I am a perfectionist. This means that I am constantly battling accusations and condemning thoughts from the worst place: myself. My own internal voice does a number on me. And Satan loves it when I get in such a stuck cycle. I do all the work for him.

I wrote this poem yesterday to express how it feels in those cycles of condemnation and accusation.

Just a little longer 

I’m stuck in a swamp of self-censure,
Mucking in a morass of deep doubt;
Attempts at escape further press me in
Even as they promise to pull me out.

Father, I need your full-on rescue.
Don’t send a messenger; I need you.
I need your arms and your face.
I need presence; platitudes won’t do. 

These long-lingering lies paralyze;
They’ve held me so long I think them true.
I need a Father’s persistent whispers.
I need powerful proximity to you.

My mind knows you are not far off,
But my heart keeps missing its cue.
My throat is hoarse from crying out.
Father, please come be my rescue. 

Until it’s time to pick you up, dear,
I’ll stay right here by your side. 
This swamp — it’s just a puddle 
Next to my love so deep and wide. 

I dove into the depths of its darkness,
And I rose, raising you on my back;
So even in the swamps of despair, 
There is nothing that you lack.

Just a little longer, my brave little girl,
You’ll see Me fully, and seeing resemble.
I’ll hold you bodily in my strong arms.
My love will still your every tremble.  

I know and have memorized Romans 8:1-2:

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”

My heart doesn’t always quickly get the memos my mind sends. This is the good fight of faith, the slow work of sanctification, the transformation from one degree of glory to another (2 Corin. 3: 18).

How Christ Treats those Accused

I was helped this morning by a scene from the book of Zechariah, the last book before the long silence between the Old and New Testaments.

God gave his prophet Zechariah a vision of Joshua as high priest standing in the presence of the angel of the Lord (which is Old-Testament-speak for Christ). Satan, ever the twisted impersonator of Christ, was “standing at his right to accuse him” (Zech. 3:1).

The angel of the Lord’s response to Joshua amidst an attack of accusations stirred my heart to hope and courage this morning. The Lord rebukes the accuser (Zech. 3:2). The Lord clothes the accused (Zech. 3:4-5). The Lord speaks truth over the lies (Zech. 3:4). The Lord remains close by to the accused (Zech. 3:5).

Christ, our advocate, stands right there in the midst of the attack. Even if the accusers words are true (Joshua was clothed in filthy garments), he speaks a deeper truth (he is still mine and I’ve a righteous robe for him). He speaks as One with all authority. And he stays close at hand.

We get a similar glimpse of Jesus advocating for the accused before his death. Satan, ever-the-accuser and the father of lies and half-truths, has demanded to have Peter so he might sift him like wheat; however, Christ assures Peter that he has prayed for him that his faith may not fail (John 8: 42-47; Luke 22:31-32).

Christ could speak such truths to Peter and the angel of the Lord could clothe Joshua only because of his coming death on the cross. The advocate would become the accused. He would be sifted to the point of suffocation on an instrument of shame. The undefiled one would be defiled by our sin.

Our advocate knows accusation. He knows the strength of the liar. But he also knows the power of his resurrection. He knows that his life and his love could not be held by death (Acts 2: 24).

If you feel sifted to the point of soreness, if you are sinking in the swamps of accusation, you have an advocate who is full of agape love and resurrection power. Soon and very soon, those who trust in him will be in his presence.

We are approaching Easter weekend. Outside of Christmas, these days commemorating the death and resurrection are among the most approachable and accessible to the watching world.

For at least a few days, even those who would not consider themselves devout slow down to admire Jesus. While this is a beautiful access point, it was never Jesus’s end goal in going to the Cross. In the words of Soren Kierkegaard, Jesus does not want admirers, he wants followers.

Born & Bored on the Same Day

People love a show; we always have. I remember being a little girl and watching the circus train arrive in our small town on the Jersey Shore. We would watch them unload the animals and scatter hay all over the muddy, trodden grounds. There was such a sense of eager anticipation that I thought my tiny heart would burst.

Entirely too much candy and popcorn would be consumed. There would be a few minutes of wonder. And then, we would head home and promptly forget about it for a calendar year.

Annie Dillard notices a similar tendency in the human heart in her book Teaching A Stone to Talk. She describes the crowds of people she joined to watch a full solar eclipse on Mount Adams. She remembers the screams of wonder, shock, and delight as the sun went dark. As shocking as it was to experience something so other-worldly together, she was equally shocked at how quickly everyone moved on:

“I remember now: we all hurried away. We were born and bored at a stroke. We rushed down the hill. We found our car; we saw the other people streaming down the hillsides; we joined the highway traffic and drove away.”

I fear that my heart often responds the same to the events of Easter each year: the build up, the anticipation, the emotion, the wonder, the disassembling and moving on.

We dress up; we prepare an extra full worship band; we up our signage game. Then we move on as admirers rather than pick up our crosses as followers. We are tempted to treat the resurrection of Christ as a day worth noting rather than the revolutionary day that it is. This day we remember, this day when a dead Savior breathed again, conquering death, this day demands a lifelong response not a check box on a response card.

Followers vs. Admirers

Pastor/poet George Herbert captures this conundrum we face at Easter so well in his poem “Easter (II)” :

“Can there be any day but this, 
Though many suns to shine endeavor?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever.”

An admirer says this day is significant and moves on. A follower says there is no day but this. According to Kierkegaard, “An admirer…keeps himself personally detached. He fails to see that what is admired involves a claim upon him.” He goes on to say the following convicting words about admirers of Christ:

“The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in word he is inexhaustible about how highly he prizes Christ, he renounces nothing, will not reconstruct his life, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires. Not so the follower. No, No. The follower aspires with all his strength to be what he admires.”

I long to be a follower, not a mere admirer. I don’t want to be born and bored on the same day. I want to be born and bored through by the reality of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

In the words of the Apostle Paul, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinth. 15:19-20).

The right response to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ is to hidden in life, death, and resurrection:

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I live now in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

I have an admission and accompanying apology to make.

I am that girl that has to be reminded to respond to an invitation. And I don’t mean one or two reminders. Evite and Paperless post need to stalk me via text and email multiple times before I reply. I think I have a mild allergy to calendaring and date-remembering.

One invitation won’t do for a girl like me who is so easily distracted by all the daily demands. What is true for small invitations like baby showers and birthday parties is also true for invitations from God.

Unfortunately, God has to send me multiple push notifications before I begin to pay attention to the invitations he is continually extending to me. Fortunately, God is the most gracious host. He patiently pursues me and points me back to the invitation at hand until I finally respond.

The Love Within the Trinity

God has been inviting me for a few months to come and check out the love that exists within the Trinity. He has been using the poetry of St. John of the Cross and the conversations between Jesus and his friends (the Upper Room discourse) and Jesus and his Father (the high priestly prayer of John 17) to show me a fullness of love I could never have imagined. The little flecks of Triune love that I have glimpsed show all the best human love to be flat and fickle in comparison.

Even as he is facing the imminent cross, Jesus is still able to bask in Triune love:

“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him…I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17: 1-5).

Jesus left this fullness to come and make a way for us to be invited back into it! St. John of the Cross poetically captures this love in his poem “Of the Incarnation” :

“I have no will but yours,
the son to the father replied.
My glory is all in this:
I do, and you decide…

I go to be close to the bride
and to take on my back (for it’s strong)
the weight of the wearisome toil
that bent the poor back for so long.

To make certain-sure of her life
I’ll manfully die in her place,
and drawing her safe from the pit
present her alive to your face.”

In the Upper Room discourse, Jesus says something astounding to his disciples:

“If anyone love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23).

I’ve had to reread it multiple times in the past few weeks to believe it. Jesus told his disciples that the Trinity would come and make its home in them. Do you hear that mutuality?

As St. John of the Cross so poetically captured, Jesus died to make a way for us to have access to the love of the Trinity (from which and for which we were made and from which we were severed by our sin). But he also said that the Trinity wanted access to our hearts and lives.

Mutuality of Invitation

Jesus’s stance towards those who trust in his life, death, and resurrection is invitation. He invites us back into the Trinitarian love for which and from which we were born. The Apostle Paul lived in a state of wonder at these unbelievable invitations: Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27) and our lives hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3: 3-4).

But the Triune God also wants to make his home in us. As C.S.Lewis so beautifully writes in The Screwtape Letters, “He cannot ravish; he can only woo.” He waits for invitations into deeper parts of our hearts and lives. As Os Guinness writes in The Allure of Gentleness, “The human will is perhaps the one thing in the universe, because it is so precious and important, that God respects ultimately.”

The more God invites me to gaze into the beauty of the Trinity, mysterious as it is, the more I am sensing his patient presence in my own heart. I sense him eagerly waiting to be given access to more of me: my thoughts, my hidden shame and fears, my time, my tears, talents, time, and treasures.

I don’t think I realized until recently that I have been keeping the fullness of the Trinity cramped in the hallway of my soul. Such a large love needs full access to every nook and cranny of my life and heart. Letting such a large love and such an exposing light into areas of darkness seems scary until I realize that it is both opportunity and invitation. As long as the Trinity is crammed into a hallway, the life coming out of my life will be muddled, at best. But when God has access to all of me, his light will shine more brightly for his glory.

“If your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light” (Luke 11:35-36).

What an incredible invitation God constantly extends to us. May we respond in humility, awe, and obedience!

The Apostle John was a master storyteller. As with any excellent fiction writer, he painted such detailed pictures of the disciples’ interactions with Jesus that we can almost step into the scenes of his gospels. John’s gospel, likely the last gospel written and the first gospel to attempt contextualization to another culture, approaches Jesus’s life differently than the synoptic gospels.

While John moves swiftly through the first half of the his gospel, often called the book of signs, he slows down in the last half of his gospel account. Suddenly, we move from high-flying overviews with an occasional drop down into detail into a more detailed account of the last week of Jesus’s life.

After the long discourse recorded in John 14-16 and the long prayer recorded in John 17, John leads us back into action in John 18.

Jesus, crossing the brook Kidron, moves into action, having set his face toward the coming Cross. He is in full command throughout the entire chapter, showing the other-worldly nature of his kingdom, which he declares to Pilate in verse 36: “My kingdom is not of this world.”

One seemingly small detail jumps out to the observant reader: a charcoal fire.

As Jesus is brought before the High Priest, having boldly, calmly giving himself up to those who sought him in the dark with torches and weapons (v.4-5), the Apostle John gives us a vivid picture of Peter warming himself around a charcoal fire (v. 18, 25).

John juxtaposes Jesus’s care and concern for everyone else in the moment of his greatest need with Peter’s selfishly warming himself at the fire. John has set the stage for Peter’s three-fold denial around a charcoal fire. The reader can almost imagine the light and dark shadows, the watery eyes from the smoke, the smell lingering on the clothes long after the fire is out.

Later, after Peter’s persistent failure given three chances to identify himself with Jesus, we find another poignant scene taking place around a charcoal fire.

Jesus, having risen from the dead and appeared first to Mary Magdalene and then to the disciples who were hiding in a locked upper room, surprises his disciples who were fishing just as the day was breaking (John 21:1-4).

Jesus first recreates the scene of his original calling of the first disciples, helping them recognize him as the Risen Lord (Luke 5; John 21). In line with his impetuous nature, Peter jumps into the water to swim toward Jesus, forgetting for a moment the wall of awkwardness that still stood between them.

He walks up the beach to a charcoal fire where Jesus is cooking a meal for Peter and the disciples. Peter gave away his chances to align himself with the Lord, but the Lord continues to give himself to Peter in sacrificial, costly love.

Jesus, in line with his nature, does not shy away from the hard subject. Rather, he gently leads Peter there in healing conversation, forcing him to relive his failures by asking him three questions around a charcoal fire. Eyes filled with tears, the smell of charcoal smoke, the interplay of light and darkness. Same scene. Different ending.

Peter is graciously reinstated around the same kind of fire where he radically failed. What a merciful and masterful Jesus we serve.

Charcoal Fires 

Charcoal fires would never be the same,
Their smell would invoke his shame:
Threefold denial of Jesus’s perfect name. 

Days later, at another fire he was fed
Fish with Christ fresh from the dead.
By coals’ warmth to forgiveness he was led. 

Around charcoal fires, Peter spoke of grace,
Sharing good news with God’s chosen race,
Showing them in Jesus God’s own face. 

Now in glory, warmed by Christ alone,
Peter both fully loved and fully known
Sees the Lamb of God upon the throne. 

What are the charcoal fires of your life? What scenes of failure might Jesus be inviting you to revisit with his grace?

“If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you might be feared…O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.” (Psalm 130:3, 7-8).