CN | A Beautiful Disaster: The Dream of the God Who Sees Me

"I shall look at the world through tears. Perhaps I shall see things that dry-eyed I could not see." + Nicholas Wolterstorff

To close these final reflections on A Beautiful Disaster during this novel coronavirus pandemic (you can read more about "The Way of the Desert to Form Beautiful Souls" and "In the Care of God While We Wait"), below is the content for the last of three posts in relation to disasters, deserts, and direction through wilderness spaces (or shelter-in-place spaces).

"Death of a Dream & Receiving the Dream of the God Who Sees Me (and You)" excerpts adapted from Marlena Grave's A Beautiful Disaster: Finding Hope in the Midst of Brokenness

God's Strange Ways

Time magazine called Dr. Frank Laubach (1884-1970) "Mr. Literacy." Others deemed him the "apostle of the illiterates." After studying at Princeton and earning his PhD from Columbia University, he headed to Union Theological Seminary. From there, he went to the Philippines as a missionary to teach at Union Theological Seminary of Manila and to plant churches. Eventually, he and another man were selected as the final candidates for president of Union Theological Seminary in Manila. A vote would decide which one of them would be seminary president. Laubach lost the presidency by one vote — his own. When he was casting his ballot, he thought the honorable thing to do was to vote for the other candidate. When Laubach realized what had happened, he was devastated. He berated himself for having an overly sensitive conscience. He could've been president of the seminary. He could've done so much good! He blamed himself for the death of his dream. In this case, the death of his dream meant literacy for 100 million people. It also meant that he'd write many books about life with God and serve as an adviser to heads of state all over the world. I wonder if he believed his dream had been smashed to pieces. Frank Laubach had no idea how God would use the death of his dream for good. There's no way he could've known.

God also has dreams for us. He dreams of us becoming like Christ and knowing that he is always with us. He wants us to believe that he is in the process of making all things new. He wants us to know that he says, "Yes and amen!" to the deepest desires of our hearts, even when we don't know what those desires are. True, we may not see the fulfillment of all our dreams in this life, but we will see the fulfillment of some — even the ones we've never dared to whisper to another. God will fulfill these desires that are in accord with his kingdom, even if it's in the next life. Of that I am convinced. Much of our disappointment is due to our inability to see. We see so little now. We are looking at reality through a peephole. So when I witness the death of my dream, or the dreams of others, and I can't figure out what God is doing, I have to remind myself that I am looking at reality through a peephole. I have to remind myself that God is doing so many things, that he is interweaving the story of our lives into his grand story. It's not just my life and my dreams. It's about our lives and our dreams. Our story — the story of the people of God. I am connected to you and you are connected to me in the kingdom life. In essence, what we really all desire is shalom. We desire for all things to be as they should be and for each of us to find and fulfill the purpose for which we were made. God is pruning us in order to work all things out for our good and for the good of others. This included the good of creation, for he is redeeming all things. 

Mourning

If we find ourselves in mourning over the death of our dreams or the death of others' dreams, let us be kind to ourselves. Let us give ourselves and those we encounter permission to weep. Let us mourn together and together ask, "Why, Lord?" We must all be careful to respect the time it takes to grieve the death of our dreams. It takes some longer than others, and perhaps some will never fully recover in this life. ... (And in time) If we submit ourselves to God and surrender what was lost to God, he'll cut off the deadness from our lives. He will graft in new dreams and grow us in the direction we need to go. We may appear to ourselves and to others as a dead tree or plant that is beyond repair, but our God can do wonders with the shoots of life that remain within us. 

The God Who Sees

"Hagar gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: 'You are the God who sees me,' for she said, 'I have now seen the One who sees me'" (Genesis 16:13). "I see your suffering. I see it. And none of it is wasted." That's what God longs for us to know.

If we will let it, the wilderness will function as our teacher. One of the many lessons it teaches us is to pay attention — to God and to others. One of the first things love does is pay attention. Frederick Buechner writes:

And when Jesus comes along saying that the greatest command of all is to love God and to love our neighbor, he too is asking us to pay attention. If we are to love God, we must first stop, look, and listen for him in what is happening around us and inside us. If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here is is is love that is the frame we see them in. ...

I remind myself over and over again that to be great in the kingdom means that I am to become the servant of all. I remind myself that being great in the kingdom doesn't entail people serving me or vying for my attention. ... I also choose to remember John 3:30, where John the Baptizer says, "He must become greater; I must become less."

Henri Nouwen writes, "The great Christians throughout history have always been lowly people who sought to be hidden ... Whenever you hear about saintly people, you sense a deep longing for that hiddenness, that seclusion." He goes on to say, "We so easily forget it but Paul too withdrew to the wilderness for two years before he started on his preaching mission." Nouwen elaborates further on this idea: 

Many great minds and spirits have lost their creative force through too early or too rapid exposure to the public. We know it, we sense it; but we easily forget it because our world persists in proclaiming the big lie: "Being unknown means being unloved." ... Now look at Jesus who came to reveal God to us, and you see that popularity in any form is the very thing he avoids. He is constantly pointing out that God reveals himself in secrecy.

Does God See Suffering?

Moses, David, and even Jesus were honest before our Father. Questions, doubts, and anger do not threaten God. ... The night started out with anguish over God seeing abuse and seemingly doing nothing about it. It blew up into anger and despair over the problem of evil. I sat stewing for a long time. And all I heard was silence. Eventually, thoughts about God's suffering began to trickle into my understanding. I thought about how Jesus endured unimaginable suffering on earth and how God still suffers by what he sees. I couldn't accuse him of not empathizing with my suffering or the suffering of others. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I'll never comprehend his suffering. God suffers. Our God suffers. He suffers with you and me and the millions we don't see. As I sat for what seemed like forty days and forty nights, I sensed God speaking to me, not audibly but speaking to me nonetheless. "Marlena, tell me, how do you know what I am doing throughout the earth? You see death, destruction, violence, illness, and perversion in the news. But the good doesn't get reported. All throughout the earth, in every corner of the globe, my people are overcoming evil with good. I send my people, and even those who do not believe in me, as instruments of grace." "What about those who've never heard the gospel? What about them?" I asked. "What chance do they have Lord?" "Haven't you heard about Muslims in closed countries having dreams and visions of me and then following me? I care more about my children than you can imagine, Marlena." ... Mysteries remain — especially when it comes to the problem of evil. But this too is a mystery: God is full of creative goodness, compassion, and love. He wants to use us to overcome evil with good. That's what Dallas Willard calls the "divine conspiracy" — us, with God and through God, overcoming evil with good wherever we are. In The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf says, "It is not our part to master all the tides of this world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after us may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

From Unwise to Wise

John Chryssavgis writes, "The more involved our exposure to the way of the cross, the more intense our experience of the light of resurrection."

Wisdom and power are the fruits of God's grace combined with our submissive obedience to God. We all need wisdom to know how to live and how to love one another. We also need the power to put that love into practice. And so it may take the desert to transform us from incorrigible, stubborn, unloving people into wise and submissive daughters and sons of God. That's why the writer of Hebrews tells us:

During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him (Hebrews 5:7-9).

Jesus had to learn to become weak. We, however, are naturally weak and dependent; we don't need to learn to become weak. We do need to learn to admit our weaknesses and, like Jesus, learn obedience through what we suffer.

Especially in the early centuries, those from every strata of society, including rulers and others in authority, would make pilgrimages into the desert in order to receive words of wisdom and spiritual direction from the desert fathers and mothers. It may come as a surprise, but the fact is that most of the desert fathers and mothers were illiterate. They were unschooled. Yet the lives of these desert saints were so powerful that even the powerful in this world braved harsh desert conditions to meet with them. ... This phenomenon of disciples making pilgrimages to obtain wisdom from those who've been formed into the image of Christ through suffering isn't just ancient history. One of the wisest and most powerful witnesses of God's ways in recent memory was Mother Theresa. Countless people flocked to the city of Calcutta to receive a word of wisdom from her and to work alongside her and the Sisters of Charity. Throughout the world, even non-Catholics and non-Christians regarded here as a holy woman who was intimate with God. They desired to drink from the fount of her wisdom, for here was a quiet, simple, unassuming woman who submitted herself to God and gained wisdom born of suffering. Mother Theresa has bequeathed to us a treasure trove of wisdom such as, "Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies." 

The Wise Gift of Becoming a Fearless, God-Fearing Person

Fearing God has to do with honoring and respecting him. We constantly think about how we can honor and respect him. He is never an afterthought. We give priority to him and run away from anything that smacks of death, including sin. God and our communion with him are so precious to us that death becomes preferable to hurting or disappointing him. Union with God is what we seek. It is what we hunger for. We willingly make whatever lies within our power to keep his name from being defamed. Citing Oswald Chambers, we give "our utmost for his highest." 

Perhaps we can summarize fearing God as being rich toward God in every possible way. At the same time, knowing that God is rich toward us in every possible way allows us to retain a posture of awe so that we tremble whenever we consider who he is. ... Small mindedness about God makes us stingy toward him and also toward others. ... If God in his goodness could deliver me from myself and from a hell of my own making, he could do anything. I felt like Elisha's servant, Gehazi. God tore the veil from my eyes, showing me angel armies surrounding me, ready to fight for my life. It shall forever remain true: those who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved — even though we don't deserve it. His rescue is never contingent on our deserving it. ... Though we cannot domesticate him, he can domesticate our wild and out-of-control lives. ... In Jesus Christ, we are the children of God, and our God will move heaven and earth for us. ... As Father Greg Boyle writes while quoting Ignatius of Loyola: Jesus chose to marinate in the God who is always greater than our tiny conception, the God who "loves without measure and without regret."

Next post: CN | Glorious Weakness: Discovering God in All We Lack

Here are links to previous City Notes books: A Meal with Jesus; The Art of Neighboring; A Praying Life; Encounters with Jesus; The Rest of God; Letters to a Birmingham Jail; Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith; The Pursuing God; Yawning at Tigers; Moving Towards Emmaus; Evangelical, Sacramental, and Pentecostal; Faith Without Illusions; Learning to Speak God; Drop the Stones; He Speaks in the Silence; The Dusty Ones; A Beautiful Disaster Part 1 and Part 2

Soli Jesu gloria.

Christ is all,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

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