Sustained

The third of a three part series on suffering. The story began in Stripped, continued in Pruned, and concludes here.

“Remember this, had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there.”

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

One of my favourite musicians, a spoken-word and hip-hop artists called Propaganda, released a song last year called Crimson Cord. Its verses, recounting tales of abandonment and moral failure, are contrasted with the repeated chorus: 

The pain that guides us
The strings that tie us
The coincidence that proves to us God's existence.
Joy we misplaced
Beautiful mistakes
The scarlet thread
The Crimson Cord.

Wear your scars out loud
That's the fingerprints of the Lord
A crimson cord, baby, a crimson cord.
A timeline, a scarlet thread
A crimson cord, baby, a crimson cord.
Let me celebrate your crimson cord.
And that's beautiful, a crimson cord.
No regrets, boy, a crimson cord.
Evidence of God's love, that's a crimson cord

The point of Prop’s song seems strange. How can such discouraging stories result in a chorus and, ultimately a song, so hopeful? Propaganda is looking beyond what is glaringly obvious in the here and the now. He looks through the lens of faith and sees a God who is at work and is redeeming the brokenness, even using it, towards something good. 

In my previous entries in this series on suffering, I described the troubles of my past year. One afternoon, at the height of these struggles, I found myself on my lunch break thoroughly discouraged and almost despairing of any hope. 

But like the beam of light from Galadriel’s phial that encouraged Frodo in his darkest hour, I remembered Psalm 118:17: “I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.” I began to remember all the small examples of God’s kindness during this period, the small knots on the rope I was hanging onto. I recalled the timing of my diagnoses, the wise council of my parents, and precious conversations with my pastor Gavin giving me guidance and encouragement just when I needed it. I recalled the moral support from friends at work, the understanding of my boss, and words of wisdom from friends at church provided at just the right season. I recalled the conversations (mentioned earlier) with my pastors and even the music from Josh Garrels and the quotes from books that proved so timely. I recalled my own Crimson Cord. 

Here is another example, another knot from this scarlet thread. Over the last 12 months my church offered a “book of the month” for our congregation to read and discuss. The book for the month of May was the puritan Jeremiah Burroughs’s ‘The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.’ No doctor could have ordered a better medicine for my soul. I’ve already quoted excerpts from this work that spoke strongly to me. Several nights I would leave work having received a particularly devastating piece of news and think to myself; “the only way I can handle this is to go home, cry, then read another chapter of Burroughs”. I clung to the volume’s comfort and wisdom as it counselled, consoled, and built me up in the strength of the Lord. How kind of the Lord to have this reading assigned at just such a time!

As I write this, it is early October, five months since these trials were at their peak. Life still isn’t easy. Certain issues have been resolved, others I continue to struggle with. I’ve gone off and had other adventures and the Lord has taught me new things. I look back on this time of suffering and I remember the darkness. But I also recall a certain strange sweetness. The Lord was good. He provided. He brought those trials upon me and, in the end, I am glad for it.

At the beginning of 2015 I read I book of essays examining the influence of C. S. Lewis. In one, theologian Kevin Vanhoozer described a certain vocabulary Lewis repeatedly used. “For Lewis, waking is a way of describing one’s conversion, a coming to new life. The Christian life is all about wakefulness. Theology describes what we see when we are awake, in faith to the reality of God, and discipleship is the project of becoming fully awake to this reality and staying awake.”

That concept of describing the Christian life as “the project of becoming fully awake to this reality and staying awake” has stuck with me and churned its way through my thoughts this whole year. I become so focused on the here and now. My way of thinking defaults to that of the world around me, which feels so real and is so all-consuming. But it is not ultimate. It is, in fact, the “shadowlands”. That is not to say it is not real, or does not matter. It matters very much, for it is made by God and is in fact the theatre of God’s salvation, the world in which we learn to be in awe of him even more. 

But when my eyes get lazy and when I fail to see God at work, I then walk around with my nose to the ground, stumbling over roots and rocks rather than beholding the vistas of greatness all around me. So I need discipleship. I need community to alert my to the unseen and align my vision with that of God’s Word. I need to reorient myself daily in the Bible and seek the face of God in prayer, and then I need to continue to be awakened throughout the day. 

“I believe” cries the psalmist.  “Help my unbelief!”

So I’ll continue to seek God’s glory. Not by just by aiming to succeed in lofty accomplishments, but by a life of what my friend calls “radical ordinariness”. A life of seeking his face through prayer. A life of seeing his face clearer by fighting remaining sin. A life of bearing fruit. 

Pruned

The second of a three part series on suffering, continuing the story that began in Stripped.

“Contentment is taking pleasure in God’s disposal. This is so when I am well pleased in what God does, in so far as I can see God in it, though, as I said, I may be sensible of the affliction, and may desire that God in his due time would remove it, and may use means to remove it. Yet I am well pleased in so far as God’s hand is in it.”

Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment

One of my pastors, Gavin Peacock, regularly reminds me that “God doesn’t waste anything, including any period of your life. He uses it all.” During these recent troubles I’ve found this to be true. I certainly haven’t liked these times of trials. But looking back, I’ve realize how much I’ve grown through them. I now see that, though bitter the taste, I would not choose to trade these events for something easier. They were given to me for a reason. I’m like a child who hates learning how to read, and the Lord is like a wise tutor who says “yes, this is hard, but it is training and you will thank me later.”

As the exhaustion of work and medication trials set in, many of the things I wanted to do had to be put aside. This of course included school and opportunities at work, but also the many ways I could support my church, writing opportunities (my website and requests from others), and other personal creative projects (a new podcast a friend and I mapped out and a series of interviews). I mentioned last time how this experience humbled me, bringing me face to face with my inabilities. But I still felt like I was wasting the resources given to me by God. With frustration I complained, for are we not commanded to bear fruit? Could I not offer something to show for the life I had been given?

I brought this conundrum to Gavin one day. He had me imagine a tree that is producing lush apples. If this tree starts to focus on these apples, channeling all its resources into what they look like and how well they are growing, it will eventually run out nutrients, wither, and die, killing itself along with its fruit. Instead, the tree would be wiser to focus on its roots, digging deep into the good soil, bringing nutrients to the entire tree. Then fruit will then come, unbidden and unlooked for, freely offered to whoever needs it. That truly is the best kind of fruit.

Later, my pastor Clint Humfrey brought to my attention Jesus’ words in John 15:2: “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit [the Father] takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it might bear more fruit.” To the branch who wants to bear fruit, being clipped by sharp shears seems counterintuitive. Compare a wild tree to a freshly pruned tree. Which tree seems healthier? The wild tree appears to be more productive; notice the healthy foliage it grows in every direction and the multitude of branches, complete with small apples. In contrast, the pruned tree looks naked and bare, perhaps even bruised and bloody. But the Farmer knows his trees and through his pruning he is preparing growth that will result in fruit far better than what the tree would bear on its own.

This illustration, brought to me by my pastor from the words Jesus himself, has brought me much comfort. Again and again I’ve told myself “Trust the Farmer, Daniel. Be encouraged by the painful pruning!” “The branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it might bear more fruit.” God is pruning because he realizes the tree’s potential. He prunes because He has better plans for that tree, plans that position him in His garden of foliage.

The story continues in Sustained.

Stripped

The first of a three part series on suffering. 

“We fear God will let us down. So we fall back into scurrying about to fill our emptiness with our own resources. But God graciously lets us wear ourselves out, and these efforts come to nothing. Life exists not in us, but in Christ alone and Christ fully. We live in him.” 

“There will be times in life when we feel that everything is falling apart. But such times can crack open our hearts to depend on the living Christ as never before, to always place our endless need before his endless supply.”

-Ray Ortlund, The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ

Friends, this website was quite for a long time. But 2015 was a hard year.

It could have been worse. I’m not out of work (although my job title has changed). I’m not dying of cancer (although a friend did just that). I’m not falling into depression (although I’ve received heath diagnosis that has been momentous to wrestle through). But suffering is suffering, and I’ve experienced some these past months. Everyone experiences trails. These occur in differing degrees of intensity, but how one chooses to handle them can be consistent. So I intend to share some of my experiences and what the Lord has taught me through them over a series of three posts, titled “Stripped”, “Pruned”, and “Sustained.” May they encourage you and may they magnify Him.

In February I received a mental health diagnosis, revealing major weakness that run to the very core of who I am as a person. Initial results of the diagnosis had me cancelling travel plans to visit a university and compete in scholarships, but such losses were least of my concerns as the long term effects of a medical trail sunk in. Not only was my brain and body being rewired by medication, but I was forced to reckon, often in public, with hard truths of who I was and how much I had to learn. It was humbling, strange, and scary.

In the months that followed, as the meds sapped my energy and rewired my personality, I had to let things go. First to leave was my internet presence. Writing reviews, applying for school, and posting articles on this website faded as my energy level allowed for not much more than three things; work, sleep, and rest at home. 

Then, in the space of one brutal week, three heavy blows were struck. On Thursday, a relationship with a very close friend changed, leaving much that I desired unfulfilled.  The following Tuesday I received the news that, due to failures at work, my job, which meant so much to me, was also to changed. And then two days later, we received the news that a young friend had died of cancer, a loss that struck heavy like humid skies.

During that hard month of May, I listened again and again to an album Josh Garrels had recently released. One song, “Leviathan”, seemed written just for me.

“All my life, all I’ve done.

Falls apart, is undone.

Built a tower you tore it down.

I am weak. You are strong. 

Who can tame Leviathan?

Yaweah gives and takes away.

Will you curse of bless the Name?

Trails test us like the flame.”

I was confronted with my own inability, but I began to see that such confrontation was in fact a gift, a realization that I, contrary to all of my self-imposed greatness and ability, am not God. I am only a man, and a broken and damaged man at that. God may have given me talents and abilities, successes and opportunities, but when these gifts puffed me up, they were taken away by the very hand that gave them. So these humbling circumstances were, in the words of another Josh Garrels song from that album, “wounds from a friend, severe mercy.” As I learned, and hope to share in more depth next time, such wounds are only given out of love, only to those whom the Lord cares for enough to discipline (Hebrews 12:6-10, Revelation 3:19). 

Here is another realization that came from this period; If I am not creating, or producing something of value, I despair. If I am not achieving something, or working towards a goal, I worry that my life has no lasting value. So to pretend that my efforts amount to something, I keep a list of every book I read. I watch movies only if they are worth watching (and preferably only if they are on my IMDB watchlist so I can check off one more thing). I’ve never cared for sports trophies that so easily dust, but achievements like internships in high school, career success at a young age, and even the existence of this website were mental belt buckles that my mind had prized and polished again and again.

All this toil. But what does it amount to? In the end, none of these things matter before God. All of them will fade like dust, and be revealed for their selfish motives. Only my position as redeemed in Christ can save me on judgement day. 

“Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul;

Not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole.”

So if my achievements are taken aware, is Christ enough? In him I am to find my identity, not in my position at work. My persona is not to come from being someone who is educated, or artistic, or creative, or sophisticated. My worth is not in my skill at words, or speaking, or understanding, and even the ways that these skills are being used. It is in Christ. 

The words of Jeremiah Burroughs sum up this entire experience well.  “[The Lord] often makes the fairest flowers of man’s endeavours to wither and brings improbable things to pass, in order that the glory of the undertaking may be given to himself.”

The story continues in Pruned and Sustained.