discipleship

On George MacDonald

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 4 Comments

Walking on Sunday nights and Monday mornings is exciting. Monday is big trash day in my neighborhood, the day when all you cleared out of your house over the weekend gets set on the curb for pickup.

Among the treasures I’ve accumulated from these piles are: a 6 person tent, a kids life vest, a trash can for the garage (ironic, right?!), and books.

My kids don’t like to walk with me on Sunday nights or Monday mornings.

On day, two whole boxes of books called me over to the side of the road. As I searched through them, I gleaned the giver was probably a professor with lofty literary leanings who was interested in Christianity. I picked up a couple C.S. Lewis books, one of which was a book of George MacDonald quotes compiled by Lewis.

The preface gripped me as I delved into the book back at home. C.S. Lewis admired MacDonald. Wow. Just that one fact drew me in deeper. Anyone C.S. Lews counts as a mentor deserves attention.

As I learned more about MacDonald and read his quotes, I met one who saw deeply into the nature of people across generations. George saw the world, the times, and the people in it with a lens honed in on God’s heart. He knows God and cuts through all the add-ons we tend to accumulate in our lives.

Its always surprising to me when a person from a culture and time period so different from mine can relate truth that transcends to the here and now. How do they do it? I think it has to do with the nature of truth, it transcends.

So, here are a few of my favorite quotes from a novel I read by George MacDonald entitled A Daughter’s Devotion. Doesn’t that sound so Victorian and romantic? In reality, it is like meeting a mature sister and her father and following their life of fath.

I hope you enjoy some of my favorite George MacDonald quotes from A Daughter’s Devotion: 
Some will answer that you must have either distrust or self-confidence. "You must have neither," I reply. You must follow the truth and in that pursuit, the less one thinks about himself, the pursuer, the better. 
Let him so thirst after the truth that the dim vision of it occupies all his being, and leaves no time to think of his hunger and thirst. Self-forgetfulness is the healthiest of mental conditions. One has to look to his way, to his deeds, to his conduct--not to himself. In such losing of the false, or the merely reflected, we find the true self. (p.44)
But what is the use of the most powerful of medicines while they stand on the sick man's table? What is the mightiest of truths so long as it is not believed? The spiritually sick still mocks at the medicine offered; he will not know its cure. (p. 214)
In God alone, who is the truth, can creatures truly meet. (p. 267)
Jesus is the only man who is no exception. We are the exceptions. Everyone but Him is more or less out of straight. (p. 286)
Happy is he who has learned the gospel according to Jesus, as reported by John--that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all! Happy is he who finds God his refuge from all the lies that are told for Him and in His name!  (p. 220)
Love and marriage are of the Father's most powerful means for the making of His foolish ones into sons and daughters. But so unlike, in many cases, are the immediate consequences to those desired and expected, that it is hard for many to believe He is anywhere looking after their fate. And the doubt would be a reasonable one, if the end of things was marriage. But the end is life--that we can become the children of God. (p. 260)
All God's gifts are a giving of Himself. (p. 240)
We may spoil gratitude as we offer it, by insisting on its recognition. To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing. (p. 45)
For me, this photo evokes that idea I get with George MacDonald of seeing something beautiful from a long way off.

Come, Follow Me!

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It probably looks really sweet to the observer. My boys with a hand around my waist and close by my side guiding me. Little do they know this action is totally self-serving and only happens when they think mom has talked to enough people and we really need to get home and eat, for goodness sake.

My boys seriously detest waiting around while I talk to people. Schools, grocery stores, on a walk, in church. There are so many places we see friends and I do what most women do, I seize the opportunity to gab.

They’re pretty effective at moving me along while I’m talking to them about poetic things like the gift of community.  But, they’re not buying it yet. I get it. I grew up waiting in this big room called the narthex (what kind of name is that?) staring at a world map while my parents spent hours, I’m sure it was hours, talking to people at church. I’ve always been pretty good at geography.

Sometimes I wish it was possible to do this for people in their spiritual lives. Escort them a little forcibly to the next destination. But it is not so. My husband pointed out to me simply, God is on the move and people have to leave stuff to follow Him.

I should know this. It’s not like I haven’t seen it time and time again in the Bible. Come, Follow Me! But my eyes have skipped over this passage so many times, I began to miss it.

Each person He invited had to leave something. A job. A task. An appointment. A lifestyle. Friends. Family. A home. To answer the call, they had to move physically from their present activity and start walking. img_7629.jpg

Jesus didn’t come over and force them. He didn’t escort them around their waist along the road. He invited and only the willing accepted the invitation. They left what they were doing, and followed Him.

Sometimes I find myself trying to do a little more than just invite. I smooth the path extra flat. I try to make an offer they can’t refuse. I bend over backwards to wait around and hope they start moving towards Jesus.

But I can never make the choice for someone. There is no detour around the fact that we must leave things to follow Jesus. And the truth is not everyone will answer the call to become a disciple, a learner of His way. Some people will not leave their way to follow Jesus’ way.

It saddens me as it must have saddened Jesus. They’re missing out. There’ll be a price.

But I cannot ever force someone to be a disciple. I can only invite. They must answer the call themselves. They must make the decision to put aside what they’re doing to move with Him. Only then can they be with Him.

As a former youth pastor said, wherever you go, there you are.

So stupidly profound.

Spiral v. Mastery

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I read an article on how Shanghai schools teach math differently from western schools. They mentioned that Shanghai teachers taught mastery before moving on to the next concept. I remember this well. My daughter spent her 1st grade year in an Asian school. They spent a couple of months on number bonds. It seemed so basic but they drove it home over and over again. She became a master at number bonds and it laid the foundation for mental math. She still loves math.

Then, I homeschooled for a while and our math curriculum used the spiral method. Teaching a concept, then another, and another, and then coming back around and going a little deeper. Revisiting each concept a little deeper each time. My daughter is now in the spiral method in her current school. She’s not a fan yet. “We’ve already done this!” she tells me often.

My heart resists relearning things I thought I knew, too. It can be a book of the Bible I’ve read quite a few times and know. Or a concept like forgiveness…yeah, I know those verses. I hear it in time with others and in my own journey of spiritual growth. I’ve already been here! Are we really talking about this again? I know this!

Yet, the Spirit speaks again in a small, soft, ever deeper way and I discover there’s another thing or two or a million I need to learn about forgiveness, grace, or obedience. The spiral concept of learning. I see it play out.

I am beginning to realize the freedom it brings. The desire for spiritual mastery is strong. To know a truth inside out and always know it, like your math multiplication facts or the ABC’s feels good. Who doesn’t want mastery? It feels so good to know something.

But, from the stories shared in the accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry, Acts, and Paul’s letters, I see a different method at play. Disciples felt they mastered concepts and then were shown how far they were from mastery. Learning, relearning, re-relearning. The spiral method.

I find freedom as I accept the spiral method over the mastery method in growing in my walk with Jesus. It also brings freedom as I endeavor to shepherd others too. Releasing mastery gives us all a breath of fresh air as we abandon the expectation that we can be done learning at some point because we somehow mastered the Christian life.

Letting go of the disappointment of failed mastery allows me to embrace the wonder that I can always, always learn new things about an old thing from God. My lessons are never over, He always keep coming back to make sure I’m getting it. It can be pretty painful and definitely humbling.

The spiral method. May I not act like a brat when presented with a lesson I thought I mastered!

In what ways do you see the spiral method at work in your relationship with Jesus? 

 

Reflections on a Fisherman’s Hands

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Rough, tan, scarred, mangled, tattooed. I imagine the followers hands. Working with nets and knives for a living does that to hands…I imagine.

I’ve fished a few times in my life. In lakes, in stock ponds, and in swift streams. That’s the fun part, the holding the pole and the waiting. The bite and the haul. But then comes the blood and the guts. The descaling. The cutting.

Fishing for men is much the same. It’s exciting and fun at first and then it gets messy. The task of the fishermen after the haul is dirty and requires skilled hands that want hard work. Hands that are willing to get messy, willing to get slashed by a sharp knife. I’m not sure I understood that part of fishing until late. It’s a messy job, this fishing. I’m a messy fish myself. Others have dirtied themselves in my life.

Hearts are sick…including mine…who can understand the twists and turns? Certainly not I but that is only my excuse to not get messy. Not a good reason to bow out of the battle. Not a good reason to jump out of the boat. Am I willing to reach into the net and grasp the fish? To wield the knife? To have it wielded on me?

And that tattoo. I love that tattoo. The mark of a life lived hard. A brand of one who understands the dark side of life. Here it means gang life or time in prison. I was branded for the other side til He fished for me. In many ways I still bear the marks for all to see.

I’d like to think they have to look hard…but I don’t think they do. But…isn’t that the beauty of grace?