Hello my lovely friends.
For this, the 100th post in my Substack venture, I’d like to do some recon. Some scouting of the area and gathering data on the enemy’s position.
So I can reaffirm mine.
We inhabit the same space, after all, and neither of us are willing to concede territory.
A Sunday sermon reminded me about that dichotomy, and wisdom is sorting most of life into “things that bring me closer to life” and “things that bring me closer to death” and also what those words mean to me.
Am I truly following God’s lead by taking this journey off the familiar path?
Or have I fooled myself and fallen into a spiritually dangerous place?
A long while ago, I wrote an entire post on running away that I may sift and send you later, but one of the striking lines in it asks, “What are you bolting yourself to, in order to keep from bolting?” It was supposed to be practical and somewhat witty.
**sigh**
All my life, I’d bolted, tied, fused, soldered, and otherwise melded myself into my church. Made best friends within the congregation. Married into it. Committed my children to it. It stood still when all the rest of the world changed, upheaved, shifted, and reinvented. Within it, people might come and go, but not me.
“Just stay in the boat,” we’d say. “The ark was there for a reason.”
I was loyal.
To a fault.
I never asked—because I assumed—whether those shoes of concrete were a good idea. If what I tied myself to was going to bring me closer to life. It’s church. That’s its one job. Right?
I spent a lot of time hammering in extra nails and coating it with pitch and soothing the inhabitants and stocking supplies and keeping a weather-eye out the window. The storm was only getting worse and the ark was always good to go.
“Come into the boat,” we sang. “He wants you here.”
Does He?
Then why, once I began attending a variety of other churches this year, did I suddenly see that those nails were being driven into a coffin lid? That I’d been gasping for air? Screaming for light? Alone the entire time?
And that walking into another church felt like life and light and delight and comfort and resurrection and glory and deep, deep peace? Even when I knew not a soul in the room. Even when I felt stupid. Disloyal. Deeply embarrassed.
An ark? Or a coffin? Safety? Or a handcrafted hidey-hole of my own design? (A compelling idea if your faith and hope is only in the afterlife—and not relevant for today.)
Nobody talks about the part where God practically had to kick Noah back out of the ark. Or how they were so scared they built the tower of Babel—you know, just in case.
I do not have a compass or a map but I can tell you that I was told to walk away. I can tell you the world was raging and I stepped out of the boat. Anyway.
I may not know where I’m going, but I can tell you that I have never been more sure of my faith in getting there.
And Simon Peter will agree with me. Because he stepped out of the boat. He left safety and his friends and, against common sense and all rational thought and everything he ever knew about boats and storms, walked away, on the water, to Jesus.
That boat was a coffin. Jesus was life. He was the Light. (He was glowing in the dark. Even Legion could see Jesus from the far shoreline.) And he was the only power there.
Let’s do it again. Moses in his basket is always linked to Noah and his ark. What possible common sense did God use when He put that baby straight into the hands of death? (Pharaoh’s daughter, already in the Nile, had only to tip the thing over and move on with her bath.) From bad to worse. Or as we like to say over here, “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
Death into life. Over and over. It had a temporary use, but the ark/basket/boat/church did not save anyone. That glory, fed from our faith and subsequent obedience beyond it, belongs only to Him. There is only one savior.
“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
“Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.
Matthew 14
Things aren’t what we think they are sometimes. Up and down and right and wrong and life and death are terms we insist are absolute and we need those labels to be so in order to position our own feet in a rocking world.
But what if your feet are standing on water?
I’m learning to listen and see with my heart and my gut, not just my head.
Changing churches is something most people do without a lot of drama, I suppose. Peter was told to get in the boat. Peter was told to come out of the boat. I don’t know if there are any more boats in my future.
But right now, I’m going with God.
Please, God, reach out and take my hand. I want to stay with you. I feel a lot of crazy things, but I don’t ever feel lost. Up and down, dark and light, mountaintops and valleys, are all the same to you.
And you can lead me on from here.
So powerful, Jolie...and so relatable!