"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

Now You See Me movie

My wife and I just watched Now You See Me.  What a great movie!  If you're looking for a fun and

suspenseful thriller check this one out about four professional magicians who are drawn together by a mysterious man in order to pull off the most incredible and money-garnering 'tricks' ever done on stage.

As I watched I was thinking about this reality: people like to dabble in faith and belief as long as it has to do with hokey stuff.  We get all tingly about "believing in what you can't see" when it has to do with hocus-pocus.

Why do we feel so much less interested when it's not dark, or when it's not a cute, old crystal ball-reading lady like in The Princess and the Frog?

I could be crabby and say what a lot of religious folk do: it's because we don't want the demands and expectations that come with believing in a God that expects things of us.  Maybe that's true.  I don't know.  Something tells me the above can't be said unless you're feeling nicely self-righteous and wagging your finger like a Pharisee.

Maybe, instead, we get more queasy about the unknown because it might mean that Someone knows us in our ins and outs, our public and private selves.  I'm not talking about the creepy 'He's watching you, so watch out' stuff (that sounds a bit too much like Santa Claus with fangs).  I mean the fear we all have of being truly known.  Honestly, we're afraid and ashamed of the real us.  If the unseen God is allowed to be real and allowed to know us truly, we'll have to deal with the sting of fear-fear that He will reject us, or be disgusted, or find us so much less than we ought to be.

Or...

what if He was...safe.  What if we could open up our guts to him like breaking a huge dam and letting out all the crap and laying it bare.  What if, instead of doing all that work to keep up the facade and hiding, we stopped and listened and heard God say, "Come to me, you who are weary and burdened, and I'll give you rest" (Matthew 11).

Matters of the Heart - student poetry

Ahh...summer.  Sorry it has taken a while to get back to posting.

I received a number of insightful student poems and wanted to share a few.  Here is the first:

Heart of sweet, soft steel
You melt like ice cream
Yet break like a glass.
Heart, when will you learn
To not beat so fast?

I love the alliteration of "sweet, soft steel."  There's a lot there.  We often associate the heart with softness and sweetness, but the upper hook of this opening line is the heart being referred to as "steel."

It reminds me of the concept of having a "hard heart."  The notorious Pharaoh of Old Testament fame was said to have a hardened heart.  When people talk about the heart, some get annoyed because they consider this a 'mushy' subject.  Yet, out of the heart comes both love and bitterness, elation and collapse.  Jesus said as much.  This is captured so well in the next two lines where the heart is said to "melt like ice cream/ Yet break like a glass."

We are both fragile and volatile.  This is all the more reason that a meaningful life is not simply one in which we develop our minds, but one where we, more importantly, more vigilantly, tend to the nature of our own hearts.

The final question is intriguing.  Should we fear that which makes the heart beat quickly?  Buddhism seems to suggest this.  To the Buddhist, desire is the cause of pain and therefore should be done away with.  The goal is serenity, lack of desire.

In contrast, the early followers of Jesus, encouraged zeal, to love deeply, to face fear, to hunger for righteousness.  It makes sense to fear our quick-beating hearts.  In those moments, we tend to act instinctively.  We can easily make mistakes, say things we didn't want to say, or find ourselves more eager than normal, to take risks.  But, if we develop in our hearts, values that we share with our Father, and a place of peace that can be carried into those anxious or exciting moments, we can ride the intensity of our hearts into places God would have us and back out of those we know would do our hearts wrong.

Jesus Loves Tacos

Yes, tacos...
So, there's this sign at the end of our upstairs high school hallway that reads "Jesus Loves You." 

I find it really intriguing because:
1. It has been up for almost two years now.


2. People are apparently afraid to take it down.
3. It used to be yellow and now is completely white.

I wrote here about why I think no one dares take down the "Jesus" sign.

Now, though, two years after some well-meaning soul put it up, someone finally had the guts to graffiti on it.  I'm surprised it lasted that long.  Now it reads:

"Jesus Loves tacos."

Why doesn't anyone take it down now, then?  Are we so afraid to remove this piece of paper because somehow it is sacred?  We wouldn't go that far, but maybe we all feel a little bad if we were the one to remove the "Jesus Sign" (even if it does have the added taco comment). 

Oh, that we could be as gentle and honoring with the real image-bearers of God: the people around us.  Somehow it feels easier to malign the people in our own homes than to take down a sign that has outlived its usefulness.

How often we graffiti on the artwork of God's hands.  We speak sarcastically to our moms, drop f-bombs in a text to our girlfriend when we're mad, stretch the truth when we talk about people we don't like, flip off our little brother, lie to our teachers, or refuse to respond when someone asks a question and we're in 'a mood.' 

Don't we realize that this is much more hurtful to God, to others, and us than some funny guy who added "tacos" to the "Jesus Loves You" sign?