God is Bigger Than Your Shit

Why do you seek the living among the dead?

I can hear the angel asking me the same thing as I stoop and peer into the dark tomb where I have buried my dreams.

Why do you seek satisfaction in that which leaves you hungry? Why do you seek fulfillment in things that will pass away? Why do you seek happiness in things that will disappoint? Why do you run around on this planet, thinking you can create heaven on earth, when all the while it is dying and fading and crumbling before your eyes?

This is all we have ever known. This, as far as we can imagine, is our home. For better or for worse, this is it, what we have been born into, with all its pain and misery, this is all we can imagine. And He doesn’t hold that against us. He has pity on us, knows that we are dust, and treats us gently.

Which is why the scripture is so wonderful “Nor has it entered into the heart of man the things the Father has planned for His children.”

We cannot imagine it. We cannot. In all of our wildest, most fantastic daydreams, what He has for us is beyond that.

He doesn’t really expect us to be able to grasp it. He knows it is beyond our comprehension. There is  no condemnation there, just a simple declaration of truth. He says “Go ahead. Make up the best possible outcome, and then multiply it by the power of infinity. And then add some chocolate sauce. Because that’s just how good it’s going to be. You can’t even fathom it. And I never get tired of seeing your faces when you come through those gates.”

This is the Good News, folks. This is It. That He came and made the way for all of us, every single one of us, no matter how depraved, no matter how crippled and twisted and ugly, to enter through those gates and fall on our faces in disbelief. His goodness and mercy know no bounds, and we can throw ourselves upon them again and again and again and again and it will never fail.

He then says that, though it has not entered into our hearts, yet He has revealed it to us by His Spirit. He has given us that taste, and now we (should) know better. We seek, and we find Him. We taste, and we find that He is good. He alone satisfies. And this is the glimpse of Heaven that we have, within us, that spurs us forward, that puts a gleam in our eye and gives us hope when that injured thing within us wants to curse God and die.

We are not left to wallow in the pain and misery of this earth. We are to hope for better things, believe in His goodness, and trust in His love. We are to put our dreams into His hands, where He can shape them into more than we ever could. This is the message of the angel to the women at the tomb, and it is the message to me today. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

Let’s seek the living in He who lives, and shut the door on the dead.

Luke 24:5
1 Cor 2:9 & 10

What, exactly, are we, as Christians, asked to believe? What, if we claim Christ as our glorious Savior, must we then give full recognition as credible, from the very same scriptures that magnify His name? Without getting too very much into side-issues, let’s just look at the most basic facts. Off of the top of my head, here are a few:

A God who created everything. Just by…you know…speaking it into existence.

Jesus Christ, His Son, who was:

1. conceived purely by the power of the Holy Spirit
2. was born to a virgin
3. performed too many miracles in His lifetime than can be listed here
4. was completely sinless
5. was sacrificed to be the perfect atonement for our numberless sins
6. rose from the dead three days later
7. sits at the right hand of God the Father, forever interceding for us, His bride
8. is preparing a place for us in Heaven
9. is returning one day to bring us all to that Home
10. will judge satan and his consorts and fling them forever in to hell

The Holy Spirit, the living Spirit of God, Who dwells within us and brings God’s power, comfort, wisdom, guidance and peace to us.

Among other things.

Really?

I mean….REALLY?

Do I believe it?

I say I do.

But wouldn’t I change how I behave if I really did? Shouldn’t I be, like, shrieking a little bit in excitement every moment of the day if I really believed it?

Well, sometimes…rarely, but sometimes…the truth of it overwhelms me, and I do shriek a little. Not too much, lest anyone be alarmed and think I’m some sort of religious kook, but a modified shriek, mostly internal.

Do we realize how much like a fairy tale it sounds to those who do not believe? Those of us who have been Christians for more than a decade, or grew up in the church and cut our teeth on words like tribulation, armageddon, seraphim, rapture, and resurrection need to step back a few paces and look at it with fresh eyes sometimes. I mean, Jesus…our Jesus…is going to come back on a white horse through the clouds, sword splitting atoms as He enters the atmosphere, angelic warriors blasting trumpets, stars raining down from heaven…

There will be lots of shrieking in that moment, that much you can count on.

It sounds like the most fantastic work of fiction ever to sprout from a storyteller’s fevered brain…yet what laughable arrogance we humans possess, to think that God’s story is a product of our imagination, when our imaginations themselves are mere shadows of His.

It thrills me no end to serve a God whose mind can conceive exceedingly abundantly beyond all I could ask or think…and to know that I am on His mind, that somehow I delight Him…how good it is to belong to Him. How thankful I am to be His creature! How I wish my tiny mind could hold even a fraction of the wonder of it!

Our God is a consuming fire, and my filth crackles as he seizes hold of me; he is all light and my darkness shrivels under his blaze. It is this naked blaze of God that makes prayer so terrible. For most of the time, we can persuade ourselves we are good enough, as good as the next man, perhaps even better, who knows? Then we come to prayer – real prayer, unprotected prayer – and there is nothing left in us, no ground on which to stand.

~Sr. Wendy Beckett

Real prayer…unprotected prayer…when we come to Jesus raw and oozing and leave pretense at the torn veil as we pass through. We see ourselves in the clear light of His Presence, and we grieve. We look into the mirror of His Word, and we mourn. We fall so short of perfection. Is it any wonder so few want to come close?

I mean, who WANTS to be humbled and broken?

Not me.

I’d prefer to hold tightly to arrogance, to the soothing voice that says “now, now, you are not that bad! you’ve never (fill in the blank) like that guy over there…”

Mostly though, there is no voice. Just the smug assurance that really, when you get right down to it, I truly do deserve God’s grace, at least a little bit. Surely He didn’t have to spill quite so much blood over me. Surely all the stripes and the thorn-piercings and the nails were for everybody else. I mean, for me He might have just needed a spanking. Maybe a really hard one, but truly…all that blood and suffering? Not necessary. But I’m glad He did it for everybody else, don’t get me wrong.

And then I read about the woman at Jesus’ feet, who washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair, who loved Jesus with such an all-consuming, extreme passion that her act of devotion prepared Him for death. I believe that her love for Him, the image of her pouring precious oil on His feet and kissing them repeatedly, must have been foremost in His mind as they drove in the nails. Because it was for that kind of love that He gave Himself up. For a bride who would accept His gift without reserve and return that Love in earnest, forever rejoicing in His wholehearted embrace.

I want to have that kind of love for Him.

Yet I stand aloof, not wanting to blubber and make a spectacle of myself.

He pursues as a lover, the bridegroom who yearns to draw me near, who calls out my name and beckons me just come…just come, and let Me look at you! I love you, I accept you, I died for you.

Oh, come come now I say, shaking my head a little nervously, thinking self-deprecation is the proper response. Get ahold of Yourself. Not me, surely. I think You have the wrong person.

Pride and doubt mingle to keep me politely declining His invitation. I think I am at some kind of party where there are just two or three hors d’oeuvres left and I must resist the urge to devour them all so that there will be enough for others. Because, you know, they aren’t ALL FOR ME. I mustn’t be greedy. I must show some decorum!

But greed is exactly what He is wanting from me. A holy greed that is hungry for Him, and all of Him. And nothing else. A holy passion that doesn’t care who it has to offend and who it has to bypass in order to get at Him. A thirst for Him that is not satisfied until it is at His feet, weeping and kissing in gratitude.

Where does that kind of gratitude come from? That kind of passion? From understanding just how much I have been forgiven. From understanding that what was done, was done ALL FOR ME.

Passionate love is the only true response when I come face to face with His holy fire that burns all the pretense away and I see just how far He had to come to bring me home. I pray the unprotected prayer, for my senses to be awoken to how truly filthy I was, how very large my debt, and how merciful my Ransom.

And the passion, it grows.

Luke 7: 36-50

Come like a hurricane
come sweep me clean 

Come like a brush fire
make me grow green 

Shake like an earthquake
come shatter these lies 

Be a tsunami
to my stubborn pride

Shatter this vessel
with Your mighty wind 

Then,
be the Healer

and build me again.

Hebrews 12:25-29

What business do I have putting the word “God” alongside the word “shit”, anyway? Am I just trying to get attention; to be offensive?

Shit has been an offensive word for hundreds of years. Apparently people don’t particularly care for a word that describes something that only other folks do.

A simple study on the etymology of the word is quite enlightening.* An Old English word dating from the 14^th century, its root is the verb scitan, which means simply “to split, divide, or separate”.  Related to shed, it implies that what is not helpful or useful is, of necessity, jettisoned.

Actually, what I DO think is funny (not haha-funny but weird-funny) is that we shrink from calling things what they are. We are sultans of spin, experts at euphemism, and we will do almost anything to polish up our poop and proclaim it presentable.

But I’m tired of it. I know what shit smells like, and I don’t care how elegant you think yours is.

I’m full of shit, I admit it. It weighs me down, makes me sick, permeates my cells. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust? Try manure to manure. That’s me.

But I don’t want to get my shit together. I want to get rid of it entirely. I want to be purged, to be set free from the foul and fetid and festering. To walk in newness, and life abundant.

And that’s what I’m writing about here. Just my own experiences in the pain of purging. And the victory as God takes me from glory to glory…no matter how gory that glory is.

If you stick around, I can’t promise that I’ll always be the good little Christian. But I can promise that I will always be honest, at least as much as a person who writes anonymously can claim to be.

I’m feeling itchy, and antsy, and fed up with the constriction that confines my growth.

I’m ready to shed.

Mark 7: 14-23

*if you’ve heard that shit was an acronym for ship high in transit, here’s some helpful debunking information For more etymology info, try this .