And out of the mystery, hope emerges

In the past several weeks, we all watched the extraordinary rescue of twelve young boys in Thailand and their soccer coach.

The media doubted they could be found at all.  Only their abandoned bicycles provided a clue to where they had gone into the flooded cave.  It did not appear it was going to end well. Given the passage of time, rising flood waters and more on the way, even the experts doubted they would be found alive.

But they were. 

And then, teams of specialists, scientists, and navy SEALS from around the world, worked to get them out alive, these boys weakened by ten days without food and limited possibly contaminated water, many of whom did not even know how to swim.

But the highly skilled international rescue teams wouldn't give up, even in the face of overwhelming forces against them.

Why?  Not for the adventure, or challenge, or heroism, or headlines, but because of a God-rooted basic truth:  Life is sacred and precious.

Against the limitations of time and the threat of even more torrential rain, the rescuers pursued deliverance.   Day after day, the sheer odds against them rose like the waters in that cave. People without faith hoped for the best.  The rest of the world prayed for the impossible.  Because, then again, "odds" never include the intervention of God in an equation. 

When a highly skilled diver drowned in the pursuit, the others were even more determined to bring out each boy alive, the children having been underground at that point for seventeen days until they all emerged, having endured so many days of deep darkness they had to cover their eyes.

It was, as the Wall Street Journal stated, "one of the most extraordinary rescues the world has seen, involving thousands of divers, engineers, military and support staff."

And as every one realized, from every worldview, it took something outside of human effort to succeed.

Just as quickly as the last boy and their coach emerged from their watery prison, before even the cheering of the crowds faded, the unexplainable was explained away.  A top story of the day on July 12 in the New York Times was entitled:  "I still can't believe it worked,"  Inside the Thai soccer team's rescue:  floating stretchers, anti-anxiety pills and no small amount of luck.

I shook my head....no small amount of luck.  What does it take to acknowledge God's hand?

The article continued with a quote from a Thai army commander:  "The most important piece of the rescue was good luck.  So many things could have gone wrong, but somehow we managed to get the boys out."

But somehow...

The definition of luck is chance, accidental, something entirely random and otherwise unexplainable, unexpected, unaccountable, at exactly the right time.

Things like that don't "just happen."  The limited margins of the explainable leave no room for mystery, wonder, or transcendence. Luck is impersonal and random.  But supernatural is not spelled that way.

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name,
                  you are Mine.
When you pass through the waters
          I will be with you;
and through the rivers,
       they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire
             you shall not be burned,
     and the flame shall not consume you.
...Because you are precious in My eyes,
and honored,
              and I love you."

                                   Isaiah 43. 1-2, 4

The daring reality of His Presence shocks us by His power in it.

As Ted Loder says in his book Guerillas of Grace: "Yet, prayer is always against the odds set by logic, by scientism, by realism...a gut deep, intuitive refusal to accept the odds or to calculate too closely with the limits of the possible or the sneakiness of grace....[Praying] opens the one who prays to broader dimensions of reality than he or she may have entertained before.

"Some part of us is taken captive or set free, and that shift changes the world a little."

Even in a cave in remote Thailand.

Even in whatever you face today.

And perhaps God did it that improbable,
                       impossible way
to put wonder in the wake of the story,
to make people doubt their doubts,
to hear the supernatural resounding in the air.
The last page has been turned,
the instruments have eased playing,
           but there is not silence,
just His glory too thick to breathe.
There will always be excuses and explanations
             for what cannot be explained,
the beauty,
the unexpected,
and a peek into the eternal.

His grand chiseling

I headed into the park one morning last week for a little hike, pulling my car into my same old spot, intending to take my usual route, so familiar that I often just follow the ascents and curves without thinking or seeing, and with my brain firmly stuck on cruise control.

But something shifted inside of me. I turned suddenly from the familiar, and instead, traveled my daily terrain in a new direction.  I scaled the same hills and entered the forest, but I saw it with fresh eyes.

Repetition sometimes digs a rut.  But wonder transforms a daily task into a sacred liturgy.

One familiar loop I ignored entirely.  One trail I went down instead of up.  I ascended the top of the hill from the opposite direction.  And towards the end of my time,  I stumbled upon a breathtaking path I had never seen before -- "I wonder where that goes."  It was only after layer upon layer of beauty that I noticed that the path ran parallel to my usual asphalt surface, revealing an astonishing splendor not twenty feet from the ordinary. 

I did my usual thinking along the way and writing in my head.  Out of the shadows, thoughts suddenly flowed freely like a flash flood -- of course, when I don't have anything to write with. I tried to memorize my words like a script. But now on this day from time to time, I even stopped to preserve these fleeting impressions and evaporating ideas by tapping into my phone, frantically searching for adequate words for what I was observing for the first time --tiny details that I had overlooked and the grand scheme of things I had run swiftly past on a daily basis.

One huge tree, I never noticed before, stood defiantly in the middle of a well-trodden trail on a downward slope, alive and well, still rooting itself deeply, reaching up in praise for longer than I have been alive.  I had always just viewed it as being in my way, just one more thing to skirt around.

A thousand shades of deepest green surrounded me, more colors than Crayola has names for them.  A thick rich canopy hovered above me, swirling like a Van Gogh painting, a fellowship of trees which someone either intentionally planted, or just as mindfully allowed to grow into what is now a majestic sanctuary. God alters the landscape with the righteous deeds of those who came before us and far beyond my time on this planet.

The voice of the LORD
      makes the oaks to whirl,
and strips the forests bare;
and in His temple all cry
                        "Glory!"

                   Psalm 29. 9

I longed to take off my shoes on this holy ground, right in the middle of a public park, right in the middle of my "ordinary day."

Picking my way down a root-crossed, rocky and unfamiliar trail, I could have been anywhere in the wilderness, indeed anywhere in the world, but suddenly the intimacy of the woods opened up, and I saw a little footbridge, a directional sign, and some cars erratically parked on the side of the road.  I knew exactly where I was after all. 

We reside in tiny rooms with bare walls that blind us to what lies beyond.  God does not intend for us to decorate these spaces, as if this is all there is, but witness His grand chiseling.  His faithfulness breaks through, and light seeps through the cracks.  His beauty appears through newly formed and unexpected windows, increasing vision for some, and for others sheer hope in impossible situations, the invisible now visible, that which has been there all along.

I knew His splendor was there.  I just did not expect such intensity.  We rarely do.

It was the same woods, but a different way of seeing.  That is how God redeems, even the ordinary.

"We shall not cease from exploration,
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started,
and know the place for the first time."

                           T. S. Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/t_s_eliot_109032

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/t_s_eliot_109032

Nothing to eat, nothing to wear

When our four daughters were younger and all at home, I would often find them – particularly after cross country practice – standing in the glow of the opened refrigerator, cooling down the entire house with its chill, looking completely dumbfounded.  “What are you looking for?” I would inquire.  They would stare a bit longer into the cavern, and reply more often than not, “There’s nothing to eat.”

And on school mornings, particularly when the three oldest all traveled through the early darkness to high school in Cincinnati, two would be inevitably and impatiently waiting on a particular sister – the one with the fullest closet.  “Car leaving!” our oldest would call up from the kitchen.  And her sister would respond, “I have nothing to wear.”

In both scenarios, they were paralyzed into inaction by how much lay before them.

I felt that way in the middle of the darkness the other night, when my mind was traveling faster than the speed limit without headlights, and my body simultaneously crying “Just. Go. To. Sleep.”  I took apart the day I had just traveled through, every decision, every conversation, what I had done, and as we reply in our church’s corporate confession of sin:  “the things left undone.”  Those incomplete things are what keep my thoughts pacing the imaginary hallways of the night.

I had managed once again to waste a perfectly good day.  I knew I needed to get some writing done.  But it was obvious what I was avoiding when I started to clean the baseboards.  Our house is never cleaner than when a writing project is on the day's agenda.

It appeared I accomplished a lot, just not what God intended. My day was stuffed with nothing to wear, turning away from the fridge still hungry as if it were empty.

Has the LORD as great delight

in burnt offerings and sacrifices

        as in obeying the voice of the LORD?

Behold, to obey

                      is better than sacrifice.

                                      1 Samuel 15. 22

It is not too different than when I would ask our youngest daughter to clean her room.  I would re-enter the mess an hour later, and find her rearranging her bookcase alphabetically by genre, the bed unmade, clothes hanging like prayer flags around the room.  Her older sister once even went to the extent of creating a card catalog for her books, while completely oblivious to a week’s history of elementary fashion.  Remarkable achievements, indeed, but not paying attention to what was asked of them.

What is needful is simply responding to Him.  It is what the Bible calls "heeding His voice," "following," "abiding," or "obeying." Not focusing on how much I can cram into the day, not “look at all the really good stuff I have done,” and then wonder why there are still gaping holes that keep me awake at night.  I am the one who abandoned His divine design for the day on the side of the road..

Help me not just to see the needs, O LORD,

help me to not just hear Your voice, 

              but help me to respond to You.

We have all

“...been appointed duties in His service.”

                1 Chronicles 24. 3

Am I doing what

      God has designed and appointed me today?

Nothing is random

      or insignificant in His name,

                                     for His kingdom,

                                     for His glory,

even in what may appear irrelevant,

ridiculous,

           a waste of time and energy,

      or a slowness in its ripening.

"You want me to do what?"

Even in this,

He beckons me,

              "Follow Me deeper."

One act of responding to God

   leads me to the next step

                         in following Him,

sometimes to remain in the familiar,

sometimes in the unexpected,

but always journeying into the profoundly eternal,

and even in what

            I can't yet see from here.

Not always the fireworks

God's hand in our lives
                  is not always revealed
by a huge fireworks display
   of monumental Fourth of July proportions.
But by the sneakiness of His grace
              in the unexpected,
and the most extraordinary ways
                    on the most ordinary days.

The profoundly significant
           sometimes appears only as a whisper.
Even in adversity and mystery
    --why is this happening like this???--
                 God is glorified,
                 even by our response.
"Trust Me in this." 
God can use even what I messed up
                        --or think that I ruined --
          because that is what His redeeming looks like.

God delivers in many unexpected packages
            and inconceivable dimensions.
Where did this come from?
Whether a package on the doorstep
                       tied with a big bow,
     something that is just not going right,
or that which stops me in my tracks,
                      God is working still,
             God is using even this.

I was running through the forest near my house,
my eyes down on the path,
thoughts elsewhere,
   watching carefully where to step next,
discerning what is only a fallen stick
                    or what could be a snake.
I glanced up as I rounded a turn in the road,
startled by a silent deer
    not six feet away on the edge of the trail,
looking at me right in the eyes,
          like God's faithfulness standing in the woods,
            His whisper,
            His Presence.
                       And I almost missed it.
               What other wonders have I not noticed?

God's voice is not always the loudest in the room,
His mighty works
           not always the fireworks,
but powerful and extreme
                right here,
                right where I am.

Don't miss this, He says.

...let the shadow go back ten steps.

                       2 Kings 20. 10

Not always in ways I expect,
     but marked by His profound Presence.