Yielding, and the Search for a Voice
How strange that we have to go in search of our voices. How did the layering of falseness become such a daily routine? Trying to write about this, I want to throw up my hands and simply ask what life is, all over again. It's like trying to stay dry in a constant rain. A constant drag against the truth fights us, an entropy of spirit demanding that we stand up and fight for our very lives each day. Now in the middle of a long read of the Bible (today was Job), there's nothing else to call it but sin. How stark that sounds to our postmodern ears, how offensive, how plain nuts. Sin presupposes a goodness that is literally out of this world, as if there really were a gold standard of ethics, morality, and behavior. Our world has effectively rejected such a notion, yet romantically, we hold to the idea that "the truth will set us free."
When I sit down to write or to blog, or even to have a conversations with one of my friends, I hardly know where to begin. There is so much on my mind, as I'm sure there is on yours. Let's see...a laundry list of topics to address: yielding to God; the worth of the small act of service vs. the achievements of cultural (read artistic) excellence; the hard work of claiming the identity God is wanting to give you to be and how that relates to the idea of "death to self"; the need for the church to be both emotionally and intellectually honest; the tension between the artist's need to be both prophet and priest; the role of the artist in the life of kingdom of God; how to make the economics of artistry work without falling prey to the materialism of the culture. How to simply live and tell and be the truth.
Job names God a mystery, and correctly discerns that all is not as it seems, that God does not always balance the books on this side, that there is much about reality that we cannot see. Which begs the question of trust, which of course is at the heart of all my meanderings.
Who do I trust? And will I trust the God of Abraham, Joseph, Job, and Jesus? Not will I believe in Him as existent and holy, nor that I will believe that He will answer my prayers as I want Him to. The question is do I live and breathe as if He knows me, made me, and understands my heart's deepest desires in ways that I can only touch the edges of? Will I trust Him to lead me through the times when there is not a shred of evidence that He is here? Will I find the absense of God to be pregnant with His presence, with memory and hope as my anchors, saying finally, with Job, "Though you slay me, yet will I trust you?"
Yield. That's the big word in my heart and mind these days. I wish I could say that I have, and it is a finished question. I asked someone yesterday, "How does the process of yielding work?" My friend just smiled and pointed me to Jacob wrestling with God at the river Jabbock, Paul's stunning encounter with light on the road to Damascus, and the various other responses of saints and sinners through the ages. There is no one path to the yielding, he said, and therein lies Paul's exhortation to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
So the working out of salvation and the finding of the voice may well be one and the same, seeing as how God and my relationship with Him is at the center of each process. Trust, yielding, and courage to live the truth, to truly act into each day the passions of our hearts. Pray for your family, your friends, and all those who have touched your life, asking God to teach us all to yield...and to have the courage to then speak what we hear.
...may we learn sooner than later...
9:25:20 AM
