Hands

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In the grip of Christ, we have no need.

My dad drew up my hand and placed it next to my grandfather’s, who was in the casket.  He then placed his next to mine, so that all three were in a row, saying, “You see, Sammy, where you get your hands?”  My young eyes noticed the similarities between my grandpa’s hands, my dad’s, and my own.  Each had the same wrinkly skin and stubby strength, passed on from generation to generation.  In that moment, as a little boy, I learned more than just genetics; I learned that everyone you love, will leave you, no matter how strong his hands.

Our safety in life is not found in all the trivial and temporary things that can be stripped away in a second.  Our comfort in life is not found in plans, pleasures, power, or people, for all will vanish.  If we place ourselves into their greasy hands, we will slip right out.  These things will always let you down.  People will always let you down, your possessions will always let you down, pleasures will always let you down.  None of these have hands that are fit to hold the human soul.

So what should you give yourself to and where is your solace found?  Recently, some have said that religion is not the answer.  They are quick to point out that Religion will let us down, too—that religion hurts, drops, kills.  It is graspless.

When your friends fail, when your money disappears, when your reputation is tattered, where is your comfort to be found?  Even more, when your life itself refuses to breathe again, what is your comfort in death?  What will hold you then?

It seems that we need hands that have been both to heaven and earth.  We need hands that hold the power of the cosmos and that hold the palm of the child.  We need hands that have thrust the stars into their orbits and that have thrust the heart into the human.  We need hands that have both the power to heal and the tenderness to hold.

The hands of Jesus Christ are the hands for us.  Not only did they spin the world into motion, but also they touched the oozing sores of a leper and dried the tears of a prostitute.  They wakened the universe with power and they writhed in pain from mortal nails.  His hands were both divine and dead, miraculous and mortal.

The holes in his hands are a portal through which heaven and earth touch.  And that is where he holds us.  That is our solace and comfort.  That is where we will never be shaken, the spot from which we will never be let go.  In the grip of Christ, we have no need.  In the grip of Christ, we can let go of our troubles, our idols, and our self-definitions.

What is truly, deeply, our only comfort?  Even the most non-religious person can see that our comfort is not in what we can hold onto, for our grasp is so weak and the natural course of this life rips everything out of our grip.  My solace and comfort come not from what I can hold onto, but from Whom is holding onto me.

So reads the Heidelberg Catechism, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?”  The answer: “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”

You belong to Jesus Christ and he will never let go of you.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.  For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.  And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.[1]

© Samuel Kee, 2012

[1] Colossians 1:15-17, ESV.

How To Help a Suffering Friend

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Resurrectionless words just make the gaps wider.

As WWII began, some of the students of Dietrich Bonhoeffer were called up to fight for the Germans.  Over half of these future pastors and students would be killed in battle, including Theodor Maass.  In a letter to Maass’ family, Bonhoeffer wrote:

“He was a good brother, a quiet, faithful pastor of the Confessing Church, a man who lived from word and sacrament, whom God has also thought worthy to suffer for the Gospel.  I am sure that he was prepared to go.  Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.  They should remain open.  Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…”

Great gaps were being torn into the fabric of families.  Great gaps were being torn in the human heart, as the brutal war ensued.

As one who depends on words, I find Bonhoeffer’s prescription for suffering both staggering and exact.  Bonhoeffer himself was a lover of words, as an academic, professor, pastor, and writer.  Yet not even he would dare presume his words on this hour of anguish.  His words would never due; never would he minimize the size of the gap by throwing mere human words at it.

When those we love are suffering, let them suffer, in other words.  Let the wound bleed itself to where it needs to bleed.  Mere human words are offensive at the point of great affliction.  Wounds should remain open in order that the pure ointment of God might be applied.

The prescription is the resurrection.  That is our only comfort and solution.  Words that fail to point to the God of the resurrection fail to point to any sufficient help at all.  Resurrectionless words just make the gaps wider and longer.

Because of the resurrection, death just makes us better.  In the shadow of the resurrection, death is forced to bow and worship.  Like a seed thrown down to death in the soil, so will the burial of God’s child lead to better life.  Death gives us life.

We learn two things from this.  First, don’t rush upon a wounded soul with your words.  Let the wound remain open.  Acknowledge the pain of the suffering one, hear their story and allow their wound to open a gap in your heart, as well.  Second, with a few cautious and confident words, tell them about the life that stands at the end of every trial.

I know what you may be thinking: I’m being way too reductionistic, for humans and suffering are incredibly complex.  Nonetheless, I also don’t want to reduce healing down to mere mortal solutions.  Humans are so complex, that nothing short of divine power will ultimately be effective.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

Weight Room

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The weight room at Ashland University, where I went to school.

I remember the day that I first started working out—pumping iron.  It was 1987 and I was in the basement of an old school, where there was a simple room of free-weights.  I was in junior high and let’s just say, I was “under-sized.”  Yes, I was small, maybe 65 pounds with my backpack on.  And the weight room was not my favorite place to be, but I had to if I wanted to be on the wrestling team.

It was so embarrassing.  I couldn’t even lift the bench press bar ten times.  Girls my age were lifting more than I was.  I was so weak.

Fast forward to my college years and again see me in the weight room.  After a decade of working out, I could finally lift the bar!  And maybe a little more.  One time I was trying to out-bench (impress) another person in the weight room.  So I slapped a bunch of 45-pound weights on the bar, totaling about 300 pounds.  I got on the bench and put it up and then slowly lowered it to my chest; only, I couldn’t get it back up!  With some serious metal squashing down on my chest and neck, I panicked.  After struggling with it for a while, and seeing stars in the process, I finally got it up.  I think a girl helped me…

These are the images I get when I read Romans 8:3:

“For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.”

Our “flesh” is totally weak when it comes to spiritual lifting.  And if we think that the law is going to help us, we’re dead wrong.  We’ll be crushed under the weight of it, no matter how many years we work-out.  The truth is that there is no one who can lift the burden of the law.  That’s why the verse says that God did it for us, “by sending his own Son” (also verse 3).  God’s Son came and lifted the weight of the law for us, since we were so weak.

The lesson of this is deeply profound.  This means that we can never impress God.  It means that God is not in Heaven, wringing his hands, waiting for us to finally get it right.  God has no expectations for us, none at all.  He knows that we will be crushed, unless he comes to rescue us.

We are crushed by lies, crushed by accusations, crushed by failures, crushed by doubts, crushed by despair, crushed by envy, crushed by rejection, crushed by loneliness, crushed by purposelessness, crushed by insufficiency, crushed by slander, crushed by misunderstanding, crushed by ridicule, crushed by un-forgiveness, crushed by misfortune, crushed by hatred, crushed by apathy, crushed by evil, crushed by sickness, crushed by death.  All of it is jammed near our neck, and it’s only a matter of time before it kills us.  Then Romans 8:11 says:

“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”

So long as we’re being crushed, then life is not possible.  But if we allow God to take the weight from us, then we can finally have life.  Purpose and joy are not found in performance (as an employee, spouse, friend, athlete, citizen, etc.), but in God.  Did you get that?  This needs to be repeated: purpose and joy and not found in performance, but in God.  If you want to be free from the stuff that is crushing you, then stop trying to lift it.  Cry out to God and say, “Take everything that I can’t, and then take me.”

© Samuel Kee, 2011

You’re going to have to allow yourself

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Allow yourself to be His beloved.

We have a choice of whether or not to let negativity reign in our lives.  This is not because we did something to stop it, but because God has done something to stop it.  God went to the cross, where he absorbed all the evil we have to offer.  He stopped it on the cross.  It goes no further.

Unless, of course, we allow it.

“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey its passions” (Romans 6:12).

Yes, yes, we know we’re weak and frail, being “mortal” as the writer Paul says.  But even our mortality, our weakness, has been made stronger than sin.  Even our mortality doesn’t have to obey the passions of sin, for the cross breaks its power.  So it is up to us: are we going to allow evil to reign in our lives?  It doesn’t have to, you know.  Unless, of course, you want it to.

We have a choice to make today.  Either we allow our self to be ruled by death and all his friends, or we allow ourselves to be God’s.  The next verse says,

“Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life” (Romans 6:13).

Give yourself to wickedness or give yourself to God.  The power is yours to choose.

Nothing is standing in your way.  God has made a way and the path is clear.  You’re going to have to allow yourself to be free.  As you writhe in the emotional pain of your life–the deep and real pain–there is an exit in view.  You must allow yourself to see it, to go for it, to be released.  You must allow yourself to be God’s, to be loved, to be his beloved.  You must allow yourself to be empowered, healed, beautified, and ravished with unconditional love.  You must allow yourself to refuse to hear the lies, to halt the feelings of rejection, to step off of the platform of inferiority.  You must allow God to pull you out of the pit, clean you up, and turn you into his precious bride, his courageous man.

There is nothing in heaven or on earth stopping you.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

Should Christians Evangelize?

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Forgive me, but I feel like being offensive.  I’m going to speak very narrowly, to a narrow batch of people, so I apologize if you can’t relate, or if it feels like I’m having an “in house” discussion.  As you may or may not know, I’m a pastor—not a very good one, but that’s beside the point right now.  The “point” has to do with a gathering I was at recently of leading pastors in my area.

The discussion went something like this.

Facilitator: “What are some strategies for growth in your churches?”

Pastor: “While I agree that healthy things grow, some churches are not called to grow through outreach, because that’s not everyone’s thing.  Some churches are called to become more spiritually minded disciples.”

You get the idea?  This is my pet peeve, people in the church who say that some people are called to reach out to others and some are called to be more serious disciples.  This objecting pastor went on to say that his church didn’t grow, and that was okay, because they were all growing closer to God.

I wanted to jump out of my seat.  As if one could grow closer to God and not become enflamed with the desire to tell others about it.  Evangelism and spiritual depth are put at odds with each other; you either pursue one or the other.  That’s what he was saying.

“Evangelism is not for everyone” was his objection to us.  But I think that’s a bunch of pietistic scat.  I believe that evangelism is for everyone, and this objecting pastor just proved my point.  He was proclaiming to everyone that trying to convert others with your message is not for everyone.  See the irony?  That’s exactly what he was doing to us!  He was trying to convince us that his message was the one true message, that evangelism is not for everyone.  That some are just called to grow deeper and closer to God, leaving outreach to the rookies, or, though he wouldn’t admit it, the less spiritual.

The truth of the matter however, and even non-Christians would back me up on this, is that we are all constantly celebrating, advertising, and “evangelizing” others with the message of our choosing.  For instance, you might discover a great bagel joint or a handy app, and what do you do?  You tell others about it.  You may even insist that they try it.  Or, you read a great book, so what do you do?  You tell others about it, spreading the “good news” that you discovered.  The word “evangelism” simply means to “spread good news.”

Or maybe you believe that all religions are the same, so much so, that you tell-off an annoying Christian who is trying to convert you to Christianity.  To be fair, nonetheless, by trying to convince the annoying Christian of your view of pluralism, you’re doing the exact same sort of “evangelism” that he is doing to you.  Now, at this point, I’m not saying that one way is right and one is wrong, I’m just trying to get us to see that we all are evangelists, every one of us, whether we realize it or not.  (And for the record, you don’t have to be annoying to be an evangelist.)

This objecting pastor was trying to convince the rest of us of his message of non-evangelism, through the very method of evangelism!

If that weren’t bad enough, here’s what really blows my mind.  By pitting so-called “spiritual growth” and evangelism against each other, we fail to see the relationship these two have in Scripture.  One is not a stepping stone of the other; one is not an alternative to the other.  In Scripture, one always happens immediately after the other.  They flow into each other.

Take Isaiah 6, for instance, a passage that I have been going back to quite a bit recently.  When Isaiah’s sins are atoned for (7) and he is finally close to God, he is close enough to hear the discussion happening on God’s throne.  The closer Isaiah gets to God, the more he can hear what God is saying to him.  God says to him, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (8).  In other words, God is looking for an evangelist to go and proclaim his message.  Do you see what happened?  The closer Isaiah got to God, the more clearly he heard God say, “Go!”

God saves us in order to send us.

Most of the time we get it backwards; we think that evangelism is just a random activity that just a few are supposed to do.  Meanwhile, the hard work of spiritual growth and learning your Bible is the serious business of discipleship.  Such reasoning simply disgusts me.  There is no way under the sun that someone can grow close to God and not have the desire to tell others about it.

God’s glory and beauty are so massive, and so ravishing, that the course of your life will be changed forever if you come into contact with him.  You’ll be forever changed; his glory will “break” you and all of your other desires.  The main desire an encounter with him will leave behind is the desire to let others know about your great God.

Beauty is like that.  You’ve got to praise it.  Not to do so would be dysfunctional at best and inhuman at worst.  The message of Christianity is that our glorious God himself put on the flesh of a human in order to turn himself into sin and die in our place on the cross, so that we might be eternally free from all guilt and condemnation.  Even more, our eternal destiny is in an addicting world of love, called heaven, where every earthly pleasure is infinitized.

If you truly had the cure for cancer, only a complete narcissist would keep this news to himself.  If you truly had the news of the World of Love that has conquered the world of evil, which is consuming us and leaving us to despair, not to tell me would be very cruel.

How do you grow closer to God?  Tell others about the magnificent God that you have found.  For in doing so, while you may not convince your hearer, you might just convince yourself.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

Who Praises You?

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There’s a scrap of paper in my Greek Bible with some words scribbled on it in blue ink.  I remember writing them about five years ago when I was reading through the book of Romans.  They contain a seed of an idea that I had that morning when I read Romans 2:29; but I’ve never developed this thought.  So I’ve left the scrap paper and scribbles right where I left them on page 413, a constant reminder to revisit this powerful verse in Romans.  Here’s my awkward translation of it, “But the one who is inwardly a Jew, even having circumcision of the heart by the Spirit, not the letter, whose praise is not from humans, but from God” (Romans 2:29).

Here’s what I wrote on the paper: “The measure of a man is not the greatness of his accomplishment, but the greatness of his repentance.”

I’ll begin with a question, “Whom would you most desire to give you praise?”  It’s awesome to receive praise from parents or from peers, from community or country, but there’s an even greater source of praise available to us.  The ultimate praise comes from God.  Can you imagine what it would be like to receive praise from God?  Romans 2:29 indicates to us that there is praise from God available to us.  But whom is the one that God praises?

If you’re like me, you struggle with this.  We love it when people praise us.  And all sorts of malfunctions/dysfunctions happen when we are not praised, when we are overlooked, when we are forgotten.  We quickly go from confidence to crisis when we don’t receive the praise that we feel is “due” us.  We love it when other humans praise us, as the verse describes.  We don’t need a lot of over-the-top celebration, mind you, but simple recognition or acceptance will suffice.  Just acknowledge my act, my gesture, and that will be enough.

Paul wrote the letter of Romans with his Jewish people in mind.  Paul knew how important this concept of praise was to the Jews of his time.  Chrysostom notes the link between the external rites of the Jews and praise.  Circumcision is an external rite, a word to summarize the Jewish practices of Sabbath keeping, animal sacrifices, purification rites, etc.  Jews prided themselves in their external accomplishments.  But Paul wants us to know that there is another kind of circumcision, of the heart and not just the flesh.  Circumcision of the flesh is external, including all that we do on the outside in order to feel better about our inside.

Humans look at the flesh, what’s on the outside.  We praise each other for the greatness of our circumcision, if I can continue to use this crude metaphor.  Some of Paul’s people would glory in circumcision, which is just another way of saying that they put all their confidence in their ancestry.  Their greatness came from humans, in other words.  We continue to place and find our greatness in the external: race, origin, degree, wealth, status, accomplishment, fame, etc.

We justify our existence by what we have done, can do, or will do.  Actually, we ask other humans to justify our existence, by placing on them the burden to praise us.  And if they praise us, then we feel that they grant us our worth.  If they give us this worth, then our lives have meaning.  And if our lives have meaning, then we are justified in existing in the first place.  If we feel like we have sufficient justification for living, then we will not do anything drastic.

But the measure of a person is not the greatness of his accomplishment, at least not according to God’s eyes.  While humans look at the flesh, God gazes at the heart.  There is a circumcision of the flesh and there is a circumcision of the heart.  Ambrosiaster says that there is a “veil over the heart,” which only God sees and only God can remove.  Humans boast in external transformation (accomplishment), but God boasts in internal transformation (accomplishment).  Circumcision of the heart is inner transformation and what God requires.  “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn” (Deut 10:16).  “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord; remove the foreskin of your hearts” (Jeremiah 4:4).

The more I am circumcised in the heart, the greater I am.  The more I seek, by all the graces that God has given, to transform my inner being, to cut away the veil on my dark heart, the greater I will be in God’s eyes.  The route of transformation is repentance.  Repentance is turning my course away from self-satisfaction and toward God glorification.  To repent is to remove self-religion by replacing it with true religion, worship of God.  To repent is to remove the hard skin on my heart, which keeps me from knowing God and living for him.

In short, to repent is to love God, because you’re turning away from loving other things more than you love him, embracing him as you turn.

The measure of a man is not the greatness of his accomplishment, but the greatness of his love for God.  The more I repent, the greater the praise from God.  Greatness is inward first and does not pertain to keeping the letter of the law.  The letter of the law will not make one great.  Greatness comes from the Spirit, as the Spirit of God takes away the layers of life that keep me from him.

Whom does God praise?  God praises the one who repents of his sin, allowing the Spirit entrance into his heart.  Once the Spirit is in the heart, it performs soul surgery, removing the veil of the heart.  The greater the repentance—the greater the turning toward God—the greater the inner transformation.

In an age of Facebook, Twitter, and blogs (mine included!), when everything is “externalized,” we must keep our hearts for God.  Our greatness does not come from what others can recognize about us, but from what God can do in us.

© Samuel Kee, 2012

Her Arms

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How do you live out these doctrines?

She pushed up her sleeve and showed me her bare arm.  Spelled out with a black Sharpie were the words, “It is finished.”  She told me that she had decided to stop cutting herself.  Yet far deeper than the cuts on her arms, was this quotation from Jesus on the cross.

Does it really matter what you believe?  Or can I get away with just believing anything, because everything is pretty much the same.  Does it matter if I get this “faith thing” right?  Or does life get easier when we throw off the restrictive shackles of religious dogma?

One does not need to have watched Inception to understand the power of ideas.  Your ideas become the reality in which you live and react.  Do you believe that you are basically good?  Do you believe that a failed relationship is your fault?  Do you believe that you are unwanted?  That nobody understands?  What is Idea about your life that you are clinging to, that is shaping and directing your every move?  Your Life-Hermeneutic is the glasses through which you see the world, the controlling idea that shapes how you perceive reality.

I don’t want to mention any religions by name, but I can see in my memory frantic followers gathered around a shrine, desperately trying to swish smoke on their bodies, believing that this smoke would “cure” them.  I can also recall speaking to a man from another set of beliefs who tried his hardest to please God; but at the end of the day, he admitted that he did not know if God would keep him or crush him.  Still, I can think of another friend who did not want to believe in God at all, so that he could live however he wanted.  This lack-of-belief belief, allowed him to indulge in sex and drugs whenever he pleased.

Konstantin Stanislavski was a Russian acting teacher in the 1930’s.  His method taught actors to “experience the part” of the characters they played.  The job of the actor or actress was to understand the reality of the character and then respond accordingly.  If you lived in the character’s shoes, then how would you naturally respond?  The actor was to feel his or her own emotional response, truly portraying how he or she would react in the character’s situation.  They were to experience the emotion of the role they played.  In doing this, they merely “acted” out the natural response of being in the character’s shoes.

Before going on stage, the actor must be convinced that the character’s reality is the actor’s reality.  That’s the key to how our beliefs affect our lives.

Let’s go back to the arms of the young woman, on which “It is finished” was written.  While she was cutting herself, she was playing the part of someone who had a great deal of pressure in her life.  Her parents were divorced and she had tremendous pressure to be perfect.  She felt alone and responsible for some of the evil in her life.  While cutting was not the right thing to do, it was the way she had chosen to “experience the part” of her life.

Then she realized that it was not her fault and that she was never alone.  She was told that God loved her and that Jesus bled for her, so that she did not have to.  She learned that God offered not only forgiveness for her sins, but also the power to overcome life’s trials.  She learned of a new “role” to play, that of a Christian.

A “Christian” is someone who has been rescued from darkness and handed over to hope.  A Christian not only has her sins forgiven, but also has been adopted into God’s eternal family.  She has a clean slate, a new present status, and an everlasting dwelling place.  A Christian is someone who has to live with the knowledge that there is a God out there who is deeply in love with her, every gasp of this life, and every millennia of the next.

Thus she began to “experience the part” of this belief, starting with the most fundamental doctrine uttered by Jesus from the cross.  “It is finished” represents the doctrines of propitiation (appeasing the wrath of God with a sacrifice) and atonement (becoming reconciled to God through forgiveness).  But how do you live out these doctrines?  How do you “play the part” of a Christian, in other words?

You write doctrine on your cuts.

Greater than our scars our his.  Deeper than our wounds are his.  His reality springs us from ours.  “It is finished” ends our old life and allows us to be born into a new life.  In this new life, we are loved, wanted, longed-for, searched-for, cared-for, ached-for, traveled-for.

I guess what I’m saying is that we are to play the part of God’s beloved.  That changes everything.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

Lesson from Sodom

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What if just one righteous person were found?

Let me share with you three paragraphs that could give you great hope.  Consider an event that happened to the man that stands at the fount of three major world religions: Abraham.  In Genesis 18, Abraham risks his life by approaching God on behalf a wicked city.  Though God was going to destroy Sodom, Abraham stood before the Lord and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?  Suppose there are fifty righteous who are in it?  Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it?” (23-24).  God told Abraham that for the sake of fifty, he would not destroy it.  But Abraham is not satisfied.  He proceeds to ask on behalf of 45 righteous people, then forty, thirty, twenty, and ten people.  Each time, God says that he will not destroy Sodom if that number of righteous people can be found in it.  But Abraham is doing more than just bargaining with God, he is probing into the inner workings of the Divine, discovering an immutable principle that could change your life.

Though Abraham stops asking at ten righteous people, the reader carries on the conversation in her own mind.  The reader asks herself, “What if just one righteous person were found, then would God destroy the city?”  That is the dramatic question that stands and lingers on the edge of our hearts.  What if just one righteous person existed, then would God destroy us?  Then we go to our history books, in a mad search for just one righteous person.  Have any ever existed?  Here’s how Scripture answers this question: “None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:11).  As God looks at humankind, he is unable to find a single, righteous person.  This means only one thing: he has no reason not to destroy us.

Abraham learned that God is only looking for one righteous person.  You and I know that “none is righteous.”  All fall desperately short of complete goodness.  We ache at the thought that we’re so close to being saved—needing just one righteous person—but infinitely far from achieving this goal.  Nevertheless, if you read just a little further in Romans 3, you will discover a verse that will melt your heart with joy.  “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (21-22).  While humankind groped in the darkness, trembling beneath the wrath of God, God himself sent our solution into the world.  God sent the “one righteous” person that we need; his name is Jesus.  We have our righteous person and we must cling to him like a drowning man to a raft.  He is our raft and our salvation, both our present help and our eternal solution.  In Jesus Christ, you have everything that God is looking for.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

Unravel

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designed by one my students, Derek Brumby

How do you move from God-as-concept to God-as-Reality?  I was recently listening to a sermon by Tim Keller, who helped me see this distinction.  God-as-concept keeps God in your brain.  He’s light, he’s digital, we might say.  He’s just an idea, that comes and goes.  He’s not real, in other words.  You may visit your idea about God every now and again, but only when you need some spiritual throat lozenges.  God-as-concept is lighter than your life; your life overpowers your God.  God is absorbed in you, rather than the reverse.

But God-as-Reality is smashingly different.  God-as-Reality is heavier than you; you quake under the pressure of him.  You do not absorb him, he absorbs you.  The best biblical word to describe God is “glory.”  This Hebrew word K-B-D, means something like “weighty.”  To be glorious is to be “heavy,” not in the literal sense, but in terms of importance.  It’s the only thing going on.  It’s what really matters.  It’s not ephemeral, not fleeting, not trivial or light.  When all else is boiled off, it’s what’s left behind.  God-as-Reality is the only thing that will last.

The example I’ve been using a lot recently is found in Isaiah 6.  In this narrative, Isaiah goes to meet God, but he didn’t expect actually to “meet” him.  He saw God’s glory and suddenly Isaiah moved from God-as-Concept to God-as-Reality.  There was no other trivial thought on his mind, before the presence and pressure of God.  God became “heavier” than any other desire, concern, or thought in Isaiah’s life.  The weight of God in his life broke him, coming crashing down on his soul.  God dropped from his brain and landed on his heart; and Isaiah couldn’t move out from under him.  He was “undone” as he put it.  “Woe is me! I am lost” (Isaiah 6:5).  I am like a dead man.  The Hebrew word for “lost” is the same word used to describe how a dead person responds.  That’s right.  Nothing.  His life is undone, lost forever before the glory of God.

You could say that he was unraveled.  Unravel.  One of my students, Phil, casually tossed this word out to me recently.  It’s a beautiful word to describe a true encounter with God, one where God is not just a concept in your life, but the reality of your life.  It’s your foundation, your base, your starting and ending point.

But it’s not all negative.  To unravel is to become undone before the glory of God, but it’s also to be made whole, for you’ve finally found life’s lasting meaning: God.  You have to unravel in order to get your life together.  You have to move from God-as-Concept to God-as-Reality; and the only way to do this is to be shattered by him.  Why do we have to be shattered?  Because our self-centeredness keeps us locked in the most dangerous orbit.  When life revolves only around me, I lose my life.  My center is hollow and will not last.  I’ll implode, as there’s nothing of weight within my heart.

Until God shatters our worlds and we unravel before Him, we will never emerge beautiful. Our self-reliance must be undone, we must come to God with no merits of our own.  And then he will give us the merits and beauty and righteousness of Christ.  We must unravel in order to come out of life alive.  We must unravel, to be healed.

Just at the point when Isaiah’s life was unraveling before God, God touched his lips and healed him (6:7).  And not only did God heal him, he also empowered him with a purpose (6:9-13).  He saved Isaiah in order to send him, out into the world to let others know about the weight of God.

God’s healing is deep, demanding that you unravel.  I believe that God is calling our narcissistic generation, myself included, to encounter him like never before.

© Samuel Kee, 2011

Our Tree

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The tree is the portal through which we find God.

The summer after my second grade year, I fell from a tree.  No one knows how far up I was, it’s estimated that I was thirty to forty feet above the ground.  At least that’s what they tell me.  I can’t remember any of it.

Evidently, an ambulance came and picked me up, taking me to Children’s Hospital in Akron, Ohio; again, I’m sorry I “missed” that.  It would have been cool to see an ambulance drive through our yard.  Then I was unconscious at the hospital for a week or two, I’m not sure how long exactly.  Again, I can’t remember any of it.  I’ve seen some pictures of me in the hospital, but that’s about it.  The fall knocked the memory of this event clear out of my head.

I’m usually a very careful climber, so I’m not sure what went wrong that summer afternoon (or was it morning?).  My brother and I were playing in the woods together, as we usually did.  My guess is that a branch broke, in my zeal to get to the top.

While I don’t have a memory of “the tree,” my guess is that you do.  You remember the tree, though not the one in Northeastern, Ohio.  The tree that we all remember was in the Garden of Eden.  It’s the tree we’re aching for and, therefore, searching for.  It’s the Tree of Life, which God banned our first parents, Adam and Eve, from discovering.

The Tree of Life is in the collective memory of humankind.  It’s “home.”  It’s the place of longing, the place of dreams, the place we’re searching for, beneath and behind everything we do.  Love.  Life.  Joy.  Meaning.  Significance.  Relationship.  Eternity.  Beauty.

Unlike my tree, none of us can shake the memory of our Tree.  Though we’ve fallen from it, we desperately want to find it.  But is it still there?  In other words, can any human have the deepest desires of the heart met?

It’s curious to note that the cross of Jesus was also known as “the tree” (Galatians 3:13, 1 Peter 2:24, Acts 5:30).  Jesus died on the tree.  Jesus was broken by the curse on the tree.  The tree meant death for Jesus—but life for us.  At the same moment, it was both a place of cursing and blessing, of death and life.  The tree of the cross is the new Tree of Life, the portal through which we return to the Garden of Eden, the very Paradise of God—home.

Through the cross, we find God.  We find life.  Our longings and dreams meet their object at last.

© Samuel Kee, 2011