To Have, To Behold

Are we fools who attach quickly, express fully, elaborate completely? To expose our hearts on our sleeve - is that something that should arouse feelings of shame?

Or rather, were we meant to be this way? Imagine yourself for a moment, completely stripped of all that has been taught you of social mores and acceptability, and consider the person you are at your very core. Probably the person you were as a child. What did you gravitate towards? What things did you shout at the top of your lungs? What made you cry? What did you hate? What did you dream about?

I get it, thinking and talking about these things isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. To consider the hidden places of one’s soul is a really vulnerable thing to do and not exactly a rainy day activity. As someone who is an artist, I know that full well, and also admit that even though I’m not supposed to, I avoid it all occasionally. But I have been considering the lines, the boundaries, the things that hold us back from being the people that God intended us to be. There is benefit to structure, it is a necessary thing. But we don’t make friends because of our structure, we don’t fall in love, pursue a passion, or create things as a result of our limitations alone. In spite of them, absolutely, but not because of them. We don’t choose tv shows or movies because of how "PC" they are. We don’t appreciate a sunset or like pictures on Instagram because they’re average.

C.S. Lewis said (and I deeply paraphrase) that he believes our capacity to understand and take in beauty will increase when we get to heaven. That God has placed a meaningful ceiling of what we can withstand here on earth because of our inability to handle the full scope of the beauty He is capable of showing us. That one day, we’ll be able to. I love that. What an incredible and exciting thought.

Because really, how amazing and inexplicable is it when you catch eyes with a kindred spirit who just understood the same unspoken thing at the exact moment you did? How singularly phenomenal is it when a cool breeze hits you in just the right way as you’re looking at the sun shining through the trees? When you’re caught off guard by an unplanned stillness and quiet contentment? When a character in a movie says something that hits your heart in a way you never heard expressed aloud before? All of these things are beautiful. They are glimpses of a much, much larger reality.

Human beings are filled with beauty. Yourself included. And to appreciate it is one of the gifts that we have. But the most important thing to realize, I think, is that God created this beauty. God is beauty.

So when you are tempted to shake your fist to the heavens at the outrage you feel, remember God created the laughter of a child.

When you feel hopeless, call to mind that the Lord Himself causes the sun to rise radiantly every morning and sleepily every night.

When you are angry at the way your life is unfolding, remember warm summer rains that cleanse the earth and promise a chance for re-growth and renewal.

Do these things seem incongruous? They’re not. These things are just reminders that the things we think we know are small in magnitude compared to the deep mysteries of the world and the delight that those mysteries offer us.

These small glimpses of glory offer you a second perspective as you consider that the One who created these awe-inspiring and lovely things must also be lovely and awe-inspiring.

Beautiful things imply a beautiful Creator. You are nothing short of a miracle, your life is miraculous, the things that make you come alive are intended, and your ability to acknowledge beauty in yourself, nature, and others is one of the very things that connect you to the Divine.

This is worship. Extending beyond ourselves and our grievances to behold the glory of the One who is too beautiful for us to understand, and to be grateful He whispers that beauty to us while we are yet on this earth.

If all else about walking with God eludes you, know at the very least that the appreciation of beauty is the beginning of worship. Consider the beauty that surrounds you and how intentional and planned it must truly be. Consider what Love must be behind the Author of such beauty, what consideration and compassion and mercy and grace behind His initiation of these gifts delivered specifically to you. As you process beauty, as we all are able to do, perhaps you will begin to understand. 

That is my prayer. That we might all begin to understand, and never suppress, His beauty and heart, even when we may not understand much else. That we may never quench or squander away our appreciation for the new things unfolding before us, failing to see them as the gifts from our Heavenly Father that they truly are. That we never shrug off His beauty, especially the beauty that lies within each person regardless of what shell they have become, and that we never feel shame or apologize for expressing our gratitude for it. That we never stop expressing aloud our gratitude for it at all.

May we never bow before the created thing,

But forever bow before the King.

 Gold Fireflies in Japan (click for more...amazing!)

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Oh sing to the Lord a new song;
    sing to the Lord, all the earth!
 Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
    tell of his salvation from day to day.
 Declare his glory among the nations,
    his marvelous works among all the peoples!
 For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
    he is to be feared above all gods.
 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,
    but the Lord made the heavens.
 Splendor and majesty are before him;
    strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

(Psalm 96:1-6)

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. (Psalm 139:14)

Those who look to him are radiant, 

and their faces shall never be ashamed. (Psalm 34:5)

Pursuit of Glory

I happen to know a beautiful woman who forgets her value. 
I happen to know a warrior of faith hanging by a thread. 
I happen to have a friend of mine wishing they could disappear. 
I hear the fear in a familiar voice's laughter.
I tangibly feel the child next-door's hurt as their father makes fun of them for crying.
I see my peers filling their bodies and hearts with garbage.
I sense regretful choices in a crowded room. 
I text a cousin asking why we are awake but want to sleep forever.

There are so many frantic bodies and busy hearts. It's utterly manic, yet oftentimes manifests itself in the real world with an eerily still exterior. It's bizarre, it's unnatural, it's dangerous. On some level, you feel it too, right? How far gone does one have to be to escape something so palpable?

I have never experienced more anxious people (and more "faux calm" people), or come to grips with anxiety myself more than I have since going to school and living in New York City.

And what is anxiety, really, but life without God? Momentary lapses of extended separation from Christ. Disengagement with the Spirit within you, living inside of you. Quenching Him, grieving Him, replacing Him, ignoring Him.

Another form of control of one's body apart from Jesus.

What has been kind of curious for me though, as I consider it all, is how we seek to replace our anxiety, one control, with another control, and not instead a peace. To us, peace is weakness, not action. Not forward-moving. Peace is vulnerably still. And that other control we seek and deem that we need to medicate is often not God, but a rapid high speed force of something else. This city is bursting at the seams with much opportunity for something, lots of things, anything else.

I was looking at an Instagram account with a series of pictures and quotes about why people love New York City the other night. It's pretty harmless, but as I often do (probably too much) of, I started to wonder. Every quote bothered me, ticked me off in a way that was beyond late night over-tiredness, and it didn't take long to figure out why. 

This city, more than others, is filled with tons of people obsessed with chasing after their perceived ideal of glory.


But it's mostly glory for themselves, and it stops there.

In a sense, where else will you do your glory chasing? It's a city of dreams, after all. It's a city of hope. I'm in it, I'm a part of it, I'm doing "that dream thing" too, lest I be a hypocrite and claim that I'm not. But the anxiety enters in because to be here you believe you must strive or else be left behind. And to strive outwardly requires the will to strive happening inwardly. And to strive inwardly leads to spinning your wheels, leads to...well, death, in some strain or form.

Comparison, city worship, goal worship, people worship, even experience worship are anxiety ticking time explosives.

Before living here, I didn't come to the city often, despite growing up a pretty fast car ride away. I could probably count on one hand the excursions. But I do remember one of the most pivotal times I came to Manhattan back then. I was in eighth grade, insecure, going to see Wicked because someone gifted me tickets or something. And I remember having kind of a disappointing time that trip, being a little grumpy for trivial reasons (my Uggs were probably too tight, you feel me?). But then, at the end of the show, I watched the procession of actors bowing at the curtain call, and I lost it. I wanted to be up there, on that stage where those actors were. Badly. It was then, when the bubble of characters and lighting and sound and effects burst and I saw these sweating, exhausted actors as the people they really were, unmasked and grateful and bowing almost submissively, that I understood. These were people, participating in something sort of like magic, but really, just souls in costumes. And they were living a dream that felt so close to me, so attainable, even if realistically I knew it might be a long time away.

On some level I sensed then the realizations that are taking deeper root now, but I left that night more dizzied by the twinkle of the lights, the energy of the city, and taken with the mystery of what it would be like to be there all the time, living out my dreams. I felt that the city was magic. 

But the magic isn't in New York city. The glory isn't in what heights you reach.

And this is not some long diatribe about relinquishing dreams we hold dear just because they were (and are still) magical to us - no, it is realizing how to dream them more fully. It is understanding what real glory is, and where it actually resides.

We are a city of refugees, but no longer with the former noble aims of old, to escape real persecution and chains, but in many ways engaging in our own persecutions ourselves in our self-willed imprisonments.

Spend five minutes talking to someone here and they'll tell you their dream and offer you a spirit of rejection in the same breath. Well, which is it? You can't be in your utopia and your hell. To me, this glory chasing, this thrill seeking group-think is founded in the depths of some of the worst depression in individuals I have ever seen.

And that is why I (you, we) breathe in anxiety here. It's not that hard to connect the dots, is it? It's difficult to "wake up in the city that never sleeps" when no one engages in a rest to wake up from in the first place.  And you're a part of that. You see, feel, hear, and are nearly forced to embrace the struggle as a rite of passage the moment you walk outside.

The truth is, God is the only power that can fill the empty nag that exists in the pit of your stomach walking home at the end of the night, in the darkness, in the silence.


And maybe He wants you to feel a little uncomfortable here.

Do you want to know what real New York City fervor should be? Waking up knowing you have a kingdom purpose. That you have plans for your life that are so far beyond you and not at all about you and satisfying for you all at once.

Want to feel more beautiful than the Rockefeller tree? Read the words that you were fearfully and wonderfully made. Bought with a price. Cared for. Approved of. Chosen. Loved.

You're beautiful to Him before your mirror debates you on the subject.

Marching doesn't unify, Jesus' love does. Love that knew no flaw is the standard and access to freedom.

Your job or your worries that your dreams will fail are nothing in the hands of a sovereign God who just wants you to look up and truly see who He is and enjoy your standing in His presence. To recognize that this is where you find your worth and value. This is where you find your dreams.

Hiding and sleeping your day away doesn't give Him the chance to show you why you don't need to be doing that, or what wonderful thing He's about to do with you.

Drowning him out with your headphones, filling up all minutes of silence won't rid you of your own culpability. 

What will you do with Jesus? 

Will you choose your dreams over Him? Ignore His calls? 

Everyone is hurting here. Everyone is lost. Everyone needs peace. Everywhere. Even if you're not in New York City at all.

I know a Savior who delivers. And I know a magnificent city that holds promise. I also know and experience daily countless amounts of people whose passions, if redirected, could make the ground quake in the name of the love of Jesus, the fulfillment of Promise. Covering every square inch of this city is the source of that Promise, the Hope of the world, the Maker of dreams and the Holder of hearts. Your dreams are not complete apart from Him. Alone, they are really not dreams at all. But with Him, they develop and grow into much more than the seductive skyline could ever provide.

To leave Him neat and tidy for your Sunday slacks misses the entire point and vision and scope and possibility. We are missing the mark as a city, as a people, as a nation of dreamers. We are entranced by the reflection of light from the crystal, worshipping the beam and failing to see the glory and intricacy and multi-dimension of the Source itself.

You're not supposed to hurt this much. You know this, deep down you know this. We'd all be better off knowing and confessing that what we're feeling is universal, what we're seeing and hearing is pain, and that we are struggling, that we are here and trying but we still need. We need, but we are gifted with the grace to know Who is sure.

What if our desire for glory got transplanted over to the One who is Glory? What a relief that would be, and what pressure would finally release from the enormity of us placing it on ourselves. Such glory was never meant for us, but for the One from whom all things and all glory originate.

Source

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And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes." (Luke 19:41-42, words of Jesus)

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

For it is fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. (Hebrews 2:10)

 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (1 John 1:14)