Waiting for the end

Last week, we welcomed spring with open arms, thrilled to see the grass again. I rejoiced over that warm gray hue on the lake. The ducks seemed to be laughing as they swam between melting chunks of ice. Even the weeping willows looked cheerful against the deep blue sky.

But, this week.
Snow, again.

Winter is bidding farewell, with passion. The hills and roofs and cars were clad  in white, again. Today, the sky is heavy with gloom.

Spring snow

The world grieved for the death of a stranger this week.

Kara Tippetts (1976-2015) was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 36. For me, 36 is only three years away. She had four young children. She battled against the cancer in her body for three years, but she called it her "fight for a tender heart."

I feel like I am a little girl at a party, whose dad is asking her to leave early, and I'm throwing a fit. I am not afraid of dying, I just don't want to go.

Most of us only met Kara through our electronic screens. Yet, she compelled us to walk with her through her kindness and beauty. She wrote on her blog last December,

My little body has grown tired of battle and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live.

Kara died last Sunday. She lived and loved and died so well. Her life made me think about how I would want to die. She left us with her book, and her call for us to die to ourselves and follow Christ, "When you come to the end of yourself, that’s when something else can begin.”

Dying seeds

So, I hold Kara in my thoughts as I am waiting for the end of this winter and the beginning of spring.

If I would listen, the fields are teaching me a lesson about acceptance. They received the snow in quietness and trust. With open hands, they rest in the goodness of their Creator. The soil and plants are teaching me a lesson about patience. The dirt is vibrating, the trees are humming, the branches are pregnant. Soon, they will burst into life and blossoms and fruit. But for now, they are content to grow in secret places.

Just because we cannot see what is happening, does not mean nothing is happening. Growth often happens in dark and hidden places.


Soul, wait not for spring,
Wait, instead,
for the Lord of the Eternal Spring,
the Lord of Life.

These Strange Ashes

Elisabeth Elliot continues to be a faithful companion. Her book, These Strange Ashes, is a collection of stories from her year as a jungle missionary in Ecuador, before she married Jim Elliot. For the first time in these past few months, I saw that my heroine was indeed made of flesh, bones, and blood.

For many years, Elisabeth Elliot had been preparing herself for the work of translating the Bible into a yet-to-be-written language. But much of her book was a confession about how distracted she was from the work she set out to do. Should she boil her milk and butter, how was she to keep her stove lighted, why it was such a trial to transport and boil the water from the river infested with human excrement, and how she made peace with wrinkled clothes.

There were points in the story when I had to put down the book, walk to my kitchen, and appreciate what she called "miracles of ingenuity"—the faucets and drains and my kitchen sink.

"The familiar became the stuff of dreams," she wrote, "and the stuff of former dream—the jungle, Indians, thatched roofs, campfires, a strange  unwritten tongue—became the familiar." Going to a grocery store became to her "almost a dream of paradise." Scotch tape, nail files, pots, vegetable parers, and notebooks became precious things, but they were always getting broken or rusty or mildewed.

Life was very stale, she wrote, and the days dragged by. But, when life was eventful, there was sure to be landslides, thefts, getting lost in the jungle, sickness, and deaths. I do not know which I would prefer.

And then, there were her losses. She quoted Amy Carmichael,

But these strange ashes, Lord, this nothingness,
This baffling sense of loss?
Son, was the anguish of my stripping less
Upon the torturing cross?

I stumbled across these words that did much good for my soul, though I do not yet understand them fully.

This grief, this sorrow, this total loss that empties my hands and breaks my heart, I may, if I will, accept, and by accepting it, I find in my hands something to offer. And so I give it back to Him, who in mysterious exchange give Himself to me.

Hers are among the strangest books I have read, and loved. There was no conclusion, no triumphant ending. I was left wondering why she suffered so, after she had poured out so much. And the losses she recorded in this book were not even the worst of her pain. After five years of waiting for the man she loved, Jim Elliot would die in another jungle just two years after they were married.

Loss after loss after loss.

Faith, prayer, and obedience are our requirements. We are not offered in exchange immunity and exemption from the world's woes. What we are offered has to do with another world altogether.

My miracles of ingenuity.

She ended her book this way:

A story is told of Jesus and His disciples walking one day along a stony road. Jesus asked each of them to choose a stone to carry for Him. John, it is said, chose a large one while Peter chose the smallest. Jesus led them then to the top of the mountain and commanded that the stones be made bread. Each disciple, by this time tired and hungry, was allowed to eat the bread he held in his band, but of course Peter's was not sufficient to satisfy his hunger. John gave him some of his.

Some time later Jesus again asked the disciples to pick up a stone to carry. This time Peter chose the largest of all. Taking them to a river, Jesus told them to cast the stones into the water. They did so, but looked at one another in bewilderment.

"For whom," asked Jesus, "did you carry the stone?"

Before her King

Mary was always at your feet.

When you came by for a visit and her sister wanted her in the kitchen, she listened to your teaching at your feet. When her brother died and she did not understand why you did not heal him, she wept at your feet. When her brother was raised from the dead and people wanted to kill you because they refused to understand, she poured precious oil on your feet and wiped them with her hair.

On bended knees, this was how she always received you. On good days and hard days, she always came to your feet.

My sister Jean once told me that we are like teabags. We release our flavor, our aroma, our true selves—in hot water. Will I be faithful, kind, and patient when I am under pressure, when I cannot understand, when death is near? What are the words that will come out of my mouth when I am provoked, when I cannot help it, when I am despised?

Will I remain in your love, my Lord? Will I fall at your feet? Will I stay here?

Mary's love for you was so indiscreet, immodest even. She held nothing back. When other people were blind to your beauty and deaf to your voice, she was held captive. You, the Maker of Stars, was in her home. The voice who spoke the universe into place was speaking. So, Mary listened.

She ran to you when you were near. Blinded by tears and confused, she fell at your feet. Here, she was safe; you were her refuge. She did not try to explain her pain or keep herself together or ask you why her brother had to die. She just wept.

Mary's love for you made people squirm in their seats, uncomfortable. Her love seemed so foolish and wasteful. Surely, she was showing too much, pouring out her respectability like that pound of expensive oil. The crown of her head wiped the dust of your feet. Again and again, she abandoned herself and other people's expectations. Her love was not respectable, or useful, or reasonable.

When people despised her, she did not try to defend herself or explained what she was doing. When people criticized her and rebuked her, she remained silent.

She knew you understood.

You saw her, and that was enough. You defended her before the scoffers and their disapproving glaces. You commended her. You wept with her.

My mother on bended knees.

On ordinary days, Mary was probably an excellent helper to Martha; this would explain why Martha could not do without her help. I am guessing she washed the dishes and helped with the clean-up when Jesus and his disciples left.

The difference between Mary and everybody else was not merely differences in their actions or postures. What set Mary apart was her certainty that Jesus was who he claimed to be: The Son of God. Those were no ordinary days. Those were the days when God walked and ate and slept among his people.

Therefore, she came to Jesus on bended knees. Her encounters with Jesus were not meetings between two equals. Mary came to Jesus as a subject before her King, a worshiper before her God.



Soul,
bend your knees on ordinary days,
bend your knees on hard days,
bend your knees on days when you are not sure.

Soul,
behold your King,
his feet hanging on a tree.