The pursuit of happiness [read: grief]

 

We want to be happy.  All the time.  Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is as about as American as you can get.  It's deeper than American, it's human.  Humans seek happiness.

I find great happiness in experiencing beauty--a waterfall, a perfect front porch, deep red cherries on the cherry tree in our yard, the ancient look in a newborn's eye--beauty draws me to a deeper soul dimension.  It roots me in what is good, and true, and whole. Happiness for me is about living well with grace, loving the people in my path with my whole heart, seeking justice with open eyes and breaking heart, and finding the Holy Spirit in unexpected and expected places.  I am deeply happy when I am connected to people, living from my heart, and being part of the movement of God in small ways.

This kind of happiness is born not from the pursuit of happiness, but out of the pursuit of grief.

 Real happiness is paradoxically not in the "pursuit of happiness".  It is in the pursuit of grief.  A very unAmerican thing, but full of the Spirit.

In the spiritual life, we learn quickly that the path to happiness is not, always or even often, easy. Nor is the path to happiness forged from carefree living.  Real happiness is forged from grief.

The greatest gifts the Spirit gives us is the gift of repentance. To repent--to turn away--to change directions--is not something that we do in and of ourselves, it is a gift of God.  The apostle Peter speaks strong words in front of the high priests in the temple. The high priests were the people in charge of the whole repentance situation.  And here, in front of them, Peter announces that Jesus who they killed by hanging on a tree, God gives Israel (and all of us) forgiveness of sin (Acts 5:31). God gives us the gift of repentance.  It is the best gift God can give.  The gift of repentance through Jesus Christ is such a powerful, uncontrollable gift that it continues to be revolutionary.  Religious power structures have tried to control it, charge for it, and own it--but it is a gift, freely given, never to be governed by human powers.

The grief of recognizing that we have not embraced the Goodness in us, but instead turned from it and chosen Self is the beginning of Real Happiness.

In 2 Cor. 7:10, Paul tells us that "godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret...". And in Romans 2:4 we learn that it is God's kindness that leads us to repentance.

When the pursuit of grief--or the recognition of finiteness of life, the reality of our choosing Self over Others, the knowledge of loss as part of life, and the understanding that we cannot save our selves--becomes the pathway that we walk, it leads us to happiness.

Repentance leads us to happiness.  It orients our heart with the center on God, not on our Self.  And this all-defining change, changes everything about how we see the world.

Repentance is the beginning of and the daily way to live in the world.  When we live in this place of grief, we find happiness.  

Or happiness finds us.  We no longer need certain things to make us happy, happiness finds us, surrounding us, naming us, creating us.  Not because we pursued it, but because we pursued the grief that we have come to the end of ourselves and need God.

Beyond our personal mission statement

In Acts 3:3 Peter and John are stopped on their way to pray at the Beautiful Gate by a man who could not walk from birth.  The man asks them for alms, and they look at him intently, and Peter says those famous words, "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give to you: in the name of Jesus Christ, stand up and walk."

On an ordinary day, doing what he did every hour or every day, this man got more than he asked.  We often hear  "You don't have because you do not ask"--true-- and that in this culture and in our relationship with God you have to ask for what you need and want.  Also true-depending.  I have heard many sermons encouraging me to ask for more of God, more blessing, more challenge, more wisdom, more growth.  It begins with the asking: my heart first recognizing my great need for God and the things of God.  I have encouraged many people myself to know what they want and ask for it in various situations.  We meet with others for clarity about what we want and need in life and how to move forward.  

In this story is another truth and one that I don't contemplate very much.

God is interested in giving us life beyond what we even know to ask.  We do not need the imagination or the vision to ask for what God has for us.   We don't need to have a full life plan or a mission-statement or a life vision or even an earnest prayer regarding the ways that we want to grow.  Those things certainly are helpful and the development of wisdom and discernment is a mark of maturity in Christ, but we are not limited in life-abundant by what we have eyes to see or words to name.

At the heart level, God desires to give us more LIFE than we could ever ask or imagine. 

Eph 3:20   [God] is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us...

And as Hannah Whitall Smith says, "God wants to give us the kingdom more than we want to have it."

The man lame from birth on the side of the road got more than he could ask or imagine.

God has life for us like this too.  Beyond our asking. Beyond our thinking. Beyond our praying. Beyond our vision.

Perhaps the work is to recognize what in us is lame, crippled, broken-down, and in pieces. So that we can be intent on recognizing the marks of what is done in us that it is the name of Jesus. 

Work Makes One Free vs. Death is no Match

Acts 2:24  But God raised [Christ] up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.


(and in The Message) But God untied the death ropes and raised him up. Death was no match for him.


Peter stands among the crowd of Jews of Jerusalem that are wrestling with the startling reality that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah.  Peter says these powerful words that resonate centuries later:  Death was no match for Jesus.  It was impossible for death to hold him in its power. 


It's the deepest revealed secret of our faith.  However it appears to us, death has no real, lasting power in our world.  It never did, it never had a chance.  It's impossible for death to be the final word.  Sometimes we can get trapped in that thinking that its a battle between Good and Evil in such a way that Evil might just have a chance.


Several years ago, I was able to walk through the gates of Dachau concentration camp with the iron words "Works make one free" over the gate.  As I walked with my family through this monument gravestone of brutality and death, I saw that in this place meant for death there are now three places of worship on its ground.  Each place there is an opportunity to light a candle in honor of someone who died and as a symbol of the light of love that conquers death.


I am still struck by the power of the symbol.  A small candle is lit, quivers into life, and a tiny light shines in a place meant for absolute destruction and darkness.  The light, no matter how small, always conquers the darkness.  No matter how dark, the dark is not strong enough to keep the light from burning.  The moment a light is lit, a little of the darkness is instantly vanquished. It is courageous and brave to light a tiny candle and to stand on the side of Love when the darkness seems so great.


How the enemies of our souls would like us to believe that "Work makes one free"!  As if our freedom is  still being worked out!  As if we have to battle against the darkness because it might win!


No matter what happens in the course of any day on this planet, death is no match for Christ.  The Light and Love of God will win in The End. And The End will be the most spectacular Genesis of all things being made whole.


Last night I read a brief article about some terrible abuse some children endured under the hands of adoptive parents.  I felt real anger towards these people and the others who they represent who could be such monsters.  I have no space for grace for them in my heart and can only try and believe that God could love them still.  I know in my head that people who do horrendous things are people who have believed the biggest lies--that absolute power brings love.  These people have learned that the only way to gain control over their own fear of death is to control others with the threat of death.  They are working out their own (anti)salvation with suffering and atrocity. People that live this way believe that they can save themselves. 

However big or small our own atrocities are, when we believe that "work makes us free" it is actually a life of living in hell, trying to earn our own passage to our own security. When we have to save ourselves, in little and big ways, we become consumed with death, not life, and death wins in us.  When we are consumed with death and avoiding it, we bring death to others.

But when we live in the reality that death is no match for Christ, that the battle has been won, that no matter how bleak things appear that the deepest secret is and will be revealed--why, then, we live differently. We hope, we dream, we vision, we are really free.

Peter says these words to us everyday:  it was impossible for death to hold Christ in its power.  And so, it is impossible for death to hold us.  We are heaven-breathing, life-living, dream-catching, freely giving kind of people.  It changes everything.

Death, it's no match for us.

Certain Women

I am preparing for a series on Acts for the fall, so I'll be reflecting on some passages as I read through Acts that capture my attention.

"they went up to a room upstairs where they were staying, Pete, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, and Simon, Judas son of James...All of these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers."
Acts. 1: 14

Whenever I read this chapter, the certain women rise up to greet me. Part the mystery of their anonymity, part the injustice that they are unmentioned, part the delight of women and men followers gathered in an upper room, waiting and listening to God together...The beginning of the church.


I have a church that I attend that is my public place of worship.  I belong to that group and they belong to me.  But my personal church is certain women and men--who I meet together in various upper rooms, cell phone calls, emails, living rooms, offices, retreat spaces and wait and listen to God.  Sometimes it is obvious that this is what we are doing, but mostly it is not.  It is church lived out in ordinary time and space of shared meals and shared time.  

The gift of certain women who listen to God in my life has been one of the most transformative things in my life.  It is truly the reason that I follow Jesus. Without certain women and men to speak into my life, I do not know that I would be able to recognize the presence of Christ on my own.

Who are the certain women or men who are devoting themselves to prayer (meaning a life lived listening to God) in your life?  How are they the church to you?  What are the upper rooms of your life?  Who is in the upper room of your heart as your certain women and men who listen to God with you and for you?