A thought from my diary

Vanity makes a woman weak.

It creates for her a vision of herself that is almosty purely imagined.  It makes her proud of assets, she may, but also may not -in her imagined vision- possess.  Her ego is enlarged and pours useless words from her lips.  Pride and self-obsession make her weak because they hinge upon the power of the self to become something.  They are like parasites, which, far from bringing gain to the woman, rather sap her of any real beauty she may truly possess.

She also has only so much strength; after it is used up all that's left is a dried out husk.  Is it not sadly so with many women who were once young beauties?  Who all their lives pursued perpetual youth, where everything they deemed to be of worth was centred around their image, and who allowed self-obsession to completely take over their hearts.  Are they not wasted, are they not now old before their time and are ceaselessly pining after their youthful, beautiful days?  They are now weak, but most of all, they are fools.

When a woman mistakes vanity for strength, outward beauty for the eternal and self-obsession for the fufilment she could have found in cultivating a beautiful soul, she slowly dies inside.

The realisation of every Christian woman at some point in their life, which perhaps some women understand more profoundly than others, is that this body is corruptible and is passing away.  Our stunning eyes, rich, abundant hair, tender skin and smooth curves will one day give way to crags, lines, sagging, dull eyesight and balding.  We will look hungrily on old photos of by-gone days and may stare despairingly at teenage girls flaunting their legs on street corners, yet all the while inwardly covet their youth and beauty.

Yet, the Christian woman's hope is that she will one day be made more beautiful than she could ever have imagined.  Her body will grow old and die, but her soul is eternal.  Her real self, where all her treasures are hidden, will remain.

Cultivating a beautiful soul is paramount not just for remaining beautiful in old age but to that eternal joy when we will be completely beautiful once again, like Eve would have experienced had she not sinned; that full and beautiful unity of flesh and spirit, an uncorrupted flesh and a beautiful soul that has been bought at a costly price.

Women become more beautiful the more they are in the presence of the Beloved, the Beautiful One and we will have an eternity of that.

Obsession with Identity

In my studies I have been reading a lot about identity, whether in a 19th Century French anarchist context or for a German literature module on the study of the 'self' and the 'other'.  Identity never fails to enthrall us, intrigue, confuse and drive us, more than often, to depair.  'Who am I?' appears to be the fundamental question in everyone's mind.  The way in which you introduce yourself hints at what you think about yourself and what you would like others to know about you.  We commonly start with a brief greeting, an exchange of names, job titles, where we originally come from and whether we are married and have children.

However, I think Elisabeth Elliot puts it well in her book, Let me be a woman.  The question in the search for identity, which often leads people into all kinds of sorrow and heart-ache, should not be 'who am I' but 'whose am I?'  Attempting to discover your identity in complete isolation never works.  It only leads to destructive naval-gazing and a deeper confusion and discontent over the question of identity.  Why is it that when we introduce ourselves we always start by talking about our outward actions and those we have chosen to spend time with?  Because they are a reflection of our feelings, beliefs, tendencies, joys, hurts, decisions and choices we have made.  In essence, they are not our identity, but they do help explain who we are or who we aspire to be.

The problem, however, is that no relationship with another human can ever fully satisfy us.  No job, amount of money, wealth of education or future prospects can conclusively tell us who we are.  We may find parts of ourselves sated for a while.  Our thirst and longing after a defining principle to be quenched momentarily, but it will never eternally satisfy us.  Our identity is far deeper and greater than can be comprehended through a collection of deeds, writings, facts and emotions, otherwise why would even the greatest of writers, thinkers and leaders have carried on in this quest for identity?

Neither can we find our complete identity in simply tracing back our family history.  My Mum works in a cemetary and often has people coming in to trace their ancestry back to local celebrities or, more often, ordinary working-class people!  After all, if we can't discover our identity in our present surroudings we resort to the past.  Family traits (in our family it's the Jewsbury nose...) are passed down, and I daresay even some characteristics, but not one of them ever fully explains our rhyme or reason for being the way we are.

We see ourselves partly then in the reflection of others.  Yet, I would argue that this is completely the wrong way around.  If we start with ourselves, creatures who are limited in our understanding and knowledge of the universe we live in, then we will never, within the short span of our lifetime, discover who we really are or what is our purpose in life.  Instead, we need to look into the face of the One who from the very beginning not only reflected but gave us His likeness.  Our identity as individuals is dependant upon God's identity.  So in looking to the present and the past for clues to our identity we are not wrong, in fact, it simply reveals a more profound trait of the God we have sought to drive out of our own self-fashioned identities.  We were never meant to be isolated, unrelational, stagnant, self-fashioned and destructive.  Rather, we were created with identities that are unique and highly complex, yet which all have their root and fulfilment in God. 

So, our mistake as humans is not our obsession with identity, it is more that we are looking for identity in the wrong place and in the wrong people.  In asking 'whose am I?', we recognise that, in the basic sense, we are all God's in that each human being has been created by Him and for Him.  But just as we find out who we are by tracing back our roots, by asking questions, by seeking knowledge of and intimacy with the ones who have physically brought us into this world, that is, our parents, so we will never find the answer to this identity question until we seek intimacy with God through Jesus Christ, who is the revealed identity of our heavenly Father.

The Wedding pratically everyone is still talking about

A post I wrote and edited ages ago and never posted!  It's actually quite nostalgic thinking back to my year abroad.  Apologies for any possible mistakes in translation...

 (1/5/11)
Wedding fever is still raging. It even made it into the sermon this morning at church. I tell you, the Germans are just as crazy, if not more so, about the monarchy as some Brits are! Even the local newspaper has jumped on the bandwagon and has printed a few articles, one making it onto the front page! Here's a few amusing snippets...

From a german tourist in London on Friday:
'Die Engländer sind verrückt, aber all so höflich.' - 'The English are mad but all so polite.'

One article commented on the length of the smackers William planted on his new wife upon that oh-so-famous balcony, revealing that the first lasted just 0.7 seconds. The latter was slightly more daring and lasted a whole 1.1 seconds.
I think someone has way too much time on their hands...

One article titled 'Longing for the Eternal' (Sehnsucht nach Ewigem), was of particular interest and which I discussed with my class today. Although the number of couples pledging their troth in Germany has declined over the last few years and the number of divorcees risen, still about 90% of young people who participated in a recent survey would like to have their own family one day. It seems, however, that marriage is out of fashion, so to speak. There is a great reluctance to make a committment which some feel is perhaps too restrictive on their personal freedom, especially in such an economic climate where mobility and flexibility appear to be the favoured job criteria. Fear that marriage probably won't last until death do us part and the court costs tied in with getting a divorce are also factors that put some people off. After all, some argue, it's only a piece of paper.

Yet, as the journalist points out, as soon as Catherine glided out of her car in her stunning, laced wedding dress, the whole nation, indeed the whole world, gasped, sighed, cried, sang and screamed almost simultaneously. As the couple met at the altar and nervously gave their wedding vows and immediately after as they trotted out onto the balcony, the sight of a newly-wed couple sent people all wobbly and gooey inside.

Here's what the journalist said:
'Eine Hochzeit ist das öffentliche Versprechen, für immer zusammenszubleiben. Man mag ein solches Versprechen für maßlos halten, da ja niemand ganz sicher garantieren kann, dass er es einhalten wird. Doch die Seele braucht solche Anklänge von Ewigkeit. Wo solche Versprechen verschwinden, bleiben sie als Sehnsucht zurück. Auch deshalb rühren Märchenhochzeiten wie die in London so viele Menschen.'
'A wedding is the public promise to stay together forever. We like to think of such promises as exorbitant because no one can garantee that such a promise will be stuck to. Still, the soul requires such peals of eternity. Where such promises disappear, they still remain as desires. For this reason fairy-tale weddings, such as the one in London, continue to deeply move so many people.'

It seems that although we cry that we do not want to be bound by an eternal promise because we claim it to be too restrictive, we still long after such oaths because we admire the sacrifice, the dedication and above all the deeply grounded love that a couple (hopefully) has for one another as they promise to cherish one another in sickness and in health. I think our souls require someone to say, 'I will love you no matter what and I am willing to die for you'.

But why on earth do we long after such desires in such a contradictory way. We want someone to love us unconditionally, even to death, and yet we reject all notions of stability as an infringement upon our individual rights. We want intimacy but desire to retain our independance.  But therein is exactly the point. By loving someone so much so that you publicly declare, indeed actually bind two families together by a covenant, you give up rights to your own body. Or, more clearly said, you promise to cherish the other above yourself; to put them first as your main priority. You give up your rights to doing what you want.

These longings are no freak consequence of evolution. God is the institutor of marriage. It is a desire that He breathed into our souls when He created the first man and woman. Human, earthly marriage is wonderful. In fact, quite a few good friends are getting married this year and I am over the moon for them! Yet, we cannot just stop here. For what happens when we realise that, despite what the world tells us, we do not feel 'complete' in that other person. What happens to this longing when our spouse dies? What about those men and women who desire to be married and yet can't for whatever reason? What good is this longing after unconditional love in such a person? Is it just to go to waste?

The Lord God is described as Husband and Maker. 'Well, that's a funny concept', you say. 'How is God my husband?!' It's that we have the starting point wrong. Man is not the founder of marriage, God is. Man doesn't define the marriage oath, although we often like to think we can and do. God displays how a husband should act towards his wife. With tenderness, love and unconditional faithfulness. 

If our souls' deepest desire and longing is to love and be loved even unto death, then God satisfies this over and abundantly in Jesus Christ.  God is the ultimate Husband because even after His wife has cheated on Him and rebelled against his love and light, He still desires her!  Jesus goes to the cross, He dies to declare His love for the Bride He is about to redeem, to wash and make lovely again.  We gasped in wonder at Kate's beauty, well how much more should we gasp in wonder at how loving this God should be to die for a people, the ultimate Bride, who do not even desire Him?  He pursues His people, He wins their hearts in the ultimate way: by dying for them.

So why do we still gasp at the beauty of the bride?  Because in a sense her beauty is the result of promises come true, of desires met, of unconditional love which her husband swears to her and before God.  She is radiant because he loves her.  Sacrifice becomes the price of beauty.

Joy through sorrow

Lately I've been wondering how it is possible for us to be realistic about the disaster and suffering we both experience and see around us and yet somehow remain joyful.  It seems almost impossible to be simultaneously sorrowful and burning with joy. 

I've been reading through Jeremiah and to me he appears to encapsulate this heart-wrenching grief.  He is almost, after all, told to complete a seemingly fruitless task.  He preaches for the Israelites and Judeans to turn back to God and give up their idolatry and no one believes that he's telling the truth.  They would rather believe a flatterer, a deceptive comforter who drips honeyed words and tells them what they want to hear rather than the hard truth.  Even when eventually they do recognise that Jeremiah is at least sent as a messenger of God they still insult, mock, leave him in a pit of mire, arrest, beat and plainly ignore what he has to say.  All the while the fall of Jerusalem and the advancement of a great and terrible empire, the Babylonians, are ever in Jeremiah's sight. Then when the judgment actually comes, when the effects of sin are finally revealed, he seems utterly heart-broken.

Lamentations is testimony to the despair that almost overcomes him.  Yet in the midst of sorrow at such a crooked world inhabited by such unfaithful people, Jeremiah still has cause for hope and a deep-dwelling, tear-stained joy.  You see, even when the Israelites had gone as far as God was going to allow them and they had experienced the judgment they had been expecting since the law itself was penned, they were never, even from the first time they crossed the line, completely forsaken or completely without hope.

A remnant of Israel and Judah will eventually return and God will bring about a redemption that far outstrips a small physical gathering.  Remembering God's covenant promises, that He will dwell with His people and be their God, Jeremiah also has to remember God's mercy and faithfulness to himself personally, attributes which He doesn't just shrug off when He enacts punishment.  Jeremiah has complete assurance that even though the world looks bleak now, He should never be fooled into thinking that God has got up and left the universe to wind down into chaos and despair.  Suffering is never meaningless, no matter how nonsensical and harsh it seems.  Jeremiah puts it like this:

'Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed,

because His compassions fail not.

They are new every morning;

Great is Your faithfulness.

"The Lord is my portion,"

says my soul,

"Therefore I hope in Him!" ' 

Lam 3:22-24

It is easy, even as a Christian, to despair at times at the overwhelming nature of how this world is.  We would be very unlike Christ not to be moved to tears.  But sorrow is never complete without joy just as the night would be incomplete without the morning.  On this present earth, the way it is now, we unfortunately learn more about joy through our sorrows, perhaps a result of our sinful self in being incapable to be joyful without having something to compare it to.  For, an age is coming where there will be no sorrow.  So joy is not defined by sorrow in a comparative way as such.  However, in keeping this sorrow presently before our eyes we delve into joy when we take God at His promises, that is, when we believe that He really does have transforming power; that the gospel is for the salvation of all who believe; that God will bring righteousness and justice to light; that when He says He will redeem the world and His people, He actually means it.

Joy comes with the morning, like it came on a resurrection morning for a world that was literally heart-broken.  Jesus still had to go through the night of sorrow, however, before He triumphed.  I suppose I am reminded then that sorrow is not the opposite of joy, but is the catalyst which God uses for taking us deeper into His joy, when we see His plan and ability to heal up the broken-hearted.

'I will only triumph in You once I have learned the radiance of the rain.' George Matheson
in Streams in the Desert, edited by L. B. Cowman (Zondervan 1997), p.23