Childlike Faith

I'm sitting at Starbucks, sipping on my free pumpkin spice latte sample and nibbling on the apple fritter sample that came with it. A dad walks in with his two young boys. I can feel the play in their eyes. After they order, the barista treats the older of the boys to one of their coffee themed stickers (the younger boy didn't want one). He gleefully peels back the wax-paper backing and plants the sticker on to his jacket. Under Dad's prompting, he heads to trashcan by the door to dispose of the wax-paper backing. I watch as he playfully tosses the paper in. But then he approaches the can and peers into the depths of its belly. For several seconds he is lost inside this unexplored wonderland.

When was the last time you lost yourself in a trashcan?

For this boy, the world was a giant playland full of adventure and excitement. Do you think God might want more of us to see His creation this way? Think back to your childhood. Think of the games of House or School or fighting imaginary bad guys in your backyard with the big stick you found during yard work that morning (or is that just me?). When did that stop?

Perhaps a better approach: why did that stop? Was it because those things no longer amused you? Was it because your imagination had run out of ideas? Or was it because the world told you it was time to "move on"? Did you ever try to go back and play those games after you had stopped? It was difficult to imagine a new reality after this one had been so well defined, wasn't it? But a true faith requires this sort of imagination. We "can only imagine" a realm of perfection that is only realized after death. We have to imagine the kind of world that God wants us to be creating. We are called to imagine the life that He would have us lead and then to chase after that. We must imagine an infinite and perfectly steadfast, loving and kind God because anything else would be us trying to put bounds and limits on Him and His love. In his book Velvet Elvis Rob Bell says this about our minds and God:

"The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. We are dealing with somebody we made up. And if we made him up, then we are in control. And so in passage after passage, we find God reminding people that he is beyond and bigger and more."

The truth is that we don't know infinite and boundless in our daily lives. We have nothing else to help us understand that idea. We live in a world with edges and compartments and limits. I'm not saying that God is imaginary, nor that our imaginations can understand Him. What I'm saying is that when we lose the ability to imagine a reality that is beyond our own we lose the ability to understand that God is ununderstandable, that He is beyond what we can know. When we lose track of this fact, we start to worry that science might disprove God. We start to worry about tomorrow. We start to doubt that God can provide. We start to trust ourselves because that is what our reality tells us to do. But how can we remedy this?

We need to return to a childlike faith. We accept our identity as children of God. We need to embrace the idea that our reality is not all there is. We need to be sure of the fact that we are unsure. Like Jon Acuff said in his Stuff Christians Like blog (there's a link in the title), we need to "put aside [our] pursuit of perfection and just color." And maybe with this change of perspective we will be more willing to try new things. Things like talk to that one person you always see at that one place but just keep ignoring. Things like encouraging that girl who has given up on herself. Things like selling everything you own and moving your family of 8 to Uganda to find out what God wants you to do there. Things like listening when you pray. Things like obeying God.

Let's make God's world our praiseground and see what a childlike faith can do in a grown-up's world.

"Unless you accept God's kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you'll never get in."

Mark 10:15 (Msg.)

Through the Looking Glass

Here I am.

Bloody and filthy and ragged

And smelly and sobbing and dejected

And bruised and battered and broken

And beautiful.

A Picture

How can I tell you?

Can I scream it like the leaves in the wind?

Can I ring it out from atop the clock tower?

Can I echo it softly through the wind-chime pipes?

How can I show you?

Can I soar majestically then land in your hands?

Can I paint it on a sky-canvas like the setting sun?

Can I roll it out over hills and fields like golden grain?

What could I possibly do to capture the complete, beautiful essence?

To make it more than the layman who would say

"I love you."

9.7.10

My soul knows its directive.

You have spoken life.

I long for action.

I have been steel, sharpened.

My breath longs for combat.

Lord I am ready to march

And You have given the order.

Bring Peace to my soul

So that it will be prepared

For War.

Capacity

I'm in a room.

The sign near the door says "capacity 150."

I am surrounded by at least 300 people walking in a mob of a circle.

They are all shouting at me.

Telling me how to live.

How to achieve happiness.

Their voices alone exceed the capacity limit.

I recognize some of them.

I see important historical figures and famous faces from several religions.

I see school teachers and classmates.

I see police and businessmen.

And I see regular people.

The walls of the room are plastered with different media devices, all contributing to the noise either vocally or visually.

The ground beneath me lifts me up and the crowd continues to circle and shout beneath me.

I elevate into another room that has a single incandescent light shining down from above me.

The capacity sign I made is hanging by the door.

1.

But the silence is no reprieve.

This room is as maddening as the first.

I wander about the room, building the world for myself.

Nothing is required, no sense must be made.

But progress is seldom and small.

I lay down under the tree I made.

Nothing was required, but I made a tree.

Then the room-world falls to pieces around me.

As the pieces fall, some gather on the sign and now it reads 2.

I close my eyes in fear and when I open them again I am lying in a new room.

There is no source to the light that fills the room.

There is no sign by the door.

There is no door.

There is but one voice and I am drawn to it.

It never sounds distant, but it has direction.

I walk through the pure white with silent footsteps.

I sit on the solid white ground and look out over the solid white pond.

A solid white bird flies silently and swiftly just inches over the solid white water.

It zooms towards me and then zooms back over the water.

As I watch the solid white poetry in flight, the solid white voice asks

"Who made the tree?"