Rain in the City...

I recently re-read one of my friend’s books. Well, I call him my friend. But he doesn’t even know my name or where I live and I doubt that he ever will. Still, should he find me the offer for friendship remains. His book is about story and how God wants us to live a good story on this earth so that when we get to Heaven we can sit with our Maker and reminice and be reminded of all the times we forgot, all the times we enjoyed and all the times that brought us conflict. I like that image. Sitting with God and laughing, crying and sitting in shock over what this gift of life offered us. I think I like it more than I know.

There is a part in the book where he talks about meaningful scenes and how they may not move the story along at all but all good stories have them. And though they may not be a pivotal point in the story, they bring meaning just the same. There is a scene in Garden State where the characters are all dressed in garbage bags in the rain standing on the edge of a canyon by a boat that is a house. In Lars and the Real Girl, Lars is seen dancing with his “girlfriend” in the garage that is his home. In Forrest Gump, Forrest is the backwoods of Vietnam describing the rain when all of a sudden the clouds clear to reveal a starry sky more beautiful than he has ever seen. In the movie Once, after recording their album, they all pile into the record executive’s car and blast it through the speakers while they drive around Northern Ireland at top speeds. The point is that meaningful scenes are important. They beg us to live a better life. They are the punctuation to a sentence that we will never forget.

It rained today. Like, serious rain. And it came all of a sudden. I stood at my window eleven floors up and just enjoyed it. I enjoyed the wind as it caressed my face, I enjoyed the raindrops and they hit my chest, arms and hands, I enjoyed the sweet smell of the air and the crack of the clouds as they unleashed their fury on the ground below. In the midst of all this I began to think about what my friend said about meaningful scenes and I thought that this might qualify as one.

The truth is I have been worried lately, worried that maybe I haven’t been living a good story. That maybe I was a few chapters behind everyone else in writing a story worth living, but in that instant, memories came flooding back to me. Like my first day in Uganda when I was standing under a tent buying coat hangers and all of a sudden got caught in a rain storm, the rain seeped into the grass and flooded the little market, it ran up over the soles of my flip flops and soaked my feet. Or the time my new roommates and I, only knowing each other for a few hours, put in our grubby clothes and ran through the rain barefoot late one night. I was reminded of the time I was at someone’s house whom I did not know, with a friend and at the first sign of down pour we ran out onto his deck and stood there till we were soaked to the bone and my mascara ran down my cheeks.

As I stood there watching the rain pool in my hands and drip down to street level I was overwhelmed at what I found. Maybe my story wasn’t as boring at I thought it was. Maybe I was living a good story, not quite there, but one that maybe one day would be worth writing down on paper. Maybe I hadn’t squandered all that God had given me. And in that moment I was truly grateful. Grateful to a God who made things like story that teach us what it is to live and that encourage us to keep living, I was grateful to a God who made the rain and the heavens that it falls from and that someday I will sit with Him and talk about this day and why it was special, just like so many others that He spoke to me through.

Museums. I have always loved museums. Even as a little girl I have marvelled at their grandeur and stateliness. They loom into the sidewalk as if to say, “Here I am, full of treasures. I know all about the past and have seen so many wonders your eyes will not believe themselves.” Granted, I have not been to many and in no means do I pretend to be a coinosseur of museums, but ever since I was a girl I have dreamed of going to the Louvre. I think it all happened on a trip to New York City a few years back. When, walking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I over heard a conversation about how wonderful the Louvre was and how any self-respected art lover would be found there and not in this tiny little museum know as the Met. I couldn’t imagine a museum that was bigger and better and more stately than the one that I was currently standing in. I saw pictures of the Louvre once, on a friend’s digital camera and my heart fell in love. Some day, when I travel Europe, I will go to the Louvre and marvel at what it has to offer.

In the meantime, I will explore any museum I find and enjoy and appreciate art in all forms. This brings me to my newest favorite painting. I saw this at the Musée des Beaux-Arts. I turned a corner and there it was. On a plain wall in some part of the museum where I thought I had gotten lost. As soon as I saw it my heart broke and I stood in front of it for almost half an hour wiping tears from my face. (I’m sure that the security guard was wondering about the apparently emotionally unstable girl standing in front of the painting worried that I would try to tuck it under my arm and make a break for it!) But the thing is, I had just wandered through a section where the only images of Jesus were a young, poor, innocent boy or a defeated shell of a man being hung on a Cross. I think this painting made such an impact because it was clearly different than all the others. This one had life, color, hope. I love what the Savior did for me on that day at Calvary, but I have spent too much of life leaving Him defeated, laiden with pain and on that Cross. He rose again and I think that we never truly live until we understand that He lives too. He came down, off that Cross, in one piece. He conquered death so that we don’t have to live within its clutches.

This painting is a scene from when Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter. Jairus was a temple leader and went to seek the one called Messiah when his daughter fell ill. While he was explaining his case to Jesus a servant from his house came to tell him that unthinkable had happened. His daughter had died. She was no more and Jairus was urged not bother Jesus anymore. Can’t you just see that scene in your head? I can. A father, taking his last chance, fighting through the crowds trying to get to Jesus and earnestly pleading with Him to come and see his daughter. He eventually agrees and before you know it Jesus and entourage is headed to your house. Your heart lifts a little and you are trying not to get too excited until one of your house staff comes, with tear filled eyes, and probably whispers in your ear, “Master, I’m afraid that your daughter is dead. Let’s not bother the Rabbi any longer. Come on let’s go, come on. Stay strong. That’s right keep walking. Just breathe. I know that this is hard but we don’t need a crowd right now. Come on, let’s go.” What an awful, gut wrenching feeling. Here Jairus is, his daughter’s salvation is coming, he can see the roof of his house from here. Jesus is not three feet from him. He can see the dirt under Jesus’ finger nails and smell that He has been traveling. This just isn’t fair. It’s not fair. He is so close and yet so far away. Before Jairus’ thoughts can turn to all the things he could have done instead that would have saved his daughter, Jesus simply says, “Don’t be afraid, just believe.” What audacity, here is Jesus looking Jairus in the face, Jairus has just lost precious little girl, and all He can say, “Just believe”? I don’t know about you, but that is not how I cope with death. Not in the slightest.

When they get to Jairus’ house, Jesus clears the crowd and exclaims that she is simply sleeping and not dead as they all assumed. He enters her room and touches her hand and she opens her eyes, takes a look around and gets out of bed. I bet that there was not one jaw that didn’t hit the floor that night.

But I wonder about this girl. Did she know who Jesus was? Was she accustomed to the lines on this man’s face before he woke her? Was she immediately at peace when she saw him sitting on her bed? Did she grasp the severity of what he had done for her, for her father, for her family and for the neighbors listening at the door? With a simple “Little girl get up.” He had restored a life and a broken family. All because Jairus had faith enough to bother the Rabbi and wait for his miracle to come.

Which makes me think that perhaps Jesus is less occupied with His death on the Cross than you and I might think. It makes me wonder if His mission was not to die here on earth, but to impart life to all have the courage that it takes to “bother” Him. Jesus could have easily held Jairus and his wife while the mourned the loss of their daughter. He could have imparted some beautiful heavenly wisdom in a wonderful eulogy as they laid her low. He could have simply shrugged and apologized for the fact that He couldn’t get there fast enough and encouraged Jairus that they would soon be together at the Lord’s table when Jairus reached eternity. But the point is that He didn’t. He raised that little girl and brought her life out of the grave. That is the point. He restores life. That was His mission and we miss out on that when we leave Him to die in defeat on the Cross like so many of the paintings that I saw in the museum that day. When we forget that Christ has life giving power we leave Jairus’ daughter in her bed, tucked into an eternal slumber. We miss out on so much. Can you imagine the partying that happened in that house that day, and for the days to come? Can’t you just imagine the joy of Jairus and his wife as they tucked their little girl into bed that night thanking, with every fiber of their being, the Savior who had made that moment and so many more like it a possibility again?

I love this painting and this story because there is life in it. It is dripping with life, from the hand of Jesus to the eyes of the little girl to the fly on her arm. The whole thing just sings life. Which is what the Savior does to all of us. He offers us life. He has given me life, and I can taste it. I recently read a blog on not letting yourself have a “near-life experience” by simply succumbing to the slow bleed that can be our lives and not allowing life to imparted to you from a loving and caring Father. I think that those are words we need to hear, and we need to hear them often. There are so many ways in which we can die prematurely and be found not alive while life is happening right around us. I don’t want that to be me. And I don’t want that to be you either. I want life for you and for your little girl. It is too precious of a thing to leave on the bed of one that you love, or on the Cross of one who loved you. Choose life, at all costs, Jairus did and I know that He never regretted it.

And as much as I love museums, all that they can show us is how life was lived, or preserved or guessed at or interpreted. They can’t show us how to live now or what the next steps for us are. Only life and Creator of it can do that. So until I get to the Louvre, and wherever the path from there takes me, I will live my life as a celebration of the One who raised this little girl, both the one lying in the bed and the one being reflected by the computer screen as I write this, and enjoy this life with gusto and zeal because it is a gift. Given to me by a Messiah who enjoyed His and makes mine count.

The Sunrise and CS Lewis

I believe in God like I believe in the sunrise. Not because I can see it but because by it I can see everything else.

-CS Lewis.

Some of my favorite memories of my childhood are of when my father would read out loud to me. One summer he read me the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A literary staple to every childhood. I enjoyed its whimsy and intrigue and all the delights and the perils of the Pevensie children. It was such fun. I would lie in my parents’ great big bed, surrounded by pillows and blankets and the voice of my father would carry off into the mystical land of Narnia and beyond to take part in adventure and uncertainty.

I have stood by the Chronicles of Narnia ever since. The memories still linger and though the series always remained a set of books that I would recommend to every child in town, my connection with the author was lost. But there is a moment in every dwindling friendship that has the power of re-awaking it and that moment was brought on by this quote. It sort of rocked my world, actually. And even though that was years ago I can feel the impact of this statement in my heart even now.

You see, for years I struggled with what to do with my belief in God. I couldn’t shake it; sure I tossed it around a lot and in sat in various places in the bedroom of my heart. Not much unlike that piece of paper with the phone number of an old friend that you are going call once you have the time. You don’t want to file it away in case you forget where you filed it and you don’t want to throw it away knowing that if you do you will forget for eternity and never call. And so my belief was something that I came across again and again. Sometimes I found it under my bed; sometimes it was on my chair. This awkward thing that just sort of stuck around. When it was useful it was very useful and when it wasn’t I would usually just end up tripping over it on my way to something else.

This quote began to put this whole “faith” thing into perspective for me. It challenged me to not just stare at it and occasionally try it on just for good measure, it challenged me to pick it up and look through it. It challenged me to put it to use. It is possible to believe in God like you believe in the sunrise, and that is a very romantic notion. One that I am rather inclined to like, but at the same time, sunrises can be fickle. On the northern pole of this planet the sun sometimes doesn’t rise, and depending on the season you are either woken up by its rays or left waiting staring out your window for a glimmer of hope that perhaps summer hasn’t left after all. But, if you count on its light and the direction that it gives then there is a constancy.

Regardless of whether you see the sunrise you can still make out objects by the light that it sheds. Some days are brilliant with the light of the sun; others tend to leave you squinting and estimating where things are and where you will end up. When we believe that through the eyes of faith we can see everything that is around us and actually put that faith to the test then we can understand what it is to believe in something more than just the fickleness of a sunrise.

The book of Job reminds of this more than anything. Job had it all, a wife, kids, and wealth and in one fell swoop Satan took it all away. But God, for some reason allowed him. Job was left with nothing more than the ruins of a life he once knew and some pretty attractive boils. But despite his wife’s pleas to curse God and despite his friends’ poor advice, he looked beyond the sunrise mentality and hung in there. He could see, at least for a while, what God was doing because he was looking at his life through the light cast by the sunrise. He wasn’t face first to the horizon waiting for that amber globe to rise and hover above it, he was probably standing with his back to the horizon waiting for the rays to continually light the tragedy of his life from an eternal perspective. When that failed God brought Him Elihu to remind him how to use the light and see properly.

When we are forced to look at things from the perspective of eternity the shapes shift. Job realized that in this heavenly hue the tragedies afforded to him could serve a bigger purpose than just himself. They could serve to glorify his God, the God that he had lost everything for in the first place. They could serve to teach him about the Almighty and His vastness and when you lose the eternal perspective on your life things get a little dim and all that begins to come into focus is what lies around you and how those objects make you feel. Without the light of the sunrise we forget that we are dearly loved servants of the Most High and that we have two purposes on this earth; to be loved by and to glorify God.

As I learned (and am still learning) to see the light of the sunrise and understand that it illuminates that which is important from an eternal perspective I noticed (and am noticing) how life slowly began (and begins) to come back together. It was no longer about that which caused me pain or discomfort but it became about that which brings glory to my Creator and how I can ease the pain and discomfort of others. When you go about your life not waiting on the sunrise, but knowing how to see from the light that it brings things get simpler. There is no longer this anxious worry about whether the sun will rise or not. There is no getting up early and impatiently waiting at the windowsill. There is simply this calm of knowing that when the sun does rise and the light fills the room, your life is embraced by eternity and all of the questions and doubts are either erased or satisfied. You can live life, not because the sun has risen, but because it has served its purpose and has lit your way.

Admittedly, I would rather some days worry about the sunrise than the life that it is about illuminate, but that is why we have Job 38. A series of beautiful yet terrifying questions about how the world works and how we control it. They are enough to remind me that when I begin to boss God around I better know what I am doing, because He has seen it all and has traced the universe with His own hand.

I used to wonder what to do with my belief in God, now I know that instead of just tripping over it it must be used and exercised or there really is no point in having it. Like Lucy’s elixir, there is no point in possessing something so valuable if it will simply go to waste.

La vie...

Life is a funny thing.

It never releases all its secrets at once. It kind of keeps you hanging on, always at its mercy, being tossed by every whim and fancy. Which I suppose has me sitting here today. I am on my own now, in a town not my own and surrounded by a language that seems just a distant memory.

I am in Montreal, far from where I thought I would ever be and yet so close I can almost taste it. Today it rained. I love the city in the rain and used most of my afternoon to watch the umbrellas bob up and down the main streets and in and out of metro stations in this french town as the drops fell from the heavens in varying shapes and sizes. It was a wonderful sight, each umbrella unique in form and color. Some had ears, others had tassels, some were garish hues of pink and green, others afforded no style at all. What a joy that I am afforded this luxury. I think that I am in love. In love with a life that could be mine and is mine. A life in the middle of rain and umbrellas and crowds and metro stations.