thank you (post-jail and other thoughts)

It was my brother's birthday a few days ago. He's twenty years old now, and once more there is so much perspective in a year. This time last year he'd been in jail for something like ten months. We wrote letters to one another, sometimes just talking about things we remembered. He liked me to write him stories so sometimes I did that. I've written before that in some ways we really got to know each other through those letters, got really close.

How do you thank God in something like this? How do you say, thank you for the fact that he was homeless, used cardboard as a blanket, was in jail for a year? And yet, in some ways, my brother is not the person he was before all that. Leaving him in that mess to come here when all I wanted to do was fix things for him, take care of him, was the hardest part of leaving. But Josh is a constant reminder of God's faithfulness: he loves and has taken care of my brother much better than I will ever be able to, just like he promised. You thank him because he's sovereign. And infinitely good. And when you step back, look at him instead of all the junk, you see this and you see him up to his ears in it, a God who put on skin and lived it all like we do.

I read Habakkuk today, and there's this (3:17-18):

"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior."

That's something.

This year we got to talk on Skype which is just about the best invention ever. In a week or two he'll graduate from high school. In the fall he starts college. I got him some books for his birthday and he told me he was rereading them (yay he's a rereader like me!), that he liked to because, having read them the first time in jail, in reminded him of where he'd come through, where he won't be going back.

So this is for all of you who prayed with me for him. This is to say: look what God did! Look at my brother. Thank you for that.

stormy night

I woke up the other night, heart beating wildly, the first nightmare I've had in recent memory. I'd fallen asleep what didn't feel like long before, hard rain and praying, telling God how much I love storms and mountains and the sea, the bigness and wildness of it all.

I was aggravated that I'd had the dream, frustrated--these words fit perfectly. And to my surprise, as I realized when I thought about it all the next morning, I wasn't afraid. I had been while dreaming, of course, but it didn't cross over into being awake. And for that I praise God, for the marvelous work he has done in my life. I read these verses that next morning, and how true they are (from Psalm 27):

"The LORD is my light and my salvation--whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life--of whom shall I be afraid?"

At some point I heard that it was still raining and so I thanked God for the rain, for the sound of it, and fell back asleep. And so I fell asleep like I did the first time, thanking God for the weather, for his mighty power we see in the way the ocean churns up a vast hurricane, how the sun comes up and the wonder of a dawn, how it 'takes the earth by the edges and shakes the wicked out of it*'--and it does this every single morning, has for millions or billions of mornings. God continually astonishes me.



*If you're wondering, this is from Job 38:12-13. God is legit a poet.

quote-of-the-day

"My thinking has led me to believe that there is a collective cultural consciousness or memory which is related to words. I would suggest that there are two parts to it: a collective memory of a specific race, and a collective memory of all men as to what man is and what reality is.

Thus man, in his language, "remembers" (regardless of his personal belief) that God does exist. For example, when the Russian leaders curse, they curse by God, and not by something less; and atheistic artists often use "god" symbols. This, I believe, is a deeper yet simpler explanation than Jung's view of god as the supreme archetype arising (according to him) out of the evolution of the race. Moreover, in man's language, man also remembers that humanity is unique (created in the image of God), and therefore words like purpose, love, morals carry with them in connotation their real meaning. This is the case regardless of the individual's personal worldview and despite what the dictionary or scientific textbook definition has become.

At times the connotation of the word is deeper and more "unconscious" than its definition. The use of such words trigger responses to a greater degree in line with what the specific race has thought they mean and how it has acted on their meaning, and to a lesser degree in line with what really is and what man is. I would further suggest that after the worldview and experiences of the race form the definition and connotation of the words of any specific language, then that language as a symbol system becomes the vehicle for keeping alive and teaching this worldview and experience.

It would therefore seem to me that the whole matter is primarily one of language, as man thinks and communicates in language. I would say that in this context the division of languages at the tower of Babel is an overwhelmingly profound moment of history."

--Francis Schaeffer, in a footnoote in The God Who is There

(I would just like to add that he is quickly becoming for me now what C. S. Lewis was for me in high school and college. Blowing my mind, seriously.)