Ladies and Gentlemen!

Back where I come from, chivalry is huge. Guys get pounded for not opening doors for ladies or walking them back to their dorms at night, or, at the very least, offering such assistance. You don't dare swear or tell dirty jokes in front of a girl when certain other young gentlemen are about. A true gentleman dances with all of the girls at Friday night swing club. I can count on only one hand the times I haven't been walked home -- I've opened lots of doors, of course, since doors are a daily challenge. Still, my friend sent me off from Hillsdale with this warning: "Doors have handles that you have to turn. If you can't pull them open, try pushing."

Can you say spoiled?

Even with this princess treatment from certain young gentlemen, I felt the urge the other day to blast the few young ungentlemen who maybe open doors for only certain young ladies but treat other people like dirt -- not very gentlemanly at all. My blood boiled at the thought of their rudeness and crudeness and insensitivity to other unspecial females and people in general. How dare they claim the name of gentleman just because they open a door an occasion!

Then I stopped short. I quickly reviewed my thoughts on the interplay between ladies and gentlemen, and I realized a horrible, horrible thing that nobody ever addresses: ladies tend to get away with bad behavior and put up unloving demands simply because they're "ladies" and guys are "gentlemen."

I, like many other girls, respond with so much rudeness and offended pride when guys fail my expectations. For example: Once, a friend of mine offended me. Instead of me handling the situation maturely by approaching him later and telling him how I truly felt, I snapped something like, "That's not what you do to a girl!" and tattle-taled on him later to another guy friend -- who later, I discovered, locked the offender in the bathroom for half an hour as punishment. Forget the fact that I'm a "lady" and he's a "gentleman." Who says I get off the hook for handling offenses Biblically because of my gender?

Fact of life: guys make mistakes -- not because they're jerks but because they're sinners just like me. So many times I forget this (purposefully or no) and demand the guy to be perfect. Sometimes he can get away with making mistakes -- but he better be the one to man up and apologize first. After all, I'm the girl. I have the right to be infuriated at him since he's a guy and should have treated me better. No, no, NO. The mature one, not the male, must offer sincere apologies and reconciliation. Girls may not lose their tempers at guys or refuse to make the first move in repairing a relationship.

Girls must follow Christ's command to lay down their lives for their friends just like guys must.

I can fake the aura of "I'm weaker and want protection" -- but really, I just want out of doing hard things. I don't want to confront a guy on his sin or immaturity or offense towards me, so I send a male third party to do my own business. I don't want to talk to the front desk person, so I send a guy to do it for me. I don't want to carry bags from Kroger or help move chairs back into place or do any dirty work, so I play the lady card. Since when did doing hard things -- especially my hard things -- become solely a man's job? And when did I get this snotty sense of entitlement? Oh, sure, I'll carry things out to the car but only while dramatically flaunting my wounded womanhood.

No gentleman needs to feel the pressure of doing someone else's job. Yes, of course, we ought to bear one another's burdens -- whether a bag of leaves or a spiritual struggle. Nonetheless, it is not the man's responsibility to take on all the responsibilities of his lady friends.

This idea probably offends every American-born gentleman, but it's true. The whole interplay between lady and gentleman creates an entitlement mentality in girls to abdicate loving behavior and responsibility. It implies that there's a special sort of "lady pride" that, when offended, deserves protection and revenge at whatever cost to restore her honor. Forget turning the other cheek, we're told. No girl ought to put up with such treatment -- no girl should tolerate swearing or bad jokes or opening her own doors.

Ladies, that simply isn't true. It is our responsibility to tolerate the ungentlemanlike behavior of guys around us. It is our responsibility not to nitpick and nag when they neglect to open a door or allow you to carry something without offering to help. It is our responsibility to treat guys respectfully and humbly, tolerating their faults and helping them with their burdens too.

This semester especially, I've heard from several guys who hate the sense of entitlement the particular lady/gentleman complex creates. They feel pressured to perform when guys are scarce on the dance floor and many beaming eyes anxiously and expectantly demand they step out of their comfort zone and dance with a total stranger. They don't always have time to hold the door open for an entire stream of people running to classes. They get tired too and want to go to bed at 3 AM without walking entirely out of their way to the girls' dorm in the freezing cold. And they tell this to me, how they genuinely care about people but don't like the rigid and inconsiderate expectations forced upon them.

It is not their duty to "be gentlemen." And it is not our duty to inform them of their duty. If they choose to walk us home, more power to them for being thoughtful. If they choose not to, the balance of power remains neither increased nor decreased. If we decide to hold the door open for a guy because we get there first, more power to us for being thoughtful. If we don't, no big deal.

True gentlemen are gentlemen because they're thoughtful, loving and considerate -- not because they perform  the hard things for us. Besides, we are not primarily "ladies and gentlemen": we are primarily brothers and sisters in Christ. We go out of the way for each other. We bear burdens for each other. We do hard things for each other. I have walked sick guys back to their dorm to make sure they make it all right. I have held doors open for numerous people of both genders. I have allowed them to dump spiritual burdens on me and taken the initiative to pray together. I have tolerated swearing and bad jokes, and when it gets to the point where I'm uncomfortable, I speak up for myself or walk away -- because I believe it's my job to protect myself from bad influences instead of expecting people to change simply because I'm a lady.

I'm not interested anymore in being a lady, in that demanding, expectant sense. I want to be a sister who guys can open up to, depend on, respect and get help from. I want to bear their burdens for them and go out of my way to show I care. I want them to feel like they have many options to show respect and care in a genuine way instead of meeting medieval expectations of chivalry. I want to show tolerance and cover their faults instead of whine about my "womanhood" being offended. Basically, I just want to show Christ to these young gentlemen -- whether or not they walk me home that night.

Mint and Cumin Christianity

For a while, I thought that sin meant just doing something wrong. Bad theology meant teaching wrong things. Other religions missed God completely because they believed certain untrue things. And that's right, as far as it goes -- but it doesn't go far enough.

When Jesus walked the earth, He reserved harshest criticism not for the harlots and tax collectors who flagrantly did wrong but the religious leaders who did many right, good things:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you tithe mint and dill and cumin,

and have neglected the weightier matters of the law:

justice and mercy and faithfulness.

These you ought to have down, without neglecting the others.

MATTHEW 23:23

 

Error of omission -- like when you forget to add the works cited page to your research paper or pray everyday while snapping at your younger siblings as soon as you get off your knees.

 

The scary thing about errors of omission? People who omit the "weightier things" -- the heart of the matter -- often look similar to those who get the heart right. It's possible to fake the outside and remain dead inside. It's possible to be a "good person" without getting right with God. It's possible to appear "righteous" and "loving" while totally missing the source of all righteousness and love. Think of the Spiritual Ones who will run up to Jesus and say, "Look, we cast out demons in Your name and performed miracles and signs and wonders! Take us in!" And He will look at them incredulously: "I have no idea who you are. Depart from me."

 

Errors of omission gain serious consequences.

 

That's why Jesus focused so much on the heart of the law -- because it was so easy to fake the trappings of the law, to tithe the mint and cumin without showing mercy to the beggar at the gate.

 

Nothing's changed for us. We still must focus on the heart -- on our own heart, on the hearts of others, on the heart of God -- instead of outward issues. And we must figure out what the weightier things are. Are they staying healthy and fit? Are they jumpstarting America as a nation? Are they raising a generation of leaders? Are they equipping families? Are they building wells in Africa?

 

What is the central thing to Christianity that all believers must emphasize in order to get the rest of these good things right?

 

The Gospel. When the Gospel becomes less-than-central in any organization, parachurch or life, the mint and cumin outweighs the weightier things. People start following the followers instead of Christ Jesus. People start creating rules and regulations that eventually brick up the heart of Christianity with legalism. People start focusing on "spiritual" things like prayer and worship and meditation detached from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. People get concepts like love messed up and support ecumenicalism over doctrinal purity. People start getting way too gung-ho about the principles and practices of Christianity while totally ignoring the Person found within that name.

 

Any time I find myself subscribing to a brand of Christianity -- an organization, a movement, a label -- I must be oh-so-careful to always, always guard against trading in the weightier things for mint and cumin. Sometimes I take a truth or principle -- either a broadly applicable one or one meant primarily for the likes of me -- and start expecting everybody to look like me, love like me, live like me.

 

The most obvious example to me was when I judged others according to my stay-at-home daughter mores. The less obvious example is when I start judging other people's walk with God according to mine: "Oh, you haven't learned that lesson yet. You're about five miles behind"; or "You don't listen to David Platt? What kind of immature nobody are you?"; or "You've not been exposed to the TULIP of Calvinism? Somebody call an ambulance before I pass out!"

 

It's easy to get caught up in "my own kind" of Christianity -- like the focused on joy and golden light photography Christianity or the serious theological Christianity or the let's go save the world Christianity or any other Christianity that starts peeling away from the heart -- Jesus Christ.

 

Go back, go back to Jesus. Don't let go of the lessons He teaches you about how your life is supposed to look, but watch out that you don't lose the heart. Passionately burrow deeper and deeper into the word: don't get primarily passionate about anything beside the Gospel -- not rescuing orphans or saving families or training pastors. Don't neglect those things but don't stop there. The heart of Christianity goes down an infinitely long way, and you'll never stop discovering and growing if you abide by its heart.

 

Let's become Christians whose battle cry isn't, "We're all about politics or godly womanhood or homeschooling or right doctrine for God's glory!" but "We're all about Jesus Christ as revealed in His Gospel for the glory of God Almighty!"

With Confidence, Not Certainty

You have kept count of my tossings;

put my tears in your bottle.

Are they not in your book?

Psalm 56:8

I remember when God first gave me the hope to go to Hillsdale. I had little money, no scholarships and discouragement from a bunch of people who seemed intent on tearing down my dreams. I also had parental support, prayers from everyone and a God with a purpose. I knew that whatever happened, God was good. This was such a new dream for me. I didn't need it to live. Oh, but I wanted it...oh, but I wanted God more, and if I had to rip this dream from God's hands in order to get it -- I didn't want it like that.

I don't think I believed absolutely that God wanted me there, therefore He would provide enough money for me to get there. It was more like this: I really wanted to go, I surrendered it to God, and I told myself, "If God wants me to go, He will provide, so I've got no reason to worry."

Still, some nights and days got hard, because sometimes I wanted to go to Hillsdale more than anything. More than I wanted God's will to be done. It created ridiculous amounts of anxiety, bad dreams and confusion about life.

Tim Keller explains sin as anything replacing God -- even good things, like spirituality or morality or wanting to serve. We catch hold of a dream we really want, a desire God gives us, a hope we nourish in our heart of hearts, and we're excited about it because think of all the possibilities that God can use this for His glory!

Eventually, we start getting attached to the dream, the desire, the hope itself, and God gets pushed to the side. He gets replaced with this dream that we really, really want to have. Up starts the anxiety, the what ifs, the how-is-this-possibles, the I-don't-want-to-see-my-dreams-dasheds.

Because who wouldn't be worried with such a shaky foundation of uncertainty? We don't know if a certain dream will come true. And how on earth can we put our faith, our life, our worth, our hope in something that might not even be real? What kind of life is that?

For me, when I start getting anxious about things, I end up crying into my pillow, "Pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease let me have this dream! Just show me! Give me assurance! Anything to stop the uncertainty!" That doesn't work, because where's the humility and faith in that?

Then it dawns on me: "Oh. He's not answering because He really doesn't want to me to have it. That must be it. Agony!" And so I cry, "Pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease just tell me that I can't have this dream! Just kill it! Take away this longing! Stop tormenting me with hope!" That doesn't work either, normally because my hope's stronger than my despair and it won't let go of the dream even if it catches a premonition that the dream will soon die.

No. Neither approach works. Uncertainty about what my future looks like is never the problem. We don't need to know the future in order to have a strong faith in God. Indeed, sometimes our desire for knowledge, our desire to "get it right" so that we don't have to be broken and confused, precludes faith altogether.

That's not to say that God doesn't want us to have certainty. Of course He does. But He wants us to have certainty in Him alone. During those times when we just don't know, He wants us to throw up our hands to catch His, crying, "I know nothing but that God is good, His plan is perfect, and He loves me infinitely." That's all the certainty we need to get on in life. That's all we need to know.

That's what quells anxiety -- not certainty about whether or not our dreams will come true but certainty that no matter what happens in life, good or bad, God transcends all pain and disappointment and even earthly joy.

Humbly, softly, quietly and, yes, passionately, we may come to Him with our requests and dreams and the tears and hopes backing them. We lay them at His feet and explain why we think our dreams can best glorify Him. We tell Him the whole story -- maybe even some of the questionable motives or things we're not sure of yet. We tell Him everything. We ask confidently, knowing that He has full capability to carry out even the craziest dream and that He loves us infinitely. But when we leave the throne room, we don't leave with the confidence that our requests will be granted: we leave with the confidence that God hears, that God cares and that God makes the best decisions for our own. We leave with absolute certainty that we cannot mess up the plan of God and that He never makes mistakes.

With a God like that, where's the need of fear and doubt?

And without faith it is impossible to please Him,

for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists

and that He rewards those who seek Him.

Hebrews 11:6



Fully Convinced

I come up with muddled ideas, naive ideas, and I don't know where I get them, but I do, and here's one: Because the truth is true, it should be obvious to everyone. Eventually, if you argue long enough and preach long enough and bang Bibles long enough, the truth will come out and everyone will agree. The reason everybody holds different ideas (so I thought) is because nobody actually does their homework. They give up halfway through and never hear the different sides out long enough to make a decision.

This wreaked havoc in me when studying theology. If someone disagreed with me, I started hatching butterflies in my stomach. Wait...what am I missing? What is he missing? How could he just totally destroy this person's view when that person seemed to get everything spot on? What's going on?

Once, I went to a homeschool convention and picked up a brochure from an uber-conservative company on why fiction was evil. At the time, I spent most of my waking hours writing fiction and aspiring to be the next C. S. Lewis. And when I read through the argument -- which even I saw was ridiculous -- I burst into uncontrollable tears. I don't really know why. It upset me, I suppose, that I had to research and argue for yet another aspect of my life to make sure it lined up with Scripture. "They could be right," I told my mom through hiccuping sobs. "They could be right, and I'd have to stop writing."

Everyone holds different ideas on everything. Everyone. If you agree theologically, you most likely disagree practically or vice versa. The Bible gets tossed around for every idea under the sun. I ran myself ragged trying to disprove all opposing viewpoints as wrong to feel confident about declaring certain viewpoints right.

You know what I've discovered? The prevalence of opposing views comes not necessarily from lack of logic or lack of information. It comes, sometimes, from stubbornness, from a dislike of the truth even if convinced it's true, from cowardice to accept the truth. It takes the Spirit to convince a sinner to follow Christ and believe the truth and base his life on the truth, no matter how eloquent the preacher or apologist waxes. Some people quench the Spirit. Some remain in spiritual bondage, unable to see the truth even if they wanted to. (Thank goodness for the grace of our God who sets even us more stubborn people -- like me -- free indeed!)

I think I feel obligated to convince everyone of a certain truth because I blog. God teaches me something, and I hop on the interwebs to declare this truth, and lo and behold, surprise, surprise, someone disagrees with me. Back I go to Scripture to review everything I learned, back I go to prayer. I feel uneasy now about my newfound belief, but not unconvinced. I return to the interwebs and present an even more stellar argument only to have that refuted...and back I go to the drawing board.

I give up. I surrender.

It's not my job to convict people. It's not my job to change hearts. I can't even do that with my own, which is why I constantly fall flat on my face and beg God for the mercy to pardon my ignorance and draw me closer to the truth.

What's important is that I am fully convinced in my own mind -- that I figure out what I believe and that I base my life on that truth. If there's a problematic point that Neighbor Sally cannot figure out but I feel confident on, I have no need to hyperventilate. Spiritual problems and truth problems ultimately lie between God and the individual.

This disturbs me slightly because truth is not a private thing and I don't want to be one of those stuck-up "free in Christ" people who never listen to admonishment. This frees me mostly because I am tired of being discouraged and downhearted over the hundreds of people who put up a fight with my most cherished beliefs.

"I can't explain it!" I cry to God. "I can't put into words what I mean!"

He frees me from that. I clarify when I can, give an answer when people ask it, but when I've explained enough, I finally wipe my hands and move on to the next city or bunker down and pray for revelation. Nobody needs bully me about my beliefs. I need not bully anyone about theirs. I proclaim and I pray, but, ultimately, truth belongs to God and He grants it as He pleases.

Interwebs, I am not apologizing or trying to convince you anymore. I strive to be fully convinced in my own mind. I strive to know God for myself and not make sure that the entire internet supports that endeavor.

Freshman Fifteen

1. Playing hide-and-seek on a Friday evening in the library. Guess who cannot find anybody for the life of her?

2. Banging head on shelf, shooting friend Gibbs with Nerf darts, and writhing in pain after reading a Russell Kirk excerpt. People, conservatism needs to get with reality or get out of the way.

3. Shopping at Kroger with two boys possessing no concept of savings or bargains or the fact that whistling through a blade of grass annoys everyone in the five mile radius. Then picnicking in the lovely Arboretum afterward with lovely friends while a photographer snaps portraits of a cute little family in black shirts and jeans. Then passing notes on Rice Krispie bar packages. Then decorating the bottoms of boring white plates with highlighters. Then teaching a homeless man named Jon how to make a turkey sandwich. Just kidding. Not really. We only imagined it.

4. Stealing Kaleb's cowboy hat and William's phone, dancing to the Star Wars Cantina song on a picnic table, and downing ice cream and Goldfish around midnight during finals week.

5. Starting a encouragement note chain during a library study session: Gibbs writes a note on an index card for me, I write one for Claire, Claire writes one for Erich, Erich writes one for Sarah, and eventually we're so encouraged and distracted that no homework gets done that afternoon.

6. Looking up massage techniques to open clogged sinuses on my bed with Claire. Allegedly, rubbing your nose in a circular motion opens your airway. (Just like holding your breath stops hiccups -- not.)

7. Watching the little girls in the nursery dance in the rainbows on the floor every single sunny Sunday. 

8. Running through puddles and downpours and mud at 2 AM. 

9. Getting as many people as possible to look at nothing in the corner of the choir room when rehearsal runs long.

10. Listening to my chemistry professor mouth along to Kermit the Frog's "Rainbow Connection" while creating an acid/base indicator rainbow.

11. Learning that when a guy says "what's up" and "how's it going," he is not asking a question but merely acknowledging your existence and must be responded to with a hip head tilt upward.

12. Hiding fifteen girls behind a green chair during a dorm-wide game of Sardines. Still hiding there thirty minutes later. Marching out victoriously singing "We Are the Champions" when everybody else fails to find us.

13. Shooting hoops with crumpled tin foil and cafeteria cups while conducting a post-lunch discussion on immaturity.

14. Reading through "The Grandiloquent Dictionary" and discovering that barefoot people actually have a name ("nelipot") and that "lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphioparaomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon" is "a goulash composed of all the leftovers from the meals of the leftovers from the meals of the last two weeks" -- which perfectly sums up the goulash served at dinner the other day.

15. Laboring through Macbeth to find that my two friends hijacked my book with encouraging sticky notes. 

In a word? Blessed. Blessed semester, blessed year, blessed life. Bring on the next challenge.

The Measure of Faithfulness

The boy I love doesn't know if he's saved. This is a hard thing for me. He makes me laugh, he gives the best hugs, he reads Edgar Allen Poe aloud in strange accents, he writes odes to blank paper, pens and ink, he asks tough questions, he points me back to the truth when I hyperventilate lies and despair -- but he does not think he knows Jesus. And there's this constant ache in my heart because of it...because we both know that two people on different roads cannot walk together.

I began praying months ago. Come to think of it, much has happened in both our lives to prove that God's working in us and through us, together and separately. Still, he does not know and I, I do not know. That point has not been reached, that realization has not been manifested, that prayer has not yet been fully answered.

Even though he's come so far, I cry more now because I love him more now. It seems more impossible now that it seems so possible. How will we know? And what if he's doing it for me? And why, why do we love each other so much if it means nothing in the end?

I pray. I trust God to work. I know He loves the lost, I know He's called the boy I love, but it seems like the stuff that never actually happens in Real Life...at least, not in the real life I live.

How long, how long, how long? If I were more spiritual -- if I prayed harder -- if I got rid of wrong motives -- if he only cried out more -- if he'd only study theology -- if, if, if -- but we both know that it's not us we're waiting on. We're waiting on God.

This confused me: Why would God withhold His salvation from someone who clearly wants to change, who prays every day to know the truth? Surely, surely God would jump into action at a chance like this!

Going off what I wrote a few days ago, waiting sometimes makes me feel like a spiritual failure. Elijah prayed for fire from heaven and it fell instantly. Peter said, "Rise up and walk!" and the lame man immediately went walking and leaping and praising God. The miracles of the New Testament involved instancy.

I would give anything for a miracle.

Notice, however, that many times the measure of faith comes from waiting inordinately long periods of time. Think about Abraham, the man of faith himself. Living to a ridiculously ripe age, he waited for a insanely long time until God even first appeared to him. I wonder if Abraham prayed to understand a God he could not know before? And then, when God promised a child of redemption to Abraham, he waited many, many years until it actually took place. It takes just a sentence, a small point in the Biblical narrative, to cover decades of Abraham's life -- decades of waiting and hoping and praying and questioning and maybe wanting to give up on God altogether. Yet perhaps the greatest spiritual lesson, perhaps the entire strength of Abraham's faith, lay in that length of time covered in only one verse -- not in the obtainment of the thing but the faith that waited an inordinately long time to obtain it. God did not wait to prove Abraham that he was human, impatient and had little faith: He waited because He knew Abraham had the faith to wait that long. And if you're waiting for a good thing God has promised -- like salvation or sanctification or anything else -- you can be assured that God does not give us things we cannot bear.

Anna waited her entire lifetime to see the Savior. Joseph suffered many, many years before he saw any redemption in his tale. God waited patiently for every one of His children to repent and believe in Him. The entire creation currently groans in anticipation of redemption. Many years passed before the flood actually took place and Noah saw with his own eyes that God wasn't kidding.

Insanely long periods of time. Insanely long. 

Sometimes God does that because...because God's God and He can. He has a reason for it. An infinitely, insanely loving reason for our own good. Maybe because He wants to show us the strength of faith He's granted us or to show us how our little faith must grow to meet the challenge. He does not wait to destroy us, discourage us or batter us down with our own sense of faithlessness. Waiting doesn't mean we missed the bus half-a-dozen times already.

Waiting means the best is yet to come.

p.s. Friends, pray for us? Pray for patience and strength on my part. Pray for his salvation. The fun thing about the faith family is that we all get to journey together and unite faith with faith to wait for God's best in the end. 

Waiting for God

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,

and in his word I hope;

my soul waits for the Lord

more than watchmen for the morning,

more than watchmen for the morning.

-- Psalm 130 --

Nighttime brings about the craziest sort of things -- weird dreams, brand-new thoughts, discouragement, exhaustion, monsters in the closet and aliens underneath the bed. My sister tells me she never allows herself to make decisions in the night. I don't either. So many times I get these brilliant ideas around 8 PM, crawl into bed around 11, wake up sometime at 2:30 AM and quickly find so many things wrong with my former dreams. I either get cold feet or get bored or think, "Bailey, you come up with the most idiotic things even with your eyes wide open." 

I get wide-awake night terrors, too: Why can't I do this right? What's God doing? Why is this so hard? Why does God take forever?

Those times when you struggle with a spiritual burden or a weight from the future exponentially become more impossible during the night. You toss and turn, begging for sleep to come and make short the eight hours of life you must get through before morning starts and the world wakes up again. Nighttime's full of discouragement and loneliness. Nobody's up to speak a kind word or give a hug or even just distract you from your dark thoughts. The house is silent, and everybody else seems to be sleeping just fine. 

No, I do not like the nighttime that takes forever to turn into morning. 

Lately, my life feels like a nighttime. I'm praying for important things to happen -- good things, things I know God desires -- I'm praying for change -- I'm praying for light to show up on the horizon -- and if that doesn't happen, I'm praying for at least the peace to numb the tears and pain and eternal waiting.

Nothing happens. And it's not that things won't happen. It's just that they're not happening now. It's just that I don't know. I'm waiting to find out. I only have hope -- not facts, not a prophecy, not a guarantee. I don't see the future. I know only that God listens, that God's coming to meet me where I am, but the morning is not yet here. I'm a watchman, sitting out on the parapet, dangling my feet impatiently, watching the colors of the sky shift from black into navy ribbons and then hopefully -- maybe -- pleaseGodletitbe -- the brilliant sunset. It's still pitch black, with a cold wind blowing, and it's lonely and it's frustrating and it's disheartening. Of course I believe in the sun, in the morning, but still, I've got eight hours to kill before the next day starts.

I used to think that the Christian life was all about arriving and getting and being full. It is, but it's not. We've got twenty-four hours a day for many, many years. Much of it is waiting. God shows up and works miracles and then seems to back off. He doesn't really, but it feels that way, and then we're left waiting.

The Christian life is about longing. We groan along with creation, waiting for full restoration. We cry with John, "Come quickly, Lord Jesus!" because this life is hard and we want to see Him face to face. We hope, we wait, we ask, we knock, we run, we stand in the watchman's place awaiting morning. 

Right now, my heart breaks with longing. I am tired of the things of the world, tired of not knowing fully, not seeing fully, not loving fully, not being fully content. I am tired of my sin and of pain and of colds and of exhaustion. I want, I long, I pine, I wait. I cry myself to sleep hoping that my best friend finds God; I ache for the ones struggling to follow Christ; I bang my head over those who just won't listen -- me included. 

I pace back and forth at the watchman's post. I'm waiting. I know He's coming, coming with full blaze of glory and steadfast love and eternal rest. And then I won't be waiting anymore. 

But for now, I wait. And it's hard, and there are tears, and sometimes I'm tempted to quit my post. But God is even more real than the morning, and the morning always comes.