Musings on the book "Compassion" 10-03-09

This morning I went to tea by myself, and I was kind of reading Compassion, kind of just thinking about things, and I realized something about my experience here. I think things have shifted from being a “cross-cultural experience,” you know with culture shock, and feeling uncomfortable, and just learning from things being so different. I think I’m ok with that kind of stuff now, or at least I’ve built up my own little walls and mental pathways around things (which may or may not be good, I’m sure staying sensitive is a continuous process). Now, it seems that God is really working on me. On the inside of me, on my identity.

But not in the way you’d expect.

I don’t know any more about what I want to do, or the things I want out of life. I feel that instead of tacking things onto my “to-do list” of life, God is pulling things off. It’s like my whole life I’ve been trying to figure out “who I am” and “who I want to be” by figuring out what I like and don’t like, where I want to go, character traits I want to possess, things I want to accomplish, how I want to be looked upon. That journey of self-discovery has its merits, but has completely defined my identity. I think God is saying, “My child, all these things are manifestations of who you are, but why do you cling to them?”

This is hard to explain.

I felt that I’ve been trying to plan, to make things go my way, and all of a sudden I realized I didn’t need to struggle so hard. I didn’t need to know everything in advance, to lay my future out in a way that is comforting not only to me, but to my parents and family as well. I feel as if I can just be. And have confidence in the fact that when decisions come, they will have been brought by God, I will have been prepared to make them by God, and they will progress in the hand of God. I can’t believe it’s taken 21 years (almost) for such a fundamental spiritual truth to sink in.

I think this has been dawning on me gradually, especially when issues come up like marriage, relationships, children, career, grad school, etc. My reaction lately has not been, “Oh my gosh, I have no idea!” It’s been this strange disinterested confidence, knowing that when those decisions come, I am fully equipped to experience them in the hand of Christ. Do you know what I mean?

I feel compelled to defend the way I have been brought up and all those points which are usually raised in response to these kinds of musings: “God helps those who help themselves,” “How can God work in you if you don’t prepare the field for harvest?” etc etc. But none of my most recent revelation negates those things. Yes, I strive for excellence, as any one who knows me is more than aware. But how many times has that striving blinded me to the movements of God, crowded out the whisper of the Holy Spirit? How little I have valued silence, all these years.

I feel now that spiritual retreats are such an essential part of growth, and confidence in Christ. I have always known the wisdom in seeking out guidance from other, older Christians and friends, of making your decisions not in isolation, but in community. Yet, I have never felt the intense calm brought on by silence before the Lord. I’ve read, “When you come into the presence of a King, do you jabber or wait in stunned silence?” And I’ve said, well of course- everyone knows you can’t just talk in prayer, you have to listen, too. But I have experienced the rewards of “waiting upon the Lord” to an amazing degree here. God’s so good. : )

Oh, this is not even the beginning of what God is showing me… Just silly things like having to teach that class, or being away from engineering for a semester, or reading all these deeply theological books, have really affected where I find my identity. I had this mental image of my soul, my essence, being a glowing coal, an orb, at the center of my being. All these other things like my major, my “vocation”, my family issues, my hobbies, my pursuits, my friends, were pieces of rock or wood stuck to the sides of the glowing ember, built up around it in a sphere. This semester God is pulling those things off, not to devalue them, but to reveal my soul, my center, as the most important, the only reality of who I am –held in the hand of Christ. “if God is for us, who can be against us?” How can I make decisions outside of my faith? Who I am if not defined by Christ?

This seems so heavy and so… ambitious, but how I really feel! I have that rational impulse to label this as a “Mountaintop moment,” but I also believe this is a paradigm shift in my identity, in how I move forward in life. You know what it is? It’s that these kinds of words, these declarations, come from “spiritual heroes,” not from people like me. But Compassion is showing me how there really is no dichotomy or gradations of spirituality- those are imposed by us and our fallen nature. God is teaching me to value my identity in Him as the greatest of gifts, not somehow fallen short because I don’t have a passion for missions or preaching. I think that allowing ourselves to separate from the “spiritually great” is just an excuse for mediocrity. Saying, “oh, I just feel called to minister in my office by being a Christian, or by going to church –I’m no missionary.” Is something I’ve fallen prey to my whole life. I still have no idea how to be truly passionate, truly living transparently for God in an “ordinary” setting, but I think that’s what makes it such a challenge, such a noble pursuit, in chasing that elusive road to the heights of living like Christ.

--Emmes