lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven

I like this visual. (Thank you to Godspeed You Black Emperor! for that.) What better posture to scream out, "Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name!"

What is forgiveness to one who has done no wrong? What is healing to one who isn't sick? What is drink to one who isn't thirsty? What is freedom to one who has never been captive?

Walter Brueggemann says, "The Psalms are a boundary thrown up against self-deception. They do not permit us to ignore and deny the darkness, personally or publicly, for that is where new life is given."

In a word, rescue.

I once was lost, but now am found; was blind—but now I see. This familiar song rings of rescue.

When I was little, I remember getting lost in a department store. I was with my mom and grandma, entirely bored because we were shopping. Shopping! when there was an entire world outside of sorcerers and captors, adventurers and heroes. Doubtless I was in my own world, entertaining plans of my next humankind-saving adventure with my friend Allison, when I looked up and realized the woman I was standing next to was not my mom. Or my grandma. I looked around frantically. Nothing. A child has no shame at this point, and I started shouting, "MOM! MOM!" (as if everyone's name isn't Mom.) Thankfully, she was only about ten feet from me, paying for her purchases at the check-out counter. But I had never felt so relieved to hear her voice, to feel her touch. I was rescued from having to live on my own as a five-year-old.

I also remember getting lost in this life. By my own hand I ended up far from any hope, seized by anxiety with no clue which direction was up...when I met Jesus and decided that his voice and his touch was relief like I had never known. I was rescued from having to live on my own as an adult.

We all have these stories of physical, emotional, and spiritual rescue. And these stories are excruciating while they are being written, but the epilogue—if you've made it there yet—is a picture of joy that never could've been reached without the story itself. In the epilogue we find a joy that makes us thankful for the pain.

There are many theories on the problem of pain. C.S. Lewis even wrote a book about the subject. We talk about how there is sin in the world—the world is "fallen,"—so there will always be pain this side of heaven. We talk about experiencing pain to better identify with the cross of Jesus. We talk about how there is pain because while the Kingdom of God is already here, it's not yet here in its entirety. There is merit in trying to understand pain, but we shouldn't try to make it go away, "for that is where new life is given."

So how is God rescuing you in your life today? What is it in your life that provokes you to lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven and shout, "Praise the LORD, O my soul"? Would that blessing arise from your soul with as much emotion if it hadn't been for pain?

So let us embrace our grief. Let us feel every ounce of our pain, trusting that God works all things together for the good of those who love him. Trusting that the epilogue to the story will be bursting with a beauty that is impossible to experience without every ounce of our pain. Trusting that the dawn would not be the dawn if it weren't for the darkness of night.

"The honest recognition that there is a untamed darkness in our life that must be embraced...is fundamental to the gift of new life." —Walter Brueggemann

"the lord is my shepherd..."

When I was a freshman in college, I wanted to be a veterinarian. I was an ADVSC major, Animal/Dairy/Veterinary Sciences. I entered my sophomore year as a Graphic Arts major, and that 180-degree change was caused almost singlehandedly by a sheep named Aryn.

On Thursdays, we had a three-hour lab class out at the farm owned by the university, and our final project for this class was to show an animal in the Little North American Livestock Show. We had to break (tame or train) the animal, then get it into "show" condition. Most people were assigned a cow. A couple girls got a pig. Jocelyn and I, well, we got the class sheep. We named her Aryn (after the wool), but most often I called her a string of expletives. And let me just tell you, Isaac was spot on with everything he communicated about sheep. After dealing with one first-hand, I have concluded that sheep are good for three things: wool, lanolin, and gyro meat.

So when Jesus calls us sheep and lambs, I always sort of take offense. All I can think of is Aryn—@#%&! Aryn—the most frustrating animal I've ever dealt with in my entire life.

But Sunday night as Isaac dissected Psalm 23, I started to identify with the metaphor.

Sometimes I'm so paralyzed with fear that I don't move. I'm afraid I'll make the wrong decision; afraid that if I step out on a limb that it'll break. When faced with a difficult decision sometimes I will choose inaction simply out of fear and anxiety.

Sometimes I feel lost—blind to anything in the future. I feel like I don't know how to change my own trajectory, because I can't tell where I should be headed. I need someone to guide me.

I've gotten myself into situations with good intentions, only to find later that I'm stuck in an unhealthy pattern; unable or unaware that I can't just back out of the shrubbery and return to life in the pasture.

Sometimes I get so frustrated and disgusted with the nastiness inside myself and inside my heart that it might feel nice to just beat my head against a tree. Distraction is one of my top ways of dealing with pain and murkiness, I'll admit that.

And sometimes I just keep running and running and running, because that's just what I do. I keep myself busy with busyness, and I don't stop because it seems more natural to just keep running. I need someone to actually make me stop.

I could keep going, but I pretty much have sufficient light shed onto this metaphor to say to myself, "Self, congratulations. You are a sheep."

Great. I'm just like Aryn. I'm the most frustrating animal I can imagine. This doesn't sit well with me, because, to be honest, Aryn sort of ruined the entire spring semester of my freshman year. Sure there were baseball games and frisbee in the quad and sweet-smelling springtime evenings of climbing the hill to the dining hall with friends, but most of what I remember from that semester was driving out to the farm everyday at 6:45 am. SIX FORTY FIVE IN THE MORNING, to feed and water a sheep that would knock me down, step on my feet, and go the opposite way than what I wanted it to. I had to care for her and take care of her, yet I hated her.

Thank God Jesus said that he wasn't like other shepherds. He was different. He was the good shepherd. He would lay down his life for his sheep. (John 10) He loves us. No matter how frustrating we are...no matter how often we step on his plans, knock down his provision, and go off in the other direction.

His love doesn't depend on how lovable we are.
It depends on how loving he is.
Thankfully.