Livin' It, Old (Testament) Style: Wineskins

The Old Testament encourages and inspires me. Though I am not bound by many of its laws or customs any more, there's a lot of beauty and timelessness in some of these ancient ways that teach me how to live under the new covenant.  Today, let's take a look at...

Wineskins.

You can't put new wine into old wineskins.  We've heard it said and assume it must be true, but it's one of those cultural antiquities we struggle to relate to.  Many of us enjoy a fine wine - by the glass, by the bottle (seek help), by the beach...but not so often by the skin.  So it's tough to know what it is to put new wine in an old wineskin, what that even means, and why it wouldn't work.  I'm frugal; I guarantee I'd try it, just to save a wineskin.

While these words are the words of Jesus and thus, aren't really "Old Testament" words, the wineskin was a concept very familiar to people under the old law.  In fact, the wineskin is mentioned ten times in the Old Testament and only three in the new, all three by Jesus in three different Gospels.  Our Old Testament references give us a glimpse of how central to life this portable potable was for the people of Israel.

Four times in the books of Samuel (1 Samuel 1:24, 16:20, 25:18; 2 Samuel 16:1), new and freshly-filled wineskins are included in the list of extravagant gifts prepared and given.  At the dedication of the young Samuel.  From the father of the future king to the present king.  By the wife of a harsh man to avert the disaster about to fall on their household.  And to gain the favor of king David.  Both to the Lord and to man, the new wineskin was a beautiful gift.

In other passages, we see lives and circumstances compared to the wineskin.  It was so culturally relevant that everyone would have known instantly what these statements meant:

I am like worn-out wineskins... (Job 13:28)

Although I have become like a shriveled and dried out wineskin... (Psalm 119:83)

Joshua was deceived by the wineskin.  Men from the town he was about to ravage disguised themselves as weary travelers, with cracked and patched wineskins hanging off their hips. The wineskin was evidence enough that Joshua didn't bother asking God if they were honest men.  (Chapter 9)

Everyone knew what an old wineskin looked like and what it meant: it was shriveled up, dried out, about to crack.  Not burst; new wineskins burst. (Job 32:19)  Old wineskins crack.  It had been out in the elements, had been opened and closed and opened and closed and drained and dried and just about worn through.

Then Jesus says something that everyone probably thought they already knew - you don't put new wine in old wineskins.  Because those old wineskins will crack.  *Pause*  That's often where we stop and imagine beautiful wine poured out on the ground, wasted.  Tragedy!  ...But Jesus says not only will the wine run out, but the old skins would be ruined.

You don't put the new wine into the old wineskin for the sake of the wine AND the skin.  For the sake of the new AND the old.

And such is life.  There are times I look at my life and it's all shriveled up, dried out, and about to crack and I want to infuse something new into it.  The tangibles and the intangibles - a new desk, a new chair, a new adventure, a new love, a new ministry, a new passion.  Times when I'm about to take a new journey and I want a little new wine in my life to carry with me (in case it doesn't work out and I need to get drunk?).

Then I kind of look around and realize what a waste that would be.  To put something new into this old life when I know that really, what I'm looking for in new wine is this radical change.  This total transformation.  I want things new because I need them new, because I can't live this dried-out, shriveled-up, ready-to-crack life for one more second.  And I know that trying to put new wine into this old skin - whether that's a new chair or a new adventure - is only going to do two things:

It's gonna make the new wine pour out, a total waste because it doesn't fit in this old life.  As long as I'm living this old wineskin, the new wine is not going to make me happy.  I'm going to shove something in, and it's going to melt underneath me and I'm going to realize what absolute no difference at all that much-anticipated taste of new wine made in the grand scheme of my heart - even if it's perfect, even if it's everything I wanted - because I didn't have the life (the moment) to put it in and hold it.  Then I'm stuck where I was with this reminder that I could have had more and yet, I don't.  It's tainted.

And it's gonna make this old wineskin crack.  Whatever honor and respect I had for this place I was in before I found myself ready to move is going to crack and crumble under the added pressure of the new, where my thirst for the new life and this taste I've tried to give myself of something fuller (not better, remember?) makes me only despise all the stronger all that was and all that remains of what used to be and so my old wineskin becomes a burden because it cannot hold my new wine and yet, I've continued to carry it at my hip and try to have both.

In the process, ruining, wasting, losing both.

Letting Jesus pour a new wine of passion and fire and purpose into a new wineskin of an open heart ready to embrace it protects both that passion and the life we're living today.  It lets us have this place and not crack it, not come to hate it simply because we've grown beyond us and can't hold us any more - it lets us honor this life, this moment we've had in this place - while also inviting us to taste something new and move beyond here.  A new journey.  With a new wine.  In a new wineskin.  An extravagant gift we offer to our God.

Livin' It, Old (Testament) Style: Sacrifices

The Old Testament encourages and inspires me.  Though I am not bound by many of its laws or customs any more, there's a lot of beauty and timelessness in some of these ancient ways that teach me how to live under the new covenant.  So I wanted to take a few days, and then however these come up, to share some of these with you.  Starting with...

Sacrifices.

Thank God (no, really.  Stop to thank Him.  Ok, now back to me.) we don't have to offer sacrifices any more.  Not ritualistically, bloodily, gorily as the people in Israel did.  I would say the smell alone  - of dried-out blood, laid-aside fat and organs, left-behind remnants, and of course, the burning flesh and hair - would be prohibitive, particularly once the tabernacle was settled.  At least in the days of the wilderness, they could have at some point left the stench behind and moved on to a bit more sanitary area.

There were a lot of rules for sacrifices, and I probably would have messed that up, too.  In general, it kind of ran like this: slaughter the animal.  Throw its blood against the altar / pour out its blood at the base of the altar.  Drained?  Good.  Remove the fat from every organ, both kidneys, and a little piece of liver.  Burn part of the fat as a fellowship offering.  Take whatever remains of the animal and burn it on the altar.  To ashes.  That's it.  One recipe for a ritual sacrifice.  Serves One.

Priests were also to set aside a portion of specific sacrifices as their own food, but the rules were equally as clear: pour out the blood first.  Cut out the fat.  Never eat or burn meat with a drop of blood in it.  Always burn the fat separate from the body.

We won't even get into all the rules for what constitutes an offering for what purpose and on what budget - rams, bulls, goats without defect, nothing speckled, nothing spotted, doves if you can't afford anything more, a vat of olive oil, the best of the wine, a loaf or two of bread for sin, guilt, fellowship, peace, freewill, and festival offerings to the Lord.  There's a lot to get buried in...but by the way, never bury a sacrifice.

These were the rules right up to the final sacrifice, a Father's Son, a sinless Lamb, a male with no defects.  He was brought to this altar where life would be altered, nails pierced through His hands and feet, and a spear driven through His side, where blood poured out at the foot of the cross.  The earth could not swallow this Man until every last bit of His blood drained out.  (And you thought the spear was Roman custom.  No, my friends...that was the sacrifice.)

Today, God tells us, we are the sacrifice.  Living sacrifices.  And we kind of struggle with what that looks like, with what that means, with how we're supposed to pull that off and live sacrificed.  I know that for me, I often confuse it with living surrendered, turning every moment back to God and letting Him ordain it as it needs to be.  That's an important part of a holy life, but living surrendered is not living sacrificed.  If we're to live sacrificed, we need to know the Levitical law and the Golgotha guidepost and embrace what that really means.

It means we pour out our blood at the base of the altar, at the foot of the cross.  Our blood is our passion.  It is that which courses through our veins and delivers to every fingertip, every toe, every nook and cranny, every tiny recess of our being the nourishment that fuels us, feeds us.  As a sacrifice, we pour that out before Him and give Him every drop of our passion surrendered.

It means we cut out the fat, taking the excess out of our lives.  Removing from every vital organ whatever we've wrapped ourselves in that's just padding our lives.  Cutting away our retentioned comfort and stripping down to bare bones and meat before the fire.  In the Old Testament, God made the fat a fellowship offering - an offering designed to honor the coming together of God and His people.  Our excess today becomes that as well - by cutting out our fat, we're able to draw closer to Him and He to us.  We honor that in this stage of sacrifice.

And it means we submit our flesh to the fire.  Whatever's left - when we've poured out our passion and trimmed away our excess and it's just bare bones us with a little meat and flesh - we lay out on the altar and give over to His holy and consuming fire.  Purifying fire and a pleasing aroma.  

This is our sacrifice.  This is what it looks like.  One recipe for a living sacrifice.  Serves One.

Better

When life's not going as expected (and let's face it - when is it ever?), it's easy to catch yourself praying for something better.  Praying for life to get better.  Praying for a better life.

I've done it.  I'm sure I'm not the only one.  But when I caught myself praying for better recently, I realized that's not at all what I wanted.  And I'm willing to bet it's not really what you want, either.

What I wanted was for life to be fuller.

There is a huge difference.  Praying for things to be better is a prayer for circumstance.  It's praying, "Lord, I don't want to do this.  I don't want to be here.  This SUCKS."  And indeed, at times, it does.  But let's be honest, there's not a whole lot that a change in circumstance has ever solved for anyone.  It just drags your problems into a new realm where you find yourself still praying, "Lord, I don't want to do this, either.  I don't want to be here, either.  This. also. SUCKS."  And indeed, it usually does.

I had kind of gotten to where my prayers for 'better' were a little more righteous-sounding.  Instead of this - whatever this is - being a horrible bane to my existence, I was able to pray with a yearning and a longing, "Lord, this is not what I was created for!"  But then you get this little nagging voice in your head that says, what do you know?  Maybe it is.  And then a stronger conviction that actually, this is precisely it.

Well, isn't that just disappointing.

The truth is that our problems are rarely our circumstances anyway.  If we didn't have the worries we have now, we'd have different worries and we'd still be looking for ways to deal with them.  Unfortunately, it's too easy these days to either obstinately refuse to deal with life as it is or to simply run away, both of which reactions stem from a place of self-righteousness - that we're too good for this or that we're not meant to be here.

As long as we're stuck refusing or running, praying for nothing more than 'better,' we stand little chance of ever finding the life we think we're looking for or the life we think we deserve.  Worse yet, we're also refusing and running away from the God we're simultaneously demanding better from.

I've long stopped longing for a life worthy of me.  I want to be worthy of this life.  I don't want it to be better; I want it to be fuller.  I don't need a change in circumstance; I need a change in attitude and experience.  I don't want to run away; I want to throw myself into whatever this is, wherever this place is, and see what kind of mess I can dig up here and what kind of grace I can pour out and what little part of God He's trying to give of Himself in this place, in this time, in this life.

I want to live every second surrendered to this second, whether that's a high or a low, a mountaintop or the valley of death.  Whether it's crushing my heart or cushioning my fall.  Whether it's heartthrob or heartache.  I want to be here.

Now, when I find myself praying for something better, I stop.  I don't want something better; I just want to be engaged.  When I'm wanting better, what I'm really wanting is something.  Anything.  I know I'm empty, I'm far-off, I'm removed, I'm alone, I'm disengaged, I'm not here...whatever this is, I'm not experiencing it.  And it's not life's fault that I'm bored or missing something.  It's mine.  Because that means I'm not engaging.

It's easier at times than others.  Certainly, the mountains are easier to climb than the valleys are to descend, but there is God in both and there is a part of me that understands that every moment - this moment - is something I was created for if I'll let myself dive in and be present.

These past few days, this has been necessary.  This has been a difficult grief for me, losing my little girl (of the canine variety, if you aren't following along) and one where it would have been easy to shut down.  There were times I've started to pray that Lord, I don't want to do this...but the truth is, I want to do every bit of this.  It's how this moment has to be, and I don't want to live my life holding onto this moment and knowing I never did anything with it, then dragging that burden with me in ungrieved loss because I self-righteously thought I shouldn't have to do this.  Grief has been this moment, and I have begged my God to let me be in every second of it.  It hasn't been easy.  I have been exhausted, sick to my stomach, physically pained, wrung out, unable to stop crying, and silenced by a world for which I don't seem to have to answer.  But I have found myself comforted by a God who has strengthened me to grieve, who has allowed me to have this moment and also the next one just as purely and fully as they were meant to be.  Who has allowed me to have this grief and torment with the mercy of love behind it, reinforcing everything I know in that grief is love...and I wouldn't want a moment without love.  That wouldn't make it better.

Curiosity

Sometime while this nation slept (well, I was sleeping; maybe you're the kind of person who stays awake for this sort of thing), a new rover named Curiosity landed on Mars after what the morning news called 'seven minutes of terror' - apparently, the time it took from atmospheric entry to surface landing, the minutes where nobody knew if it was going to make it or crash hard.  Now that it's landed, it can start looking for signs of life on the Red Planet.  What may have been.  What is.  What might be possible.

Is there life out there?

Then I watched a bit more of the news, and it was heartbreak after heartbreak.  An ex-military man opened fire in a Sikh temple, killing six worshipers.  Turmoil in Syria continues as a dictator clings to whatever small power he holds at the cost of thousands of lives.  Wildfires, severe storms.  Drought, excessive heat.  Children locked in hot cars.  Families without food to eat.  Young people shot.  This is just this morning's news, but if we're being honest...it's not news any more.  It just is.

But it makes you wonder:

Is there life down here?

NASA admitted they aren't looking for little green men; what they want to see is some sign of organic compound, some trickle of water that would confirm for them that life there was possible.  There are a lot of people here looking for the same thing.  Looking for some evidence that life is possible.  Some hope that something here can support them, that something is holding them up in this universe, that there's enough breath to sustain them.

Yet we're content to push them aside for the chance to glimpse some other world we've no chance of touching.  We're thrilled about touching down on Mars when so many of us have failed to touch down on Earth.  We've failed to engage this planet, to dig around, to search for what life means and figure out what that means for us.

I know because I'm looking around and we're missing your gifts.  And we're missing mine.  I'm not proud of it, but I know in my heart, I'm not living up to all God put in me.

It's not about excuses; we all have plenty of those.  They're easier the more distant the problem seems to be.  I'm not in Syria; are you?  I wasn't worshiping at a Sikh temple yesterday; how about you?  I'm not holding the integrity of Olympic badminton on my shoulders, not beating back a wildfire, not pigging out in front of a hungry family.  I'm watching the technological feat of a group of scientists landing on Mars, and some days, that's as close as I feel I can get to the headlines.

This is our fifth journey to Mars, and all we've ever done is look.  Look for life.  Look for signs of what maybe used to be (we hope).  (I've yet to figure out why except to say that it might be cool; the practicality of such a search eludes me.)  It takes a year to get there, and we don't know how to get back.  Imagine what you and I could do in a year's time for life here.  Not usually in the headlines, but more often in the breadlines and the deadlines.  For life we have known existed, know exists now.  What if we held our breath and prepared for landing, putting our feet down here and touching this ground, then set ourselves ready to roam.  What we could do if we were searching for signs of what used to be, if we were searching for Eden.

It's cool to see what Curiosity is doing.  It's neat to see pictures from our neighbor, the Red Planet, and see a world that (in case you've forgotten), God also created but doesn't seem to have been touched by the pain and the trials of this one.  It's cool.  I'll give it that.  But it's more to see the pictures of our neighbors, the people here around us that (in case you've forgotten), God also created but have been ravaged by the pain and the trials of this world.  It's more...it's Love.  And Love leads to all kinds of better things - mercy.  Grace.  Peace.  God.

Maybe one day, Curiosity will tell us whether there's life out there.  In the meantime, I pray we can engage and discover...is there life down here?  And what are we doing to bless it?

Heartache Hodgepodge

My mind's been rolling around some beautiful stuff from the Old Testament all week, and I'm looking forward to sharing some of those thoughts with you.  But I'm still kind of out of my mind today, and so this post, too, belongs to my heart.

When Harold died, I spent a week writing about the tough things we were all kind of dealing with, though I was only speaking for myself.  With the grief of the past couple of days, I realize I could write maybe forever and not get this all out of my heart.  It's not something I'd really want to do, but I did kind of want to share this whirling sense of heartache and peace that's spinning me around right now because it does center on truth and maybe if I share what this actually feels and looks like, you might find that the next time your world is spinning, you, too, can find truth.

It was hard to go to sleep last night.  Every time I was ready to shut down and turn off and crawl under the covers, I started crying all over again because if I went to sleep, then I'd have to wake up for the first time without her.  That was a thought my heart could not bear.  So I stayed up an hour or so later than I wanted, fighting sleep because it seemed like only pain, and finally hearing that voice that said, You're simply exhausted.  Is that love?  And no, exhaustion, punishing yourself, pushing yourself to these radical extremes...it can't be love.  Because it only depletes you, and love is tough when you're depleted.

There's just been this mix of emotions and these thoughts here and there from the time she came out of that first of six seizures late Wednesday night.  It just defines everything.

I wanted to take some time.  I wanted to have a few days, a few weeks, maybe a month where I didn't have to clean up right away.  I was just going to let her blankets lay there, let the little remnants of fur hang around the corners of the house.  I didn't want to move in a clean out and get to life like she hadn't been here.  But my girl didn't give me that choice.  In her final hours, she soiled everything, unable to control her bladder and her slobber in seizures and paralysis.  There was no choice but to clean up or vomit from the smell, and to tell you the truth...I was kind of close to vomiting anyway.  I'm still scrubbing my rug with Resolve every few hours.  I think it's slowly helping?

But those last few hours, I knew she smelled.  I was laying right next to her.  Holding her paw, patting her head, and telling her she was a good dog, hoping she could hear me, even while I watched her agitation subside as she relieved herself on her blanket, on my rug.  I wasn't a bit mad.  I wasn't upset. I wasn't panicking about my rug, though I fully knew what was happening to it.  I let her lay there and do as she needed to do, encouraging and supporting her because in 12 years, she's not a dog to have an accident in the house and I had watched her wrestle with her failed body and knowing she didn't want to do it.  She tried so hard, but these things are what they are.  (When she had rested and settled, I switched out her blanket for her dry one from the kitchen and put a few towels around to try to soak up the mess.)  I just wasn't worried about it then, and I'm not really worried about it now.  But I'm pained that she didn't give me a chance to hang onto her a little longer and instead forced me to clean up right away.  Maybe it's a good thing, though; who knows?

Then it got to be evening, and I heard a sound in the other room.  A paw scratching across the hardwood floor...and I know what you're thinking, but it wasn't that.  It was clearly one of the little dogs and what I found most surprising was that when I heard that noise, I didn't jump.  And I didn't hurt.  And somehow, my heart settled further into peace because of the way I instantly knew, before consciously knowing, that it wasn't her.  My heart was comforted because I've spent the past three years jumping at every little sound, thinking of my girl struggling against arthritis to get up or - heaven forbid - falling into another seizure.  The little sounds got me; I was always on edge.  Last night when I heard that, I had overwhelming peace and finally, a few minutes later, put words to why: I absolutely know she doesn't do that any more.  Not because she's not here, but because she's not sick.  She doesn't do that any more.

That led me to faith and restoration and the beauty of passing, and I think faith makes grief harder.  Faith lets us think of loved ones restored, healed, Heavenward.  When I laid Kiira's head down just minutes after she'd passed in my arms, she just laid there, poised.  A small smile on her face, eyes oddly with more life than they'd had all night (and really, in a long wile), and legs ready to run...and I knew she was running, chasing, doing all the things I'd loved for her to do and longed to do with her again, and that made me miss her.  That ravaged my grief...because I wanted her back.  I wanted that her back.  I'd given away my tormented best friend, and now she was perfect and perfectly fine, and that's only made me miss her more.  A mixed blessing in that moment of peace and that last look at her lying there.

I'm also guilty because there's not really a good thing to do with the body of a loved one, and I think this for humans, too, but it is worse for dogs since we don't preserve them before burial.  Cremation just seems so...callous?  As if to say, I am now done with this, so let's toss it in a fire because it's kind of large and will now just be an obstacle.  I don't like cremation at all, so it was hard to have Kiira's body taken this way.  On the other hand, my aunt has purchased her ashes, so she is coming back home in a sense.  And the vet is making me a cast of her paw print, her shaking paw, that I will cherish and have forever.  And of course, her collar and blanket.  With a heart of treasured memories.

Of course, we also passed a truck advertising taxidermy on the way to the vet yesterday morning, so there is that.

I miss Kiira for some of the same reasons I miss Harold.  Harold was looking forward to my second book, and we talked about it often.  Now, he will not see it.  The other night, I had this strange thought that Kiira will also never see my second book, and that stung.  Then I laughed at myself for being silly, but I meant it.  And I miss her because we've been by each other's side daily for 12 and a half years.  Because whenever I'd think about petting one of the other dogs, she'd be there insisting I pet her instead.  Now, she's not.  Because whenever I'd make food, she'd be standing there begging even though she rarely got table scraps (she did get some porkchop last Sunday).  Now, I make a sandwich in peace.

So often in life, my heart leads me back to faith, to patience, and to integrity and righteousness while my brain screams that there's something I could get away with.  I've always been one to trust my gut and my heart.  These days, though...my gut is sick and my heart is torn, and it's my head that I find bringing me back.  

The truth is, there's a lot more peace than heartache in all of this, though the heartache is profound.  Every moment I think about her, my first thought is of her peace.  My second is of my pain - I hurt so bad missing her.  Bordering on depression, if we want to be honest, and I'm not one prone to such things but I keep having this thought that life has changed and I don't want to be here right now.  (I'm not suicidal, just bummed.  Let's keep perspective here.)  Then my third thought is of thanks - because God let me spend these last hours with her just like that, with every bit of comfort and peace and knowing.

Speaking of knowing, I must also say that I keep praying she knows how deeply I love her.  I really hope she knows that.  Because when these moments come, I think that's all we think about for awhile - whether we took our chances to show our love and if she had the same confidence and faith in me that I had in her.  I hope that she did

And my final thought is of worship.  In all of this, I have seen the hand of God.  In the trying times, the moments I think too much about it for too long, the pain in my heart because I miss her so much (and grief feels so selfish)...He brings me back to peace.  It's all comfort except when my aching flesh gets ahold of it...then it's tough.  But then it's Him.

And I'm glad.  Because I need Him.