smeagal-ism.

Let's talk about legality for a minute.

Or several, because I think that it's a discussion that is going to take more than a one word Sunday-school answer. Or maybe it is only a one word answer.

I've sort of been mulling over the concept of being comfortable with sin.

Not a light subject exactly.

Exhibit A:

Why do I think it's ok to burn CDs, but it's absolutely not ok to just snag a CD from a music store.

Or

Exhibit B:

Why do I sometimes think its ok to roll my eyes at the creepy couples that spoon in Joes or the Chapel-Heavy-Petters. But you know, speaking pejoratively of someone behind their back is absolutely not ok.

So how are my small reactions less sinful than my big reactions?

And then, I get worked up over it- of all of the things that I said or did that were not exactly "above reproach." and I repent and try to move on, but not without some mental battle of self loathing and condemnation. And then I start clamming up when I'm having normal conversations with people because

what if what I'm about to say isn't edifying? What if I'm wrong? What if I wear a two piece bathing suit? Maybe I shouldn't wear skinny jeans? Oh gosh! Is it wrong to wear makeup or to style my hair? .... now where is that Amish dress that I had from Halloween two years ago- that should be modest enough. Hey Mom have you seen my bonnet, I can't seem to---

HOLD UP.

This is when you say, "You know Rachel, I see your lips moving but all I'm hearing is: legalismlegalismlegalismlegalismlegalismlegalism."

EXACTLY! That's what I thought too.

WE absolutely have freedom because we've been saved by His grace (Hallelujah!).

And should we keep on sinning? By no means. (spoketh St Paul)

But here's the kicker.

Are we free from the condemnation of legality because of God's grace? Well that's obvious.

Or is there another component here? Are we giving ourselves permission to act in a way that might be just

a little sinful?

It's puzzling. There is some aspect of getting cozy with sin, right? Or maybe it's just get cozier still with grace.

Yeah.

My money's on grace.

Grace Wins.

Hm. Sort of like Love Wins. But less universalist.

doorpost of your heart.

Hands stretched apart, nails like railroad stakes through his wrists and ankles. He hung naked, bleeding, sores weeping, scourged, gasping, all the while onlookers mocked. The death of a criminal and his charge: King of the Jews.

What a throne.

And they told him to bring himself down from there.

Save yourself! They sneered. His friends too: Save yourself! they begged, gasping as their friend, son, brother, messiah pulled himself up in the effort to grab a breath, and then sank back down. His lungs were filling up with water. They watched the pain streak across his face while this most perfect God-man suffered insult and injury. He screamed:

Papa! Why have you forsaken me? Papa!

And then it was finished.

It- salvation, redemption, the greatest Love Story of all time had been penned and the great Author looked at it and He saw that it was good.

Then the Author looked at me.

And in the very moment when he should have penned my sentence, an eternity of screaming Papa! Why have you forsaken me? Papa! He wrote,

Beloved.

You see, because when He had looked at Jesus on that cross, it wasn't Jesus that repulsed Him. It was my sin. My hate. My selfishness. My pride. My arrogance. My failure. My shortcomings. My perversion of His created great good.

And now, I am called Beloved.

It's hard to wrap my mind around. I think about Passover, which starts tomorrow, and Good Friday which is only five days away, and am gobsmacked by the magnitude of this giant Love that has somehow changed my status from being repulsive creature to precious child. I can't quite comprehend that the powerful blood has been smeared over the doorpost of my heart and the Angel of Death has no power here.

I'll continue to dwell here, and to let my spirit rest in the knowledge of this Love that has somehow made a wretch His treasure. And I'll think on this as I lay on my bed. And then I'll wake up in the morning, and make every effort to make this my first thought.

But then I will hold onto my idols and my sin, with two hands probably, and the great Love will fade into the background and-- wait, what's the big deal about following Jesus anyhow? I'm much more partial to my way. My pride is so becoming, don't you think?

Oh. How quickly I forget!

This is my prayer this Easter: take from me what I will not give.

You gave what I had no right to take, and now You look on me with Love.

blog monster.

I think that "blogging your feelings" is a lot like "eating your feelings."

Don't do it.

So I'm restraining myself.

Instead I'll post that ol' essay:

Living (and blogging) for Eternity

I wouldn’t call myself a "Blogger". Mostly because when I think about the word, I picture a blobby alien in flannel roaming the woods cutting trees down (blob and logger? Get it?). The other reason is because of the weird looks the mere mention of a blog seems to evoke from my Christian pals.

You mean, you publish your private feelings online for everyone to see?

Uh, that would be a no. That’s what my grid-lined Moleskine journals are for. The blog, I can assure you, is nothing more than a desperate cry for attention.

Hold your judgments until the end please—I promise that I’ve got a message that’s worth listening to.

This summer past, I lived in Israel and backpacked through India with a Jewish ministry. It was one of those experiences that you look back on three months later and think to yourself, “Oh my word. Did I actually do that?” We walked where Jesus walked. We shared the gospel with Israelis. We stood on street corners and passed out tracts. We learned Hebrew. We almost got arrested. Then we trekked through India to get into more conversations with Israelis, fresh out of the army, and dying for a mental escape. We got Delhi-Belly. We watched broken, broken people interact with the idea that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. We also got cursed out and spit on, almost run over by rickshaws, and attacked by small beggar children. It was an epic adventure.

I decided that I wanted to start a blog so that my friends and family would have a place to read about our adventures and know how to be praying specifically. Which came in absolute handy because the Lord was faithful to protect us from the flooding that was wiping out Indian villages hours after we had left them. The goal of the blog was to proclaim God’s faithfulness, acknowledge the often-humorous ways that the Lord works, and have a place where I could honestly talk about what my team was experiencing.

I have to confess that my motives were not so pure at the beginning of my blogging career. Remember Xanga? That quirky online watering hole, where anyone could publish anything and have anyone read it? At fourteen I could not think of a better outlet for my hormonal outburst. I made a promise to myself that I would keep the blog for only as long as I was in high school and then after that, I would let it be- an Internet time capsule of sorts.

Recently, I decided I wanted to revisit my blogging roots, poke around the old entries typified by teenage angst and sophomoric yammering. I skimmed a couple of entries and became increasingly alarmed and sad. Post after post I kept thinking, “I felt that way? I thought that way? Who was this person?” I read comments people left- some incredibly hurtful—you know, things that high school girls will only say to the computer screen and not to your face. Others were a little more encouraging. But still the string that seemed to tie all of my entries together was a radical self-love that resulted in self-pity and a desperate cry for help. I needed Jesus really bad.

Graciously, the Lord swooped down and caught up my heart only a few months after my last Xanga entry, yet even after having been walking with the Lord for two years, I still see similar sin and thought patterns in my writing. Flipping through private journal entries and recent blog posts from just two days ago, I can still see echoes of who I used to be, B.C. (Before Christ) as portrayed in my Xanga blogs, but there is a difference- two major differences, I think.

The first is that I no longer write like a fourteen-year-old teenybopper. If this were my blog page, I’d post a picture here [X] of me with gangly arms, a middle part, and braces furiously trying to make my buck teeth submit to their steely frame.

Secondly, I don’t regularly insert words like, “LOL!!!” and “OMG!!!!” Thirdly, I don’t try to use emoticons to emphasize my attitude. And finally, everyone should be rejoicing that I’m not writing “emo” poetry anymore.

I’d be remiss to not mention that fact that despite all of the personal growth, I’ve become a grammatical degenerate more or less, overusing commas to emphasize and add verbal pauses so you’ll know exactly how I’m speaking. But for the most part, I’m now writing like a woman that’s been walking intentionally with the Lord for the past two and a half years.

Which brings me to the second difference.

I can hear it in the tone of my writing how the Lord is changing me. He breaks my heart daily. He renews me. He refreshes me. I do a lot of processing when I write, and through that, can see the work of the Holy Spirit changing my heart, convicting me, and showing me how desperate I am for Him.

There’s a lot of vulnerability in writing. Which is a good thing.

But it’s a scary thing too, because this is where it gets personal. I’ve noticed a trend in some of the close Christian communities I belong to, of a lack of honesty with ourselves, with each other, but most alarmingly, with the Lord. We seem to be falling prey to the deception that we’re not fit for ministry unless we’ve got everything together.

I was talking to my parents on the phone the other night and had made a pretty lengthy list of all of the ways that I was frustrated, challenged, bitter, not growing, resistant to the Lord, and I’d never be a woman of God, and I’ll never get married, and how do I expect to impact someone else’s life when I can’t get mine together, I’ll never be a good mentor if I oversleep for my class—sob, sob, sob.

Sounds dramatic, but I’m fairly emotional, so don’t fret.

My wise dad said, “Who told you that you had to have it all together to be effective in ministry?”

I sniffed and did that shuddery breath that you do after you’ve cried really hard and realized that no one had said that to me. No one had ever looked me in the eye or implied in their tone- “You had better figure your whole life out before you go and help other people.”

I was listening to a fat lie from Satan.

I wasn’t called into ministry because I was perfect. I hadn’t even done anything to earn my own righteousness.

So, I sat down at my journal to process everything. I skimmed through old blog entries, read old comments from friends, and parents of friends, and strangers that had somehow stumbled on my blog and realized something:

The Lord is glorified as He transforms my life and the lives of those who love Him.

It is my hope that in my transparency of sharing the normal everyday awkward moments, spiritual epiphanies, and personal struggles (with discretion, obviously!), the Lord’s faithfulness, goodness, mercy, even His humorous workings, and especially His love, will ring louder and truer than any desperate cry for attention an old Xanga post might clamor for.

Maybe it was a tad dramatic to call my reason for blogging a “desperate cry for attention”. But I desperately want people to pay attention to the fact that our God is alive, He is at work, and He is always good- all the time.