A severe mercy....

One way or another the thing had to die. Perpetual springtime is not allowed. You were not cutting the wood of life according to the grain. There are various possible ways in which it could have died tho' both the parties went on living. You have been treated with a severe mercy. You have been brought to see (how true & how very frequent this is!) That you were jealous of God. So from US you have been led back to US AND GOD; it remains to go on to GOD AND US. She was further on than you, and she can help you more where she now is than she could have done on earth. You must go on.--- CS Lewis, from the book A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken, upon the death of his wife.

Now it came to pass as they traveled, that He entered into a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house. And the woman had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus' feet and was listening to His word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, "Lord, don't You care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me." And Jesus answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her."
(Luke 10:38-42)

In everything, there is a tension between our desires and the desires that motivate that action. Behind everything we do, there is a search for Joy (as Lewis called it). Or maybe Hope is a better word: Hope in a Hebraic sense where the word picture is clinging to a cord, attached to the only thing that can save you. For Vanauken, in the above quote, his cord was his wife and their love as the sublime US. For Martha, her cord was proving herself valuable by the effacy of her service. We are all attached to something to make sense of our efforts and strivings in this life. And while Jesus certainly doesn't invalidate the intrinsic worth of marital love or hospitality, his response is His characteristic 'yes' when our question is '2+2=?'. It's not that he's dodging our query with the wrong answer; but that we are asking the wrong questions to seek the knowledge we desperately need in pursuit of the most Holy 'What are we looking for?'

Jesus answers our questions of longing with Himself. The dichotomy here is not between Jesus and the 'kitchens' of our work and striving. The dichotomy is between life with Jesus and life without; so much so, that one almost assumes that Jesus would have helped Martha if she would have asked. Martha is busy caught up by her desire for fairness between her and her sister. Jesus is busy caught up in His desire for Martha. That's the point. We can long together as friends, the Lord and Us, provided we long together. He's the only one can satisfy, the Lord, Hope of our lives.

More later

Daniel

Moving with the Lion

I saw Narnia last night and I was, as you all can expect, deeply rocked by the experience. Grand epics like that, those symphonies in the key of fantasy and mythology, really help me understand the life I lead in a real and profound way. Our God is awesome. He is creative and real and not tame. As real people, we've got to understand that: not as cogs in the machine of a god we don't really understand and certainly don't love. People complain about these books because they feel that telling the Story of Christ in Myth forms a caricature of the real thing of God; However, I would dare say that the caricature is not Aslan, but the world's picture of Christ.

We don't realize that we have totally mistaken the face of our Lord. He's not afraid to act, nor is he able or willing to let injustice go unpunished. Yet He refuses to buy in the world's lie that His enemies sit in a dark room, plotting His destruction with every kind of malicious intent. The Lord knows that wickedness comes from desires that run contrary to God, not an evil heart or an unsalvagable soul. In the movie, this allowed Aslan to love the traitor Edmund but still oppose the nefarious White Witch. In the end, Edmund knew that the throne offered of the Lion and the throne offered of the Witch resulted in an acceptance of either the purposes of Life or that which ran contrary to life, namely death. He choose life and lived. The Witch opposed life and ran into what else but death?

This choice helps us understand that we are all one choice away from either kingship or evil. It simply rocks our paradigm of spirituality. We make this choice between life and death in everything, our work and school, our family and friends, even our cravings for a little bit of Turkish Delight. We certainly don't choose the way of death because we like being dead! We choose it because we think it will bring us life. What if the church brought this to bear on any number of our relations with one another (or, may the Lord haste this day, the outside world!)? Instead of calling people wicked, what if we understood them as deceived: deceived with a very deception all of us fall pray to daily. What if we have pity on the Edmunds in our midst because we are Edmunds, trying to desperately to restrain our cravings for petty, paltry things when the Lord offers us deep themes of kingship and destiny? Would we settle for Turkish Delight when there is greater destiny to be had? Do we want to?

May the Lord haste the day when this is so!

I didn't get into the caricatures of the Lion, more on that tomorrow.

Daniel