “coping”? What I’m asking is: why should it HELP to feel like we’re not at home in our lives?

Perhaps the issue is that on a very deep level none of us is really at home in our lives. The title of Robert Heinlein’s famous science fiction classic, after all, comes not from Heinlein’s imagination but from the mouth of God. It’s a phrase from the Bible. Moses described himself as a “stranger in a strange land” because he lived in exile from his childhood home of Egypt; Moses had to flee because he murdered one of Pharaoh’s abusive guards in a fit of rage. Exodus 2:22. Similarly, when Abraham obeyed God’s call to go to a land God would show him, Paul writes that Abraham lived there as a “stranger in a strange land.” Hebrews 11:9. Those two examples illustrate two sides of why we feel like a stranger from ourselves on this earth, both stemming from the imperfect nature of this world.

First, we feel like a stranger to our lives because we sin. We like to see ourselves as perfect, so when we live outside that paradigm, we tend to go into denial. We think it’s not really “us” that could act or think like that. On one level, we’re right. It isn’t our best self. It’s not the self who was created in God’s image that could lie, cheat, steal, commit adultery, gossip, be jealous, covet something that belongs to someone else or be selfish. But the fact is, it IS us. To be fully at home in our lives we need a way to own our sinful side. The Bible describes us as beings made of heart, soul, mind and body. To be at home in our lives is to integrate those selves. It means to integrate the fact that we have a “human” side – no matter where we locate it physically – that is less than all we want.

We can’t make our sinful side go away, no matter how hard we try. Nor do we want to just blandly “accept” it with a big “who cares?” Because we do care. Instead, the only way to live at peace with our sin is literally just that: to make peace with it. In other words, to forgive. A refusal to accept the concept of forgiveness is deadly. I’ve seen it. If we can’t accept forgiveness – our own, other people’s and God’s – then we will never be able to even acknowledge our sinful self. We will always be a stranger to ourselves. We will always disassociate, always dissemble, always live in fear that our real selves will overtake us like a monster we’d rather keep hidden in the attic. We will always viciously attack anyone who dares criticize us. But if we can swallow our pride – no matter how bitter it tastes – we can humble ourselves to see the truth. We are fallen people who desperately need the forgiveness of others. We are imperfect people who desperately need our Creator to forgive us. We are sinful humans who need to forgive ourselves.

This kind of forgiveness is freely available to us, as this chapter of Romans so beautifully declares.. That’s why David writes of the “happiness” of those “who are declared righteous without working for it: ‘Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven.’” Romans 4:5-8. It is the joy of the one who expects to be exiled, who is instead welcomed home with open arms. It’s as if we think we’re about to walk into a prison cell and instead are ushered through a gate into green pastures. God promises us we can live at home with Him by “faith” alone. It is “given as a free gift.” Romans 4:16. Jesus “was handed over to die because of our sins, and he was raised to life to make us right with God.” Romans 4:25. We are seen as “right” with God no matter how “wrong” we act. This is free for us because God Himself paid the price. God left His home and lived as a stranger in our world, so that we can be welcomed by Him as IF we were perfect. Accepting that miraculous gift of forgiveness makes us so grateful we become people who can offer to others the same kind of forgiveness. When we receive mercy, we become merciful. We forgive others. We forgive ourselves. We receive.

It’s hard to live in a world of grace. I know it should be easy. It’s free, after all. But somehow it’s so hard. For me, personally, it takes daily reminders. ”Oh, right. I’m imperfect. Oh, I forgot. God forgives me. Oh, shoot. That means He wants me to be merciful to others. Okay, okay, fine. It I REALLY have to…. ” And then we cross the Rubicon all over again and find ourselves on the other side of our self-righteous stuck-up pride, and we think: WHAT WAS I EVEN THINKING BEFORE??? We suddenly feel how lovely it is to live in a land of mercy. It IS lovely. Until…. we forget where the best home is, and we go back to our little lonely worlds of self-righteousness and pride, and the process starts all over again.

On top of resolving the homesickness occasioned by our sin, there’s a second step to feeling at home in our lives; it’s the one hinted at by the Abraham story above. It’s the idea that even as sinners forgiven by God’s grace, we will still only feel at “home” in this earth to the extent that we can trust God. Because God calls us to feel at home even HERE, in this broken imperfect world. We resist that call. We don’t think we should feel at home here. We want to be at home in palaces. We “deny” that we could be at home even in grief. We want to live in our dream worlds.

Instead, God calls us to feel at home even in broken infrastructures, broken relationships and our own broken hearts. The only way to do that is if we like Abraham can accept God’s promises based on faith alone. Faith enables us to feel at “home” even in a strange world. We can say to our griefs: “you are strange. You don’t belong to me. And yet I will own you because my God says that one day, He will wipe away every tear from my eyes. My God promises that He will bring good out of bad. My God says He will redeem every broken thing, even me.” This is the kind of faith that enabled Abraham to believe God would make him the father of many nations even though Sarah had already gone through menopause. For when we open our hearts to miracles, miracles happen.

Paradoxically, the moment we accept that we are strangers in a strange land – because of our sin, the sin of others, and the griefs occasioned by living in a fallen world where waves can rise up out of nowhere and engulf us – we do become at home here. We become “homed” not by a bitter or fatalistic reframing, but by believing in the love of a God who promises to redeem us. We become at home in unfamiliar landscapes because we know God is with us always. We become at home in the odd places God calls us to go, because we live by faith not sight. We embrace the strangeness of this world by believing that God will make even the strangest things melt into the most familiar and yet elusive thing of all: love.

But what happens when we fail? What happens when we know all this, we may even believe it, and yet we still feel fractured? That’s when all we can do is offer our hearts up to God and ask Him to help us. And right then, no matter where we are, what we’ve done, or how many people despise us, a door opens in front of us. If we walk through it, we’ll find a table set, a fire burning, and that sense of belonging we’ve always sensed existed but could never find on our own. That’s because this door is a person. The reason God can ask us to feel at home in even a broken world, is because the door itself was broken. When Jesus said “I am the door,” He meant that His body would swing on nails like hinges, to usher us to the land of unbroken promises. Love is strange. It doesn’t look the way we thought it should. It can look like something small, unattractive and broken. And right there, when things look the strangest, is when Love springs out to greet us in all its unexpected, strange, beautiful, familiar, undeserved glory.

posted by Caroline Coleman in A Chapter a Day on March 11, 2013

real fairy tale endings: Romans 3

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Caroline Coleman

read Romans 3. Anyone who loves fairy tales knows what it is to have an insatiable appetite for them. I used to read them from every culture, translated from every language, and written in every century. There’s something so … magical about magic. It taps into something deep inside us. We’re drawn to it and wonder how to satisfy that deep longing all the time.

When I became a Christian in college, it was because I got sick of being restless. I wanted peace instead of the insatiable. I was too old for fairy tales. I wanted real. I sensed God was real but I didn’t believe in HIm. So I asked for faith. And God in His kindness gave it. I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and it made more “sense” of the world than anything I’d ever heard. I read a tiny bit of the Bible each night and it must have blossomed in me. Because one day I realized I actually believed what I was reading. I discovered that all that magic I’d always hungered for in fairy tales was real and accessible — and lighter and sweeter and more lasting than any human fairy tale.

Here in Romans 3 is the true magic that God offers to each of us, and that He gave to me merely for the asking. It’s such a perfect summary of the good news that I’m launching straight in. The chapter starts with a truth about human nature that any reader of fairy tales knows. All humans are capable of great evil: ”No one is good… No one knows where to find peace. No one seeks after God.” But despite this negative truth, there’s freedom and beauty in here that takes only a moment to unpack.

Because we do “all fall short” of the glory of God. Our world is full of evil stepmothers and bad fairies and tooth-smiling wolves, and all too often, despite our best intentions, we have seen that evil stepmother and she is us. So for anyone who knows but can’t conquer her inner wolf, there is joy to be found in the next claim. Paul says ”God has shown a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes no matter who we are.” Paul says we get a free passage to the magic of God’s presence because Jesus was the one who struck out on the open road and left his home behind. Jesus was the one who got hurled from the tower by the wicked witch when he tried to rescue the trapped princess. Jesus “freed us from the penalty for our sins…. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.”

For us imperfect humans then all that remains is to bask in the magic. For us there is joy, peace and thankfulness. We can be ushered into the sweetness and light of God’s presence by faith alone. There’s no room for boasting, because we’ve done nothing to be “accepted” by God. No more tall tales. That’s where the magical freedom lies. For once in our lives, we are in the presence of love that gives all and asks nothing in exchange — except that we accept it thankfully. Even thankfulness seems to be a gift. When we realize what’s been given, thankfulness bursts out of us in such abundance that we find ourselves wanting to give Him everything, and we weep because he needs nothing from us at all.

Perhaps we resist believing in God because the pathway to Him sounds too good to be true. But for once in our lives, why shouldn’t something so wonderful be for us? Perhaps there really is a place where all our dreams can come true. Perhaps there really is a place of freedom. Perhaps there really is a place of acceptance. Perhaps there really are arms open wide to receive every one of us just as we are without asking us to change first. Perhaps there’s a real fairy godmother whose magic doesn’t end at midnight. Perhaps there’s a magic coin inside a fish that gives us three wishes that will create rather than destroy us. Perhaps there is the kind of love that rises in our hearts until the brightest dawn of all breaks with the return of the Son.

Here is the true magic we’ve longed for every day of our lives, but this time it’s real. Once upon a time there was a lonely girl. And God came down and loved her. He loves you, too.

And it’s all just a wish away.

posted by Caroline Coleman in “A Chapter a Day” on March 4, 2013.

upon reflection: Romans 2

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Caroline Coleman

read Romans 2. Mirrors are funny things. They reflect back only a two dimensional version of ourselves, and yet there’s a sense in which they have magical powers to show us more and yet less of ourselves than we feel exists. Fairy tales, fables, myths and children’s stories are full of mirrors with these kind of magical powers. Snow White’s stepmother had a mirror that showed her the fairest one of all; her mirror seems believable, perhaps reflecting the idea that when we look in the mirror we see idealized versions of other people. Alice in Wonderland also had a believable mirror. She had a mirror that was so transparent she could fall into the world of it. There’s something misty and opaque about mirrors, as if they hint at other worlds, shadow worlds, alternate universes. Narcissus was so proud he disdained anyone who loved him – until he fell in love with his own reflection in a lake, not realizing he was seeing himself mirrored in the lake’s surface. Like Alice, Narcissus fell inside his “mirror”; unlike Alice, however, he died there because his mirror wasn’t magical. It was unforgiving water. Narcissus drowning in himself is a metaphor that almost isn’t. After all, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, a metaphor has to stand for something, and Narcissus actually did drown in his reflection.

Harry Potter fell in love with an image of what he hoped for but could never have in the Mirror of Erised; he saw himself surrounded by adoring parents celebrating his teenage victories even though his parents had passed away when he was a baby. Dumbledore gently pulls him away from the mirror, explaining that many had lost their lives by staring into the impossible. The scene is too good and its wisdom too powerful not to revisit:

“Except — “So — back again, Harry.” Harry felt as though his insides had turned to ice. He looked behind him. Sitting on one of the desks by the wall was none other than Albus Dumbledore. Harry must have walked straight past him, so desperate to get to the mirror he hadn’t noticed him.

” — I didn’t see you, sir.”
“Strange how nearsighted being invisible can make you,” said Dumbledore, and Harry was relieved to see that he was smiling.

“So,” said Dumbledore, slipping off the desk to sit on the floor with Harry, “you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised.”
“I didn’t know it was called that, Sir.”
“But I expect you’ve realized by now what it does.”
“It — well — it shows me my family –”
“And it showed your friend Ron himself as head boy.”
“How did you know –.”
“I don’t need a cloak to become invisible,” said Dumbledore gently.

“Now, can you think what the Mirror of Erised shows us all.” Harry shook his head.

“Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help.”
Harry thought. Then he said slowly, “It shows us what we want… whatever we want…”
“Yes and no,” said Dumbledore quietly.
“It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.

“The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again. If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. Now, why don’t you put that admirable cloak back on and get off to bed.” Harry stood up.

“Sir — Professor Dumbledore. Can I ask you something.”
“Obviously, you’ve just done so,” Dumbledore smiled. “You may ask me one more thing, however.”
“What do you see when you look in the mirror.”
“I. I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks.” Harry stared.

“One can never have enough socks,” said Dumbledore. “Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn’t get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.”
It was only when he was back in bed that it struck Harry that Dumbledore might not have been quite truthful. But then, he thought, as he shoved Scabbers off his pillow, it had been quite a personal question.” HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE.

In all these stories, there is an element in which a mirror shows more than just ourselves. Mirrors seem in literature to be able to capture visions of what we want to see; what we wish we could be; what others look like; and a world in which we want to live or a world in which we can’t live. What are the archetypes straining at? And how do we find a true mirror that shows us as we really are and the world as it really is? How do we find a magical mirror that captures our dreams in a way we don’t drown in them but can instead walk on water?

The Bible has a lot to say about mirrors. Perhaps the most famous passage of all is after Paul’s triumphant ode to what love “is” in 1 Corinthians 13, he adds that now we see “through a glass, darkly.” 1 Cor. 13:12 (KJV). A more modern translation is that now we see “through a mirror, dimly.” (NIV). It’s as if he’s implying we see what love really looks like when we look in a mirror, but we see it dimly, and we don’t see it in ourselves but somehow on the other side of a mirror. Because what’s magical about this description of love and a mirror is that there’s an element of Alice falling through the looking glass. Paul doesn’t say we look into a mirror and see ourselves. He says we see “through” a mirror. There’s a hint of seeing a reflection and yet also seeing through. How can that be? Is the Bible like one of those two way “mirrors” we pass in the airport, where we see ourselves but also the dim outline of a grey man in a grey overcoat surveying us critically to guess if we’re carrying drugs or bombs? Does the Bible show us ourselves but also a harsh judge on the other side, surveying us?

The Bible claims that when we read God’s Word, several mirror-like things happen. First, the Bible claims to act like a perfect mirror that reflects ourselves back to ourselves and shows us as we really are: ”For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12 (KJV). A more modern translation explains that the Bible reflects back to us our “innermost thoughts and desires.” Heb. 4:12 (NLT). The Bible claims that we are self-deceived; we can justify anything. It says that only the light of the Holy Spirit working on our hearts through kindness, Scripture and revelation can reveal our true self to ourself.

But at the same time as showing us ourselves, the Bible also shows us God. And seeing both those things at the same time somehow transforms us into something beautiful. It transforms us into the person God created us to be. When we look at the words of the Bible, the Bible seems to show us as a person made in God’s image. Here’s how Jesus’ brother James explains this mirror-like quality of the Word of God: ”Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” James 1:23-24. James seems to imply that listening to the Bible is like looking at the face of someone who has the ability to do what the Word says. Apparently when we read God’s word we do see our better self. Let’s say we read how we are to let our gentleness be evident to all – and we think: “oh, yes, yes, yes! Of course. I will be gentle, gentler and gentlest today!” But then the moment we shut the Bible, we feel harshness course through our veins, and even worse, spew out of our mouths. James says that when we act in an ungodly manner (as defined in the Bible) it’s as if we have forgotten what we look like. In other words, this is an encouraging verse – even though it always feels to me like a condemning one. It’s encouraging because James is suggesting that we see ourselves in all our God like possibilities when we read the Bible. We see what we could be. We see what we want to be. We see what we were made to be.

James’ mirror verse is discouraging, however, because we’re all constantly disobeying God. We can dip into the “mirror” of the Bible countless times daily, see ourselves and see God, and yet not act in a godly way. We are all therefore “forgetting what we look like” all the time. Here is where we turn more into Snow White’s stepmother than we would like. We know God wants us to love others but all too often we feel jealous of them instead. So here is where we start to need real magic, transforming magic, a way to transform us into the godly image we long for.

So the mirror reference in James suggests that the second way the Bible acts like a mirror is this magical sense of being able to look at the Word and see not not just ourselves but God in it.

There’s another verse about what we “see” in the Bible that starts to point the way to the true magic we long for. Paul writes: “And all of us, as with unveiled face, [because we] continued to behold [in the Word of God] as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are constantly being transfigured into his very own image in ever increasing splendor and from one degree of glory to another; [for this comes] from the Lord [Who is] the Spirit.” 1 Cor. 3:18. According to Paul when we read the Bible we see “as in a mirror” the glory of the Lord. But here’s where the miracle happens. By looking at God, we somehow become like God. We are being transformed into God’s image. We go from glory to glory. It’s an astounding claim. Somehow by looking at God’s glory we become glorious.

I like the sound of that a lot better than feeling guilty for not being perfect. Because, let’s face it, it’s much easier for me to look in a mirror than it is to be kind. I can’t speak for you, but personally, I’d rather gaze at something lovely – especially if it’s simultaneously God’s beauty and magically mine being transformed into something God-like. That sounds a whole lot nicer than just trying hard to be “kind” and failing miserably and being mad at myself.

The good news is that that is what God calls us to do. Jesus doesn’t say try harder. He says, “look at me.” ”Come with me.” ”Go away by yourself to a lonely place and pour out your heart to me.” ”Gaze at me.” ”See yourself as I see you.” ”I am my lover’s and he is mine.” Jesus calls us into a love affair not a guilt fest. In effect, when we look in the mirror of the Bible we are to see, as so many have cried out, God’s face “smiling” at us. Jesus is smiling at us. That is what He wants us to see when we look in the mirror.

Jesus took the guilt for us on the cross so we can see only beauty when we look in the mirror. He took the punishment for our imperfections, so when God looks at us He sees Christ’s perfection. We and Christ have become one in a mysterious way. It’s as if Christ offers us marriage, and all we have to say is: I do.

Why would we want to? Because the key to remember is that it’s not a colorless humorless judge on the other side of the mirror, but instead a living breathing God of kindness and love. How do we believe that? How do we get that inside our resistant fearful heads?

Luckily, there is another helpful way in which Scripture acts as a mirror, here in Romans 2. The Word of God shows us what other people look like, and then turns the mirror back on ourselves and reminds us we look the same. For instance, in Romans 1, Paul lists every bad quality we can see in other people: “Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.” Romans 1: 18-32. That’s how Romans 1 ends.

We can easily think of other people who are like that, and there’s this strange thing our hearts do. When we see wickedness in others, we tend to judge and condemn them. We turn into hyper critical security guards on the other side of two way mirrors. That’s when Paul delivers the kicker in the opening sentence of Romans 2: “You may think you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you who judge others do these very same things.” Romans 2:1. Paul has done something that warms the cockles of a writer’s heart. He uses story like a mirror to show our hearts the truth about ourselves. Have a look at his list in the paragraph above. Haven’t we all been heartless? Haven’t we all broken promises? Haven’t we all been guilty of greed, envy, quarreling or gossip? Haven’t we all fallen short of the glory of God? Yes.

So here is where the switch happens. We expect Paul to hone in on us with a lead-tipped whip and strike hard, and instead he gives us kindness. He delivers one of my all time favorite lines: “Don’t you know that the kindness of God leads to repentance?” Romans 2:4.

No, we think. We didn’t know. We don’t expect kindness for our flaws. We expect condemnation. But God is kind in the face of our unkindness. He is patient, long-suffering and forbearing. And why does His kindness make us so very sorry? I don’t know, but it does. When we are unkind, and someone is kind back, it melts us. We recognize that we don’t deserve kindness back, so when we get it, it’s as if we’re suddenly a small child again having a full blown tantrum and instead of being punished for kicking down every can in the grocery store, we’re being swept up in kind arms and embraced until our rage turns to tears. When we look in a mirror and see perfection and know we fall short, we tend to condemn and judge ourselves.

But God’s mirror isn’t like ours. When we look in God’s mirror, it’s kindness all the way through. God’s word is a magical mirror that shows us as we really are; shows us other people as being neither better nor worse than us, but instead equally flawed; and shows us a God who loves everyone of us. The more we can see clearly to the love of our God, the less dim our mirror becomes and the more brightly we can shine forth with the love of God making us radiant and transforming us into the beautiful person He calls us each to be.

posted by Caroline Coleman in A Chapter a Day on February 27, 2013

paradise on earth: Romans 1

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Caroline Coleman

Romans 1

“If this were a different story, I’d tell you about the sea.” In this beautiful line from THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER, it’s as if Junot Diaz were saying: if this were a different story, I’d tell you about how all your dreams will come true. If this were a different story, I’d tell you about how everyone will love you forever. If this were a different story, I’d tell you about how beautiful you and how beautiful the world around you is.

But the stories Diaz writes are stories of how we lose people – through death, disappointment, grinding poverty, racial prejudice and our own dumb mistakes.

We describe paradise as the embodiment of all we long for and yet in the same breath, we paint it as something unattainable. We make paradise sound separate from us. We make it sound as different as earth is from sea.

But does it have to be?

Why would we long for paradise if it were truly unattainable? How do we even have a concept of paradise if it were so separate from earth? Perhaps they’re completely different and yet closer than we realize. Perhaps a paradox has somehow come true.

We see earth and paradise as existing in tension like a seesaw. We think when we’re “bad” we’re showing our clay feet, and when we’re “good” we’re flapping our angel wings. But God doesn’t see us in that disunity. He sees us in our unity. He sees as fallen creatures made in His image, redeemed by the death of His Son. As C.S. Lewis put it: “all that is earth was once sea.” God sees our earth and our sea. He sees our glory and our flaws. But the interesting thing is that while God is the only one with absolutely clear vision, He is also the only one who truly and completely loves us just as we are.

In contrast, we humans have a constantly shifting and distorted view of our glory and our flaws, and yet we struggle with loving ourselves. When most of us talk, we try to give others a telescopic vision of our weaknesses and a microscopic one of our strengths. But when we listen inside ourselves, those lenses are all too often reversed. We forget our victories and instead feel our weaknesses too keenly. We magnify the sides of ourselves described here in Romans 1:29-32. We kick ourselves over things that cause us shame, guilt and regret. It’s as if we are doomed to live in some nightmarish eye doctor’s office with the doctor peering far too close and asking, “better? Or worse?” while giving us only dark lenses to peer through. ”Horrible and horribler,” is our only possible response.

That’s a seesaw way to live. It’s a way of looking at earth, then paradise. It’s a way of seeing ourselves as TERRIBLE then GREAT. It’s a way of seeing our lives as meaningless then triumphant. It’s a way of thinking we’re all alone in our misery and then all alone in our victories.

So how do we integrate the two? How do we experience our emotions fully and yet not be crushed under the weight of them? Is there a better way than just being “bad” then “good” then “bad” then “worse” then falling asleep until the cycle starts all over again?

Of course.

God invites us to get off the see-saw and live under grace. He invites us into a paradise on earth. He invites us to live in a world where we are loved as we really are. He knows us better than we know ourselves and yet He calls us beautiful. That’s because He looks at us and sees Christ’s perfection. He promises to redeem the brokenness of our lives. We find paradise not through our achievements but “from start to finish through faith” in Jesus and what He has done for us on the cross. Romans 1:17. That’s the only way to get off the see-saw of good and bad.

And when we begin to see ourselves as God does, through the lens of grace, we no longer need distort our flaws and magnify our victories. We can be honest about who we are, where we’ve failed, and where we long to go. For we no longer exist to prove ourselves. He’s proven everything that needs proving. Instead, the moment we feel discouraged because we go down the “what’s the point of it all” road, we can remember that the point is to have a relationship with the God who loves us so much He died in order to make the relationship possible. As Paul writes, we live and move and have our being in Him. We were made for that. We find our meaning through “belonging” to the one who invites us to belong to Him just as we are. Romans 1:6.

Looked at through the lens of grace, our lives become a different story than the one we thought it needed to be. It starts and end with God, and somehow in Him we find ourselves. We’re not alone in that. When we start to see with the eyes of God, we see how all of creation sings about Jesus. Romans 1:20. We’d see how the whole universe is “speaking” about God. We’d hear the stars, skies, rocks, snow, rivers and clouds delighting in God. Like creation, Paul says that every human heart knows God. It’s an astounding and beautiful claim. He says people can “suppress” their knowledge of God, but they can see Him all around them. Paul says God is “obvious” from the world God made. Perhaps that’s why we hear people being defensive about their faults. Romans 1:21. They’re speaking out loud to defend themselves from an invisible judge and jury, but they don’t yet know that that judge has forgiven them. There’s no call to be defensive. God died to free us from all guilt and all shame.

The good news is that we don’t have to find paradise on earth; paradise came down to earth to find us. Our earth is not yet paradise, not by a long shot, as Diaz’ stories portray so poignantly, but in the meantime God offers to “paradise” each of us. He wants to “tabernacle” us or “home” us – to come and live inside each of us. He wants, in effect, to “marry” us.

This is a different story, and God tells us that He wants to sea us all. Trusting in Him will make all our dreams come true. He wants us to stop trying to do things our way, and instead go about enjoying our lives, enjoying other people, and wishing upon every star in heaven and earth because God made them all, just as He made us.

posted by Caroline Coleman in A Chapter a Day on February 20, 2013. Photo taken of a random door in lower Manhattan (with abject apologies for whatever else it says – I don’t speak that language…)

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: