troubadours of a nobler romance

To be troubadours of a nobler romance—should we have any other directive as followers of Jesus? I don't think so. If we do follow him—Jesus, that is—then we should share his idea of the first commandment: love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. [Matthew 22:37] Basically, to be lovesick above all else. To be lovesick above being righteous, to be lovesick above being pure, to be lovesick above being just...that is our calling.

That's not to say that we won't wind up being advocates of social justice, that we won't have a pull on our hearts to help those down and out, that we won't desire to be pure and righteous in thought, word, and deed. But those things will be overflow if we are simply in-love with the person of Jesus. You know how when you're in love with someone, a human, you tend to do kind things in general? Not even directed at that person necessarily, but you may start waving kindly at drivers who cut you off on the highway, or you may play peek-a-boo with a child in a restaurant, or pay for the coffee of the person behind you in line. You want to be a better person. And this? This is just an ordinary romance. Imagine what you might be capable of with a nobler romance? That's where our righteousness, our purity, our justice flows from...our lovesickness with the person of Jesus.

So why is it so difficult to pursue the heart of Jesus? Why is it easier to pursue the heart of another human being that we find physically attractive? I would venture to say it's because we don't what we're missing. We have absolutely no idea how cool and how beautiful Jesus is. Why? Because he is other. We can't get our minds around him, so we think that he is only as great as we can imagine. It's easier to stay with what we know, because we know what to expect. The questions that we ask the most important people in our lives—those probing, unearthing questions that let us get to know the inner landscape of a person slowly and over time—those are the kinds of questions we should be asking Jesus. We will be blown away by the way he answers us, the way he reveals himself to us. So much so that we will grow to expect more; we will get a taste of who he is and then not be able to stop ourselves from pursuing him more.

C.S. Lewis, in his famous essay The Weight Of Glory, states, "Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

So the psalmist says, "Make Yahweh your joy, and he will give you your heart's desires." The psalmist is saying, make Yahweh your joy—not the things we are far too easily pleased with—because those things aren't your heart's desire: in fact, Yahweh is your heart's desire. If you make HIM your joy, then your heart is satisfied. He created us, he made our hearts, and he made our heart's desires. We'd do well to trust him. He has promised us so much more—a love-affair with our Creator. How can we help but be troubadours of that romance?

to see, to hear, to feel

When I was twenty-one, I had my tonsils removed. I was one of those people who got strep throat every few minutes, and my doctor finally decided that I needed to have my tonsils taken out. For the entire week afterward, swallowing hurt so much that I could barely open my mouth for a straw. I had a prescription for painkillers, though, and when they ran out but the pain hadn't, I called the nurse and said that she would really need to send another prescription over, and maybe a little mixed grill of drugs because I was also feeling somewhat anxious. But she wouldn't. I asked to speak to her supervisor. She told me her supervisor was at lunch and that I needed to buy some gum of all things, and to chew it vigorously—the thought of which made me clutch at my throat. She explained that when we have a wound in our body, the nearby muscles cramp around it to protect it from any more violation and from infection, and that I would need to use these muscles if I wanted them to relax again. So finally my best friend Pammy went out and bought me some gum, and I began to chew it, with great hostility and skepticism. The first bites caused a ripping sensation in the back of my throat, but within minutes all the pain was gone, permanently. I think that something similar happens with our psychic muscles. They cramp around our wounds—the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both—to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So those wounds never have a chance to heal.
—Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

As Jim was speaking tonight, I couldn't help but remember this story. The way that God wants us to live our lives to the full—to see and hear and feel—yet we are so cramped up emotionally and spiritually that we divert our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears and loudly pronouce, "LA LA LA LA LA." And we distract ourselves from feeling pain by television and conversation and Facebook and beer (all very good things when used in the right context) and skirt through life with the illusion of living it.

But Jesus says, "He who has ears, let him hear." He has given us ears to hear, eyes to see, souls to feel...yet we shield ourselves for fear of pain. Jesus calls us to be active participants in our lives, in his word, in his kingdom. What if Annie had stopped cold at the first ripping sensation in the back of her throat? She would've prolonged her pain, or worse yet she might have never eaten again, walking around sucking down milkshakes with a face scrunched with anxiety.

At the beginning of 2006 and I started praying that God would wrestle me to the ground every time I tried to take the easy way out and close my eyes to pain. I asked him to walk me through all the gross and dirty parts of my life and heal me. And this has been the most stinking painful year of my life, by far. But where am I? Closer to God. Closer to myself. A million miles closer to freedom.

The challenge that Jim set before us tonight is simple: use our eyes to see, use our ears to hear, and be aware and conscious of our feelings. So often we ask God to reveal himself to us, to reveal his glory to us. Well, God's been revealing himself and his glory all over the place. We simply need to open up to it, to realize that sometimes we'll see and hear more clearly on the other side of pain, even if we take that first step with hostility and skepticism. One day the pain will be gone, permanently.

"You dance over me while I am unaware. You sing all around, but I never hear the sound." —Amazed, Jared Anderson