Photo by Alexandr Bormotin on Unsplash Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. (2 Thessalonians 3:16) In my comfortable little first-world context, I did not understand the value of peace for the longest time. Why the Bible often described God as the God of peace, depicted peace as a gift to be desired and sought after. Love Joy and Peace, the trio you see every December on Christmas wreaths and tacky wrapping paper. It was only at a point in my life when I realized I repeatedly felt harassed, anxious, and inadequate. Exhausted from the endless struggle of trying to keep up while trying to do more. Wondering whether my time management was really that lousy or was it just because there simply wasn't enough time. Hurrying through devotions and feeling a sort of vague satisfaction that I'd managed to get that done, at least. Wondering why, when I tried to quiet myself to pray, it was so hard to keep myself focused, why God seemed so distant and passive. As I get older, I realize that how I respond to these feelings determines who I become--who I let myself become, rather. The sense of inadequacy, the anxiety, the stress, to use that all-encapsulating six-letter word that we use so generously everyday in every conversation. They don't magically fade away once you've graduated--gotten married--promoted--paid off that debt. Like the Hydra, new heads replace the ones we've cut off, leaving us with a perpetually unattainable delusion of rest "when we've finished this." Or, to use a more relevant metaphor, our lives become a frenetic mindless chase, like the snake in the classic handphone game; endlessly pursuing an endless trail of crumbs, a new one appearing every time we hit one. So telling ourselves that "I just need to get this done, get it off my mind; I'm too busy right now for any other strategy" isn't a good solution. Under these conditions, the importance of having a heart of peace is especially relevant as a Christian in today's culture. Why as a Christian? Because peace is the product of trusting God, relying on God despite changing situations and emotions. Having a "heart of peace" amidst the crazy, hectic rush of life indicates greater understanding of and intimacy with God. It's become a phrase that lies close to my heart for that reason. As I think more and more about it, I realize how much my life would change if I had that heart of peace, how it would manifest itself in so many different ways... calm and good cheer, not getting impatient or anxious or stressed or discouraged as easily, due to an applied understanding of God's timing and sovereignty, which gives more balance and perspective... being able to discern and maintain priorities even when other things are distracting... contentment, even as you make goals and pursue them--the type of deep-rooted, genuine contentment that is not reliant on success, not upended by troubles... comfort and stability during difficult times, and the same balance in happy ones, since you are not dependent on the fickleness of mere emotions... being able to not take things so personally, or be so hung up on other people's behaviour, because you do not need them to behave in a certain way in order to live your life well and be happy, and you don't have to relate to them on the grounds of those expectations... ...And the list goes on. Peace, that "surpasses all understanding", because we have so little of that peace in our lives. (continued in part 2)
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Photo by Mitchell Hollander on Unsplash O God, give me peace and wisdom to handle this sense of overwhelming inability, of being futilely stretched, of failing. There are so many people needs and relationships, so many areas of service needing faithful people to commit to and labour in, on top of everything else; and most of all I just don't have TIME. Overused as the phrase is. I feel helpless, struggling not to feel guilty or depressed over everything I couldn't do, everything I wish I could do, everything I couldn't do as well as I ought or wanted to. It's as if I'm trying to donate blood to as many people as possible in an endless cue...trying to make do by giving each one less, faint and bloodless, yet it's not enough. I feel so helpless. God help me. Human limits are staring me in the face. Vaguely I recognize this as a lesson in learning to trust--learning humility--learning wisdom in loving and serving better... I happened to flip back on an old journal entry where I was having a particularly bad case of burn-out. Discouraged. Exhausted. Verging on resentful, even as I felt guilty for failing, for not doing more. I was trying to keep up my studies, wanting to be more active in church, uncomfortably aware that there was more I could do for my family, also unpleasantly conscious that to be an ambitious and productive young adult I should also be researching and getting my own projects done during this precious window of time before I graduated. After all, "do all things to the glory of God," right? We groan inwardly and resolve (more faintly each time) to try harder. These are ugly, poisonous, unpleasant thoughts and feelings; but we shouldn't be afraid to confront them, because they indicate a serious problem in our spiritual lives, rather than our generalized diagnosis of inadequacies on our part, limitations of time and energy. The Plate Spinner: A Little Book for Busy Young Adults by Dev Menon-- this thin little book happened to come my way recently. I read it and realized: 1. almost every sentence was relatable 2. it was quite rare and refreshing, in my experience, to read a Christian book from a Singapore perspective. 3. though initially I was somewhat skeptical on how much of a resolution the author could provide to such a big, abstract problem, he made quite a good shot at hitting the nail on the head. At least in Singapore, where our culture is ingrained with expectations of perfectionism and subsequently, constant assessment, this is a real issue. We really do have this unspoken ideal that we should excel at each area of our life, as Christians. "Do all things to the glory of God" has become a kind of pressurizing drive to excel, whether in spiritual or secular definitions of excellence; in every area of life, in your obligations and duties. You know how students get told that as a Christian student you glorify God by working hard at your studies and doing your best (which is true, in one sense, yet so easily gets twisted into a good grades=glorifying God mantra.) On top of that, as young adults, we're juggling more and more responsibilities and relationships. The drive to excel, to be at the top not only of our game but of all the different games we're involved in (in Dev Menon's metaphor, the different slices in the pie graph of our lives) becomes overwhelming. That means being a hard-working, responsible student/employee--getting good grades, promotions, respect. That means coming for church and prayer meetings and serving in some way at church. That means caring for our families and spending time/communicating with them. Bonus points if you have some charity/outreach work you're involved in. Oh, and did we mention being free enough to spend time with church friends outside of church? To be a listening ear to that needy friend in crisis? That's the vision we all have of the "perfect Christian," isn't it? We get burnt out and discouraged, wonder why we can't juggle everything and why, once we focus on one area, all the rest slip out of control. The different slices of the pie graph seem to pull us in different directions and we often succumb to feelings of guilt, inadequacy, anxiety. Worse, we start to cut corners in an attempt to juggle better, or we start to resent the areas which take up more of our time than we'd planned for them to in our neat little pie graph. We start to get results-oriented, self-reliant, we dismiss people and their individual needs and opinions if they don't go along with our efficient plan, or we start to resent people who are 'needier', 'high-maintenance.' And we start to wonder, tiredly, why it's so hard to 'be a Christian'; that God's demands on us seem like the last straw on top of the other demands being made on us. Just another slice in the pie competing for our (very limited) time, energy, and effort. Dev Menon calls this 'plate spinning.' Because we have our plate full rushing around keeping all of the many plates in our lives spinning (A lame pun, I know.) It's a matter of perspective, at least that's what I've learnt to see in my own struggles with this issue. Instead of thinking that being a Christian is one slice in the piechart of your life, which you're obligated to maintain--to see your entire life/the whole pie as your new life in Christ. Different aspects of it, that's all, but all contributing, all part of. This collapse of the spiritual/secular divide, this consciousness of God in every day and activity, was crucial in my own spiritual growth, and I believe is just as crucial in overcoming the sense of burn-out and insufficiency we're talking about here. During the journal entry above, I hadn't quite reached this point yet, though I vaguely knew--as I recognized--that there was something fundamentally wrong with how I saw and applied my abilities, priorities, how I understood what it meant to address the different areas in my life as a Chr I know, I know. Maybe "perspective" alone doesn't seem that liberating. After all, a change in perspective doesn't mean that we magically get an extra two hours, or that we can wave off going to church whenever we feel like it. There are times, Menon emphasizes, when certain areas are going to need more time and effort than others. At these times, we should not feel guilty or like a failure if we need to step back from those other areas--consciously do less than the best. For example, you might need to spend more time with your family when a crisis happens, and take a step down from work, or--gasp!--serving in church. To truly see God in all areas of your life, and trust His timing and wisdom, we would be able to accept that this does not mean failure. That we're being a lousy Christian. That we're regressing spiritually. Rather, we accept that God allowed this to happen--we accept our limitations--we accept that we have to change our focus, that God wants us to grow in this specific area, at this time. This can only happen when our understanding of what it means to be a Christian transcends that pie slice labeled "Christianity/church-related" in our time, isn't limited to the activities that make up that pie slice. Instead, we would see that God is making it clear that we need to actively pursue His help and presence in this particular area. That in it, we face another opportunity to understand Him better. Instead of feeling woefully guilty and insufficient, as if God is throwing us dirty glances because we're not clocking in the hours required on His pie slice, we see it as under Him--from Him--rather than competing with Him. And if you think about it--isn't that a more accurate and significant application of what it means to "do all things to the glory of God?" I am someone who is easily and heavily influenced by emotion, and discouragement is very much an emotional issue. Like depression, it often comes as the convergence of various issues which are small, which you could handle on their own, if they weren't all hitting you at the same time; the combined weight of which knocks you down. You lie limp and passive under the heavy cloud of discouragement, without strength to move, without motivation to try and get up, without hope that you could escape even if you tried; and wonder why you had ever been excited about life at all, and thought you could ever do anything. As such, I've often struggled with discouragement--recently, to be honest; reminding me it's a lifelong battle which no amount of spiritual maturity can immunize you against--something I should expect as long as I'm human, and by correlation, emotional. Spiritual maturity helps in dealing with discouragement, but it cannot completely prevent it. I was clearing my storage space recently. That means boxes of old diaries, letters, schedules, notebooks of stories, sermon notes, travel journals. It was sobering and yet uplifting as I flipped through the little stack of well-worn, rather shabby, but very precious spiritual journals. Reading what I'd written over all those years made me realize that the discouragement and despair I had experienced--so often the reason for an entry (if only it was natural to document happy times as it is, ironically, to document sad ones; not because I actually want to remember them, but as a coping mechanism, a therapy of sorts)--could be categorized as discouragement with my own failures, and discouragement with the failures of others. Forgive me for falling into sin so easily, so often, the same sin. I thought I could be wiser, stronger, but I'm seeing just how pitiable and helpless I am in the grip of sin and my own weak nature...a little beast, that's what I am. O God, forgive me even when my heart is numb and cold and I don't feel as sorry as I should--when I wilfully decide to do it, when I come crawling back again in shame asking for forgiveness. Break me out of this vicious cycle of my own making and set me free. I feel so helpless, struggling not to feel guilty or depressed over everything I couldn't do, everything I wish I could do, everything I couldn't do as well or as much as I wanted to....God help me. Human limits are staring me in the face. Self-pity. Despair. Loss of faith in grace (forgetting its very definition.) It alienates you from others--alienates you, most of all, from God. You draw away because you feel like you don't want them to know how unworthy you are, because they all seem so much better than you. I feel disappointed and angry and hurt. I knew this is part of growing up but I never expected it to happen so traumatically. It makes me feel almost scared to think that everyone is as messed up and mistake-prone as myself, that perhaps being an adult doesn't so much mean you're mature now, but rather realizing that others aren't so much more mature than you as you'd always assumed...I feel so emotionally crippled by all this, unable to interact with people without feeling wary or speculating on their motives or imagining what they've heard or what they think. Alternatively, people-oriented discouragement works the other way. Cynicism, resentment, frustration, even bitterness. Feeling disillusioned or disappointed in people. Feeling betrayed, let down, when you gave so much effort and time and invested yourself emotionally in someone. It embitters your relationships with others, alienating you from others as well if in a different way. You draw away because--to say it bluntly--you feel that they are not worth your interaction, whether specific people or just the whole of humanity in general. I'm not sure which type of discouragement is more poisonous. Pulling yourself out of these ruts can seem almost impossible when you're lying at the bottom. How to trust grace? How to try again without feeling like a hypocrite? How to trust people, or avoid becoming cynical and defensive when a similar situation arises? How to rescue a relationship you feel disillusioned with? I found an old post-it in my Bible, scribbled carelessly and tucked away so it obviously had been written at a time when it didn't mean as much to me as it eventually would. "What must we do if we find ourselves spiritually empty? Firstly, confess and put away any sin in our lives. Then we need to seek God's face in prayer and through His word" (this was taken from Desma Lewis' Fellowship Bible Study on 1st Samuel.) In discouragement--regardless of what type--we must first confess and put away the sin in our lives. In discouragement with yourself, it's easy to confess. You see everything you've failed and done wrong already like a neon billboard. What's more challenging is to put it away. That means not only resolving not to continue in them--whether in sins of selfishness, idolatry, but even lack of faith--but also to move on. When we put away something we stop turning it about in our hands and staring at it from different angles. On the other hand, discouragement with others requires a commitment to confront and confess our own sins with relentless honesty even as the sins of others loom big in our eyes--something, I think we would all know, is not easy. In bitterness, in pride, in being unloving and judgmental. I have sinned. When we acknowledge our own failures in God's eyes we stop pointing out the failures of others to God. Why the Word? After the humbling process of confessing and putting away our sin, hopefully we've been recalibrated, so to speak, for a more balanced perspective--whether with which to see ourselves or to see others. In the first case, one which isn't so devastatingly self-centered; in the latter, one which (equally devastatingly) doesn't include ourselves. Hopefully we're able to let go of the very human prejudice of emotions and accept the objective truth of the Bible. Which means that no matter how big our sin--or the sin of others--Christ's death is bigger. Which means no matter how empty or incapable of trust we feel, God's power to enable and empower remains the same. It's not easy. Discouragement is such an intensely personal and predominantly emotional trial that objective truth sometimes seems the last thing, in all its dryness, that can help us. But ironically, the very cold impersonality of objective truth is what we need when we're attacked by blinding, overwhelming, and often irrational or imbalanced emotion. Looking through my journals, I was reminded of another phrase which had once been very important to me, at the time when all the uncertainties, fears, and doubts of college applications were the biggest thing in my life. That was the metaphor of driving on an unlit road at night--I experienced that once, as a passenger of course, during a violent tropical rainstorm in Malaysia; and it really was a tense, unreal experience. You couldn't see any further than the five feet in front of your headlights, in the dark and the thickness of the rain. But you had to press on, in faith, as long as those five feet were clear. The temptation to stay where you were was an illusion of safety--to stop would very well be fatal, even if moving forward posed a risk. The only way to get through was to keep going--slowly, perhaps, but ahead, as long as the five feet of road in front of you was clear. Sometimes it was as simple--or more accurately, as hard--as that in discouragement. I might not know much but what little I knew was the right thing to do lay in front of me like that lighted space of five feet in the dark and storm. To do my best to resist bitterness and resentment. To fight for joy. To love others as well as I could with Christ as my example. Perhaps that meant the simple things I'd already been doing. Perhaps it meant something as unexciting as going back to the Bible, persevering in prayer even though it felt dry and meaningless, or simply just controlling myself. 'Show me in the way in which I should walk' (Psalm 143:8) has been a prayer of mine increasingly, in uncertainties but especially in discouragement. Sometimes this 'way' isn't a significant choice or crossroads but simply the five feet in front of our headlights. To confess and put away our sin. To find guidance and comfort in the Word. No matter how alienated we feel from others or from God, to continue in what is right, until we hear the storm dying away, or see the dawn break through the rain. It is God who arms me with strength, and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of deer, and sets me on my high places. He teaches my hands to make war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have also given me the shield of Your salvation; Your right hand has held me up, Your gentleness has made me great, so my feet did not slip. Psalm 18:32-36 I found an old entry in a prayer journal on this section of Psalm 18. yes, I had scribbled, and the (extra) spidery appearance of my handwriting indicated that it was a very heart-felt yes--I need the impossible. I need help to do the impossible. I want to do so much more than I am doing now, though I'm already engrossed just keeping up with everything. I want to love people and serve and care for them even though I struggle with bitterness or burn-out from serving. I feel like I'm at my limits. Because I'm at my limits, because I can't see myself being able to fulfil that, I need God to 'enlarge the path under me'--I can't walk better or keep from tripping. This may sound hard to understand, but it ties in to another verse in this psalm, a phrase that I never understood until I had my first experience of great grief: Your gentleness has made me great. I am learning, growing, in so many painfully precious, staggeringly significant ways, because of pain and trouble. I see so many huge mistakes and blindspots and cesspits in my maze of a heart, which I couldn't have seen otherwise. A whole new aspect of God's goodness and love; learning to value both so much more, in the war ground of crisis. And yet because I am weak-- I cannot take much pain. I'm lousy at suffering. If I was pushed into the heat of the fighting I probably wouldn't survive. Just struggling along the fringes of it is bad enough--one flesh wound, and I feel like I'm dying. I know that what I struggle with now is nothing compared to what I see others having to deal with. I see how, even as I feel burdened down, how much worse it could have been, or become. A lesson which comes in the shape of an open, smarting wound, but which could have likewise come in the form of an amputation --which, at this point in my immaturity, I likely wouldn't be tough enough to survive for long. He is gentle with me. He knows just how shallow my thresholds for pain and suffering are. He gives me what He knows I can bear, and with these relatively small, easy lessons, moves me forward in guided baby steps towards greatness. Greatness of mind, and soul, and heart. Greatness of faith. But it's a balance too. Earlier on it says that He 'makes me feet like the feet of deer'. He gives me skills and ability that aren't even within my species, that are so far from my natural ability, to put it another way. To bend a bow of bronze--besides the lovely imagery and cadence of this phrase, I never actually realized the impact of the metaphor until I read Elizabeth George Speare's The Bronze Bow and discovered that actually the very idea of a bow made of bronze was in itself a symbol of impossibility. Sometimes, He helps us by enlarging the path for our dragging feet, catering to our individual limits with the gentleness that one would hardly dare to expect from One who is God. Other times, He helps us by gifting us with the skills and abilities and wisdom that seem so unnatural now, enabling us to do what would previously have been the impossible, to bend the bow of bronze with hands suddenly deft and powerful. He gives grace in both ways, according to our needs and His will. |
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