Real community is only available to those who are willing to own their weakness.
– Mike Woodruff, The Friday Update

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Is weakness The Thing?

The thing I search for—subconsciously, maybe—in a church community? People who seem weak and okay with it, who embrace it, even let others help them? (How am I supposed to get a feel for that from a Sunday service?)

The thing that, above other qualities, helps me connect with a new friend?

The thing that—when admitted and paired with desperate pleas for help—endears us to God? Isn’t that what the Lord’s Prayer is about? Give us this day our daily bread [for we cannot provide for ourselves]; Forgive us our sins [for we cannot save ourselves]; Lead us not into temptation [for we so often lead ourselves straight into the fire]?

The thing that—more than anything else—is looked down upon in the West? But what if it’s the only antidote to self-sufficiency’s poison? And what if it’s the very thing that could save our civilization from downfall?

I used to believe that God is good, meaning that he gives me what I want. Maybe not right away, of course — I was taught that at a young age — but certainly in time, he will give me what I want. I suppose really, I thought God was nice. 

I used to think that pain and suffering must be a result of sin, somehow. I wouldn’t have verbally affirmed that notion, but somewhere deep in my heart, I believed it.

I was, and surely in some ways still am, an “American Christian.” God bless America, and if he doesn’t, well, then I guess we did something wrong.

My dad died when I was a teenager. Death didn’t fit into my faith framework, especially since my dad was a godly man. My family prayed for healing, and we believed he would live, but God didn’t give us what we wanted.

Somehow, I had missed all the parts in the Bible where people — even righteous people — endured great pain and loss. Job, Abraham, Moses, David, Esther, Paul, and, oh yeah, Jesus!

Suddenly, I had to wrestle with God, or straight-up dump him. I chose the former, which can only be explained supernaturally. It took several years to get answers. Heck, it took several years before I found the right questions to ask! But in my pursuit, and through pain, God began to reveal more of himself to me.

I still believe that God is good, but I’ve learned that goodness is not the same thing as niceness. I’m glad I don’t believe in a nice god anymore; I believe in a good one.

I love my little copper cup that Averie gave me as an engagement gift, some nine months ago now. It feels like I’ve been drinking from it my whole life. It’s a beautiful cup: sleek, shiny rim and top half intersecting the dull and tarnished bottom half like sunlight breaking through rain clouds after a storm. And right in the middle, cut almost in half, is the simple design of a camping tent with the inscription scrawled above it: THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME. Even the imperfection of the apostrophe looks like a shooting star, though I’m sure it’s just a scratch. I love my perfect cup; there’s not another one like it.

My cup reminds me of war and peace, pain and joy. It seems to me a perfect personification of the tension that exists inside the human heart every day.

I know that Heaven is my home and my Earthly dwelling is only temporary, but inside my heart I build up this tent and live inside it, insulating myself from the Home I’m destined for. My cup reminds me where I belong.

I grow accustomed to the feelings of sadness, anger, and bitterness, resigning myself to them. Out of fear, I choose apathy over hope. My cup reminds me of the truth.

I feel the war waging around me and within me and I grow disheartened, wondering if good really does prevail over evil. My cup reminds me that it does.

Copper is such a beautiful metal in all its forms, for it wears its imperfections like a badge of honor, the way boys proudly flaunt their scars. It isn’t afraid of aging or of the tarnish that comes from hard work, it simply becomes more beautiful. Its patina reminds me what it is and where it has been. That is what I want to be to others: a reminder.

Remember to breathe.

Remember who you are.

Remember what you’re made for.

Remember to drink more water.

Remember to dream.

Remember to hope.

Remember that Jesus will return and make us a new home.

Remember, there’s no place like home.

As followers of Jesus, we know the importance of TRUTH. We know that Jesus is truth, that everything God has ever said is true, that the Holy Spirit leads us in truth, and that relationship with Jesus Christ is the only way to walk in the truth. We also know that the world hates the truth, and that Satan is the father of lies. Perhaps one of the hardest challenges for the Christian is the task of going about sharing this truth with the unbelieving world without being smug about it. There’s nothing quite so off-putting as someone who knows something and puts you down for not knowing it.

This morning I came across a verse in John 18 that caught me off guard and led me down a rabbit hole of thought. Jesus has been brought before Pilate, not long before he is beaten and crucified, and he questions him. “Are you the king of the Jews?” he asks. In verse 37, Jesus responds “I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” And then comes the three-word question that surprised me so much. Pilate responds to Jesus by saying “What is truth?” 

And then he walked away.

This is one of the saddest moments I think I’ve found in the whole Bible. Historically, I’ve always felt bad for Pilate as being sympathetic to Jesus and trying to convince the Jews he wasn’t all that bad, but this verse puts him in a new light for me. How can you stand in front of the King of Truth, ask the question “what is truth?”, and then walk away?

I was looking at some commentaries on this verse online and I found this comment that struck me.

“This might be the most important question a human being can ask, and Pilate is standing in front of the ultimate answer, yet he walks away without really considering his own words.” (BibleRef article linked here: https://www.bibleref.com/John/18/John-18-38.html)

Jesus is the ultimate answer, the ultimate truth. If Pilate were really seeking an answer, he would look no further. Clearly, Pilate was not genuinely seeking. I think the same can be said for most of the world. 

Matthew 7:7 says “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Romans 1:20 says “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

1 Timothy 2:3-4 says “This is good, and pleases God our savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

While God is mysterious and confusing and nobody fully understands His ways, He does not make the truth hard to find. He upset history by sending Jesus to Earth, He put his Spirit inside His believers, and He commissioned us to spread the truth. There is great power in truth and one must choose to accept it or to reject it. Pilate rejected it. What will you do?

I’ll never understand the magic of story, the power of words woven together to make something that didn’t exist before. It truly is one of the most miraculous things, and I think it’s a gift. The way you feel when you read something that moves you, the empathy you feel for the characters you know only by name on the page, the deep sorrow and awe you feel when you finish a book… it’s all so mysterious. 

I just read the last chapter of C.S. Lewis’s book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It’s one of my favorites. I am amazed not only by the words Lewis uses and the picture he paints, but by the feel of the chapter. When I read that chapter, I can’t help but feel sad and happy, dread and hope. It’s a chapter that tears you apart and puts you back together in seven short pages. I read it slow and fast at the same time, hoping it will never end yet wishing to read the final sentence. This chapter makes me worship. No joke, I am holding back tears as I write this, thinking about the glory of God, who created story and language and art and beauty and asks us not to hold these things back, but to express them and to help others express them. And isn’t that the job of the storyteller, to usher God’s children into His presence and show them how to bow before His throne?

This is a noble and sacred thing, to create, and I hope I never waste this gift.