faith

 For those who fear their sin has been too great and their pride too blinding,

For those crushed under doubt and shame and unbelief,

For those whose hearts are broken with loneliness, abandonment,  and mind-numbing grief,

For those who’ve spent years in a dark and dreary wilderness, without the tiniest shimmer of hope,

For those whose souls ache for the joy of homecoming,

For those who are ravaged by addiction and longing and worry,

For those who don’t remember a day when love didn’t threaten to leave,

For those who’ve been battered and bruised by the Church, by the religious ones who said you didn’t measure up,  [Read more…] about For My Beloved

The first time I read Chesterton, I was on a flight with 2 friends for a girl’s weekend. Yeah, it’s not exactly chick lit, if that’s what’s you’re wondering.  I was in a stupor when we reached Tampa, because well, CHESTERTON.  If you haven’t read this book, it’s probably in the top 5 of my top 10 books every Christian should read.  It will make you very contemplative on your girl’s weekend, but will certainly give you a broader, more orthodox view of the faith.  He’s brilliant, to say the very least.  Philip Weingart said of his writing:

“Since Chesterton was both a genius and the son of a saner era than our own, the ideas which coursed through his head may astonish modern readers. He seems to turn the world on its head; the book is a continuous feast of the delightfully unexpected. To Chesterton, faith is reason, orthodoxy is liberty, the order of our universe is as unexpected as the wildest fairy tale, and heeding tradition is as natural as allowing all citizens to vote. Modern readers at first will think him just a little bit crazy, but as they warm up to his approach, they will begin to feel that perhaps his point of view is healthier than theirs, and in the best of cases, they will begin to right themselves.”

The last paragraph in G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy has always stayed with me.  I’ll let you read it for yourself.

“And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”

Maybe Chesterton was right. Maybe the thing that was written all over the face of our Lord was joy.  Maybe the thing He kept from us was His laughter.

Lent is a gift to us, just like everything else from our Father.  40 days to remind us that this is not our true home.  40 days to remember what it is like to be hungry or alone.  40 days to repent for all the ways we’ve made a mess of every last thing.  And 40 days to rejoice that Healing has come.

I think our approach to spirituality (or my approach to my spirituality!) is often flawed, perhaps especially during Lent, and we have a tendency to take ourselves too seriously.  John Kleinig puts it this way:

“The modern interest in spirituality is a bit like our interest in health.  Our obsession with health is not at all healthy;  in fact, it emphasizes the problems that we have without providing much of a solution to them. So, too, with our concern for spirituality!  Despite the multitude of books on spirituality that can be found in the bookshop, Christians seem to find it harder than ever to practice what they believe.  So many aspire to be spiritual high fliers but never seem to get off the ground for any length of time.  As the failures mount, so does the fascination with what seemingly cannot be achieved.  The only thing we learn is that something is lacking in this part of our lives.  But we end up with no understanding on how to fill the void……If we have problems living the life of faith, if we have challenges in our practice of prayer, the solution is not to be found in what we do, our self-appraisal, or our performance.  The solution to our problems is found in what we receive from God Himself, in His appraisal of us, and in His gifts to us.  Like our physical life and health, our spiritual life is something that is given to us, something that is to be received and enjoyed and celebrated.  Our piety is all a matter of receiving grace upon grace from the fullness of God the Father. “

I don’t like being people who are crash dieting because they’ve made food into something utilitarian.  They’ve lost the joy of eating.  I’ve done it myself and it made everyone around me miserable.  We make the same grievous error in our faith life. We’ve come to think it’s something we do, so we try to set our faces like a flint, only to discover that Someone has already done that for us.

I’ve made the mistake of going on  a spiritual crash diet during Lent, trying to do all the things that make one pious and saintly.  It’s was zero parts spiritual and 100 parts crash.

Make it your one goal to rediscover the joy of your first Love and then breathe a sigh of relief when He rediscovers you instead.

Let the most sane among us teach us something about Christ as we remember that JOY is the business of heaven.

So, happy Lent, as we are all reminded of the things that have clouded the joy.