Look Up

June brought in warm evenings like summer's heralding banner, and the rich woolly sky blanketed the sleepy house where some friends and I were cuddled up for a late night.  My phone suddenly buzzed at me with a message from my mama, but not the one I was expecting: "Go look outside!"

"Girls--listen to this!" I cried, and we all jumped up, heavy eyelids instantly opened in wonder.

We leapt outside in our bare feet, spiraling in circles with our arms outstretched and our eyes heavenward, trying to spot Jupiter and Venus converging into one visual spectacular.  Desperate to beat the expiration of a perhaps once-in-a lifetime sight, we ran down to the golf course, but trees shut us in on every side.

We charged back up to the main road and sprinted down the asphalt, past dark houses that scowled at our wakefulness at such an hour.  When I rounded the last bend in the road, coming to where it sprouted off from a busy street, the sky unrolled across the horizon above a treeless field, and there the great conjunction of the two planets shone in a star-of-Bethlehem-like brilliance.

The two planets danced so closely together that their brightness was mesmerizing to anyone who laid eyes on the sight.  And we were no exception.  The four of us made a rock our arm chair, and I sat in awe with my hands clasped around my legs.

There was no clock to fetter the flitting moments down.

There was no rhythm ticking an impending deadline besides the unison beating of our hearts.

So we watched in reverent silence, our backs masked by the darkness, but our faces lit by the light of the star.  With such a sight glittering in our eyes, we couldn't help but sing hymns of praise to the Morning Star, and there was something special about that worship by the roadside that I won't ever forget.

Time lapsed...cars streaked by...but the star, my friends, and I remained.

It struck me as we sat how odd we must have looked to the passersby.  But when a busy, harried soul drove by and saw four women with their eyes rapturously fixed on the sky, I wondered if he would follow our gaze and look up, even if just out of curiosity.

In that moment on that warm June evening a chill went down my back.  For through my wondering I found a rich nugget that I've carried with me these past six months.

Shouldn't my eyes perpetually be fixed with equally rapturous delight on Jesus the Morning Star?

And shouldn't I be so enthralled by and illuminated with His light that all who pass me can't help but follow my gaze and stare, not at me, but at Who I am looking to?

Yes and yes.

And if at the end of my days it is said that the best analogy for the thrust of my life was that beautiful, worshipful evening of looking up, I will be satisfied.  If it is said of my life that all who looked at me couldn't help but look to Jesus because of me, my mission will be complete. 

“We Choose to See Vol. 002,” © 2013 AMRenault, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.

Gullible

Did you know that Shakespeare didn't actually write Shakespeare? That, in fact, he isn't the author of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and every other piece of writing attributed to him? The first time I realized this was when I was taking my SAT years ago. The essay question was on this very subject, and I found it fascinating, but never got around to researching it further. I saw, a few years later, that a movie had come out about the same topic (but never bothered to watch the film). And so a seed of doubt was planted. Based upon two very small pieces of information, I believed that there was definitely reasonable doubt as to Shakespeare's authorship.

It wasn't until last week, as Joel and I looked through the decade-old pictures of a trip he took to Great Britain with his family that I voiced aloud my doubt when we reached the photos commemorating his visit to Shakespeare's house. He looked at me with great amusement, and I realized to my consternation that I didn't know anything for certain. Research was definitely in order.

What did I find? Well, there is indeed loud controversy surrounding who wrote Shakespeare's creations. There's been many books on the subject, organizations formed, movies made, Wikipedia articles created, and more. And yet, the first suggestion of such a trick being played upon the whole world did not occur until 1857--241 years after Shakespeare's death! No contemporary of Shakespeare ever suggested such a masquerade; no written evidence has been uncovered corroborating the controversy; and the leaps of logic required to reach such a conclusion (certain bits of the plays match events in Francis Bacon's life, or Walter Raleigh's life, or--most recently popular--Edward de Vere's life) are hotly contested by academia. Indeed, award-winning scholar William Hunt said, "No, absolutely no competent student of the period, historical or literary, has ever taken this theory seriously. First of all, the founding premise is false -- there is nothing especially mysterious about William Shakespeare, who is as well documented as one could expect of a man of his time. None of his contemporaries or associates expressed any doubt about the authorship of his poems and plays. Nothing about De Vere (Oxford) suggests he had any great talent, and there is no reason to suppose he would have suppressed any talents he possessed [1]."

I had to laugh at myself for so glibly assuming such a conspiracy to be true, and to wonder at the people who are so avidly attempting to rewrite history while blindly ignoring facts, evidence, and truth.

And yet, I shouldn't be so surprised. A very many people do the exact same thing with God and His Word. 

"For since the creation of the world His invisible [attributes] are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify [Him] as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened." {Romans 1:20-21 NKJV}

There are those who--like I did with Shakespeare--need only a few suggestions about evolution and the impotence of a god to believe the alternate theory that the world created itself or that Scripture is a literary gem, but not authored by God. They may not realize that "I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents, written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies, and they claim to be divine rather than human in origin [2]," as Dr. Voddie Baucham so brilliantly put it.

The good news is that many of these people are no more truly educated in the matter of spiritual things than I was about Shakespeare. It may take only a look--only a question put in love, to cause them to reconsider the lie they have so unconsciously believed. It may take only a statement to cause a lifetime of assumptions to vaporize.

New King James Version, © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

[1] Blakemore, Bill. "'Anonymous': Was Shakespeare a Fraud?" ABC News. ABC News Network, 14 Oct. 2011. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

[2] Baucham, Voddie. "Why I Choose to Believe the Bible." The Ever Loving Truth. 30 June 2005. Sermon Audio. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

Musical Chairs

Where you sit matters.

When  I walked in the door for some of my first childhood concerts, I picked my seat carefully with one objective in mind: the best view of the violin section.  Somehow, though, I still knew that no seat in that auditorium was the best seat, for you couldn't physically feel the music from that vantage point.  Since I surely never dreamed I had a chance of sitting up on stage with the music-makers, though, I was satisfied with my spot in the audience.  

Now I play in concerts several times a year, and a few weeks ago when the lights were dimming and the hush was falling, I realized with the crescendo of the drum roll that I have the best seat in the house!  Joining me in that position are nearly fifty musicians, our conductor, and one very special person each concert who gets to sit in our "Merry Chair."  With sponsorship, an audience member is ushered on stage to sit in this specially placed chair in the midst of the symphony, and my ten year old self is intensely jealous!

For believe me, there is a mammoth difference between staring down the bell of the trumpet as it bellows at you versus living amongst the music while it swirls around you.  And the leap from sitting amongst the music to being a music-maker is even more indescribable!  My violin vibrates with the ring of the cymbal crash behind me, white rosin dust puffs in clouds at our first bow strokes, and fifty people are swaying as one.   Nowhere else do I get the same pull of tension and delight that comes from creating and enjoying at the same time.  

So where are you sitting in the symphony God conducts?

Are you in the audience?  Appreciating God's mighty master hand as He works in the lives of others in the world?  Looking to the "professionals"--the missionaries, pastors, and leaders--to make great music, and being comfortable in your position of observer. 

Or maybe you're in the Merry Chair.  You're rubbing elbows with those through whom God is working.  You even look like you could be making music.  You're in the midst of the music-makers, but there is one key difference between you and them: you're not being led by the Conductor. 

So why not be a music-maker?  Don't just casually observe what God is doing, and don't just look like a music-maker to satisfy other's expectations.  Own the instrument God has given you.  Tune it well and play under the Master Conductor!  Be led by Him, and Him alone, through all the time changes and key changes and grand pauses that could trip you up.  He knows what happens after that page turn better than anyone. 

And while I still stand by the statement that where you sit matters, know that once you're a music-maker, it doesn't really matter anymore.  Whether you are the soloist or the violinist nearly hidden by the stage curtain, as long as the music you make is led by the Conductor, it is important, and it is beautiful. 

---

“Abandoned cinema 1962,” © 2010 phill.d, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.

Behind the Scenes of My Last Blog Post!

Photo Credit

 

Tuesday mornings mean two things for me: prepping for a full day of teaching music lessons and publishing a blog post.  And two weeks ago, my Tuesday morning was a tangled one indeed.

 

As I was doing the preparing part, I was also doing the praying part, about what God would have me publish that day.  I had several ideas to which I was quite partial, but God suddenly prompted me: Why not post on pride?  I thought of several reasons why not to write an article on pride, but since most of them were based in pride, they fell somewhat short.  So the topic was decided (how turning my God-given light on myself in pride leaves the world in darkness: read the post here!), and I just had to find the time to write it! 

 

This particular teaching day, I had several cancellations which left me with a free morning.  There was the time to write my article, but where could I write it?

 

You see, Mikaela and I use a local church to teach our lessons on Tuesdays, so even though I didn’t have lessons to teach, I was still stuck at the church with no internet with which to publish a post.  As I began to think through the problem, I remembered that furthermore, the church had no three-prong plug-ins to even plug in my laptop cord, and our local library to which I normally would have resorted didn’t open for another hour. 

 

These all seemed like tiny hairs of an everyday tangle, but unbeknownst to me, none of them were actually a tangle: they were part of an intricately tatted thread of lace that God was weaving for my day. 



Melanie sitting in the same tea shop I was enjoying. Photo Credit

I was left with no choice but to go to my favorite tea shop, order a steaming hot Lavender Milk Tea with Mango Popping Boba (delicious!), and settle down with my laptop and Bible to write the post God had laid on my heart for the day.  That was my mission.  And yet, even as I was typing away about being a light in a dark world, I couldn’t have guessed that God was preparing another mission for me. 

 

She was a sweet looking older woman who approached me, and I instantly realized had observed her earlier, chatting with two older men in suits. 

 

“I couldn’t help but notice,” she said with a smile as she came up to me.  “But is that a Bible on your lap?”

 

“Yes!” I replied, wonderingly. 

 

“That is the tiniest Bible I have ever seen!”  She exclaimed.  “How do you read out of that?”

 

“Well, it’s my travel Bible,” I explained, and we exchanged a few other pleasantries before she handed me a tract and began talking.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that we were not on the same page and that, in fact, she was a Jehovah’s Witness.  (You can read about another witnessing encounter with a Jehovah’s Witness here.)

 

Finally, she asked me point-blank, “What are you?”

 

The ultimate question, loaded with existential preconceptions.  I gulped a quick prayer before diving in. 

 

“I’m a Christian,” I said, and wasted no time in getting to the “good” stuff.  “I believe that Jesus is the only Son of God, and that He died and rose again to save me from my sins.”

 

She was nodding in agreement with me.  “Oh, yes, and you have it so right that Jesus is the Son of God, because so many people get that wrong!” 

 

I knew she was misunderstanding, although I wasn’t yet quite sure what she was misunderstanding, so I tried a different tack.  “Yes, but I believe in the Trinity, that Jesus is One with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.” 

 

Suddenly, she didn’t quite agree with me anymore, and a new door opened in our conversation as she said, “But you can’t find that in the Bible!” 

 

“No,” I agreed, “That word ‘Trinity’ isn’t in the Bible, but the Bible clearly teaches that God is three in one.”  At this point, my heart pounding with adrenaline, I scraped through my brain to try to remember a verse, any verse, that could help communicate this truth to this lady.  And you know what?  Thinking back, I can’t even remember which verse I took her to at that moment!

 

I do know that the passage I found after thumbing through my Bible, was not “The Perfect Verse for Empirically Proving the Truth of the Trinity.”

 

I know that the words I used did not follow the “Three Step Plan for Converting a Woman in a Tea Shop.” 

 

I know that the conversation that followed was not “The Benchmark Conversation You all Should Replicate with a Jehovah’s Witness.” 

 

But I do know that the Holy Spirit she was discounting as a “force” lives inside me and was guiding me, comforting me, helping me. 

 

I know that for about ten minutes I was able to discuss Jesus with a woman who used His name but missed the entire person of Jesus Christ our Lord! 

 

I was able to share with her from John 1:1-3

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”

To a woman who says that God the Father created the world, but Jesus did not, I imagine that verse was worldview-shaking. 

 

I also turned to one of my favorite chapters, John 17, and although the conversation took a different tangent before I could get to these verses, they would have been perfect to share as well:

“That [the believers] all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one.” {John 17:21-22}

As she prepared to leave, I told her I wanted to leave her with this thought, which I know the Holy Spirit impressed on my heart: “If you do not believe that Jesus Christ is one with God, and that while on earth He was fully God yet fully man, then you can’t believe that His redemption on the cross for all mankind was enough.”

 

“But it was enough!”  she insisted.

 

“Yes,” I agreed.  “But you can’t believe that unless you believe that Jesus was one with God.” 

 

With that, she left.  As soon as she did, I wasted no time in googling “verses to share with a Jehovah’s Witness about the Trinity.” 

 

I found all the verses I should have shared.  I found this excellent website, with all the information I should have known. 

 

And I encourage you to study to show yourself approved, and to be prepared.  But I also encourage you to seize those precious missions that God entrusts to you at the moment they occur and do one thing, perfectly prepared or not: talk about Jesus. 

 

Jesus, after all, is the stumbling block for all other religions. 

Jesus, after all, is my first love! 

And Jesus, after all, is the reason we share, not to prove how intellectually brilliant our crippling arguments are.  Thank goodness! 

 

So there I sat, my lavender tea cooling on the table, my Bible opened to John, my cursor blinking in the middle of the last word I had typed in my article on being a light in a dark world. 



Photo Credit

 

And I prayed.  For a nameless woman who seemed so lost.  For my own failings in sharing. 

And I gave thanks.  For a free morning and for three-prong laptop cords and for a library that opened an hour too late.  It was in that giving thanks that I began to realize that perhaps the library opened right on time for God to turn these tangled hairs of my morning into a thread of lace that was beautiful beyond my wildest dreams. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: Photo 1: Jonathan Kos-Read

                       Photo 2: Raquel

                       Photo 3: Marlana
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Lighthouse that Killed a Man

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The waves are so dark they are nearly black, and they tower above the rocks with their manes of foam.  They tower also above the half-submerged ship, dwarfing its captain.  The man has never before felt such a cold rush of fear as when that next big wave crashes hungrily over him.  And while fighting for his next breath, the captain doesn't know that the vague pillar he can just barely make out ahead is a lighthouse. 

 

If he could see the beacon, it would be a bulwark of hope, a promise of life, a rope to a drowning man.  But he cannot see any beacon, only the outline of the building itself, for the lighthouse light is not beaming out into the deathly waves, but is turned within.  It is spotlighting itself. 

 

Every nation in the world gazes with their last hope at the hill before them.  Brutality more cruel than they could ever imagine defeats them.  Uprisings more sinister than any yet seen divide them.  Debauchery more profane than one could even whisper of shames them.  And so they gaze at the hill, at the city on the hill, hoping for a love to beautify, hoping for a leader to unify, hoping for righteousness to purify.  But their hopes are crushed at the foot of that hill for, crane their necks as they will, they can see nothing.

 

The city, the great city upon which the eyes of the world were pinned, must still be there, but it cannot be seen.  The city is now invisible. 

 

The surgeon swipes the dripping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.  With bleary eyes, he examines his shining tools once again, laid out for the tenuous operation he is about to undertake.  He is ready, and strides across the silent cabin to sterilize his hands in the sink before he begins.  When he is finished, he turns to speak to the wife and daughter, to comfort them with what words of encouragement he can give.  But as he turns, the flickering light, the precious flame that is to be his right hand in the operation, is shadowed, and he catches sight of the daughter enclosing the candle in a sooty lantern.  “What are you doing?”  He cries, stopping just short of gripping her hand.  That candle—without it her father will die, and the surgeon is desperate. 

 

“Oh, don’t worry,” she replies calmly, shutting the lantern door.  “It is just that the light becomes more gorgeous when it glimmers from inside the lantern.  Don’t you think this light it is much more mysterious than the flame of the candle by itself?”  The surgeon narrows his eyes at her in horror.  Can she be serious?  The life-giving light is all but obliterated by the sooty lantern! 

 

The lighthouse spotlights itself.

The city set on the hill hides itself.

The candle is shrouded by its own soot. 

 

The lighthouse is so consumed by its own glory that it twists its whole purpose in being.

The city on the hill is so devoted to its own cause that it withdraws from its whole purpose in being. 

The candle in the house is so blinded by its own lack that it denies its whole purpose in being. 

 

Pride. 

 

I am a lighthouse to the men caught on the rocks of the world: but when I turn that God-given light on myself, men perish while my self-esteem is petted.

I am the city set on the hill to nations craving hope, but when I hide myself lest I be tainted by those polluted nations, men die while my ego remains elevated. 

I am the candle in the miserable, dark house of sickness, but when I deny my very identity for fear of my small flame not being enough, men bleed to death while my idol of self remains enthroned. 

 

Pride.  It's a matter of life and death. 

“Let your light so shine before men, they they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” ~Matthew 5:13-16

 


Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Photo Credit: Steve Wilson