Least of These

A note about the "least of these" that Jesus references in Matthew (as mentioned yesterday when we discussed the lost):

They are not now, nor have they ever been, the least of "those."

We've done a pretty good job at making such a distinction as Christians.  We are the Christians, the righteous good, the servant-minded, the well-off and rich and helpful Christians.  They are the naked, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the imprisoned.  No longer do we count the least as these, but those.  Those over there.  Those far removed from us.  Those whose world we hardly understand but dare step down and try to touch every now and then with our vast goodness.  Those.

We like to compartmentalize, to say that here, where we are, there are these - these Christians, these comfortable people, these fairly-well-off.  And over there, in the mission field, far away, on the other side of the tracks, there are those - those who become the object of our outreach, those we feed and clothe and shelter, those we are sent to serve.

Jesus says no, not those.  These.  The least of these.  You can imagine Him pointing a finger, waving a hand to indicate the encompassing nature of the word.  These, around us.  These, in our midst.  These on this very hill, on this very street, in this very town.  These right next to you.  These, included; these, a part of "us."

The least of these are among us.  Right here.  Right now.  Today, tomorrow, and forever among us.

I ought to know.  I am the least of these.

The least of these are hungry, and I have known hunger.  The least of these are thirsty, and I have known thirst.  The least of these are naked, and I have stood naked.  The least of these are sick.  Lord, have I intimately known sick.  The least of these are imprisoned, and I have been locked down.  (No, I have never been in jail.  Never even had a speeding ticket, but I know imprisoned.)

It would be easy at this point to get into my story, and there is a day coming when I'm going to do a little bit of that because God's burdening my heart maybe to do so, but that day is not today.  Because this is not a story about the least of me; this is a story about the least of these, and I don't want you today to see my story; I want you see Jesus.

Because that's who I see.

When I have been hungry, I have been fed.  Thirsty, I have been given drink.  Naked, I have been clothed.  Sick, I have been encouraged.  Imprisoned, I have been visited.  And never - I want you to hear me on this - never have I received any of the above from any of "those."  It's always been "these."

It's been people who never thought of me as a mission, as a project.  It's been people who didn't believe their calling in life was to send an aid package and take a step back.  It's been people that I have been honored to fellowship with day after day after day, year after year, people who have invested more in me than the tangible needs of the least of these; they have given their time, their hearts, their homes, the fullness of themselves and the incredible goodness of God to meet me where I've been.  Today, as so many days in the past, as so many days as the least of these, I stand with them.  We are these.  And we're bringing more people in.

That is the mission of Christ.  Not that there are ever these and those, but that there are only these - each and every man as a part of one body of Christ.  Each and every man on this very hill, on this very street, in this very town - we are these.  As easy as it is for us to distance ourselves by serving the least of those, Christ's mission for us is that we understand and love the least...of these.  That we know we are all one, we are all together.  That we stop dropping in and dropping off supplies and taking a step back.  That we instead bring in and bring together and build up and give place so that even the least of these know that at least, these are these.  These are among us.  These are a part of us.  These are us.

Even if I had never been hungry a day in my life.  If I had never been thirsty or naked or imprisoned.  If I had never been sick (one can only wish), I would still consider myself the least of these.  Whether there is depravity in my living or not, there is depravity in my heart.  It is the harsh reality of living this side of Eden, this side of Heaven.  But at least I am these, I am among us, I am sitting on the hill listening to Jesus talk about one such as me.

And I am knowing His hand that reaches out to feed me.  His Living Water that gives me drink.  His righteousness that clothes me.  His presence that visits me.  His strength that encourages me.  Through His word and His love, and through His children who are also these.

The least of these.

Lost in Translation

I'll admit - I have a shelf full of Bibles, all in different translations.  For awhile, I was reading exclusively out of the New Living Translation, but switched a couple of Christmases ago to the God's Word version, but I keep the others around because sometimes, you know, the Word is just more beautiful in different words.  Or more poignant.

The other day, I was reading one of those verses about how we are supposed to care for the widows and orphans, except the translation I was reading in did not call such children "orphans."  It called them "fatherless."  Doesn't that change things?  It does for me.

As Christians, we are pretty good at nailing down the specifics and then distancing ourselves from the service.  Admit it.  We see a verse to take care of widows and orphans, and we start donating to charities building orphanages in Africa.  That's where the orphans are, we say, and we could never go there, but here's a couple of bucks for your Kingdom work.  Then we think we've done what God has asked us to do - cared for the orphans - without actually investing ourselves in caring for the orphans.

But what if those orphans are nothing more than the fatherless?  Rather, the Father-less?  What if we were to read God's word about the very lost He came to save and understand, yes, the social realities of the widows and orphans but understand, too, the spiritual realities.  The Father-less are all around us.

And the widows.  Yes, we ought to care for women left behind, women fighting alone in the world, women who had left their father and mother, cleaved to a lover, become one and had their other half ripped away from them by the violence and violation of death.  Absolutely care for the widows.  

But what if the widows are also those who were once the bride of Christ?  What if Christ is dead to them now, and they are fighting alone in the world?  These widows are all around us.

It's easy to think we have to solve the tangible, social problems of the world.  That a Christian doing good is a Christian doing physical good.  We donate to orphanages in places where too many children have no one to care for them.  We take some time out of our week to feed, to fellowship, to friend the widow down the street because no one else seems to be checking in on her all that often.  We break these commandments and these problems down to their visible need, but as much as God calls us to the visible (He does), He also calls us to the invisible, to the spiritual reality.

You go to the homeless shelter and volunteer your time.  But what are you doing for those who have no concept of where Home is?  You cook a meal and serve the hungry.  But what about those who cannot live on bread alone?  What about those hungering for something more than carbs and calories?

Jesus said whatever you do for the least of these....  The hungry, for whom food is not the answer.  The thirsty, desperate for living water you can't draw out of a well.  The naked, longing for the wardrobe of righteousness that comes with the Cross.  The stranger, who isn't looking for a place to stay but a place to be.  The imprisoned, who are trapped in the failings of a fallen world and a broken heart.  The sick...those who can't take one more minute of this brokenness and need the power and the presence of the Great Physician.

The simple answer is to look at these verses and think, ok.  Food.  Drink.  Clothing.  Shelter.  A visit now and then.  Medicine.  Simple things.  Simple things we must absolutely be doing as God's people, as His church.

But it's not enough.  It's not the whole thing.

God came to save the lost, a work He calls us to aid Him in.  And that calling includes the lost...in translation.  The lost...in new words.  Not just the orphan, but the Fatherless.  Not just the widow, but the once-beautiful bride of Christ.  All of the lost - in this word or that - through His Word alone.  In any translation.

New

Every day is something new, and every moment is new again.  We're living n a time and a place where new is in, new is hip, new is the thing - a new relationship, a new tv show, a new smartphone, a new car, a new job, a new church, a new place, a new you.  (20 pounds lighter with just a hint of a tan, please.)

I got a new desk this week.

Well, new to me.  This thing was a garage sale STEAL at a mere 15% of the original price, and it's in excellent shape.  Hardly a scratch on it.  It's pretty much everything I've been looking for in a desk, and I've been looking for four years.  It's also eerily similar to the desk I designed to build for myself when I could not find one I could afford.  (I couldn't afford to build it either.)  This desk has work space, beautiful curves, and hidden storage - all pluses that raise it high above my old desk.  It's also reasonable height.

I've had the old desk for about 18 years; it was the family desk back when I was in middle school, stayed at dad's house after the divorce, and moved into my bedroom after his death thirteen years ago.  It is still in great shape, excellent shape, except for a few scratches from my x-acto knife, and sturdy.  But that thing is a monstrosity.  It stood taller than I did, stacked near-ceiling high on the hutch with almost everything I own and use.  No work space.  Nothing.  I've kept it because it's not worn out, because it was free, and because I couldn't afford a new one.  But I finally bit the bullet and that thing is on its way to Goodwill later this week.

Which brings me back to my new desk.  It's new.  It's beautiful.  It's wholly different from what used to sit in this very spot.  But it doesn't feel different.  You know when you get something new or even when you just move things around, everything feels awkwardly different for the first few days, at least.  You try to sit where the couch used to be and find yourself laughing when you fall on the floor.  You drive yourself crazy looking for this or that thing in the top drawer before twenty minutes later remembering you moved it to the third drawer.  Little things that just throw you off for awhile.  In little things, it's easy to laugh about.  But the big things...I dunno.  It's kind of fun to be disoriented, isn't it?

Except I'm not.  From the instant I made the desk swap, I haven't felt anything different.  I don't lose myself walking into my work space.  I don't accidentally reach for something where it used to be on the old desk.  I know right where everything is at, sit here like I've been sitting here all my life, utilize this space like it's always been here.  And I have wondered how that could be.

The answer is: because this is right.  This desk is so right for everything I've wanted to do with this space.  It is conducive to the work that I do here.  It is aesthetically perfect for my sensibilities.  It's me.  It doesn't feel different because it feels so right.  It's natural.

It's a silly example, I know.  Forgive me.  But it's not just the desk.  We spend so much time changing, so much time chasing new, and we're so frequently disoriented in different that I think we're wasting it all.  The answer to life's discomforts is not in "new;" it's in right.

In the past couple of weeks, I have spent considerable time in two houses.  One, I live in full-time; one, I was just visiting for awhile.  When I walk in the door of the one, I head straight to my room, set my stuff down, kick off my shoes, and worry about nothing.  I engage in life as it comes and don't worry about being something specific, something new.  When I walk in the door of the other, I kind of put stuff wherever it fits, where it maybe should go, I forget for awhile to take off my shoes, I'm looking around trying to figure out where I am and what I'm doing and what I should be doing and it feels like I should be doing something new, like I'd have to be something different in this place.  And you might be surprised which door is which.

Some things are just natural, some places just are.  You feel at home in them, and even when things change, there's no time for them to feel different.  Because they just feel right.  It's not a new thing.  It's not an old thing.  It's just a right thing, and it doesn't drive you nuts to think there could be another thing.  This one is enough.  It's perfect, just the way it is, whether it was this way yesterday or has never been this way before.

The same is true of you and I.  There is a place where we just are.  A natural place for us to be.  A natural heart for us to live from.  A gift, a grace, an attitude, a presence that are all just perfect for us.  I've spent so much of my life trying to overcome the shadows that haunt me, trying to change things, trying to become new.  Trying to prove to everyone that I am new.  Trying to prove to myself that I can be made new.  All this emphasis on new...it's disorienting.  I'd wake up in the morning and have to remember my "new," have to find it again, have to figure out where I put it so I could do that again.  But here lately, I've found a better thing and that better thing is "right."

I'm just me, and this is just it.  And I'm not a new thing.  And I'm not an old thing.  I'm just a right thing, a right Aidan.  A wonderful creation.  And you know what?  The more I live in the right thing, instead of the new thing, the more I notice that nobody notices.  Nobody remarks that oh my gosh, I'm so different now.  Nobody's drawing comparisons between how I was yesterday and how they find me today.  Because, I guess, this just makes sense.  I am as I ought to be, so it doesn't strike anyone as a new thing.  It doesn't strike me as a new thing.  It's just a right thing, completely natural.

Be yourself.  Be your right thing and stop chasing after new.  Whatever is new will be made old again; whatever is right is pure.  So be that.  Be right.  It's so much better than new, and much less disorienting.

Unimaginable

You've heard it said, and my pastor said it again this past Sunday, that you will eat in Heaven - you will feast in Heaven - and not gain a pound.  You won't have to worry about calories.  You won't have to count points.  You won't have to think about skipping that dessert.

True and...not quite.

We will absolutely feast in Heaven, and I can't wait.  I don't know if there's anything greater than bacon, but you can bet I'm looking excitedly forward to holy, heavenly bacon.  Apple pie, sure, but....God's apple pie?  (Still might not be better than grandma's, but I'm game.)  And we won't gain weight.  And we won't count calories or points or bites of dessert.

But it's not like Heaven is going to be a gorge fest.

It's not like we'll get to Heaven and eat ourselves silly, browsing the grand buffet for eternity while filling our plates again and again.  I know that sounds like Heaven to some people, but that's not the promise.  The promise of Heaven is not that you get to do whatever you want, as much as you want, to whatever excess that you want, and not have to pay the price for it.

The promise of Heaven is something else entirely.  Let me think of the word.

It's not that you will eat endlessly; your appetite will change.  You will have this body that isn't the perfect body, but it will be your perfect body, the body created perfectly for you as God intended you to be.  You will eat delicious foods, and your body will accept them because there will be no illness, no disease, no allergies even to make you think twice about that next bite.  You won't have to test your sugars.  You won't have to guard your gluten.  You won't have to choose between potatoes and cornbread because your body will be able to handle both starches in the same meal.  Those and more!

And you will eat only until you're satisfied, and your perfect body will find perfect satisfaction in the perfect food.  You will not be hungry.  You won't be scoping out seconds.  You will have as much as you need, and it will be perfectly enough and you will be perfectly content with that.  And it will feel like a feast.

You will always be satisfied, you will always be full.  There will be no saying that God doesn't feed you enough; Heaven is perfectly enough, and I don't think we understand that concept down here.  I don't think we really have a grasp on "enough," on contentment, on satisfaction.  But that is Heaven.

And it's not just about food.  See?  That's the glory of it.  

Every time we talk about Heaven, people inevitably try to put it in terms of what we would do more of, have more of, indulge in more of if we could do so here without consequence.  It's this glorious place that is more than we have now.  I don't think more is a helpful descriptor.  I think it makes us miss the promise of Heaven, which is not that we will have more, but that our everything is going to change and we are going to have enough.

Our everything is going to change so radically that we can't even imagine it here.  That's why Heaven is unimaginable.  It's not bigger, grander, greater; it's perfect.  But we have no concept of perfect that is not frail, fragile, and flexible.  We've conceptualized perfect from our imperfect bodies, and that skews everything.  Heaven won't be like that.

Because we won't be like this.

Everything you crave here - nutritionally and otherwise - is going to change.  Your appetite is going to change.  And then you will find Heaven satisfying.  It will be enough.  It will be perfect.

I smile a little bit every time I hear someone talk about feasting in Heaven.  I smile because I know it's not going to be like that, because it reminds me that I'm not going to be like this.  I can't wait to see what I look like in Heaven.  Can't wait to feel what perfect and enough and perfectly enough feel like in their purest, most radical forms.  I can't even imagine.

Go ahead and try.  Think about Heaven.  Just know that it won't be like that because you won't be like this, and let that incredible truth take hold of your heart.  Can you imagine what you might be like?  

Of course not, but it's fun to try.

Now, somebody pass the bacon.

Unintimidated

Go ahead.  Growl.  

Was that the best you can do?

It doesn't matter much anyway because I've finally hit that point in my life where I am living unintimidated.  Which may be dangerous - for me, for you, for the Gospel.  Hopefully mostly for the Gospel.

I've spent so much of my life comparing and proving, striving to be the best because I've always thought I had to be the best.  Laboring to prove myself.  Doing more than I've been called to do because, well, I can.  Even if I shouldn't.  Lately, I've taken a step back and disciplined myself into doing only the things God has called me to do and created me to do.  It's changed a lot of things.

Most notably, that I am unintimidated.

I am finally reading the books of other authors without my red pen in hand, without waiting to criticize and critique in order to show my own supremacy.  You know what?  There are some incredible up-and-coming authors out there, and I hope you have the chance to read some of them.  (I will share as I discover them, I'm sure.)  I am meeting with other artists and taking an interest in their work - an honest interest - instead of racking my brain to figure out if I've done anything that worthy or not...or if I can.  I am embracing new moments and incredible opportunities in unbelievable ways because I'm no longer trying to figure out what I could be or should be doing with them; I'm just there, and let's rock this thing.

I am not intimidated by you being better than me.  I am not intimidated by the moment being bigger than me. I am not intimidated by time pressing in on me.  And interestingly, I'm not even intimidated by my own failures.  That last one shocked even me, maybe because there are so many of them.

But I'm editing my way through Prayse (title subject to change if God would just inspire me with a better one already!) and running into some glaring failures, especially as a writer, just as I was starting to think I might get this writing thing under my belt.  That used to be discouraging.  That used to be intimidating.  Today, I just find myself smiling - and laughing, often - because it's just a challenge.  And it's one God has uniquely prepared me for.  I trust in the gift He has given me, and I'm not scared of my own bad writing.  I just won't leave it that way, either.

That's the key of it all, I guess.  Of being unintimidated.  It's trusting in what God has given me, what God has given you.  It's believing He has crafted and created this unique and wonderful and capable gift within me and that it is sufficient to do as He has called me to do.  Once I gave up all I haven't been called to and settled into the gift, I find that the gift is enough.  For writing.  For creating.  For socializing.  For living.  For breathing.  For loving.  For being.  It's everything; it's enough.

It's simple.

So go ahead and growl.  Is that the best you can do?  Go ahead and paint a brilliant painting, cast a breathtaking sculpture, write...*gulp*....an intoxicating story.  It doesn't change what I'm doing, and you can't scare me.  Heck, even I can't scare me.  There is no reward, no prize, no glory in being the best at anything if you are not first and foremost the best you that can be.  That's what I'm working toward.  I'm pretty excited about what the best me is going to be able to give to the glory of the Gospel and to the praise and honor of God.

And I'm excited for you, too.  I'm excited to see what God can do through you when you put aside being the best and hone in on being the best created you.  See?  Since you don't scare me, I can get excited about that.  Looking around, there's a lot of good reason to be excited.

Our best selves together, let's rock this thing.  It's a mighty dangerous time - for me, for you, for the Gospel - because this is how fires start.  And friends?  I'm on fire.