Another "break-up poem"?

This poem begins with a whimsical adjective for love: lighthearted.  It is.  It is the stuff of dreams, romantic comedies, fairy tales, and Disney movies.

But quickly this poem sets up a more telling description.  Love is a city that began with lighthearted doors, so easy to enter.  But "long ago" someone entered who was "heinous and eerie".  The poem mainly chronicles the havoc performed by this long gone love.  The domain of love is now surrounded by "high wandering walls [and] guarded day and night for none to enter."

This havoc was heaped upon the man, not just an abstract idea.  He is described now as "a man of an empty shell."  The speaker is changed, cursed in bitterness, seeming never to return.  

Another break-up poem, eh?  Is it cliche?  I think there is a reason there are so many break-up poems (and this one, by the way, is actually well-written!).  

When we first open to love, it seems like fun, something that older people have and we want it too.  Eventually, you find that there is much more going on here.  Love is ultimately about being known and validated.  We want someone to see us, truly see us and like us.  Eventually, in long-term relationships we want them to care for us, but we want to find someone who enjoys us, finds us interesting, someone who will find delight in our self.  

This is not as cutesy as it sounds.  All of us, if we are honest, are painfully aware of the not-so-great aspects of ourselves.  If we truly look around, we see that we are a tiny being in a world of many other faces and in an expansive universe.  We are like an unfettered astronaut floating in a dark nothing.  

Then for someone to say, "I like you," the world shifts.  We connect.  We are alive.  

And therein lies the danger. 

Our doors can be so lighthearted that we let anyone in.  This can mean that we date the wrong people because we are desperate (whether we realize it or not).  Or it can mean that we date someone who seems like a good choice, and we let them too far into our lives emotionally or physically, and then, when we find out that they aren't the person for you (which is, after all, the point of dating), so much destruction is left that could have been avoided.

Still, as one of my favorite artists, Pierce Pettis, once wrote, "To reach for the roses we must feel the thorns as well."  Love is worth the danger.  Still, we can build good walls.  Let the Father help you build them, not fear, or bitterness.  Let Him be the King of your city of love.  He wants to walk you through the pain and the joys that love can bring.

"Broken" Student Poetry

"Broken"
Heed she who knocks on love's lighthearted doors
That they estrange the face of deceiver's lore
No scurry upon thine quick thought ears
For, beloved, you may be by love's general here.
But forewarned be she who knocks on the door
Considering love's high wandering walls
Guarded day and night for none to enter,
But should you succeed a prize beholds in the center.
Twas long ago that one entered this city,
She last who sung love's great song,
Was heinous and eerie
But the walls, they know of a day they were torn of concept to feel
by none other than she who once dwelled in its frontier.
She made quick haste for what was thought of to be love
And the walls lowered down but none presented was such
Passion senseless passion breached these walls
And corrupted the general's innocent thoughts.
She likewise broke him as well
Making him a man of an empty shell.
He took what pieces he had left and put them together
But then he never noticed himself again in the mirror
She changed him from the pieces she took,
Yet she doesn't care nor even dares look.
He now knows where's a mask that can't be removed,
For this man's identity is not his own.
He may tell you, lie like a serpent,
But really underneath he drowns on the surface.
Life's shortened sword gives him temptation
Just to let it all go with an open invitation.
This man's fate might be sealed you see,
For the man with the mask is none other than me.

Labels

Tonight is my first high school reunion.  I have not seen the majority of my classmates in 20 years

when we were all 17 or 18 years old.  As adulty or mature as I've gotten there's still the lingering fear of: being labeled.

My wife recently has gotten a label from some friends at church.  They call her "the Mayor" because it seems like everyone knows her one way or another.  The title is given affectionately due to Beth's love of greeting and connecting people at church, but it was met with a little apprehension on her part.  Even though it's good-natured, it feels unsettling to get a label.

Last year my wife helped coordinate her high school reunion.  Good friends threw old labels her way.  Again, it was done jokingly, but it felt frustrating to her.

As I head into my reunion tonight, many of us are going to be taking our old labels of each other with us.  What else do we have?  The only memory most of us carry of each other is from a four-year span in our teenage years.

What is it about labels that cut so sharply?  Predominantly, I think it comes from our longing to be known.

We are complex.  We have so many desires, motivations, idiosyncrasies, passions, triumphs, failures, experiences, histories.  The most aching hunger in our souls is for someone to fully know us.

Life, however, makes this painfully difficult and we all go through periods, some longer than others, of loneliness.  This pain can be exacerbated by then being labeled by others.  To be labeled is to feel this pronouncement: "You are this and nothing else.  You are 2D without distinction."

This is the beauty of Father's gift of relationship.  He gives us family to know us.  We pursue friends
and spend time with them hoping to be known and enjoyed.  Many of us pursue a spouse by dating for this very reason: for someone who will both know us fully and love us fully.

Yet, we all know the above relationships can sometimes have their share of labeling as well.  There is a rock, though, a fortress, that will know us fully.  The Father.  He knows us intimately, every joy, every struggle, every deep thought, every hope, every lust, every anger, every dream.  We are fully known-even the thing you are afraid of-and still He walks up and embraces us in full sight.

Because I have this kind of Father, and because He's given me a wife who loves me so much like He does, I pray that I can go to my reunion and, despite my fear of being labeled, I can extend a heart to my former classmates that lets them be who they are, seeks to get to know them again in our few hours together, and will take pleasure in having a chance to reconnect.  Amen.

Love the Author

A few days ago I received a letter from an organization called Answers in Genesis. 

 The president and CEO of this organization and the founder of the Creation Science museum in Cincinnati, Ken Ham, wrote in the letter of his vision to build a recreation of the ark based on the specifications of Genesis and make it an attraction along with "a large complex of associated museums, theaters, and amenities, including a first-century village, Tower of Babel, aviary, and Walled City."  The price tag: 29.5 million dollars.

Ken Ham states, "I really don't think there's a better way to reach America with biblical truth than by building our Ark Encounter."  Really?  I can't even imagine Jesus saying that sentence, let alone inspiring it.  And yet, Ham regards this vision as a "God-inspired mission."

Of course, it's easy to see this Ark Encounter as a wacky idea, but here's what concerned me.  Clearly Ham has a heart to reach the lost, but what is His gospel?  For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son?  That's in there, but it's only secondary to Ham's main focus: the Bible is true.  

Here are a few quotes of his:

"your most important jobs as parents is to teach your children the truth of God's Word and the message of salvation through Jesus Christ."

The Creation museum "is a testimony to the truth of God's Word."

He wants to "draw more non-believers here so they, too, could experience the truth of God's Word and its life-changing gospel message."

"we will be able to point millions of people to the truth of God's Word and to Christ."

"What a powerful outreach to teach millions about God's Word and the message of salvation!"

"it's crucial that we reach every man, woman, and child we can with the truth of God's Word."

"so much of our nation is in rebellion against God, His authority, and His Word."

"the Ark Encounter will be a bold reminder that God's Word is true."

"Carrying your wooden key chain is another simple way you can share the truth of God's Word."

The actual gospel is in some of these statements, but it seems secondary to the Gospel of the Bible.  Have we become Bible deists?  For God so loved the world that He gave us the Bible?  Repent and believe the Bible?  Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will let you read my Bible?  

Hundreds of years of early Jesus-followers turned their world upside down (and brought down the Roman Empire) without a Bible.  They experienced God, felt His love, found forgiveness, were enlivened by the Holy Spirit, loved their neighbors, gave them the hope of the Messiah, even clarified the Trinity without the Bible as we know it.  The creeds don't list the Bible as a prerequisite to orthodoxy either.  

This is no criticism of the Bible.  Instead, it is a criticism of the place that it has become in our faith.  We have a picture of my wife and I on our wedding day on the wall of our bedroom.  We don't have a picture of the pastor.  He was a vehicle, a means, a gift, one I'm glad we had, but I don't give him credit for my marriage.  I don't teach my daughters that the way to a successful marriage is to find the right pastor.  Of course, the analogy is incomplete, but the point is that we can miss the heart by focusing on the veins.

 

For so long, I assumed that when Scripture talked about God's Word, it meant the Bible when, in actuality, it meant either God communicating with His people or Jesus Himself.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The Word came and lived among us.  The B-I-B-L-E is still the book for me, but when I stand alone on the Word of God, I want it to be my Savior, not the book.  

Why Me?

I found this little blurb in a devotional book from the 1930s:

A child of God was dazed by the variety of afflictions which seemed to make her their target.

Walking past a vineyard in the rich autumnal glow she noticed the untrimmed appearance and the luxuriant wealth of leaves on the vines, that the ground was given over to a tangle of weeds and grass, and that the whole place looked utterly uncared for; and as she pondered, the Heavenly Gardener whispered so precious a message that she would fain pass it on:

"My dear child, are you wondering at the sequence of trials in your life?  Behold that vineyard and learn of it.  The gardener ceases to prune, to trim, to harrow, or to pluck the ripe fruit only when he expects nothing more from the vine during that season.  It is left to itself, because the season of fruit is past and further effort for the present would  yield no profit.  Comparative uselessness is the condition of freedom from suffering.  Do you then wish me to cease pruning your life?  Shall I leave you alone?"  And the comforted heart cried, "No!"
-Homera Homer-Dixon

And every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit."  John 15:2