On Being a Measuring Rod, and the Aftermath

...as hopelessness still strives to stake its claim.

My Lord, You prayed this for me, and I do believe it. " 'Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world...
...And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.' " John 17:24-26.
Funny, how easily these words of Your prayer roll off the reciter's tongue, that is until they are crushed and mixed under the pestle of Your sermon on the Mount--and its requirements for selflessness--in the realities of daily of life. Your particular glory brings pain in its revelation, and the love of Your Father is a love of pain and sacrifice. If this oneness You ask for us to have is not seen through a veil of pain, I question whether it has really been perceived at all.

And what more might we know of this One who loves from before the foundations of the earth--what is His nature beyond its love for us? Can we survive reaching out to touch that expanse? For He asks this of man:
"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements?...
...Who laid its cornerstone,
When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
"Or who shut in the sea with doors, (you dreamed of being assigned this job, my husband)
When it burst forth and issued from the womb;
When I made the clouds its garment,
And thick darkness its swaddling band; (and I have dreamed both of these.)
When I fixed My limit for it,
And set bars and doors;
When I said,
This far you may come, but no farther,
And here your proud waves must stop!"
Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
And caused the dawn to know its place,
That it might take hold of the ends of the earth,
And the wicked be shaken out of it?" Job 38:4, 7-1

What have I to say about being used to fix a limit? To be the tool by which You cause the dawn to know its place? Do I have the strength for such a call? This is the sifting of my soul.

"Why?" Few people dispute the power of this word to stand alone, even though it always requires a triggering event, and a recipient. Still we put it out there alone. We think that if we have the answer, we can endure. But I submit that knowing the answer can sometimes be even more devastating. It is said that when Christ was in His Gethsemane, an angel came to minister to Him. But after these ministrations, He was in even deeper anguish. I believe He got His why answered.

And this text from Job is partial answer for me too, I know, God. I understand.
Man is a precious tool in Your hand, a tool for refining, a tool for exposing the dross that is wickedness. Man is a precious tool in Your hand for sorting and measuring the length and breadth of the things that claim allegiance to You, but that must have their love's sincerity proven. How far will they go for me? How much will they sacrifice? And iron sharpens iron in the answering of it. For now, the proud see no benefit in allowing God to use them this way. Such a state of events feels degrading. It feels like an act of profound disrespect from God even as He demands respect from us. At such a time, it is easy to ask ourselves, how can God have so little care for me that He would seemingly arrange for my ill-will toward Him as He uses me ruthlessly to measure the self-sacrifice hopefully latent in another, and in so doing destroy my comfortable self-deception that I matter to this pressed-down brother that I love; that He would then tell me to forgive that one who hurts me, because He forgave me; forgive even now, while the hurt is still raw. How do I find the courage to seek out and then thank Him for the benefits of this moment, even as I recognize His ill-using of me in this breaking of my heart? Is this the cross I carry to follow my Jesus? It is too hard, God! Who could be so gracious? Maybe I could be so strong in a moment of crisis, as in feeling the call to step out and take a bullet for someone. But to "die daily" and maintain it like a chronic condition of life in a "vast array" of circumstances? I say again, who can be so gracious?

Yesterday and the day before, my eldest son and I took a road trip. The purpose of the trip in part was to present to the appropriate legal bodies and offices the evidence needed to reveal a clerical error on his driving record that resulted in a wrongfully suspended license. Five hours of driving we spent on a wild goose chase to take said record to a government office that proved to be the wrong office, all because we believed, once again, that a government official knew what she was talking about, knew what she was doing, as she attempted to interpret what we should do with the judge's ruling to vacate the ticket that suspended his license, what we should do in order to cleanse his record of wrongful points. Wasn't it a scribe, a clerk, a record-keeper for the government that caused our problem in the first place? Why should we expect competency now, oh foolish hopeful ones that we are. Now, it turns out we needed to go to another office, in Indianapolis, IN. We got back in the car. So, after driving the hours required to get to Springfield, IL, we turned around and headed back the way we came. (We rejected the recommendation of that clerk in the IL Sec. of State's office to "make the trip worthwhile" by making a visit the Lincoln Museum while we were in town anyway. It almost felt like a slap in the face, although she didn't mean it that way.)

I looked at the sky as we drove through those flat, unending cornfields while my son slept beside me. That sky was hung with clouds that looked unfinished. In fact, if that sky were a painted back-drop on some movie studio set, an observer would say, "What was the point of starting to paint those clouds if you weren't going to finish them? You can't use them like that. They just look slopped on there!" But there they were. Real clouds in a real sky. Why? Why is truth so often stranger than fiction? Why do our efforts to hang a measure of substance above our heads often seem futile, like visions unreal and yet pervasive?

And I am not the only one feeling the pointlessness of striving, striving to make things right, striving to be honorable under the sun. My husband endures this hardship, too. God, now I'm not just talking about you, I am praying to You. Give us the strength to persevere. Give us the heart to love unconditionally, immeasurably, no matter what hangs over us. If ones around us are being tested and falter and can not love us Your way, then gird us to love enough for all. And, we acknowledge that only You can enable us to fulfill Your command to love those who would make themselves our enemies--in this case, those who would under-realize and therefore under-prioritize their power over our lives. You know, God, that in three days time we will most likely lose our car and thus our credit rating and therefore our last hope of turning this option to buy into a real mortgage so that we can really own this home we felt like You called us to buy. How are we to make sense of this situation? Did You put us in this house only so that You could measure the world around us as it responds to our attempts to occupy and keep it? How are we to feel about the fact that You have left us with no safety net, and all so that You can assess whether our desperation will be recognized by others, hopefully eliciting a response from those You are measuring? How do we feel about them and You, as we watch while You put before them choices that empower them to make or break our lives on this plane, that this is a power You have granted them over us, and we can do nothing but pray and love and believe. And if that "enemy" is not a stranger but someone more like a brother, then the anguish felt as these higher spiritual realities play themselves out, well it is all the deeper. How easy to look at this sky You have hung so wide and unavoidably over us and call out to it, "Your substance looks fake! Why are you up there?!?"

Choices under such a sky are at a premium. The sky of course has its own reasons for being the way it is, reasons that we can't know deeply, ourselves being earth bound. The only real choice that can be made in such circumstances--and I mentioned this the other day--is the choice of how to pray. And indeed this prayer has been made: that no matter what the personal cost to us, may the skies all around us thrive and become beautiful again, and this not just because of their place over us, but even in the lofty parts unseen. In fact, the answer to that prayer was given even before it was prayed, even before the return to home was an accomplished fact--the home that even yet may prove so temporary. For as my son and I drove home last night, and when we were almost home, the most brilliant and beautiful sunset shone down upon us. It was so beautiful that my son called his girlfriend to recommend she go outside and take pictures of the ripples of gold and peach and maroon swelling across its blue dunes.

Still that answer in the sunset--is it not just something fanciful for the moment? Who (but me) claims that all will be well based on such a "sign" as this? And is it not a sign for the sky itself? What is that to me, for our own plight doesn't change. We still need the answer to the question: where do we turn to beg for help as justice proves itself over and over to be locked down tight? Where do we turn? To You, God? But were You not the one who arranged for these various measures to be taken in the first place, measures that exposed us to so many possible harms, measures that set us up for potential ruin on almost every front? Dare we trust that we matter more to You than we do to this cloud that surrounds us? Dare we believe You will help us to be content to let go of even more of what is temporal, eating the invisible food, sleeping in the invisible bowers?

You give and take away. So it is said. But again, why? If You only give in order to take away, what does that say about the meaning of higher love? And if a heart is mature enough to cooperate with such a love, even clinging to hope and faith when the love is driven sacrificially to the point of love-blindness, will You even then make a perceptible picture of the puzzle pieces You've scattered? For this, I pray, O God, my Redeemer.