He Suffered Violence . . . for Us

Posted on April 23, 2011 | 2 Comments

On a Dark Friday

Image by Sister72

Last year on Good Friday, I sat in the back of my church and watched seven candles on the platform stage go out, one by one, as the last seven words Jesus spoke before his death were read from the Scriptures. When the last words were spoken and the last candle extinguished, the sanctuary went completely dark. Several hundred quiet souls sat together in the dark for several long moments in time.

Silence.

Darkness.

Today as I write this post, I’m trying to get back inside the powerful and profound realization I had in that moment. It was the realization that Jesus sustained violence . . . for us.

This was not a new truth for me to hold. I grew up in the church and have participated in my fair share of Good Friday services, some of which depicted the reality of Christ’s last hours in gruesome detail. But this reality struck me in a new way last year, perhaps because I was deep in the woods of this nonviolence journey and could see with fresh eyes that Jesus embodied on that original Good Friday all that I’ve come to believe is contained in the nonviolent ethic:

  • Love is stronger than evil.
  • Nonviolence is more transformative than violence.
  • Nonviolence is rooted in the conviction of truth.
  • Nonviolence is postured in love.

Early in my nonviolence journey, I began to read the autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. What stood out to me in the early section of that book was Dr. King’s own process of coming to embrace the nonviolent way of life. He studied various philosophers — Marx, Nietzche, and Reinhold Niebuhr among them — and eventually landed upon Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance as that which has the power to “lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale” (p. 24).

I was particularly struck by Dr. King’s response to Niebuhr, who had been a staunch proponent of pacifism for many years but eventually rejected it. Regarding Niebuhr’s rejection, King said:

Many of his statements revealed that he interpreted pacifism as a sort of passive nonresistance to evil expressing naive trust in the power of love. But this was a serious distortion. My study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil. Between the two posiions, there is a world of difference. Gandhi resisted evil with as much vigor and power as the violent resister, but he resisted with love instead of hate. True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to evil power, as Niebuhr contends. It is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love.

– The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr, p. 26

I remember watching the Ben Kingsley film on Gandhi’s life several months later and seeing this demonstrated so clearly in the famous salt march. Along with several hundred of his followers, Gandhi marched 240 miles to the sea coast over the course of 26 days in protest of a salt tax. When the marchers arrived at their destination, they faced aggressors who beat and killed many of them, and yet still the marchers stood in conviction for what they believed to be right and true, and they refused to fight back.

This was nonviolent resistance: a firm stand for truth and justice coupled with an unwillingness to raise one’s own hand against another out of love for the dignity and humanity of the one standing against you.

In Jesus, on Good Friday last year, I saw this exemplified in even greater measure. On that day, as I listened to those seven passages of Scripture being read aloud and as I watched those candles, one by one, go out, my mind filled in the details of the story.

In my mind, I watched the Jesus I have come to know and love get arrested. I watched him stand before the chief priest and all the elders and scribes and Pharisees and become the object of their scorn. I watched those religious leaders stir up the crowd against him in derision — the same crowd who had saluted him with palm branches just days before and who had thrown their cloaks on the ground for him when he entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, many of whom had likely followed him around for years, always showing up where he did because they wanted more of his teaching and more of his healing. I watched those same people seek his crucifixion.

I watched him stand before Pontius Pilate in the court the next day and say nothing to defend himself. I watched him being given over to the death sentence and watched the Roman soldiers beat him with their clubs and their cat of nine tail switches. I watched them laugh at the torture they inflicted on him and watched them rip the robe off his back, raw pieces of his flesh tearing off with it because of how badly he had been beaten.

I watched him stumble down the dusty road  to Golgotha with a heavy wooden cross laid upon his shoulders, splinters gouging into those gaping wounds. I watched the crown of thorns they twisted into his head pierce his temple and his forehead and watched blood run in streams down his face and into his eyes and mouth.

I watched the soldiers pound three heavy, rusty nails into his hands and feet. I can’t even imagine the pain of that part, but yes, sharp, thick nails tore through his skin, tendons, and bones so mightily that they were able to hold the weight of his body against that cross when it was raised high up to the sky.

I watched it happen in my mind as I listened to those Scriptures and watched those candles go out on the stage in front of me that day, and as the last candle went out and we sat in the darkness and silence of that room, tears streamed down my face at the realization:

He suffered violence . . . for us. This was his nonviolence act.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus was not afraid to speak words of truth because he believed they contained real life. This speaking of truth is what eventually led to his arrest and crucifixion, as it leads to death for so many who speak truth in places where truth is not wanted.

He was willing to speak the truth, but he was not willing to save his own life to defend it. Instead, he operated with the knowledge that new life would come from his death — that love would indeed be more powerful than evil.

In the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday, we see this principle born out in the most powerful way it has ever been demonstrated. Life really did conquer death. Love really did overcome evil. Everything contained in the nonviolent ethic is played out in its most literal form in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For that reason, Jesus Christ stands as the foremost example to me of the embodiment of this way of life and its actual transformative power. It is my sincere hope and prayer that he will teach me to be worthy of this reality he exampled through his life for me to follow.

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Posted in Jesus Christ, Nonviolence

Now, to Live Inside the Kingdom

Posted on March 15, 2011 | 2 Comments

Image credit: Barbara Lane

It’s been interesting to watch my journey into nonviolence these past two and a half years.

The journey began with a lone statement that intrigued and arrested me:

Only love has the power to transform and overcome violence.

I stayed with that statement for months. I could not evade it. It wanted my full attention and would not let me go. So I turned toward the question and asked a number of my own: Really? Is this how all the darkness in the world and in our hearts is meant to be redeemed — through love? Is love the only way?

I knew it was true.

My own experience of being transformed by love was testimony enough for that. Nothing but love had ever transformed me. Can’t you say the same is true for you? When you honestly evaluate your life, can you say you’ve ever had true, life-altering transformation of heart, soul, and spirit any other way?

So I went in search of mentors. If the world and all the darkness and brokenness living within it could only be changed by encounters with love, then I wanted to see it. It’s no secret that I carved out a year of my life to study the great peacemakers. That initial year was the first of a whole lifetime before me that will continue to include such study.

But in the midst of that intentional study, I learned one main thing:

It begins with me.

Even when taking several months inside one summer to study and think deeply about this subject, the majority of those months were filled with the honest examination of my own heart before God. Together, we rooted around inside to see what was really there. And what did I find? Unforgiveness. Judgment. Arrogance and anger. Unlove in spades.

So I’ve learned this above all:

The nonviolent journey begins with our own hearts.

Much of the work of this space, this JTN blog, is about that central truth: how our own hearts increase in their capacity to love . . . because it is only from a posture of love that we ourselves become nonviolent, and it is only from the posture of our own nonviolent lives that we can ever hope to effect any change inside this world, no matter how grand or miniscule that change may be.

So it’s about learning to grow in love. That’s what we do here.

###

Over this last year, my journey into nonviolence has continued into these truthful depths in my heart. I have faced the reality of a competitive spirit. I have faced, and continue to face, my difficulty with the truth-telling side of love. (I look forward to sharing more about this in an upcoming post.) And I’ve continued to find my heart broken for those we normally call our enemies. For whatever reason he has deemed fitting, God keeps giving me a heart that weeps for those who hurt others.

More recently, God has renewed a fervency of love in my heart for himself. He’s been taking my focus off doing and planning and living with passion and cause in order to turn my full attention to himself. He has become, increasingly, the One True Object of my love these past few months.

And as we’ve grown in love together, I’ve begun bumping up against my struggles with God’s history of violence. I’ve found myself unable to fathom the wrathful side of God when my own experience of God is one of full acceptance, generosity, intimacy, and unconditional grace.

So we’ve had our struggles in the midst of this fierce love. And that’s been okay, and even good.

###

Speaking aloud here about my struggle with the violent God of history has been fruitful and has informed my ongoing journey. I’m so thankful you take this journey with me and feel the freedom to share your perspective and your own struggles. I find myself starting conversations, but it’s really from your contributions that I learn the most. So, thank you.

More recently, I have begun to find much peace in the knowledge that Christ’s coming changed everything and does make a difference. I’ve been surprisingly comforted by a theological idea I never much noticed before: that Christ’s descent into hell inside the grave was marked with revelation, perhaps, to those under the earth who may have anticipated his coming with eagerness or who may never have even known to expect it.

Just tonight, in fact, during a church service I attended, I was reminded of the verse that says “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:10-11, emphasis mine). This passage reminds me that the reality of Christ will become present knowledge to all at some point. No one will be left out.

That comforts me in the midst of this struggle that recently emerged with God.

That being said, I am sure I will continue to struggle with these ideas and many more. I have no illusions of them being settled once and for all, despite the current appeasement to the struggle that I feel. That’s why I continue to be glad to call this a journey.

But for now, I’m ready to go on living inside the kingdom. I’m ready to move forward in exploring the nooks and crannies of what that even means.

What does it mean to live in love inside this world?

Let’s continue to find out together.

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Posted in Growth in Love, Jesus Christ, Journey Toward Nonviolence, Violence in the Old Testament

Struggling with a Violent God, Part 2

Posted on March 13, 2011 | 6 Comments

Image credit: Barbara Lane

Nearly seven years ago, in what feels like several lifetimes ago, I was living on my own for the first time in my life and going through a process of healing and restoration of heart. I was separated in a marriage that would soon end in divorce, and I felt, on a human level, incredibly wounded, abandoned, and lost.

Every night after work, I returned to my tiny guesthouse and settled into the quiet life I had learned to lead on my own. The furnishings were simple, the dishes delicate and few, and I had discovered a new joy in keeping a tidy and simple home.

Every night for what seemed like months on end, I settled into my evenings at home the exact same way: by flipping on the CD player to play, over and over again, a song by Jeremy Camp called “Revive Me.” It was the song of my companionship during that bereft and lonely time and echoed the cry of my heart for God to revive my heart and love me in an intimate way.

As the song played on repeat, I sat on top of the comforter of my tiny twin bed and open the pages of the Bible to the exact same place: Psalm 139. I read the verses of that psalm each night, sometimes inserting my own name into its words, in an effort to begin to understand and believe how loved and held I was by God.

God used that season and that psalm to teach me my belovedness. He taught me my loveliness. I learned that God saw and delighted in me and wanted me for his own. I learned that I was the bride of Christ. I learned that I was cherished and adored by God, so tenderly and thoroughly.

###

It is largely because of that experience of learning my belovedness that I eventually landed here, in a posture of nonviolence. I came to realize a few years ago that God’s tender, fierce, and restorative love for me is the same love God has for everyone else.

It is a love that takes joy in the creation of every single human being, a love that knows the intricacies and particularities of each person’s essence, and a love that knows each person’s fullest potential and deepest depths. It is a love that seeks to claim each person for the true home in which we were all meant to live, which is: the majestic, merciful, and loving presence of a triune God.

Knowing this, I can’t help but walk the journey toward nonviolence.

But the reality of this fierce and tender love God has for all is why I struggle with the violent God of the Old Testament. The God we meet in the Old Testament was indeed long-suffering and compassionate toward Israel over and over again. And in truth, it’s amazing that this God chose a wayward, confused, and clumsy people to be his own at all. It’s beautiful the way he rescued them, guided them, and stayed with them again and again.

He really didn’t have to do that. He is God, after all.

In many ways, then, it’s amazing to watch God create the elaborate systems by which he came to be in relationship with Israel. As silly, shocking, or dismaying many of the rituals of the Mosaic law may be to our 21st-century sensibilities, I do stand back and find it marvelous that such a holy God would want communion with the human beings he created so much that he would instill an intricate and extensive system that made it possible, despite how far removed God’s holiness was from Israel’s utter humanness.

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And yet he chose Israel and no one else.

And sometimes, when Israel pushed God too far, he lost patience and exerted his righteous wrath.

And then, on top of it all, he waited hundreds and hundreds of years to instigate a new system by which all humans could be saved and never exhaust God’s patience or compassion.

I’m speaking, of course, of Jesus Christ.

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Several weeks ago, shortly after we discussed my initial post on the struggle to understand this violent God, I came across a passage in Romans that helped clarify some of my struggle. Paul says:

But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. . . . Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself.  Pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ. . . . [He] set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. This is not only clear, but it’s now — this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness.

–Romans 3:21-26

At the time I read this passage, I felt an immeasurable amount of relief. The coming of Jesus really did mean something. It really did change something in a cosmic and historical sense that Jesus came and walked the earth and then died and rose again.

It sounds so prosaic and pedestrian to say what we’ve always known: God took the sins of the world on himself through Jesus because he knew we couldn’t do it for ourselves. And through that, he set things right and did something new that had never been done before.

We live in a wholly new age. The character of God exercised in the Old Testament really is exercised differently in the New Testament because of Jesus. In short, Jesus matters.

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And yet, as much as this helps make sense of the difference in God’s actions and expectations in the Old and New Testaments, which was part of the struggle I voiced in my initial post, I’m still left with my struggle — it’s just a struggle that’s been re-clarified.

Now, instead of wondering why God demonstrates himself so different from one Testament to the next, I’m struggling with what essentially seems to be survivor’s guilt.

I asked this in my previous post, and I’ll ask it again: why me, and not them?

This past Wednesday, Kirk and I attended a lunchtime Ash Wednesday service at the local episcopal parish around the corner from our house. At one point in that service, I heard something that may help lay to rest this clarified struggle, and I would welcome your thoughts on the matter.

Each week in the liturgy, we speak the Nicene Creed that includes a line that says Jesus descended into hell after his death on the cross. There are many theological perspectives on what that means, why that happened, and what was accomplished when he did that, and I’m not here to debate those perspectives. What I am here to share is that I heard, in a very small moment of that service, an expansion on that idea that said Jesus descended into hell and preached.

He preached? To whom — the dead?

And what did he preach? The reality of grace offered through his death on the cross and consequent victory over sin ?

Perhaps.

If it is true that Jesus descended into hell and preached to those souls gathered there who had lived before his time — the souls who never knew the compassionate, long-suffering, all-inclusively loving God that we now know because of Christ — then perhaps my struggle with the violent God of the Old Testament is indeed satisfied.

Perhaps this means that God took care to rescue those who seemed beyond the scope of God’s rescuing or care in the Old Testament after all.

Perhaps.

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Posted in Jesus Christ, Violence in the Old Testament

God of Justice, God of Mercy

Posted on February 6, 2011 | 10 Comments

Image credit: Barbara Lane

I was so refreshed and encouraged by the comments you left on the last post about my struggle to understand God’s violence. Not only did it become abundantly clear that I’m not the only one wrestling with this question, but also that there are many resources and perspectives to help us along. I look forward to continuing to wrestle aloud and pursue this question with you. It’s helpful to know we’re not alone in it, isn’t it?

Earlier this week, I encountered a meaningful reminder about my journey into nonviolence that I think can contribute to our ongoing consideration of this question. It began with my reading a passage in Martin Luther King’s Strength to Love that talks about our need for both a God of justice and a God of mercy. Specifically, he wrote:

At times we need to know that the Lord is a God of justice. When slumbering giants of injustice emerge in the earth, we need to know there is a God of power who can cut them down like the grass and leave them withering like the Greek herb. When our most tireless efforts fail to stop the surging sweep of oppression, we need to know that in this universe is a God whose matchless strength is a fit contrast to the sordid weakness of man.

But there are also times when we need to know that God possesses love and mercy. When we are staggered by the chilly winds of adversity and battered by the raging storms of disappointment and when through our folly and sin we stray into some destructive far country and are frustrated because of a strange feeling of homesickness, we need to know that there is Someone who loves us, cares for us, understands us, and will give us another chance.

– Strength to Love, page 9

I’ll admit that at the time I read this passage, it didn’t hit me at my core. However, I could identify with what he said. I thought of the little girls sold into brothels and the families owned by slavemasters around the world and IJM’s staunch fight to overcome these realities of injustice. I know the God of justice cares for these oppressed and forgotten ones. I know that he is coming for them and does not tolerate the evil done against them. I know it breaks his heart and angers him.

But I haven’t personally been very in touch with this God of justice of late because God has been taking me deeper into his merciful heart — his heart that grieves for the sins of humanity and wants to rescue us from ourselves. This is the part of God’s heart in me that weeps for my enemies and the perpetrators of evil on this earth. There is a connection to the heart of God in this, too.

But then the following morning, I read a psalm that reminded me more concretely of my journey into the heart of God’s justice that happened several years ago. The psalm reads:

We’ve been hearing about this, God, all our lives.
Our fathers told us the stories their fathers told them,
How single-handedly you weeded out the godless
from the fields and planted us,
How you sent those people packing
but gave us a fresh start.
We didn’t fight for this land;
we didn’t work for it — it was a gift!
You gave it, smiling as you gave it,
delighting as you gave it.

You’re my king, O God –
command victories for Jacob!
With your help we’ll wipe out our enemies,
in your name we’ll stomp them to dust.
I don’t trust in weapons;
my sword won’t save me –
But it’s you, you have saved us from the enemy;
you made those who hate us lose face.

– Psalm 44:1-8

In a vivid way when I read this psalm, I was reminded of key moments in my life where I was beaten up and scarred and wounded, times when I was called out and humiliated, times when I was taken by force and used as a plaything or object of another’s selfish gain, times when my innocence was taken, when another person didn’t respect my boundaries or love me with a selfless love, times when I was accused and left alone by those who ought to have loved me, times when I was given too much weight for my too-small shoulders to bear.

I recalled these moments in graphic detail and remembered my need for God’s just heart when I originally faced the real truth of these hurts and needed to heal from them. I needed the justice of God to heal. I needed to encounter a God who saw those things happen and thought it mattered. I needed to be seen in those moments of pain, and God saw me. He cared for me in a way that I needed care. He acknowledged the wrongdoing and fought for my heart. He ministered to me tenderly and dressed my wounds.

God’s heart of justice was the essence of my healing at that time. His justice brought me close to his side. It grew my love for him. It secured me in his love, and my conception of God today is bound up in his having done this for me.

But as I grew in this love from God and became rooted and established in it, a shift happened. I stopped needing God’s wrath. I no longer needed his vengeful justice against those who had brought me harm. His love for me overcame my original pain and my need for God’s justice on my behalf.

Instead, I began to love those who had hurt me and desired their good and their salvation. I began to see their woundedness and felt nothing but compassion and mercy. I forgave them. I prayed for them. I sought reconciliation with some of them. I desired their good.

In this, I became united to God’s heart of love. I entered God’s love for the world. It is a love that weeps for the brokenness of humanity and seeks its salvation. It is a love that comes after those who reject God. It is a love that is stronger than hate.

The love of God that was rooted in his justice healed my wounds and helped me forgive and love the world. This is where my nonviolence journey began.

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Posted in Forgiveness, Journey Toward Nonviolence, Justice, Mercy

Struggling with a Violent God

Posted on February 2, 2011 | 20 Comments

Photo credit: Image by me, Getty Museum, January 2011

I’ve been struggling of late with my knowledge of the violent God who exists in the Old Testament. I am a follower of Jesus, and in the pages of the New Testament, I discover God walking around on earth in the person of Jesus Christ.

In this Jesus, I discover the fullness of love. I discover a God who teaches and embodies peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation. I discover a God who bears burdens gladly. I discover a God who forgives all enemies.

But in the pages of the Old Testament, I discover a different kind of God. Here, I find a God who chooses favorites. I find a God who chose Israel and no one else. I find a God who decimated whole cities and countries because they lived lawlessly or opposed God’s chosen nation.

One God exhibiting quite different attributes between each testament.

I don’t say any of this to be flippant or disrespect my God. I truly want to understand what this means and why it is, and I’ve been asking God to help me understand. I’m writing about it here for two reasons:

  1. To continue chronicling the reality of this very real journey I keep walking into nonviolence, including all its questions and difficulties.
  2. To learn what you might say. Have you ever struggled with this subject?

I’ve wrestled with this question for over two years. Quite early in my journey, actually, I wrote a piece called “What About the Violent God of the Old Testament?” on another online space I maintain, and I continue to wonder if the place I landed at the end of that piece isn’t the most orthodox place to land: that perhaps in the death of Jesus, the full justice of God was truly satisfied. This means God no longer has reason to administer justice in the ways he used to do.

As I share at the end of that piece, this brings with it its own fair share of new questions, and there are questions I have about that which weren’t even raised in that article.

But even if it is true that this is what happened to make God “change” when it came to Jesus, that still left thousands upon thousands of people in the hands of an angry God. All those people who lived and died before Jesus walked the earth  lived under the wrath of a God who administered such grave justice.

I get that God is just. I get that such a supreme being bears the high standards of perfection. And yet still, my heart breaks at the reality of what that means.

A couple weeks ago, for instance, I read the Passover account in the book of Exodus. This is where God “passes over” those houses of the people of Israel when he comes in wrath against the citizens of Egypt and all their first-born sons. In one night, all the first-born sons in the houses of Egypt died.

That same day, I read the following psalm:

What a stack of blessing you have piled up for those who worship you,
Ready and waiting for all who run to you
to escape an unkind world.
You hide them safely away from the opposition.
As you slam the door on those oily, mocking faces,
you silence the poisonous gossip . . .
Love God, all you saints;
God takes care of all who stay close to him.
But he pays back in full
those arrogant enough to go it alone.
– Psalm 31:19-20, 23 (The Message)

Earlier in my faith journey, I used to read these kinds of passages and find great comfort and solace in them. They told me of a God who cares for those who love and follow him. They told me that those who mocked and scorned me for my faith wouldn’t keep their days of herald forever.

But today, it’s not like that at all.

Today, I read these passages and weep. I weep for those God killed in the Passover. I weep for those parents who lost those sons. I weep for all the people who lost their lives because of the anger and judgment of the God I serve. Such weeping for those I would normally deem my enemies just won’t seem to go away.

Lately, I’ve been sitting here in a struggle with this violent God. I don’t fully know how to reconcile him with the Jesus I’ve come to know and dearly love — the Jesus whom I believe is the incarnation of this same exact God — who tells me I am wholly precious and cherished.

I know that I didn’t choose God. I did nothing to merit the love of God, and yet here I stand, utterly steadfast in it, unable to lose it at all. Why me, yet not those?

These questions trouble me, and I ask God to teach me. I hold these questions, and I wonder. Will you wonder with me?

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Posted in Jesus Christ, Violence in the Old Testament

Happy Birthday, Dr. King

Posted on January 17, 2011 | 6 Comments

Dear Dr. King,

Every year, when the public observance of your birthday rolls around, it makes me smile. It reminds me of the many school years I shared my birthday week with you, sometimes with my special day falling on the very same day as yours, resulting in a holiday from school.

I felt a kinship with you from a young age because of this. In my mind, we always belonged together. Our lives were intertwined.

Only two years ago did your life began to make an impression on me for its own sake, though. I read a book and stumbled unsuspectingly on an idea that changed the whole course of my life. It’s an idea you know very well — that only love has the power to truly transform violence — and the book hailed you as one of its major proponents. Now, two years later, I know you weren’t merely its proponent. You were also its incarnation.

In that first year I encountered this new idea, I began to read your autobiography. There, I learned about the measure of a man required to embody such a hard and difficult truth. I learned about the bombings. The arrests. The attempts to subvert requests for justice. The cryptic phone calls. The fears. The brushes with death. And the masses of people you led through so many long and determined demonstrations of dignity.

So many aspects of your life mark me deeply now, but your faith is the brightest of them all. There is a moment in your autobiography that is forever sealed in my memory. I revisit it often in my mind. It was a turning-point moment for you, the bedrock foundation that forever sustained you in the long years of labor, conviction, promise, and hope ahead.

You know what moment I’m talking about, no doubt. Here it is in your own words:

One night toward the end of January I settled into bed late, after a strenuous day. Coretta had already fallen asleep and just as I was about to doze off the telephone rang. An angry voice said, “Listen, nigger, we’ve taken all we want from you; before next week you’ll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery.” I hung up, but I couldn’t sleep. It seemed that all of my fears had come down on me at once. I had reached the saturation point.

I got out of bed and began to walk the floor. I had heard these things before, but for some reason that night it got to me. I turned over and I tried to go to sleep, but I couldn’t sleep. I was frustrated, bewildered, and then I got up.

Finally I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee. I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward.

I sat there and thought about a beautiful little daughter who had just been born. I’d come in night after night and see that little gentle smile. I started thinking about a dedicated and loyal wife, who was over there asleep. And she could be taken from me, or I could be taken from her.

And I got to the point that I couldn’t take it any longer. I was weak. Something said to me, “You can’t call on Daddy now, you can’t even call on Mama. You’ve got to call on that somethinng in that person that your Daddy used to tell you about, that power that can make a way out of no way.”

With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory: “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now, I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. Now, I am afraid. And I can’t let the people see me like this becaue if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.”

It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even until the end of the world.”

I tell you I’ve seen the lightning flash. I’ve heard the thunder roar. I’ve felt sin breakers dashing trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me alone. At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before. Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeeared. I was ready to face anything.

Dr. King, there is a short list of people I name as personal heroes in my life, and it’s because of the entry above that you are on that list. You did so many remarkable things with your life. You paved a way where there had been no way before. And yet because of this moment you detailed above, you and I both know that it’s only because of Christ that those things ever happened through your life.

You remind me, Dr. King, that Christ is our strength and sustainer through all the dark moments, hours, and years that will meet someone walking this nonviolent path. You remind me that Christ is the light shed abroad in this world’s darkness, that Christ is the love radiating out from the center of our lives.

Christ is the reason I ever chose to walk this path in the first place, and your life reminds me of that. Thank you, Dr. King, for living your life in such a way that it challenges and teaches me, nearly 50 years later, how to live my own.

Happy birthday to you.

With great admiration, respect, and renewed kinship,

Christianne

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Posted in Letters to the Great Peacemakers, Martin Luther King Jr.

A Time of Rest to Mend the Soul

Posted on September 19, 2010 | 3 Comments

Hello, friends.

I promise that I haven’t forgotten you or abandoned this online space. Life has been happening, and so has growth, and there is quite a lot to share. But for now, I need to stay quiet in this space for the next little while.

Put most simply, I need to attend to the mending of my heart. It’s finally on the mend after a long season of darkness, and I am thankful to be glimpsing the light in my days once more. Right now, I’m realizing it is best to direct a majority of my energy to staying present to that light.

One way that I am going to be able to stay present to that light is through the relaunch of my original blog, Lilies Have Dreams. This was my first and long-time online haven where I reflected regularly on my daily life, faith, and growth, and I’ve decided it will be the perfect environment for staying present to where I am, especially in the dailiness of my days. It has always been a sacred and often playful home for my soul, and I know spending time there again will provide rich nurture for me.

I anticipate returning to a regular pace of posting here in the next couple months, and I look forward to when that time comes. After all, we still have much journeying to do here together! (Feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed so you can be kept in the loop when regular posting begins again.)

But during this quiet time, as I encounter stories and links worth sharing, I’ll still pop in and share them with you.

For instance, here are two beautiful stories I discovered recently that encourage me to keep living from a place of love and understanding in this world, whether I’m encountering events that are world-changing in their magnitude or happen inside the course of a normal routine:

  • A look back at 9/11 from the perspective of a punk rock singer as he experienced the event in 2001.
  • One man’s loving — and ultimately impactful — response to a mugger at the end of his hour-long commute to the Bronx one night.

Thank you for your patience and understanding through this.

And know that in this in-between time, you are always welcome to join me over at the Lilies blog!

[Image credit: Sara Alfred.]

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Posted in Self-Care