April 4, 2007 - Wednesday
Current mood: amused
I've been reading through Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz (for the second time) over the past couple months. It is a phenomenal and eye-opening portrait of our lives as Christians....a little hazy in some spots.....some patchy theology over there....a few scattered revelations in various locations, but littered with the clear, abundant love of God for His people throughout. And while I find myself enamored by this masterpiece, there are some points on which Donald and I do not see eye to eye.
One such occurrence is in his chapter entitled "Worship". I believe it's chapter seventeen, and I am very sorry that I do not currently have the book with me while I am writing. In this chapter, Don (I can call him Don since I'm reading the book for the second time....that makes us friends) is discussing God's mystery, which I contend he must be confusing with God's majesty. In one paragraph in particular, Don alludes to the fact that God is so much bigger than we are, so much more, so much higher...and there is no way we could ever figure him out with our limited, earthly, fallen and sinful minds. He contends that God is a mystery. He cannot be known to us. And that we should find comfort in the fact that we worship a God who is so beyond us that we cannot possibly comprehend Him. That if we worshiped a God who we knew, that would put us on the same level as this god, and would render him un-sovereign. I understand the point Don is making here. He is illustrating that there would be little benefit or significance to worship a God we had completely figured out. We may as well worship Pauly Shore. Our God is beyond the grasp of our ideas. He is indecipherable. He is unpredictable. He is…a mystery.
And I agree that God is indeed much bigger than our minds can fathom. He is beyond us. To use Bible college terminology…he is sovereign and Transcendent.
Dictionary.com defines the word Mystery as "anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained or unknown."
Now, hold on to that while I pause to share with you a brief narrative. I read a book once by a comedian/writer named Mark Steele. It's called Flashbang: How I Got Over Myself. It is the most hysterical book I have ever read. I would read a chapter, laugh out loud, read it again, laugh harder, read it again, etc. It took me a very long time to finish the book in its entirety. Anyway, in the middle of his chapters, Mark would insert what he called "A Brief Pause for Important Autobiographical Information." In this break in the chapter, Mark would share a story about his life that would later tie into the topic he was writing about.
That's what this is.
In church on Sunday my Preacher was talking about serving others. He used the illustration of a family that was out to dinner. One of the sons was about five years old and he was asked to bless the meal before the family ate. The little boy thanked God for his family, thanked Him for the food they were about to eat, and then prayed that they would all get ice cream at the end of their meal.
A woman sitting in a nearby booth overheard the little boy's prayer and said, loudly enough for the family to overhear her, "Oh. Can you believe that? Asking God for ice cream – this is what is wrong with children these days!" Tears instantly welled in the little boy's eyes as he asked his mother what he had done wrong. He was afraid he might have made God mad.
An older gentleman with a kind face walked over to the table after witnessing what had just occurred. He leaned over and whispered to the boy, "I happen to know that God loved your prayer. A little ice cream is good for the soul sometimes. Ice cream would probably do some good for her."
The family finished their meals and of course, the parents ordered ice cream for their children. When the little boy received his, he didn't say a word. He stood, picked up his ice cream and walked over to the woman. "A little ice cream is good for the soul," he said, "My soul is already full enough. Here, you can have my ice cream."
Our preacher explained that God wants us to serve others. He will reveal those opportunities to us if we just ask. So we took a few minutes to pray for God to show us some opportunities to serve others that day.
After church I went out to lunch, ran a couple of errands and then went home. When I returned home I walked in and set my things down. I noticed that something in the house smelled very strange, but I couldn't quite peg what the odor was or where it was coming from.
**Please be warned that this is the point in the story where things get a little gruesome. The following few paragraphs are not for pansies.**
I walked into the kitchen and noticed, there on my roommate's living room carpet, the hugest, most disgusting pile of dog poo I had ever seen.
Now you have to know, my roommate Katie has this sweet elderly dog named Speck. To my knowledge, Speck has never gone #2 in the house. He has rarely done #1 and then only in mocking defiance toward Katie when she was doing something he didn't like…such as leaving. And you also must understand the layout of our house. Katie's (carpeted) living room is right next to our hardwood floor kitchen. Speck missed the hardwood by approximately 1 ½ inches and decided to relieve himself on the carpet instead. I suppose it was cushier on his paws or something.
Upon seeing the pile of poo, I thought to myself, "OH. Wow it sucks to be Katie. I wonder when she'll get home from church so she can clean that up."
No sooner had I turned to walk out of the room, when I heard a little voice, "Nicole. Remember what you heard in church this morning?"
"umm. No."
"Really? Do you remember what you prayed about?"
"sorry. I got nothing."
"Jamie talked about serving others and you prayed for God to give you the opportunity to serve someone today."
"What's that? I can't hear you. You're mumbling a little bit."
And with that I chose to ignore the prompting I was receiving and go to check my email. As I was sitting on my couch, realizing that I had no email, the Holy Spirit's sudden silence was loud enough for me to realize what I needed to do. God will never force us to do something we don't want to do. But He will most assuredly let us know what He wants us to do.
I walked into the kitchen…looked at the pile of poo….looked at Speck who was lying nonchalantly on the floor, pretending he didn't know how it had gotten there….looked back at the pile of poo….looked at the ceiling, and decided to go upstairs to look for some carpet cleaner. I didn't find any. I walked back to the kitchen and again looked at Speck's masterpiece, then I said to God, "Are you sure? There's not something else I could do to serve someone today?"
"Go look in the basement for the carpet cleaner" was the only response I got. As I re-entered the kitchen, carpet cleaner in hand, I again looked at the poo.
Now, you need to understand exactly why this was so difficult for me. And in order for you to really grasp this image in your mind, I'm going to have to get a little graphic. So strap yourself in. Here we go.
This was not just your run-of-the-mill, piece of dog poo you see on the sidewalk sometimes. This was a pile of runny, gooey, sloppy dense doggie diarrhea with subsequent diarrhea droplets making a trail almost to the kitchen but falling just short. It smelled of hot dogs…or maybe that was someone grilling outside. I'm not sure and I didn't really try to find out the answer to that question, for fear of making myself vomit or forever turning myself off to hotdogs…I like hot dogs. I would swear there was steam coming off of the pile if I didn't know that kind of thing only happened in the cartoons.
Again, I glanced at the ceiling, smirked and said, "That's funny, God." Then I hunkered down and began cleaning…Speck watching me the whole time…trying to give the appearance of innocence, as if I didn't know he was the culprit.
***Now, back to what I was saying earlier. Donald Miller contends that God is a mystery. He cannot be fully known by humans who have such finite minds. And while I agree that God is so much beyond our normal comprehension (insert those big Bible college words here again)…I disagree that God is a mystery.
A mystery is something that is unknown or unexplained. Something that can't be figured out.
I would say that God is mysterious, but he is not a mystery.
By this I mean that there are some mysterious aspects to God. We cannot always predict what He will do next, or how he will lead us in a certain situation.
But God, in His Sovereignty, allows us to know Him. He is bigger than our minds. He is transcendent over all of creation. But he is also imminent (deeply and passionately involved in the world, in our lives, in our hearts). There's another Bible college term for you. God is so powerful, so all-knowing, so beyond us…that He allows our finite, fallen minds to know Him personally. To walk with Him daily. To talk to Him whenever we want to. We often use the phrase, "I don't know. It's a mystery to me," when we're describing something that we can't explain. But I don't think this applies to God at all. I think God intervenes in our lives and moves so that He grabs our attention and we take hold of Him and allow Him to reveal Himself to us.
No, we cannot completely figure God out. We don't know how He will move, or where He will lead us. But we do know Him, as a person and as our Savior. He is not a mystery. He is someone I know intimately.God works in mysterious ways. I don't know why he wanted me to clean up dog crap rather than help an old woman to the car with her groceries that day. But it was no mystery to me that cleaning up the poo was exactly how He wanted me to serve in that moment.
May you find yourself surrounded with opportunities to serve others today…and may you constantly be perplexed by the mysterious things God does in your life every day. But may you always know that He loves you intimately and deeply, and that He will not keep Himself a mystery to those who seek after Him.
Currently listening : Queen - Greatest Hits, Vols. 1 &2 By Queen Release date: 14 November, 1995
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