fasting and praying or ditching
I am sitting in room 303 Stearns Hall, the single men's housing unit, performing an exercise for my current class at DTS - The Primacy of the Pastor's Spiritual Life. Our class of 14 men and one woman were told to take four hours today and spend it practicing some of the spiritual disciplines we read about, are doing, or are planning to do, to maintain our spiritual health. We are to do it in solitude, then return to class in the afternoon and talk about our experiences. As with most areas for the "professional", this is a solitary exercise and the temptation to play hooky is always great.
Now less you become suspicious, journaling is considered one of the spiritual disciplines, a quite noble one I think. These exercises are meant to take us away from the everyday - it's ditching life for awhile. But it isn't ditching to get away, and just go play (I feel like Dr. Seuss), it's getting away from our normal routines in order to better go through and enjoy these routines. It is disengaging to reflect and refresh so that we can engage better.
I look around our class and see some very remarkably gifted and smart people. Some with multiple degrees, so in high places of influence. I wonder what I'm doing in such distinguished company and who made the mistake to let me slip by the gatekeepers. Yet even though I feel very much out of place, there is something we all have in common. From our instructor down the status ladder to myself, we all have the common experience of brokenness. Each one of us knows full well and have been deeply effected by sin and disappointment. In fact, this is the common experience of every soul. Some of the stuff that happens isn't all that bad, and we're adults anyway, so we can just shrug it off. What we don't recognize is the cumulative effect of all these little things. Other stuff is the big stuff. The bad stuff. The stuff that breaks us apart. We're broken.
Whether it's all the little stuff that has added up, or something big, we need to ditch for awhile. It is important to remember we go away so we can come back. We can't go away and stay away. Jesus won't let us. He withdrew so He can return. And only when it was finished (John 19:30) did He leave. So what do we do when we withdraw? We rant, we rave, we talk, we listen, we shake our fists, we shed our tears, we ask to see. Our instructor asked us if we ever were angry with God. Then he told us every genuine and deep relationship includes conflict. Superficial ones never involve conflict, because you'll just ignore each other and walk away. Deep relationships require conflicts that are resolved. "Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another" (Prov. 27:17) - that friction hurts. Often times, God allows hurt, brings hurt, so we can be sharpened. In all that glorious maiming, we catch a glimpse of the beauty of Christ.
The group Starfield's latest album is entitled Beauty in the Broken. The music is delicious, but the title nails it. We withdraw so we can see the beauty of Christ in all the brokenness that surrounds us. And it is only in catching a glimpse of that beauty that helps us to hang on by faith. We can't know all the reasons why certain things happen, but our beautiful savior gives us an enduring hope. After teaching that people had to eat His flesh and drink His blood, many of Jesus' own disciples abandoned Him. Turning to the twelve, He asked them if they wanted to leave too. Simon Peter responds in a fashion that I think illustrates genuine faith - Lord, to whom shall we go? There are devastating blows ahead, if not now, but to whom shall we go? Simon concludes - You have the words of eternal life, we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy one of God (John 6:68). In the end, to see the great beauty in the brokenness, we rest in our faith. Where can we go? Who else is there? Believe and see.
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