Here For...

20 July 2010

Well Done (Insert Sarcasm)

I was talking to a couple of students in my office today. One was an Adventist, the other was not even a church-goer—which is a recurring pattern I've been seeing. And it is beautiful. It's rather awesome how God has worked to merge lives together. The deep truth now, though, is that this can either be the sealing of two or the undoing of a pair. Depending upon their decisions and interactions, and how resolute the cedar of Lebanon is—how near the water, how deeply its roots dispersed through and into the earth—there could well be two souls out of the Kingdom, rather than one added. Pray, readers, that those on God's side will hear His whisperings and learn to live in His love, so that their friend will become their compatriot, and both will come Home.

The non-Adventist friend of mine was saying something to the effect of “Yeah, I don't get why you pastors do that. Why would you go so far away—from where they don't even have Vegemite—not even getting paid, to the complete other side of the world to do this?” I began to sputter some kind of answer, trying to get somewhere about how I ended up there instead of like some third world type place, and I guess I was going to go from there to how God called me, and maybe I was thinking about going on to “saving souls” or some rubbish like that, but it ended up being drowned out and skipped around, and diversion took the whole question, the whole moment away.

Peter counsels us to be ready at every moment to give a reason for the hope we have (1 Peter 3:15). This was one of those moments that people who are passionate about Jesus crave like Adventists crave haystacks. It was the perfect opportunity, THE reason I am here in Tasmania, and I had no response. I HAD NO RESPONSE?!!! This is the thing I live for! Hello, His name is JESUS!

In the end, I'm thankful I went tongue-tied and lip-flop like I'd just gotten dental work done. Why? Because the next words of that statement Peter makes go like this “with gentleness and respect.” I figure I would have done one of the following if God had let me go on:
1. Disrespected the student, making it sound like I was better than him.
2. Become another cliché and “yeah, whatever” pastor who lost any chance of touching him
3. The portrait of Jesus would have suffered another blurring—and we already do enough damage to the picture He's painting when we try to pick up the brush!

There was another one, but I forgot. But the real thing is this: what am I doing here if I don't even know how to answer that question? It really made me start thinking about where I am spiritually, and I think I'm a fish living in a centimeter of water—it's not really working. How hard is it to say “Jesus”? All I had to do was start there and the rest would have come:

“It's Jesus, man. Maybe you haven't gotten a good look at what it looks like when people really get a good look at what Jesus did for us, a good feel for what His love is like. But let me tell you, when you have felt it, and you really get an idea of who this Jesus really is, it changes you. And all you want to do is whatever He asks. And you want other people to know the love He has for them. So when He calls you to go somewhere, you go. The money doesn't matter—I was going to go to a place with no running water or electricity. I would've been drinking rain water and eating rice! But I don't care where I end up or what food I do or don't have. I just want to tell people about Jesus. And wherever He ends up thinking I should be, that's where I'm going.”

I had no idea what I was going to write there. I just started with “It's Jesus, man.” But if that had been all I said, it would have been the right answer. The example of Jesus is always the right answer.

Then I started thinking a little bit more. And I began to wonder whether the question really was so easy to answer. “Why AM I here?” What am I doing? Obviously, I have already forgotten. I have the right answer, “Jesus,” and that's the reason I'm hanging out with the kids and trying to make the spiritual components better—but is it just a cliché to me? Does it mean anything in my heart? Does it really mean anything when I wake up in the morning? When I'm playing with the kids? When I'm having a conversation with them? When I get home in the evenings and choose what to do with the hours I have left?

To be honest, where I've been lately, who I've been lately, I don't know why I'm here. With the life I've been living, the passion I haven't had, it's pretty pointless. I'm not really sure why I'm living—I don't think it's been for God.

I'm tired of random Christ encounters. I want to fall down at His feet in awe every morning. I want to hear His whispers of love and guidance every moment. I want to think with His mind, feel with His heart, and see the world through His eyes every minute. I want to keep Him on my mind, and seek to know Him in every decision. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways know Him, and He will make your paths straight.” More on that verse later.

Last Thought

In the end, I'm glad the moment came and made me think, but I shouldn't have ever needed it. I should've been ready for it. Will I get a second chance at that one? God I hope so! But if He doesn't manage to give me another shot, what can I do about it now? Live a better life now, that's what. Ask the right questions. Live with my heart wide open.

 

~While we were still sinners, He endured the shame; how can I ever be ashamed?

-Colton J. Stollenmaier, M.I.A.

Pushover

15 July 2010

Tender Heart

“Love does not rejoice in evil”

I cried today over a story of a man dying in his mid 50s. Just a little anecdote; no significance or relationship to me, no special heaviness or spiritual emphasis. It wasn't said what disease he was dying from. It didn't need to be. The unnamed and silent killer is always assumed: cancer.

The human heart holds a special hate for cancer. The reason is fairly simple: it's everything that isn't meant to be in the experience of humanity.

God never wanted us to experience evil. He wanted to keep the knowledge of good vs. evil from being a part of the world we knew. We said no. We said we'd like to be our own judge, and thus our own God, and thus our own life force. But this can only lead to mutation, degeneration, and death.

Cancer is the gravest analogy, the foulest irony, the most bitter object lesson. It reveals sin all to perfectly. In many respects, it should be considered an autoimmune disease; it is defeat by your own body. Your own cells become useless masses of tissue—not really even life; kind of what we say fetuses are when we rip them up and suck them out. And so they keep on growing and reproducing, until they interfere with your body's functioning. They're the thorns that grow up and choke out the life before it can grow to its fullness.

The worst is when it is malignant. That's when pieces break off and migrate to other places, where they can start a whole new infection. The spread of disease—the spread of sin in your life. You can see now why leukemia is such a horrific form of cancer.

Now plenty of medical professionals could come in and tell me “Well, that's not entirely true” or “There's way more kinds of cancer,” but the point is the same. And the points I've made are true to at least a layman's level.

I'm not going to explain out this analogy terribly much. Some things you won't get until way later. Some things you'll probably get that I didn't. But I leave it to you to consider how much like sin cancer is—what an analogy and irony and object lesson it is.

I heard mention of a study recently of at least a form of cancer that was contagious. I'm not sure if it was just one form or a study suggesting “turns out you CAN catch it!” And I don't care. I'm just angry. That was the only way the analogy was incomplete. That was the only need of HIV; the infection that we spread through our idolatry, which then makes us kill ourselves, or at least our every defense from even the slightest evil.

Getting Softer

“Love hopes all things”

I'd had tears in my eyes just before this story, this time for a glory moment. A little boy and girl were in a boat that flipped upstream of Niagara Falls. The little boy was saved just feet from the tumultuous cloudy mist of incredible force that pummels the rocky scape below. First thing out of her mouth to her savior—the only man who cared to take action as the rest of the world looked on at this exciting spectacle—was a question: “Where's my brother.” The man looks up and then whispers in the girl's ear, and her hands cling together over her heart. He had seen the boy being sloshed and smashed upon the rocks and through the waves. He was far from rescue and far too close to the edge.

The words the man had whispered? “You need to say a little prayer for your brother.”

And the dark cloud of death, at the last moment when all hope was lost, became the sweet caress of a soft mist, floating him down to the bottom, where he would be rescued. All of his wounds and scars came from the raging rapids before his fall. All of them came from the tumbling and turning he'd done up before the great plunge. No harm at all was done by the drop itself.

Draw your own analogies, because there are plenty. But don't miss the big idea: it was a miracle.

And it glorified God.

Oh yeah

“Love bears all things”

What I was really wanting to say this time around was simply this: I'm not claiming to be super-spiritual or have any rights to say I'm closer to God than anyone else.

But I know I hunger and thirst for righteousness. So I know I'll be filled.

Because I hunger, because I thirst—because I yearn and burn and seek and deeply desire and dig my nails in and claw—I know that God will make me a righteous man, though at present all I know is my weakness. And so I know that He is changing me.

And the evidence for me is this: in a world that tells us to grow colder and more familiar with pain and sickness and death, it grows stranger to my eyes. Though I have watched enough filthy entertainment and killed thousands in bloody games of war and violence to numb my affections, and though my heart has been turned to stone by abuse and let-down and sickening travesties, though the scar tissue has grown thick and the callous deep from the rough familiarity with sin, yet am I unfamiliar. Each new knell of the death bell hurts more than the last. Each new story of pain cuts with lighter and still lighter blows. I'm changing. I'm growing soft. And He's to blame.

~While we were still sinners, He endured the shame; how can I ever be ashamed?

-Colton J. Stollenmaier, M.I.A.

Just Plain Wrong

11 July 2010

So Wrong

I think one of the greatest things in life is not the times I've been write, but the overwhelming majority of the time that I've been wrong. I can't think of any sweeter medicine than realizing “wow, I was SO wrong” so many times. And that medicine is certain to have effect.

Really, by simply making that statement you're undoing it. But, like salvation, blazing the trail of brokenness takes more than just confession. The bush is heavy there, and the work is tough. Self-seeking is one of those things that is so innate in us that its roots are often deeper than we've ever looked before. Yet this too holds its own reward. You rarely learn so much about yourself as when you prayerfully delve into the depths of your own soul. There, where bone and marrow merge inconspicuously, God brings His light. And with the light of His presence, the scalpel of His word can be wielded. It's time for surgery.

The blade begins to slice through death and decay. Bone and marrow find their meeting place, and all the empty holes and infectious abscesses are revealed. It's amazing how much you never knew had found its way into your very identity. Your character was being altered without any consciousness on your part. You thought you were perfectly healthy. It turns out that was only because you had no idea what health really feels like.

I once had a friend who had mononucleosis for weeks without knowing it. They thought the way they were feeling was perfectly fine; they'd been sick for so long that they thought it was the norm. It wasn't until the sickness was finally alleviated that they learned how life was meant to feel.

In the same way, we all live in shadows. At worst, we are the characters of Plato's philosophy, chained to a pole in a cave, seeing only shadows of images of life. How painful it is to be drug into the sun! But what liberation can be found there! At best, we have been rescued from darkness, and are walking in His marvelous light. With myopia. And the less you think your vision is off, the more terribly you need eye surgery.

I'm stumbling through my bright new world with a pair of lenses that are probably built for someone who's in need of just the slightest aid in their vision, when images are far and small—and I'm legally blind.

So how wrong do you find yourself? How short-sighted are you? Maybe it's time for a checkup.

It's Getting Better...

The crazy thing is, your err might be in the very light of truth; you may well be drawing your conclusions from the truth of the new life in Christ you have been born into. The problem is that you have no idea how bad your eyes are. You've been living in a cave all your life, and your eyes have gone bad. And if a man's eyes are bad, his whole body is full of darkness—and how great is that darkness!

This is why, each time you read the same passage of scripture, you can find something different—something deeper and novel. It's because you've gotten a new pair of glasses since then, and taken another dose of medicine. The light is going deeper, the blade is cutting further. And as your wrongs are revealed and your health returns, you see better and still better. And life feels better and still better.

In this manner, we come to maturity in faith—a maturity that condemns our immaturity. You see, now that we can see more clearly the beauty around us, we can also see our stark contrast with it. And so, day by day, we recognize further our desperate need of God and His detergent to wash us clean. It only comes in one scent—and at first, it's never pleasant. It only comes in one color—and at first, everything looks red. But the aroma that soon fills our nostrils, and the purity that follows the cleansing, is more wondrous than anything we've ever known. Each time, we receive a deeper clean than we've ever experienced, so it never loses its excitement or novelty.

But despite the incredible new purity we receive, the very cleansing sharpens our sight, and so we see all the more our depravity. We are desperate for God and His love to cover us. So you see, the closer you draw to God, the more you recognize your desperate state, the incredible extent of your wrongness, and your total need of eye surgery.

There's something that you need to understand; all this time, we've been thinking, as far as the eyes go, that we've only got problems with short-sightedness and blurred vision (there's a whole lot of gray in our lives [that's something for another time])—just a pair of glasses can correct that! But the truth is, there's something far more grave than that going on; we've got cataracts.

The scales on our eyes threaten all hope of vision, and just living life here on earth tends to make them grow. But Jesus is the Great Physician, and time with Him makes those scales flake off, bit by bit. And when the log in our eyes begins to be chipped away, we can see clearly the reality of the speck in our neighbor's eye; it's true nature, it's true size in the grand scheme, and it's true relevance. And to think, we wanted to try to perform surgery for that! Us, with no medical license, extreme myopia, and cataracts. What a disaster that would have been! How blind we could have made them. It's a good thing no one in Christian churches tries to take out the flaws they see in others...

But as we begin to get a clearer perspective—on us, the Truth, and others—we can begin to point others to the Physician's tender care. We all need Him (although telling someone that can be the exact wrong thing to say, ladies and gentlemen), and a simple introduction is all that is necessary. In the light of His glory, they'll see their need. In the light of your glory, they'll see your need. Luckily, Jesus offers to shine through you while He's making you like Him.

The most wicked heart is mine
When drawn so close to thine

My blinded eyes have light enough to see
The chief of sinners, dining there with thee

What health, what joy, what all-surpassing peace
Is mine to find when humbled at your feet

~While we were still sinners, He endured the shame; how can I ever be ashamed?

-Colton J. Stollenmaier, M.I.A.

Emptiness Stew

6 July 2010

Loneliness

I've just finished my first cooked dinner in my new home for the next 12 months. I moved in yesterday, but I had to go grocery shopping and to a church board meeting. This is my first night truly alone.

I'm far too objective about my feelings; I try to assess how I'm feeling. I'm analyzing my loneliness and considering the implications for myself—personality and future—and how I can generalize those implications to general humanity. More than that though, I'm embracing the loneliness. Gladly.

No facebook. No television running. No texting new friends or finding something to do. This is good. Feeling that raw gnawing feeling in the gut that never really leaves.

“What about God?” is on auto-response, I know. And yes, there is an enrapture of love and peace when I'm spending time with Him here, living on my own. He is so sweet ('tis so sweet to trust in Jesus...). But my God is not a crutch. Even in His presence, even when He is my all in all, it's there. A little loneliness that just can't be kicked. And there's something beautiful about it. It's embracing the dependency of humanity. It's recognizing the brilliant blend of frailty and strength. It's sharing in the daily trod of my millions of brothers and sisters living in a full and busy world but who, inside, are filled with nothing.

It's amazing, we can do everything to ignore it, to suppress the discomfort and drown it out, but there isn't a single pain killer in the loneliness line. Praise God that we can never escape our need of others, our need of Him, and most of all our need of something more than this life; a new life to come.

~While we were still sinners, He endured the shame; how can I ever be ashamed?

-Colton J. Stollenmaier, M.I.A.