What a Friend

“Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh, what needless pain we bear.
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.”

“What a Friend We Have in Jesus” is kind of the theme song for Safe Haven, and I’ve downloaded about six different versions of it to use for scene change music during the play. So I’ve been listening to this song over and over and really hearing it for the first time.

God’s answers to prayer are not our answers. This is shown rather vividly in the play when one character has his prayer answered in a way no one would ever choose. Yet, in God’s plan, everything has worked together for good.

I’m seeing this in my life right now, as well. (Funny how often I find myself dealing with whatever we’re working on dramatically.) I pray for peace and healing, and I’d like God to wave His magic wand and make it happen. Yet God’s answer is, Follow Me through this desolate wasteland – peace is on the other side. I ask, Can’t we go around? But God is firm. The only way out is through.

So here we are, wandering in the wilderness. I think back to the words of the song – Oh, what peace we often forfeit…All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. If this is peace, why does it feel like so much turmoil? That’s when I have to cling to faith and just keep following Him, knowing He’s promised to bring me through.

If only I could learn this as well as the characters I write do.

Old News

Remember when you were a kid, and you got that new toy for Christmas? Remember how you didn’t want to do anything but play with it all day long – and maybe sleep with it, too? Remember the way it seemed like nothing else would ever be as fun or exciting as that new toy?

Then, remember how you’d forgotten it by the middle of January?

Time to confess, friends and neighbors – that’s how I’m feeling about this blog right now. It’s been two months since I started writing it, and things have really changed. In those first few weeks I was on every day for hours at a time, writing posts, tinkering with layout, reading the forums and learning everything I could about what it meant to blog. I learned quite a bit, actually – not bad for someone who came into this with no clear idea of what a blog was.

Then came December, and I was busy preparing for Christmas, so of course I didn’t spend as much time on the site as I had before. But now it’s January. Christmas is long past, but I still don’t have the drive to be on here every day. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not planning to let the blog die. I still have things to say. I expect I’ll say them once or twice a week.

Time for the deep thoughts (you knew they were coming, right?) Remember when you first gave your life to Jesus, and you didn’t want to do anything but sit with Him all day long? Remember how you’d read the Bible for hours at a time, marvelling at everything you learned? Remember how you couldn’t imagine anything ever being more exciting than Him?

Then time went by, and Jesus got old. You got used to Him. Sure, He was good to have around – wouldn’t want to return Him – but He was one of several things in your life, rather than the only thing.

I think to some degree that’s inevitable. We can’t live constantly at a fever-pitch about anything, or our heads would explode. But if there’s anything worth recapturing excitement about, it’s Jesus. Look at Him with fresh eyes. Read a less-familiar Bible passage, and see something new about Him. Remember why it knocked you out when you first met Him.

Don’t let your Christmas present get old by the middle of January.

Redefining Christianity

Yes, it’s been over a week since I’ve written. Sorry. Let’s move on.

We had our first rehearsal (read-through) for Safe Haven yesterday. It’s always a little frightening to hear the script out loud for the first time – I hear all those parts where lines don’t sound the way I thought they would, and I end up cringing a lot. But there were remarkably few of those spots yesterday. It went well, and I think I’ll only be tinkering with lines, not writing whole new sections, like I did in Blackwell Inn.

It was also good to hear people reading and feel like I cast it well. Characters and actors are good matches.

One thing I heard as we read yesterday that I didn’t like was how often I used the words christian and christianity in the script. As I mentioned in my very first post on this site, I don’t really like those words. In today’s society, they don’t tend to mean what they’re supposed to. Christian should mean Christ-follower, but to those outside the church, it too often means crazy, hate-filled idiot. A major theme in the script is the difference between those who use their christianity to beat others over the head and those who have genuine faith. I hope, through advertising, to be able to draw in an audience from outside the church, and I hope to show them that following Jesus is different from what they may have thought. But I fear if I use that word too much, they may tune out anything else. So there’s a place for tinkering.

The “Wow” Factor

In 1984 (the actual year, not the novel) my parents took my brother and me to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Perhaps because we took a day off from our Disney trip to do it, or perhaps because people in 1984 weren’t as keen to grab kids’ attention with the “wow” factor, or perhaps both, I remember it as one of the most boring days of my life. So I wasn’t sure what to expect when my husband and I took our son to Johnson Space Center in Houston yesterday.

May I just say – Wow!

They had lots of stuff aimed at grabbing kids’ attention, and Nathan had a blast (pun definitely intended). And it was interesting to see how the astronauts live on the space station without gravity. All of it was fascinating, but what really grabbed me and won’t let go was the Saturn V rocket. This was an actual rocket of the type used to travel to the moon, but it had never been used. Eventually they built a temperature-controlled shed around it to preserve it and left it for tourists to look at.

Have you ever stood beside a rocket? If not, you cannot begin to imagine the size. Even if you’ve seen them on TV and think you understand that they’re big, until you’ve stood beside it, you cannot begin to imagine what “big” means. Our tour guide had said ahead of time, “I guarantee when you step into the shed, your first words will be something along the lines of, ‘Oh my goodness.’” I thought, Well, now that you’ve warned us, that won’t be true. But it was true. I had determined I wouldn’t be shocked, just to prove him wrong, but the words were jerked out of me without my consent.

The size was amazing enough, but even more incredible was the proportionately tiny space allocated for the astronauts. They were squeezed into a triangular cone on top of something like 350 feet of fuel tanks. That cone was the only part of the rocket which would return to earth – the rest was jettisoned after the fuel was burned.

Anyone who knows me knows I think more than is good for me, so naturally I’ve been thinking too much about the symbolism of that rocket. (I swear, this stuff just comes to me; I don’t dig for it!)

I thought I’d been prepared for the size of the rocket, but when I stood next to it, the true, overwhelming size of it blew me away. It was huger than I ever could have imagined. I think when we come one day into the presence of God, that will be our reaction. We may talk, here on earth, of how big He is, and how overwhelming, but we can’t begin to imagine what that means. No amount of knowledge will ever prepare us for that moment when we step into His presence and simply have to say “Wow!” (Or think it, since the wow may be so huge we’re beyond speech.)

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is how tiny the astronauts’ space was compared to all the fuel it took to get them where they were going. It wouldn’t have been comfortable. It may have seemed like they could take over more of the space and stretch out a little. Of course, they didn’t do that, because they wouldn’t have reached the moon without all that space for fuel. And that’s how it is for us, too. It’s not too comfortable to make ourselves decrease so God can increase in us, but if we start stretching out, if we try to take space back from Him, we won’t have the fuel to get where we’re going.

I realize it’s a stretch as an analogy, but it shows me again how, when God is first in your life, everything points to Him, whether it’s intended that way or not. That’s a big wow factor.

Mystery

I always try to read one of the Gospels around this time of year – generally I’m working on the script for the Passion play, so it’s a necessity. No Passion play this year, so it’s just for myself. I decided this morning to read John, because I tend to neglect that one. I didn’t get very far, though. I had trouble getting past the first few verses.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Then, later – “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

I’m utterly knocked out by this. I can’t stop thinking about it.

I think we’ve heard those verses so often we just kind of skim them. They’re the intro, just something to get through before we start the story. But listen – the Word was made flesh. Jesus is the Word of God. What does that mean? I can’t answer. I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

I know that God’s Word is living. I know that God spoke and created everything. “Without him (the Word) nothing was made that has been made”. Is Jesus the Word that went out from God in creation? Is Jesus the Word God spoke when He crafted His salvation plan? Even the questions sound nonsensical – Jesus is a person, how can He be a word (or even a Word)? But that’s what it says – the Word became flesh.

It’s a mystery. A great, big, hugemongous God mystery. And when I bring it up to someone, with a tone of wonder and awe, I usually get blank stares in return.

We don’t tend to like mysteries, unless they’re the kind we can solve with the clues in 60 minutes, including commercial breaks. We like “Four steps to being a mature Christian”. We like “Twelve biblical steps to healing your hurts” – as if God can be broken down into easily digestible chunks, studied under a microscope, then fully understood and put to work for us. It’s not comfortable to say, “This is bigger than I am, and I will never, ever understand it”.

Look at Christmas (you can’t help but look at Christmas everywhere you go this time of year). Even forgetting the commercial side, even looking at it from a religious perspective, we try to make it a story we understand. A young mother, no room at the inn, a cute little baby born in a stable, and the angels sang and the shepherds came and the animals must not have smelled too bad.

Here’s what Christmas is about – the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. At Christmas, the Word of God became flesh. The Word who was with God and who was God. What does that mean?

I don’t know. And I’m okay with that. It helps me remember that God is God, and that I am human, and that there are some mysteries I’m not meant to understand.