Lessons from a French Monk

As I write this, my first post in months, I'm just beginning to grieve the passing of my Grandpa Russell. It seems surreal: we only lost Grandma a few months ago, and now the tears, the funerals in Champaign, IL and Evansville, IN, the whirlwind of emotions, will all be repeated. As I was leaving the office today, dressed in black but basking for a moment in the perfect Connecticut summer sun, my mind drifted to a plane ride from Chicago to Zurich about this time four years ago.

I was headed to Perugia, Italy via Switzerland and then Rome when I met a man who shamed me in my understanding of death and dying.

He was dressed in a grey burlap robe that touched the floor, and his navy baseball cap looked out of place perched atop his shaven head. At first he struck me as Middle Eastern. It took me a moment to notice the rosary beads and cross draped around his waste in a belt-like fashion. As he slung his bag into the storage compartment, he smiled and made a joke about the small seats, indicating that he would need to get past the aisle seat I was struggling to settle into. I returned the smile as I let him pass and asked where he was from. “I’m French,” he replied, not answering my question directly, but claiming his nationality. I learned that he was a Catholic monk and had moved to Peoria, Illinois, about an hour from my hometown, to live in a monastery there. He was traveling home to France to attend the funeral of his monastery’s founder.

When I offered my condolences, he quickly replied, "For us it's not a sad thing. It's the best thing that could happen." Holding my John Piper book and my Bible, I felt suddenly ashamed. Of course! Shouldn't I, the protestant girl with all the good theology, know about hoping for Heaven?

To my dismay, he fell asleep almost immediately and our social interaction was cut short. But I shall never forget the wise monk who understood the secret of "looking for the city that is to come" (Hebrews 13:14).

I praised God for that Frenchman today as I walked to my car. There are many tears to come this weekend as I grieve the loss of my dear Grandpa in this life. But I am trying desperately to hold on to those words from the Swiss Air flight four years ago: "It's the best thing that could happen."

As Christians, we hold these two things in tension: the bitterness of losing a brother of sister in this life and the joy in knowing that the gospel has achieved its fullness in them in the next life.

The Caedmon's Call lyrics that cheered me in my grandma's death this fall put it well:

there's a Land
where our shackles turn to diamonds
and we trade in our rags
for a royal crown
on that Day
our oppressors hold no power
and the doors of the King are thrown wide

Thank you, Jesus, that you conquered death and the grave. Thank you that you are the resurrection and the life (John 11:25).

Advent Thoughts

It's Christmas Day, and I'll admit, I'm a little sad. I have always loved the anticipation of things--birthdays, vacations, holidays, parties--almost as much as the thing itself. And so it is with Christmas. As a little girl, I would lie awake in bed for weeks before Christmas, imaging the fun times with family and the many gifts under the tree. I would count down from at least a hundred days to the day, driving my mom crazy. And then Christmas would come. It would be glorious, of course, everything I imagined it to be and more. But then it would be over so quickly and I would feel sort of empty. I loved that anxious feeling, the beforehand waiting, the most. I guess that's why I love Advent.

And now it's over. Taylor and I packed up our presents and brought them upstairs. In a couple of days I'll pack up my suitcase and go home. When I get back to Bethel, I'll pack up my Christmas decorations and put them away. And this sweetness, this waiting for Jesus to come, it seems I'll have to pack it up as well.

But the beauty of Advent is that it not only celebrates Christ's coming to us in a manger, but anticipates His coming to us in undeniable glory. That anticipation, that waiting, does not have to be packed up with the Christmas ornaments. And when the Day finally arrives, it will not pale in comparison to my anxious waiting for it, as Christmas sometimes does.

What I have loved this Advent is learning to relate to God as the One Who Comes. It wasn't just in that Bethlehem stall that God revealed Himself as Immanuel--no!--He has been Immanuel for all of eternity past. He is the God who is present with His people.

In fact, it's the pillar of cloud, again, that reminds us of God's ever-present-ness with the Israelites. It was the cloud by day and the fire by night, the Shekinah, Hebrew for "dwelling," that reminded God's people of His care for them and directed them where they should go (Numbers 9). God came to Moses in the burning bush. He spoke to Abraham. He walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden. He said to Joshua, "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." God with us. Not just beginning with Jesus, but from the beginning of creation.

In Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus, John MacArthur writes, "You see, God only whispers in His creation. He revealed a shadow of His glory in the Shekinah. But He speaks with absolute clarity in His Word. 'God...spoke' (Hebrews 1:1), and not in a whisper, but in full voice. Still, there was an incompleteness in it all until, '[God] has in these last days spoken to us by His Son" (Hebrews 1:2).

"Now that is God shouting. You can't mistake it. Christ is God, and you see every attribute of God manifest in him. His judgment, his justice, his love, his wisdom, his power, his omniscience. It's all there in person as we see Him walk through the world, working his work, living his life. The fullness of God may be seen as it was never seen before in Jesus Christ."

And this is the One we call Immanuel, who saw fit to leave his heavenly dwelling and make his home among us, visibly and personally. This is the Incarnation we celebrate at Christmas: the coming of the One of whom the prophet Zechariah said, "Shout and be glad, O Daughter of Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you," declares the LORD" (Zechariah 2:10). He is the one

who enables the psalmist to declare,

"say to those with fearful hearts,
"Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you" (Psalm 35:4).

But there is more! The One who came to us then, and who made himself continually present by imparting the Holy Spirit to dwell in the hearts of believers (John 14:26), is also the One who will come again! Revelation 21:1-8, one of the Advent Scriptures, gives us a beautiful description of what will happen on that Day:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"

And so our Jesus, the supreme expression of God with us, will come and dwell among us fully and finally. He will make everything new and--the most encouraging thing to me this first Christmas after Grandma Russell's death--will do away with the affects of sin, all pain and death and mourning. Glory! This is the holy paradox: our God has come...and He is coming to reign forevermore!

Outside the Camp: Light Amidst Darkness

Last night, as I caught up with my mom in one of those really priceless hour-long chats, we found our way to one of my favorite topics: how to be light to a dark world.

As I told my mom about my frustrations with the cultural Christianity here in Nashville, and as she shared some of my sister's recent struggles at church, I was reminded of a quote I just love from Shane Claiborne's book, The Irresistible Revolution. While Claiborne and I come from quite different theological understandings, I do appreciate what he has to say about being light.

"Do not let your eyes adjust to the darkness, but neither fall asleep in the light."

That is the difficulty of the Christian faith, isn't it? It seems our natural inclination is to do one of two things: either we cease to notice the darkness we're in, slowly assimilating just like the Israelites did again and again, or we let our Christian environments strip us of all boldness and fervor. Most of us are either letting our eyes adjust to the darkness or we are falling asleep in the light!

I love my life in Nashville. I love having Christian bosses I can talk about theology with. I love living with a sweet Christian family. I love having an abundance of godly people around me who will encourage and admonish and pray for me. All these people in my life who truly "get it" are such a blessing from the Lord!

But some days, I start to wonder, how am I supposed to be missional here? When everyone I interact with day to day is either firmly rooted in Christ, or just considers himself a Christian thanks to church attendance, it's pretty difficult to even find the darkness! It makes me miss my college-girl years terribly, and I'm reminded of the dramatic way in which God revealed His call on my life to go into the darkness...

It was November of my senior year of high school, and I was in the midst of college applications, standardized tests, and campus visits. My youth pastors, Matt and Brandon, were taking a small group of high schoolers to a Passion event in Peoria. It was a fun night of worship and fellowship, culminating in getting to hang out with Chris Tomlin and his band. But the most meaningful part of that night was Louie Giglio's talk on Hebrews 13:12-13:

"And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore."

Giglio spoke passionately about the tendency of Christians to hide out in little pockets of light, refusing to go into a dark world. He shared his passion for Boston, the city he believes to be the darkest in the nation. (Having visited there twice since, I tend to agree with him.) He pleaded with us to go into the darkness, to "go outside the camp" as Jesus did. I was dumbfounded. I had been wrestling with whether to choose a Christian or a secular school, and the Lord had cut to the heart of the matter, convicting me with such force that I knew immediately the path I was called to take.

It was those verses that motivated me to initiate spiritual conversations on an almost daily basis my first semester at Richmond. It was those verses that challenged me to pray that God would send me into a dark sorority during recruitment second semester. And it was those verses that sustained me through my college years at times when my Christian community seemed like more of a scattered remnant than a cohesive family.

This is just another way I'm called to wait for now. This cloud is in a holding pattern, and I'm waiting, albeit not-so-patiently, for the Lord to reveal where it is He wants me to venture "outside the camp." It occurs to me, too, that I'm waiting to see this city awake from her slumber!

I'll close with more wisdom from Claiborne:

"That is what the Kingdom of God looks like. Christians blaze through this dark world and set it on fire with their love. It is contagious and spreads like wildfire. We are people who shine, who burn up the darkness of this old world with the light that dwells within us. And perhaps the world will ask what in the world passed through here."