Assume Love

Lately....

every song on the radio touches my soul.

every person I know makes me laugh - not because they're funny, but because the joy in knowing them has to spill out.

hearing a beautiful truth makes me dance - in my room, in my car, on the sidewalk.

love between friends has become something wondrous.

I've been having feelings of joy, and it's all because of a realization that I'm finding difficult to articulate, even to myself.

Maybe God's grace isn't an oasis in a horrible world. Maybe God's grace is so humongous that it overshadows the sin, overpowers it, overwhelms it. Lately when I look at the world, I see love instead of darkness.

Maybe I'm not a sinner. Yeah, I sin, every day, I know. But what if that's not who I am, not the consummation of my identity? Without Christ, I'm a sinner. But with Him I'm glowing, full of hope, changing, reforming.

A couple of weeks ago I was telling a sweet friend of mine about my brilliant 1-year old nephew, Elliot. He had a bit of a "dag tood" - a bad attitude - and was mumbling to me "ma ma ma" in a grumpy voice because he was mad at Megan. It was a funny story, and after laughing my friend said, "oh, that little sinner!"

Technically, she didn't say anything wrong. But inside my heart hurt, because when I see Elliot, I don't see a sinner. I see God's love pouring not only into him, but out of him. I see a vessel of joy and comfort and glory.

I'm not saying the world is, or people are, "basically good" (although I think this feeling is the kind of excitement that motivates that theology). I'm saying God's poured SO much love into me, His love is what I see when I look at myself. But for the grace of God, I know where I would stand. But I feel like we're always talking about where we would be "if not for God's grace." Okay - but now I have God's grace! What now? Shouldn't I see myself differently? Shouldn't I see the world differently?

We are most certainly not "just passing through." We are here to change the world.

There is knowing something. Hearing it, saying it, memorizing it...

and then there is knowing something. Feeling it. Living it.

I now know that God's love and comfort offers more than enough joy to overwhelm any fear.

I now know why people say, "assume love."

, originally uploaded by nikolinelr.

Break forth! Shout joyfully together, you waste places of Jerusalem. For Yahweh has comforted His people - He has redeemed Jerusalem.

Isaiah 52:9

Intimidation Survey

I am thinking of sending out a survey. After the usual demographic info, it will say:

How intimidating do you find Sarah on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being not intimidating at all and 5 being paralyzingly intimidating)?

1 2 3 4 5

If 1: Thank you.

If 2 or above: Why the heck? (Please feel free to use reverse side of the paper. Or simply go out to lunch with me because, really, I'm not that bad)

I just don't understand this. To intimidate means to make someone timid, fearful. Webstah!

Pronunciation: \in-'ti-muh-date\

Function: transitive verb

Etymology: Medieval Latin: intimidatus, past participle of intimidare, from Latin in- + timidus timid

: to make timid or fearful : frighten; especially : to compel or deter by or as if by threats

synonyms: cow, bulldoze, bully, browbeat. "to frighten into submission"

intimidate implies inducing fear or a sense of inferiority into another

A new friend of mine, Joe, recently told my sister that he found me intimidating (but also said some nice things, so we'll let Joe off the hook). The real issue is that I said, "Why the heck?" and my sister proceeded to tell me that most of her friends find me intimidating. No, strike that - most people find me intimidating upon meeting me. I don't think this is true - but I have to concede that Bethany has some verifiably true stories about people that came to her feeling inferior/frightened/whatever after meeting me.

It would be one thing if I were rude to these people - that would be very bad, but explainable. But I always come away thinking, "Hey! That was a good time! I really got to know them! I really respect them!" or something along those lines. Because, while I'm certainly not intimidated by Joe, I felt we were pretty at home/relaxed. But no! Joe was intimidated! And so were a dozen other folks! (No worries, Joe, it's not you - you are just the final straw.)

I am very small: 5'2". I am not strong - anyone in my family could beat me in an arm-wrestling match. I am not a success machine - I live with my parents, earn minimum wage, and am a little socially awkward. I like kittens and gardens. I wear the same clothes almost every day, and they are not stylin'.

Mostly this whole intimidation thing discourages me. I want to convince others of their own value, not my own. When people find me intimidating, I feel as if I've failed at that.

At the same time, I want to be myself. I don't want to limit my vocabulary if I have an effective word. I don't want to be cool with people's actions/words when I disagree with them. Maybe this is what is intimidating?

I feel like Mystique is intimidating. Or maybe Cat Woman. I don't know any real person that I find intimidating - because I have been give a spirit of POWAH!

So please answer my survey. Or enlighten me. Or tell me how to lighten up and help people relax. Because people shouldn't be frightened of a poofy-haired, wobbly-in-high-heels, bites-her-fingernails teacher. That is just silly.

I am the problem.

I was reading Blue Like Jazz a couple of months ago. It made me cry like a baby more than once. Donald Miller is my hero, you see - I disagree with him politically, doctrinally, and who knows how else, but he is still my hero. He gives me an awesome picture of authenticity.

I think authenticity is hugely important. If God says, "My power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9), then we need to be open about our weaknesses - we need to shout them out! "Hello, my name is Sarah, and I'm a terrible mess of pride and self-hatred...I hardly know how that's possible." As uncomfortable as it may be for some of us, it's important to be open about it, vulnerable. Paul only ever boasts in two things - did you know that? He boasts in Christ, and he boasts in his own weaknesses.

That's so hard for us, though. Well, it's hard for me. It's much more easy to get caught up in the weaknesses of others - in pointing them out, "helping" them out. It's easy to see weaknesses in the system: our school's organization, the nation's policy, our family's dysfunction. I'm not saying we should ignore those things, but I am saying we tend to blame "them," whoever they are, for most of the problems in the world.

Here's what Donald Miller says in Chapter 2 (which contains the best explanation of human depravity I've ever read. Read it sometime.):

I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.

The thing I realized on the day we protested, on the day I had beers with Tony, was that it did me no good to protest America's responsibility in global poverty when I wasn't even giving money to my church, which has a terrific homeless ministry. I started feeling very much like a hypocrite.

Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I just want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read "I AM THE PROBLEM!"

I have since wanted to do this very often - step into a group of protesters and tell them it's me - it's them. We need to fix us.

I wrote a mission statement for my life one time. Part of it said, "I will be honest about who I am, and excited about changing into who God wants me to be." You would be surprised how difficult this is. You would be surprised how easy it is to pretend you're more knowledgeable than you really are, to act like the type of person you want to be known as, rather than the type of person you know you should be. Well, maybe you wouldn't be so surprised.

"I know now, from experience, that the path to joy winds through this dark valley." Page 23.

Or like God says, "I give grace to the humble." Sort of. 1 Peter 5:5.

I intend to change the world. This sounds very big. Well, it is very big, isn't it? Because the world is huge, and, as Megan said (although I can't recall why), "I am very little."

But.

As I see myself slowly changing into the person God created me to be, I see the people around me change, too. A man at IWU said one time that we are like puddles of water, and God is the waterfall. Trying to fill each other on our own is completely draining...but if we place ourselves right under Him, we can't help but drench everyone around us.

I really think I can change the world. Back to 2 Corinthians 12:

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

God already changed the world in a HUGE way. He's given me the chance to be in on it, to tap into this huge, world-changing power. "Just become weak."

Or, in my case, just be real about how weak you really are.

So here is Sarah raw:

I am a mess. Sometimes...I feel like changing into Your likeness is never going to happen. This is because I constantly feel like I'm regressing...and that is probably because I am. I have so much head knowledge of You that I feel like I could scoop it out of my brain with a shovel. It feels ancillary and cluttered. But my heart knowledge of You is so weak. I want to rest my head on your chest so that I can feel your heartbeat, live your heartbeat. I want to stop reading books about You and start writing them.

Semper reformanda. We say this because it was one of the battle cries of the Reformation - always reforming. They meant it about the church, but I mean it about myself - because I am the problem.

And God is the solution. And maybe, if I stop presenting the world with a cardboard cutout of myself, then the real me, the weak, God-powered me, can be part of the solution, too.

Next time I roll my eyes at you (I do this often), or lift an eyebrow in derision (I do this more often), remind me that I'm a punk, and that you love me anyway. Next time I get hypocritically...critical about something irrelevant, remind me that I should love my enemies, get over myself, and remember that passion without patience is annoying and ineffective.

I think I'm going to change the world in a big way, maybe something bigger than I've imagined. Maybe I won't even know it in this lifetime. But I can say with certainty (although I can offer no proof) that more world-changing is done in the small things, in the mundane, than in world-recognized greatness.

1 Corinthians 10:31. Whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do - do it all for God's glory.