Beauty in the Eye of the Creator

Someone pointed out to me recently that she'd noticed how prone I'd become to negativity and self-pity. I had to mentally take a step back. I would normally consider myself to be a happy person. There are so many things I genuinely find joy in. But this hasn't been an easy year, and I hadn't realized how easily I'd fallen into a pattern of complaint and anxiety and self-centeredness. I had lost sight of the One who is the source of our joy. The poem I am going to share with you is one that I started months ago, but as I pulled it out to finish in the last couple weeks, it turned into a conscious effort to see things differently.

My quote for today is the title of one of my favorite films, 

"Life is Beautiful." 

For those of you who haven't seen this movie, DO! Don't let the fact that it is in Italian deter you. Believe me, it is well worth the effort. "Life is Beautiful" is hilarious and tender, though the ending is hard. I won't give away that ending. Suffice it to say that the movie is the story of a father's love for his son, how he protects him from fear in a concentration camp by pretending the whole thing is a game.

And the little boy looking back, describes it this way, "This is the sacrifice my father made. This was his gift to me."

What the movie suggests is true. Life IS beautiful, but not because we are being shielded from the harsh truth. There's no doubt about it, life is also hard, but we have a God who is above those trials, who promises us a future beyond this damaged life, and who is even willing to walk with us in our present times of need.

It is often said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I believe that's true, but it depends less on differing opinions and more on whether you intend to see beauty in the first place. There is beauty all around us and of all different kinds. Let us rejoice in what God has created and in what He has redeemed.

A Study of Beauty

The mountain peak in sunset dressed,

The cheerful river at play or rest,

A tranquil wood when thunder sleeps,

The calming rain when heaven weeps:

Beauty tried and beauty true.

Beauty neither old nor new.

The intricacy of a spider’s toil,

A butterfly’s tongue, the slender coil,

The veins of a leaf, like stained glass green,

The infant plant within a bean:

There is beauty still so small

That most cannot be seen at all.

On forgotten moons the wastelands lie

Beneath the stars that crown the sky,

The rich expanse of the Milky Way,

The emptiness without night or day:

Beauty too vast to comprehend

Spans the Universe, end to end.

The smile that’s worth a thousand thoughts,

That comforts the heart with misery fraught,

The embrace that forgives an angry word,

The ear that listened, more than heard:

Beauty is a three-strand cord

To walk alone we cannot afford.

The joining of two lives as one,

The aspirations of life begun,

To make a house his castle grand,

And growing old while hand in hand:

This beauty beyond horizons lies.

I wait for One whose plans are wise.

The design of suds across a plate,

The delight of a sock who has found his mate,

The valor of a dust bunny chase,

The mirth of dirt that streaks the face:

Beauty often smells like bleach,

A beauty never far from reach.

The mischief made with food or dirt,

A “Jackson Pollock” on his shirt,

The nose that does not cease to drip,

The sticky hand with tightening grip:

A beauty I have yet to know,

A sprouting of the seeds you sow.

The misused life, the damaged heart,

The dream once sure that fell apart,

Still this by God can be renewed,

With grace’s beauty thus imbued.

Imperfect beauty fills our earth,

Excepting one unblemished birth.

The wounded hand, the heaving chest,

One Son by wrath of God oppressed.

The lonely tomb, the weight of sorrow,

Until the wonder of tomorrow:

Beauty in each drop of blood

That fell unheeded to the mud.

The beauty of a tombstone rolled,

A God who every vow upholds,

Because of this His bride receives

A beauty where no soul can grieve.

Till then He shows us beauty here.

If grand or humble, hold it dear.

The Checkered Life

The Cat in the Hat was the first book I fell in love with, the first book I memorized before I could read. It has held a special place in my heart ever since. I shared it with my siblings before they learned to read, and I expect I will read it to my children if God blesses me with a family. But I find that the longer I live, the more I envy "Sally and I" in the story. The Cat put those two children through quite a bit, with his wild games and the antics of Thing One and Thing Two. By the end of it all, the house was in shambles. And I often react much more like the fish than the children when things in my life get turned upside down. Even the fish was lucky, though. The Cat came in with his "clean-up machine" and put everything right in a matter of minutes. It was as if he hadn't been there at all. The children's mother never knew any different.

Real life isn't like that. When something goes wrong, when we sin, when we are hurt by other's sin, when circumstances beyond our control sap time and resources and energy, there is not a magic "clean-up machine," no rewind button. This angers me, because I can't seem to give up the idea that everything can be fixed if only we try hard enough. I want to "make it better," to stop the hurt I see wearing on myself and those I love. But, there are things I will never be able to fix. 

What then? Do we despair? Today I came across a quote from Charles Dickens, a favorite author of mine, that I think provides interesting insight into trials, regret, and life that is never what we think it will be.

"To remember happiness which cannot be restored, is pain, but of a softened kind. Our recollections are unfortunately mingled with much that we deplore, and with many actions which we bitterly repent; still in the most chequered life I firmly think there are so many little rays of sunshine to look back upon...and memory, however sad, is the best and purest link between this world and a better."

This is taken from Nicholas Nickleby, a book I only started reading, but I know the story. It is spoken between travelers on a journey, just before the title character's life will take a turn that he hardly expected. It will all come out alright in the end, but there will be trials and tragedy before that point. In a way, this quote captures the theme of the book.

It captures life pretty well, too. Life is a strange blend of joy and pain. The two are often inseparable. And the lost joys we recall, the unfulfilled hopes, the sins and regrets, the irreparable parts of life, serve to remind us that our entire world is irreparable. So damaged is this world, that God will one day exchange it for a new one. We were once irreparable. Until Christ fixed what we could not. He renewed us, though we were decrepit and dead. Without him, we would indeed despair. 

There is something better coming, and this perishable world reminds us that we were made for an imperishable one.

Dickens is not a Christian author, though his work often expresses Christian themes. His sentiment made me think of this Sovereign Grace hymn.

"The sun beams on behind the clouds

"And in the dark still grace abounds

"All is well because of God's great love

"The road of disappointment runs

"Where unseen mercies wait for us

"And all is well because of God's great love."

Think of a checkered hillside in the interplay of light and shadow on a cloudy day. When we walk that hillside, we are sometimes in the shadow and sometimes in the light, but God is with us all the way. It is God's love makes this life liveable. 

I often cannot fix, but I can hope. I can remember the joys that I had for a little while. I can thank God for the joys that I have now. And I can wait for the day when nothing will mar the joy of seeing my Savior's face.

The Comb That Was Mightier Than the Sword

My dad is someone blessed with particularly vivid dreams at night. Often populated by spaceships and time travel, any number of them could have been an episode from the Twilight Zone or Star Trek. I find myself fascinated and sometimes even envious when he tells me about all the interesting things that happened to him while he was sleeping. 

The other day, he related a dream to me that was not so much exciting as it was convicting. He dreamt that he was standing in line at the grocery store. In front of him was a mother and her little girl, about six or seven years old. As they were standing there, the little girl pulled a comb out of her mother's purse and began hitting my dad on the leg. When he asked her why she was doing that, she said,

"I'm protecting you from a life of comfort."

Now, I'm not the kind of person who puts very much stock in dreams, and neither is my dad. But, I thought this one was particularly interesting, counterintuitive, and even uncanny. It gave me pause, and I am starting to realize how important comfort is, in America, and in my own life particularly.

The idea that we need protection from comfort is not a new one, but very foreign in our culture. In Deuteronomy 6:10-12 Moses warns the Israelites about the dangers of forgetting God when they have become comfortable in the Promised Land:

"Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you, great and splendid cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you eat and are satisfied, then watch yourself, that you do not forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery."

And in 1 John 2:16, the Apostle John warns his readers to beware of what the world has to offer:

"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world."

It is not that the physical, mental and emotional comforts this world has to offer are inherently bad. We ought to enjoy those things with which God has blessed us. On the other hand, when we begin to put to much value in worldly comforts that are passing away, they take our focus off the One in whom we should find value and comfort. In those circumstances, a trip to the threshing floor would do us good. 

To add to my father's dream, I have experienced something over the last several days (though a very mild example) that has really made me reconsider my attitude toward comfort and pleasure.

For health reasons, I have decided to give up wheat, dairy and cane sugar for a month. For someone like me, who could eat pasta and ice cream every day of the week, it seemed like a big deal at first. But I also recognize that I have plenty of friends who have much more serious food restrictions that they have dealt with their entire lives. And even more, there are so many people around the world who are lucky to get a bowl of rice in the morning. I may not be able to eat my favorite foods right now, but I still have a fridge full of nutritious and delicious options, and that is exactly the point.

It may sound like the argument to get a little kid to eat his spinach--"Now, you remember that there are children starving in Africa..."

But, I'm not saying that what I can and cannot eat is really the issue. It's not that I can't get a scone from Starbucks or have a cupcake at an office party. The issue underneath it all is this: How much stock do I I put in those things, or anything else that makes me "happy."

Ours is a culture based on rights. The right to free speech, free press, free elections, etc. We have taken that idea much too far, demanding that we deserve to be comfortable. If traffic is jammed, we complain. We deserve a stress-free commute. If the wi-fi is down, we complain. We deserve our favorite shows on Netflix. If Burger King gets our order wrong, we complain. We deserve a hamburger without pickles. And I say this knowing that I am guilty of all of it.

So what is the secret to contentment if it isn't comfort? We know that those in our society who have the most physical comforts are often the least content. Christ promises not physical comfort, but eternal comfort. And that comes not from knowing that heaven will be beautiful and pain-free, but from knowing that we have been made forever righteous before God. We have worth because when God sees us, He sees His Son. We have worth, because we are His children, even though we don't deserve it. We are not the sum of our possessions here on earth.

It was Paul who said it best, "...for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."

A Crash Course in Perspective

About a month ago, my dad came into the kitchen and poured some water into a glass. He then called my sisters in one at a time and asked them a simple question, "Is this glass half full or half empty?"

The first walked in, studied the glass for a minute and replied, "It's half empty."

The second one walked in and promptly answered, "It's half full." But then she stopped and her eyes grew wide. "Wait a minute!" She ran to tell my other sister, "It's both!"

I couldn't help smiling at this exchange, that my sisters so innocently illustrated the point of the "glass half full/half empty" analogy. It all depends on your perspective.

The idea of perception and perspective has been on my mind quite often recently. Much of it is related to several life circumstances where emotions tend to run very high and where trusting God in uncharted territory might be difficult.

I can't see past my own nose sometimes. In the midst the unknown, I want so much to be in control. I focus only on the here and now, and the narrower my perceptions become, the less room there is for God and His ever-working hand.

I think what I've been experiencing is much like a roller coaster. To the observer, roller coasters never appear to be moving very fast. The drops do not seem as steep. Take a step back and you can see the ride as a whole in relation to everything around it. It always ends by coming safely into the station. Riding a roller coaster is a very different experience, though. Every turn is unexpected, every drop is terrifying. We see only a few feet of track ahead of us, nothing more.

And so I come to today's quote. It's actually an entire poem, written by Corrie Ten Boom, expressing the difference between our perspective in the midst of life and God's perspective, who sees the entire sprawling plan of history as one coherent picture.  

My life is but a weaving 

Between my God and me. 

I cannot choose the colors 

He weaveth steadily. 

Oft' times He weaveth sorrow; 

And I in foolish pride 

Forget He sees the upper 

And I the underside. 

Not 'til the loom is silent 

And the shuttles cease to fly 

Will God unroll the canvas 

And reveal the reason why. 

The dark threads are as needful 

In the weaver's skillful hand 

As the threads of gold and silver 

In the pattern He has planned 

He knows, He loves, He cares; 

Nothing this truth can dim. 

He gives the very best to those 

Who leave the choice to Him.

I forget that God sees everything, that His plan has already been written. It's like Philip Yancey's book, Where is God When it Hurts? 

In the last chapter, he says, "You can go to a ten-foot blackboard and draw a line from one side to another. Then, make a one-inch dot in that line. That dot, to a microscopic germ cell undulating in its midst, would seem enormous. The cell could spend its lifetime exploring the dot. But if you, a human, step back to view the entire blackboard, you'll be struck by the hugeness of the ten-foot line compared to the tiny dot the germ cell calls home."

We are all like that germ cell. When I question God's reasons for the circumstances in my life, it is not because He ought to be questioned, but because I am not looking at things with the right perspective. Just today, a friend of mine mentioned the Casting Crowns song "Already There," and I think it is very fitting: "When I'm lost in the mystery, to You my future is a memory, cause You're already there..."

How has my life become a crash course in perspective? I think it is the tough circumstances, or those that may not be tough, just uncertain, that remind me who I am and who God is. It is enough for me to know that we see "in a mirror dimly," and not expect to see more, not yet. I can be content, as one bound by time and space, to rest with confidence in the care of One who is bound by neither. 

For this reason, when someone asks me if the glass is half empty or half full, I ought to instead respond with David, "My cup overflows." And this, because God is the One who fills it.

The Story of a Duel

"Why is it not doing away with them?" I cried, outraged. "If you systematically ruin somebody, and take any possibility of earning a living from them, they must surely finally starve. Is that not so? I call it doing away with someone when you deliberately allow them to starve, don't you?"

"Calm down," said Holz, "nobody starves in Germany. If a Jewish shopkeeper is really ruined, he will get social security payments." The terrible thing was that he said that quite seriously, without the slightest sneer. We parted in a hostile mood.

-Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler 

I am doing something a little different with my blog today. Why? Because, I have just finished reading a remarkable book, and half the pleasure in the discovery an articulate, insightful, and (sometimes) painfully honest author is being able to share it with others.

For several years I have been a student of World War Two history, largely because the novel I am writing is a WWII story. During that time I have collected a small library of firsthand accounts, biographies and history books all dealing with 1940s in general and Nazi Germany in particular. I have been trying to understand how an entire nation could have been duped into following one man bent on taking over the world and systematically destroying entire races. Even 70 years later, it is a puzzle we may never be able to solve completely, except by simply citing the depravity of man.

Last summer, my mom visited a used book sale and brought me a small paperback that had caught her eye: Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffner. Neither of us had ever heard of the author before or this little book that had been written in 1939 but published posthumously in 2000. Haffner was born in 1907 and came of age in a country that was just beginning to fall under Hitler's spell. He emigrated in 1938 and began working on what would become his first book (though the last to be published). Defying Hitler is part historical account, part memoir, part philosophy, part confession, part tragedy and a rare view of Germany by a German who himself just barely escaped being swept away in an ideological maelstrom.

What I found remarkable about Haffner's account was his attempt to explain something inexplicable. From his perspective, everything about post-WWI Germany conditioned his generation to accept the Nazis. He speaks of growing up in the midst of the Great War, when he and his young friends lived for the daily army bulletins and the back-and-forth, chess-like movements of the troops: 

"For a schoolboy in Berlin, the war was something very unreal; it was like a game. There were no air raids and no bombs. There were the wounded, but you saw them only at a distance, with picturesque bandages... It was a dark, mysterious game and its never-ending, wicked lure eclipsed everything else, making daily life seem trite. It was addictive, like roulette and opium. My friends and I played it all through the war: four long years, unpunished and undisturbed. It is this game, and not the harmless battle games we organized in the streets and playgrounds nearby, that has left its dangerous mark on all of us."

This addiction to sensationalism followed Haffner and his friends into their teen and young adult years, when one of the most "sensational" men in history would be vying for their loyalty. Haffner describes the advent of Hitler with uneasiness, but also points out that the Nazi takeover did not seem like a violent revolution to most people. Daily life went on, basically unchanged. People were born, went to school, fell in love, worked, played, died, etc. And when they finally began to feel the grip of the Nazis tightening around them, the cloud of fear hanging over them, they chalked up the additional restrictions (the atrocities even) as necessary to keeping the peace.

While Haffner claimed he could see the Nazis for who they truly were, he was not looking for a fight, as he explains in his introduction.

"This is the story of a duel. It is a duel between two very unequal adversaries: an exceedingly powerful, formidable, and ruthless state and an insignificant, unknown private individual... The individual is...ill prepared for the onslaught. He was not born a hero, still less a martyr. He is just an ordinary man with many weaknesses, having grown up in vulnerable times. He is nevertheless stubbornly antagonistic. So he enters into the duel--without enthusiasm, shrugging his shoulders, but with a quiet determination not to yield."

But he almost did yield, teetered on the edge of the precipice and stepped back. Haffner was training to be a lawyer. When the time came for him to take their government's equivalent of a bar exam, he and his class gathered at a barracks town. What was meant merely to prepare them for the test was turned into a Nazi conditioning camp by the state. They learned how to march and shoot, to sing Nazi songs, and to enjoy the terrible convenience of being too busy to think about what they were doing. 

Haffner was not looking for a duel. Except for a few angry outbursts at his classmates, he tried mostly to slip under the radar. It worked...until that which he had tried to avoid came so close that he could feel its breath on his face, and he was unprepared for it.

I wanted to share all of this with you, because I thought Defying Hitler was a very interesting book, a good window into one of the most troubling societies of the 20th Century and a telling commentary on the nature of man. There also may be some lessons for us here. 

Now, I am not a political person. I have never been. But even I am tempted to make some comparisons to what this man experienced and what Christians in this country can experience. I'll keep it brief and leave the discussion to those who know what they're talking about. What struck me was something Haffner discovered: Complacency doesn't work. That applies to any society, any moral choice. If we simply try to avoid conflict, then conflict catches us unawares, and we realize that simply for the sake of keeping the peace or saving our skin, we've already taken too many steps in the wrong direction.

Take it from someone who's struggled all her life with avoiding conflict (for the wrong reasons), who is too easily tempted by the path of least resistance: comfort zones can get pretty cramped. But, we have a Father who has given us all the tools to combat evil in this world and whose Word rings like a clarion against the lulling drone of modern liberalism and tolerance for every deviant whim. His is a cause worth fighting for.

A Life for a Life

"It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." 

-Sydney Carton's last words in A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

Think back about the best story you've ever read. What was so intriguing about it? How did it affect you? Some prefer the suspense of a thriller or the emotional rewards of a love story. There are mysteries that cater to the reader's intellect and tales of heroism that restore our belief in chivalry and honor. 

When I was in school a professor of mine asked our class what most affected us in a story. The answer was different for everyone, but I knew immediately what mine would be. Nothing will make me weep, nothing inspires me in a story like watching someone give themselves, their very lives for the life of another. This is why I included the above quote from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Against the backdrop of the French Revolution, the novel tells of dissolute lawyer Sydney Carton and his love for Lucie Manette, and woman of whom he is not worthy. In the end, Carton takes the place of Lucie's husband at the guillotine, giving his life so that she can be with the man she loves. It was this act of selflessness that turned a high school English assignment into one of my favorite works of literature.

I think of books and movies that have particularly moved me, and most of them include the sacrifice of a major character. Why is that? From a secular perspective, self-sacrifice makes no sense. According to evolutionists, survival of the fittest is the guiding rule in nature. Was the person saved by the death of another worth more than the person who laid down their life? If this life is all there is, what a "waste" to purposefully give it away.

And yet, A Tale of Two Cities is literally the bestselling novel of all time. Films like Life is Beautiful win Oscars. (That one in particular I encourage you to watch if you haven't seen it.) Medal of Honor winners and fallen soldiers are lauded as heroes (and rightly so). But why are they heroes? 

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that before humans were dying for each other, this is exactly what God did for us. 

(Note: Please do not misunderstand me. By bringing up A Tale of Two Cities, I am not trying to compare the drunkard Sydney Carton to our Lord. But if we value the story of a sinner giving his life for another sinner, how much more the truth that the Sinless One gave His life for a world of sinners?)

And think that this sacrifice was made by an omniscient God, who knew from eternity past what humanity would cost Him. The lyrics of the song "Mystery," sung by Selah, never cease to amaze me:

"God predestined that His Son would die, and He still created man."

Just ponder that for a moment. Words fail me. 

This is what our Lord did for us. But so much more than anyone else who has even given their life, Christ died, bore the physical pain and the soul-crushing separation from His Father. Then He took His heel and ground the serpent's head into the dirt. He sent the stone rolling back from the mouth of the tomb. He lives. "O death, where is thy victory. O death, where is thy sting?"

The Song of a Galilean Fisherman

I wrote this poems several years ago. I was reminded of it tonight and would like to share it with you. We remember today the crucifixion of our Lord, and we remember the fact that the ones who condemned Jesus to death, who denied ever having known Him, could have been us. We are, in fact, just as guilty of blasphemy and denial, and yet that horrific death on the cross paid our penalty. Remember with me the remorse of Peter and the grace that was shown to him. The same grace has been shown to us.

The Song of a Galilean Fisherman

He spoke in manner plain and true.

Why would I not believe?

He spoke because He ever knew.

Perhaps He ever grieved.

But in my false and foolish might

I heeded Him, aghast.

Of all I had on mind that night,

Denial was the last.

I thought, “No doubt I’ll prove Him wrong,

“As friend to show my worth.”

My sword rang out in jarring song.

An ear fell to the earth.

My action done, He firmly chid:

An unforeseen reply.

To put my sword away He bid,

Lest by it should I die.

So close about our meager band,

Came priests and foreign men

 And though a few did by Him stand,

Our numbers dwindled then.

Like one who sees himself as brave

The roguish band I traced.

They reached the house and I, a knave,

The glowing courtyard faced.

I thought to only warm my hands

Outside, while He was tried.

The slave girl came with her demands.

And it was then I lied.

To think that I had been so bold

To doubt He knew my heart.

The rooster crowed as He foretold.

I went a stood apart.

I wept as I have never wept

Before or ever will.

My soul as to a corner crept.

I felt both weak and ill.

But I remembered how He said

That He had prayed for me.

I thought of how He healed the dead

And set the sinner free.

If He could work such works for throngs

That daily would implore,

Could He not cover all my wrongs

Notice them no more?

The evening next I understood

That this is why He died.

My awful guilt was gone for good.

‘Twas then for joy I cried.