Early this summer, our family was able to have a quick family vacation to one of my favorite places in the U.S., a place I had not been in quite some time: Santa Fe, New Mexico. My daughters are all creatives, and they greatly appreciated the culture, the art, and the overall aesthetic of the place.
But one of the things we loved the most was the evenings. We were staying in a VRBO outside of town, in the mountains, and at night, we were treated to a spectacular view. Although we might consider ourselves to live in the country here in Tyler, I believe we would all agree our little town is increasingly becoming more urban. I live right in the center of town, and at night, as I look up at the sky, I can usually see four or five stars, maybe Orion, and possibly Venus.
However, in Santa Fe, on a clear desert summer evening, it was extraordinarily breathtaking! I could see what seemed to be thousands of stunning stars, planets, and galaxies. It had been a long time since I had seen the night sky so clearly. We often throw around the word “awesome” too flippantly to include pizza, the Cowboys (who are decidedly NOT awesome), and that dress you bought last week. However, this sight was truly awesome, and by that, I mean “filling me with a sense of awe for the majesty and power of the God who created the universe and everything in it.”
And it made me think about my life, maybe yours, too—about walking the streets of Tyler, Texas, surrounded by the things we’ve built, ambient light drowning out the magnificence of God’s goodness and the fullness of his joy, just waiting for me if I only had eyes to see, if I could just peer beyond the mundanity around me that I’m content to let entertain, medicate, and dull me into numbness.
People have told me I’m a visionary, and maybe I am. God has shown me things, and after 23 years, much of what you see around here is prompted by visions the Lord gave Doug, me, and others. Even so, I discover myself lacking vision for the fullness of life as it can exist if I were to truly live, constantly and fully, in the presence of God. If I were able to recapture the awe of seeing life through the eyes of the Lord.
Our theme this year is “Practicing the Presence of God,” based upon Psalm 16:11. In it, David, a man who had a true vision of God, says, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures evermore.” Jesus said, “I came to give life so that they may have it abundantly.” He lived fully and completely in God’s presence.
How many of us are really living that whole and abundant life? In one of C.S. Lewis’ most famous passages, he writes, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
The life to which we’re called, the life of faith in Jesus, is so much more spectacular than many of us realize, because we’re too easily amused with the stuff around us: drink, sex, ambition, shopping, vacations, and scrolling. None of those things are evil, but we use them to medicate ourselves against the world around us. And the devil plans it that way, because if he can numb us with the mud pies, he’ll take our eyes off of the spectacular night sky the Lord has created for us.
When we’re younger and more ambitious, we think there are worlds to conquer. We’re driven to achieve, to prove that we can be innovative and create something new. We want to make our mark in the world. We buy into the cultural narrative that if I get a good education, a good job, and make lots of money, I can buy a lot of stuff and be happy. I remember the times when people would say to me, “I don’t know how you do all that you do,” as I ran a school, headed up boards around the country, and worked for a graduate degree. I remember the secret pride I would take in being someone who operated seemingly without limits, never realizing the toll it was taking on my soul.
By the time we grow older, we realize that those things don’t work. We often become grumpier, complain more, and are frankly less enjoyable to be around for younger people. I think that happens because we surrender not only to the trappings of getting older but also to a world weariness. We feel a deep sadness and exasperation with the fallen earth’s subjection to futility, played out in the hearts of human beings through anger, oppression, hatred, suffering, and polarization time and again. We just grow sick of it, or even worse, find that we’ve become part of it. Only a handful of old people are like my mother—gracious, grateful, funny, generous, and fun to be around, even if she is occasionally crazy.
But, I’m old enough now and have banged my head against enough of all those walls to know that I want more. I want the night sky in all its explosive beauty. I want to be fully healed from all my deepest pain. I want the total quenching of all my deepest desires: to be truly known, and seen, and loved by the only one who knows how truly depraved I am and loves me still. I want to be transformed into everything he wants for me, so much more than I could have ever hoped or imagined for myself. I want to love as he loves, the way he loves me.
And, because I love you with the love God has implanted in my heart for you, I desperately want that for you, and I pray you’ll want it, too. But, we can only have it by living in the fullness of God’s presence.
I think being in God’s presence allows us to maintain our faith and our hope in what will be, to see beauty in life repeated every day. Being in his presence helps us realize that all those encumbrances of living in a Genesis 3 world, terrible though they may be, are temporary and are only truly terrible if they change the inner core of who we are into something less than what we can be, rather than something more.
Author Ross Ramsay notes that people often speak of Christianity as a “practice,” as in “practicing our faith.” “Practicing” is a good word and shouldn’t be considered as a synonym for “do” or “believe.” To be a practicing Christian means to continuously grow in our craft through intentional, thoughtful repetition, like practicing medicine or law. I should think that, like those other things, after 10, 20, 30, or 40 years of practice, a Christian ought to be a master, someone so full of grace, peace, and truth that anyone would want to hang around with him or her.
Are you? Are you a person of faith and hope, one who radiates joy, one whose deepest longings and desires are met in Jesus, one who faces suffering with equanimity, if not rejoicing like the apostles, knowing that, by God’s grace, it’s going to make you more than you were? Or, are you pretty much the same person you were all those years ago, just an older and maybe somewhat grumpier version of that person? If you feel like me, it’s time to move past the mud pies, past the sickly sweet candy Satan’s been trying to shove down my throat all my life, and onto the good stuff—the vacation, the banquet table in the presence of the Lord.
Christian philosopher Dallas Willard said that for anyone to change, they need vision, intention, and means (what people call “the VIM method”)- First, you have to have vision, imagining who you see yourself becoming. Then, you must intend to take the necessary steps to achieve your vision. Finally, you must adopt the means—those things it takes to live out your intention. Willard says the reason we’re put off from so many things, including living in the presence of God, is that we’re moving past the vision and straight to the means. You cannot live out your intention or adopt the means without a clear vision.
If I don’t have a vision of myself as a better golfer or pianist or in better shape or with my finances in better order, if I don’t see that picture, I won’t practice my short game or my scales or go out running in this heat, or do the Dave Ramsey envelope thing. We all buck against the means if we haven’t caught the vision. It’s just too hard. It doesn’t seem worth it. We don’t want it as much as we want other things.
Living in God’s presence is a compelling vision: to have our deepest needs and desires to be loved and valued by the only one who can do so in a totally satisfying way. To have the abundant fullness of life Jesus promises. To have unshakable hope no matter what I suffer or how hard life gets. To have these greater passions for Jesus empower me to finally put to death the toxic loves in my life that are killing me like a low-grade fever. And, to be able to model all these things for my children, both the ones under my own roof and the ones in my school every single day.
Incidentally, living in God’s presence is the same thing as abiding in him. When Jesus says in John 15, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you,” and “If you abide in me, you will bear much fruit,” he’s talking about living in his presence. Being in God’s presence is abiding, and getting answers to your prayers and bearing fruit are other aspects to the vision we have of living in his presence.
But, like piano or golf, I have to practice being present with God. I’ve been thinking about it this summer, and I thought that I don’t have to be one of the Desert Fathers, or Benedict, or Bernard of Clairvaux, or wall myself up in a church like Julian of Norwich. I was thinking that God’s word is telling me that I, as a normal human being in East Texas, could actually practice God’s presence. So I decided to try a few things. I know there are others, but here are a few that have been on my mind:
The first is praying specifically and expectantly. I think for me in the past, I’ve prayed and asked God for things—either generally, like for “peace,” or to “be with” someone—that are hard to determine whether God specifically answered or not. Sometimes people would tell me they felt God’s presence, and I’d see that as God answering my prayer, but most of the time “be with” is a fairly nonspecific prayer. Other times, to be honest, I’ve prayed as if I’m God’s PR guy or image manager: “Lord, you may choose not to heal Susan, and that’s okay; we know you’re still good,” as if God needs my assurance that he’s good or needs me to cover for him.
Instead, I’m trying lately to pray specifically: “Lord, please keep Pablo’s tumor from growing any larger as a result of this coming treatment, and please just go ahead and shrink it or eliminate it while you’re at it, Lord!” I don’t know whether God is answering my specific prayers any more thoroughly than my general ones, but I know what He IS doing—he’s causing me to look more expectantly, to keep my eyes on him and watch what he’s doing more than I did before. It’s causing me to pay closer attention to where and how he’s at work, like when he absolutely shrunk Pablo Raborar’s tumor a couple of weeks ago, based upon my prayers and those of a whole lot of other people. Praying expectantly and specifically is making me more attentive to his hand in the world around me.
The second thing I’m doing to practice his presence is to build a gratitude list. I stole this idea from Ann Voskamp in her book “One Thousand Gifts.” I’m keenly aware that I may be Ann Voskamp’s only male reader, but I think she beautifully captures the heart of enjoying God’s presence by cultivating gratitude through developing a list of 1,000 things God has given her. She says:
“This act of naming grace moments, this list of God’s gifts, moves beyond the shopping list variety of prayer and into the other side. The other side of prayer, the interior of his throne room, the inner walls of his powerful, love-beating heart. And I see it now for what it really is, … It really is a dare to name all the ways that God loves me… To move into his presence and listen to His love unending and know the grace uncontainable.”
My list currently stands at around 110 things, so I’m about 10 percent of the way in. But, I find that as I am actively looking for things to be grateful for, things as expansive as my wife’s inexhaustible patience with me and as narrow as the fact that every leaf on every tree at the lake is a slightly different shade of green, showing me God’s infinite variety. As I watch for things to be grateful for, I’m seeing God and his loving hand in so much more of the world around me. And, as I see his love and grace through thousands of gifts I would otherwise miss, it inclines my heart towards him and reinforces for me that He is the giver of all good things.
As a third practice, I began an ancient church practice of praying morning, noon, and night. In addition to my regular quiet time, which includes silent meditation, Bible reading, lectio divina, and journaling, I’ve set a reminder to pray at noon. I also pray the examen right before bed, asking the Lord to help me reflect, rejoice, and repent over my day. I also set my watch to buzz me every hour to pray: “I give everything and everyone to you, Lord.” I still don’t pray every single moment, but I’m finding that it’s easier to fall into prayer and be more mindful of the Lord when I discipline myself throughout the day by setting reminders to return to Him.
My fourth practice is to discipline my heart not to run from suffering but to embrace it. After our high school guidance counselor Diane Carnes’ death this summer, and because I’m a little slow, it finally dawned on me after 22 years at Grace that we’ll never have a school year when someone close to us won’t die, or have cancer, or suffer, and we will suffer with them, in addition to our own suffering. It is going to happen this year; it happens every year. It’s already happened with our sweet little 5th grader with cancer. It happened this summer, with the unspeakable tragedy in the Hill Country and Camp Mystic. Instead of dreading it or engaging in the futile exercise of trying to avoid it, I’m going to embrace it as an opportunity to grow deeper in love with Jesus and with you all.
Earlier, I mentioned Ross Ramsay. I read a great book by him this summer called Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive. In talking about Rembrandt’s suffering through his life, Ramsey says that “to suffer well is not to have our faith shattered but rather to have it strengthened because, through it, the object of our confidence becomes clearer and more focused. The blessing of suffering is that it strips away any pretense of not needing God or others. It frees us from “this exhausting comedy” of having to pretend we’re fine on our own.”
Suffering moves us to a place of intimacy and familiarity with the Lord. I’ll no longer ask him “why.” I know why.
As a final practice, I aim to cultivate awe in the mundane. G.K. Chesterton famously observed something child-like in God’s consistency:
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again,” and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
When Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” I think he’s saying blessed are those who see through God’s lens, who haven’t lost their sense of awe, who are continually amazed at the majesty and power of God’s work. I have to open my eyes and freshen my heart, seeing through his lens and recapturing my awe.
The school year follows a cyclical pattern, and after 22 years, I have observed the same events recurring again and again. Two weeks before school started, I wasn’t excited at all about it. I was still tired and jaded, thinking about budgets, enrollment, fundraising, and the most recent of the seemingly incessant complaints I’ve received over the years. I was tired because, like Chesterton, I’ve sinned and grown old.
Until we had new employee orientation and new parent orientation the week before school. And, God let me see what we do and how we do it through the lens of people who are seeing it for the first time, people who are coming here because of what we do. People who I saw weeping because they get to do this, now, here, for the first time in their teaching careers. Or because they realize what their kids are getting here that they’ve never received before. I saw it with new eyes, and I wept with them.
I rejoiced again that we get to teach Jesus, and that this holistic, integrated life and learning–that God is truly in everything and his word speaks to everything and he wants to reveal it to us and invite us to join him in life and his work—is just the water our kids swim in every day, their default life view. This is altogether peculiar and abnormal, a gift beyond price, and it’s theirs because of what we do here.
God, in his tenderness and kindness, let me see this beautiful place and people and the glory of his work through all of you from their new perspective, and he rekindled my sense of awe. “Do it again this year, Abba! Do it again!”
I pray that you’ll live in God’s presence this year. I pray it will inspire awe and appreciation for what he is doing through you and among you, as well as a determination to be present in the lives of your kids, our school community, and everywhere you work, live, worship, and play, to help transform the lives and perspectives of those around you for Jesus.
Practicing God’s Presence
Early this summer, our family was able to have a quick family vacation to one of my favorite places in the U.S., a place I had not been in quite some time: Santa Fe, New Mexico. My daughters are all creatives, and they greatly appreciated the culture, the art, and the overall aesthetic of the place.
But one of the things we loved the most was the evenings. We were staying in a VRBO outside of town, in the mountains, and at night, we were treated to a spectacular view. Although we might consider ourselves to live in the country here in Tyler, I believe we would all agree our little town is increasingly becoming more urban. I live right in the center of town, and at night, as I look up at the sky, I can usually see four or five stars, maybe Orion, and possibly Venus.
However, in Santa Fe, on a clear desert summer evening, it was extraordinarily breathtaking! I could see what seemed to be thousands of stunning stars, planets, and galaxies. It had been a long time since I had seen the night sky so clearly. We often throw around the word “awesome” too flippantly to include pizza, the Cowboys (who are decidedly NOT awesome), and that dress you bought last week. However, this sight was truly awesome, and by that, I mean “filling me with a sense of awe for the majesty and power of the God who created the universe and everything in it.”
And it made me think about my life, maybe yours, too—about walking the streets of Tyler, Texas, surrounded by the things we’ve built, ambient light drowning out the magnificence of God’s goodness and the fullness of his joy, just waiting for me if I only had eyes to see, if I could just peer beyond the mundanity around me that I’m content to let entertain, medicate, and dull me into numbness.
People have told me I’m a visionary, and maybe I am. God has shown me things, and after 23 years, much of what you see around here is prompted by visions the Lord gave Doug, me, and others. Even so, I discover myself lacking vision for the fullness of life as it can exist if I were to truly live, constantly and fully, in the presence of God. If I were able to recapture the awe of seeing life through the eyes of the Lord.
Our theme this year is “Practicing the Presence of God,” based upon Psalm 16:11. In it, David, a man who had a true vision of God, says, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures evermore.” Jesus said, “I came to give life so that they may have it abundantly.” He lived fully and completely in God’s presence.
How many of us are really living that whole and abundant life? In one of C.S. Lewis’ most famous passages, he writes, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
The life to which we’re called, the life of faith in Jesus, is so much more spectacular than many of us realize, because we’re too easily amused with the stuff around us: drink, sex, ambition, shopping, vacations, and scrolling. None of those things are evil, but we use them to medicate ourselves against the world around us. And the devil plans it that way, because if he can numb us with the mud pies, he’ll take our eyes off of the spectacular night sky the Lord has created for us.
When we’re younger and more ambitious, we think there are worlds to conquer. We’re driven to achieve, to prove that we can be innovative and create something new. We want to make our mark in the world. We buy into the cultural narrative that if I get a good education, a good job, and make lots of money, I can buy a lot of stuff and be happy. I remember the times when people would say to me, “I don’t know how you do all that you do,” as I ran a school, headed up boards around the country, and worked for a graduate degree. I remember the secret pride I would take in being someone who operated seemingly without limits, never realizing the toll it was taking on my soul.
By the time we grow older, we realize that those things don’t work. We often become grumpier, complain more, and are frankly less enjoyable to be around for younger people. I think that happens because we surrender not only to the trappings of getting older but also to a world weariness. We feel a deep sadness and exasperation with the fallen earth’s subjection to futility, played out in the hearts of human beings through anger, oppression, hatred, suffering, and polarization time and again. We just grow sick of it, or even worse, find that we’ve become part of it. Only a handful of old people are like my mother—gracious, grateful, funny, generous, and fun to be around, even if she is occasionally crazy.
But, I’m old enough now and have banged my head against enough of all those walls to know that I want more. I want the night sky in all its explosive beauty. I want to be fully healed from all my deepest pain. I want the total quenching of all my deepest desires: to be truly known, and seen, and loved by the only one who knows how truly depraved I am and loves me still. I want to be transformed into everything he wants for me, so much more than I could have ever hoped or imagined for myself. I want to love as he loves, the way he loves me.
And, because I love you with the love God has implanted in my heart for you, I desperately want that for you, and I pray you’ll want it, too. But, we can only have it by living in the fullness of God’s presence.
I think being in God’s presence allows us to maintain our faith and our hope in what will be, to see beauty in life repeated every day. Being in his presence helps us realize that all those encumbrances of living in a Genesis 3 world, terrible though they may be, are temporary and are only truly terrible if they change the inner core of who we are into something less than what we can be, rather than something more.
Author Ross Ramsay notes that people often speak of Christianity as a “practice,” as in “practicing our faith.” “Practicing” is a good word and shouldn’t be considered as a synonym for “do” or “believe.” To be a practicing Christian means to continuously grow in our craft through intentional, thoughtful repetition, like practicing medicine or law. I should think that, like those other things, after 10, 20, 30, or 40 years of practice, a Christian ought to be a master, someone so full of grace, peace, and truth that anyone would want to hang around with him or her.
Are you? Are you a person of faith and hope, one who radiates joy, one whose deepest longings and desires are met in Jesus, one who faces suffering with equanimity, if not rejoicing like the apostles, knowing that, by God’s grace, it’s going to make you more than you were? Or, are you pretty much the same person you were all those years ago, just an older and maybe somewhat grumpier version of that person? If you feel like me, it’s time to move past the mud pies, past the sickly sweet candy Satan’s been trying to shove down my throat all my life, and onto the good stuff—the vacation, the banquet table in the presence of the Lord.
Christian philosopher Dallas Willard said that for anyone to change, they need vision, intention, and means (what people call “the VIM method”)- First, you have to have vision, imagining who you see yourself becoming. Then, you must intend to take the necessary steps to achieve your vision. Finally, you must adopt the means—those things it takes to live out your intention. Willard says the reason we’re put off from so many things, including living in the presence of God, is that we’re moving past the vision and straight to the means. You cannot live out your intention or adopt the means without a clear vision.
If I don’t have a vision of myself as a better golfer or pianist or in better shape or with my finances in better order, if I don’t see that picture, I won’t practice my short game or my scales or go out running in this heat, or do the Dave Ramsey envelope thing. We all buck against the means if we haven’t caught the vision. It’s just too hard. It doesn’t seem worth it. We don’t want it as much as we want other things.
Living in God’s presence is a compelling vision: to have our deepest needs and desires to be loved and valued by the only one who can do so in a totally satisfying way. To have the abundant fullness of life Jesus promises. To have unshakable hope no matter what I suffer or how hard life gets. To have these greater passions for Jesus empower me to finally put to death the toxic loves in my life that are killing me like a low-grade fever. And, to be able to model all these things for my children, both the ones under my own roof and the ones in my school every single day.
Incidentally, living in God’s presence is the same thing as abiding in him. When Jesus says in John 15, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you,” and “If you abide in me, you will bear much fruit,” he’s talking about living in his presence. Being in God’s presence is abiding, and getting answers to your prayers and bearing fruit are other aspects to the vision we have of living in his presence.
But, like piano or golf, I have to practice being present with God. I’ve been thinking about it this summer, and I thought that I don’t have to be one of the Desert Fathers, or Benedict, or Bernard of Clairvaux, or wall myself up in a church like Julian of Norwich. I was thinking that God’s word is telling me that I, as a normal human being in East Texas, could actually practice God’s presence. So I decided to try a few things. I know there are others, but here are a few that have been on my mind:
The first is praying specifically and expectantly. I think for me in the past, I’ve prayed and asked God for things—either generally, like for “peace,” or to “be with” someone—that are hard to determine whether God specifically answered or not. Sometimes people would tell me they felt God’s presence, and I’d see that as God answering my prayer, but most of the time “be with” is a fairly nonspecific prayer. Other times, to be honest, I’ve prayed as if I’m God’s PR guy or image manager: “Lord, you may choose not to heal Susan, and that’s okay; we know you’re still good,” as if God needs my assurance that he’s good or needs me to cover for him.
Instead, I’m trying lately to pray specifically: “Lord, please keep Pablo’s tumor from growing any larger as a result of this coming treatment, and please just go ahead and shrink it or eliminate it while you’re at it, Lord!” I don’t know whether God is answering my specific prayers any more thoroughly than my general ones, but I know what He IS doing—he’s causing me to look more expectantly, to keep my eyes on him and watch what he’s doing more than I did before. It’s causing me to pay closer attention to where and how he’s at work, like when he absolutely shrunk Pablo Raborar’s tumor a couple of weeks ago, based upon my prayers and those of a whole lot of other people. Praying expectantly and specifically is making me more attentive to his hand in the world around me.
The second thing I’m doing to practice his presence is to build a gratitude list. I stole this idea from Ann Voskamp in her book “One Thousand Gifts.” I’m keenly aware that I may be Ann Voskamp’s only male reader, but I think she beautifully captures the heart of enjoying God’s presence by cultivating gratitude through developing a list of 1,000 things God has given her. She says:
“This act of naming grace moments, this list of God’s gifts, moves beyond the shopping list variety of prayer and into the other side. The other side of prayer, the interior of his throne room, the inner walls of his powerful, love-beating heart. And I see it now for what it really is, … It really is a dare to name all the ways that God loves me… To move into his presence and listen to His love unending and know the grace uncontainable.”
My list currently stands at around 110 things, so I’m about 10 percent of the way in. But, I find that as I am actively looking for things to be grateful for, things as expansive as my wife’s inexhaustible patience with me and as narrow as the fact that every leaf on every tree at the lake is a slightly different shade of green, showing me God’s infinite variety. As I watch for things to be grateful for, I’m seeing God and his loving hand in so much more of the world around me. And, as I see his love and grace through thousands of gifts I would otherwise miss, it inclines my heart towards him and reinforces for me that He is the giver of all good things.
As a third practice, I began an ancient church practice of praying morning, noon, and night. In addition to my regular quiet time, which includes silent meditation, Bible reading, lectio divina, and journaling, I’ve set a reminder to pray at noon. I also pray the examen right before bed, asking the Lord to help me reflect, rejoice, and repent over my day. I also set my watch to buzz me every hour to pray: “I give everything and everyone to you, Lord.” I still don’t pray every single moment, but I’m finding that it’s easier to fall into prayer and be more mindful of the Lord when I discipline myself throughout the day by setting reminders to return to Him.
My fourth practice is to discipline my heart not to run from suffering but to embrace it. After our high school guidance counselor Diane Carnes’ death this summer, and because I’m a little slow, it finally dawned on me after 22 years at Grace that we’ll never have a school year when someone close to us won’t die, or have cancer, or suffer, and we will suffer with them, in addition to our own suffering. It is going to happen this year; it happens every year. It’s already happened with our sweet little 5th grader with cancer. It happened this summer, with the unspeakable tragedy in the Hill Country and Camp Mystic. Instead of dreading it or engaging in the futile exercise of trying to avoid it, I’m going to embrace it as an opportunity to grow deeper in love with Jesus and with you all.
Earlier, I mentioned Ross Ramsay. I read a great book by him this summer called Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive. In talking about Rembrandt’s suffering through his life, Ramsey says that “to suffer well is not to have our faith shattered but rather to have it strengthened because, through it, the object of our confidence becomes clearer and more focused. The blessing of suffering is that it strips away any pretense of not needing God or others. It frees us from “this exhausting comedy” of having to pretend we’re fine on our own.”
Suffering moves us to a place of intimacy and familiarity with the Lord. I’ll no longer ask him “why.” I know why.
As a final practice, I aim to cultivate awe in the mundane. G.K. Chesterton famously observed something child-like in God’s consistency:
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again,” and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
When Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” I think he’s saying blessed are those who see through God’s lens, who haven’t lost their sense of awe, who are continually amazed at the majesty and power of God’s work. I have to open my eyes and freshen my heart, seeing through his lens and recapturing my awe.
The school year follows a cyclical pattern, and after 22 years, I have observed the same events recurring again and again. Two weeks before school started, I wasn’t excited at all about it. I was still tired and jaded, thinking about budgets, enrollment, fundraising, and the most recent of the seemingly incessant complaints I’ve received over the years. I was tired because, like Chesterton, I’ve sinned and grown old.
Until we had new employee orientation and new parent orientation the week before school. And, God let me see what we do and how we do it through the lens of people who are seeing it for the first time, people who are coming here because of what we do. People who I saw weeping because they get to do this, now, here, for the first time in their teaching careers. Or because they realize what their kids are getting here that they’ve never received before. I saw it with new eyes, and I wept with them.
I rejoiced again that we get to teach Jesus, and that this holistic, integrated life and learning–that God is truly in everything and his word speaks to everything and he wants to reveal it to us and invite us to join him in life and his work—is just the water our kids swim in every day, their default life view. This is altogether peculiar and abnormal, a gift beyond price, and it’s theirs because of what we do here.
God, in his tenderness and kindness, let me see this beautiful place and people and the glory of his work through all of you from their new perspective, and he rekindled my sense of awe. “Do it again this year, Abba! Do it again!”
I pray that you’ll live in God’s presence this year. I pray it will inspire awe and appreciation for what he is doing through you and among you, as well as a determination to be present in the lives of your kids, our school community, and everywhere you work, live, worship, and play, to help transform the lives and perspectives of those around you for Jesus.
Leave a Reply