"To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.
If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries;
avoid all entanglements;
lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change.
It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."
— C.S. Lewis
I really can’t explain it, but this quote has been fluttering around my mind nonstop for the last week or so. In my last blog, I wrote partially about the difficulty I’m having in terms of dealing with wanting to be in Mexico (which I now almost always write as México) and the reality that I am not quite sure what God is up to. Now, there are always a few rock-bottom truths that must of necessity form the foundation of our worldview as believers:
1. God is good.
2. God is faithful.
3. Ultimately, God is in control.
So, these truths being the reality that they are, I know enough about what
God doing. I’ll never need to know more. But we cannot all at once deny the human yearning for certainty, that insatiably child-like cry that asks, “Why?” or “How?” or really any interrogative word. What we long for is a foothold in this crazy world. Now, you may ask what on earth this has to do with the aforementioned quote. That brings us to the other item I’ve been pondering.
Remember that guy from the “Father Abraham had many sons” song? Yeah, Abraham. You know the one. I’ve been mulling over that part of the Bible where God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. If you work it out, by the time Isaac was born, Abraham had been waiting about 25 years. That’s longer than I’ve been alive… so for me it might as well be an eternal number. But I think even if you’re older than that, you can accept that wanting something for 25 years is a bit… odd. I mean, it would be no stranger for someone to declare that one day they are going to find a golden ticket to the Chocolate Factory wrapped around the Big Mac they buy every lunch hour at McDonalds. I mean, we would think he was completely insane today! Obsessed, to say the least. Delusional. Idiotic.
Could you hold on to a dream for 25 years? I honestly thought this through. The longest I’ve held on to any dream would be about 8 years… and said dream and I have our ups and downs. How many of us “wake up” from that “silly phase” and move on into the “real world”? How many dreams now lie safely in real coffins in real cemeteries because people did not fight for them? Now, Abraham, to be fair, had some pretty unique Divine messages to guide him and encourage him along the way. But if you count it up, Abraham had no more than 10 recorded “mountaintop moments” with God. That’s really not as much as we make it out for a quarter of a century… So don’t give me that “But Abraham and God were, like, BFFs. If God talked to me like he did to Abraham, of course I could do it!” God gives each person exactly what he or she needs the moment it is needed. God has given you whatever you need. The question, then, is what are you doing with it?
There’s one important thing I see Abraham doing with his dream, and it seems to be a learning process. He orients his entire life around the revealed purpose of God. I’m serious, even in his catastrophic mistakes—taking his wife’s servant, for example—you still see how his entire focus is the dream God gave him. Would any of us be passionate enough about something God spoke into our heart that we would hold onto it for years and years, even sinning, to bring about that very thing? Obviously I am not condoning sin here. What I am highlighting is that even Abraham’s sin was oriented toward making God’s promise happen. Now, trying to do anything to “help” God is doomed from the beginning. But Abraham believed God. The promise of God, Abraham’s dream of having a son through his wife Sarah, meant absolutely everything to him.
That is what makes the almost-sacrifice of Isaac so interesting. Abraham has thought of nothing but this promise, this dream, for 25 years. His son is now alive before his very eyes! In fact, Isaac cannot possibly be any younger than 10… bringing us to 35 years and counting with this dream. And then came the fateful command: sacrifice the boy.
Wait. What?
Let’s take a break here for some imagery. Anyone out there have a dog? Have you ever given little Fido a nice new bone? Well, let me tell you from experience: give that dog 10 seconds of possessing his new bone and he’ll rip your arm of if you come within five feet of it. Never you mind the fact that you bought it for said pooch: that is his freaking bone and you’ll pull back a bloody nub if you reach for it.
Well, Abraham had that dream for 35 years. At least. Don’t you think he would’ve been a little possessive of it? I was trying to come up with some way for myself to understand. What if God told me to drop my guitar from the top of the Empire State Building? I honestly cannot even imagine it. And that’s talking about an inanimate object! We’re talking here about Abraham’s own flesh and blood, his dream 35+ years in the making. And what do we get out of him in response? Not a word! The man who interceded like a babbling idiot for a good five verses to get Lot out of the destruction of his city. The man who laughed when God told him Sarai would bear a son in her old age. This time, he simply saddles up his men and goes.
This is an important growth process I see at work in the life of Abraham. Now we can tie in the C.S. Lewis quote. Early on in the story, we see Abraham really holding on to his dream. We see him surrounded by luxuries, continuously trying to protect the Self (lying about his wife’s identity to Pharaoh, for one). But again and again, God interrupts and forces him to lay his dream bare on one altar or the other. I honestly see Abraham’s laughter not so much as doubt, but that awkward sort of cover we do when someone has discovered something we didn’t want them to. Perhaps he was really beginning to doubt the dream. Perhaps he even felt stupid about it. By laughing it off, he could cover it up—distance himself from the dream altogether. But God continuously brings it front and center: “You will have a son.” I can’t imagine how such a statement must have plucked at his heartstrings. Obviously, there was nothing the man wanted more! What an idiot he must have felt by year 24. He had his moments of “stepping out” in faith—all of which seemed to head in the wrong direction. It still baffles my mind that he found anything funny at all 24 years into the “joke”.
Yet something radical was at work in Abraham. A kind of rock-bottom, foundational faith was forming in him. His ever-yearning heart was re-prioritizing. A sort of heart-on-the-table mentality was awakening inside of him. There was no covering of doubt with laughter, no trying to weasel other people into the family line. When Isaac asks Abraham where the sacrifice is coming, Abraham cryptically replies, “God Himself will provide it.” Don’t you think he maybe had a nagging “Good grief I hope so” in that statement? Whatever the case, this is a radically different man then the lying coward who used to offer his wife to other men just so they wouldn’t hurt him! We see Abraham in this moment as a man no longer afraid to just step out and declare the [seemingly nonsensical] thing that God has spoken to him. We have no idea what God spoke to Isaac about this matter, but I’m sure if Abraham had doubted or been fearful, Isaac would’ve bolted at the first stoplight. I think there was a sort of decided, grim calm about Abraham. He trusted God, but had no idea what was going to happen. And bear in mind that what he is laying on the line is this dream he’s now spent more than a third of a century nursing.
Remember our dog image? Abraham is not behaving in that way at all. Had he been possessive of “his” dream, the son that he loved, it would have been better in a way for the whole dream to die. (not that I advocate here for human sacrifice… I’m talking symbolically.) Only when you can walk away from something are you really free to love it at all. Love demands freedom.
Referring back to our opening quote, to love at all is to put yourself on the line. You have to be willing to be vulnerable—to declare God’s promise to you—to dream. To love. To walk. To live. You cannot love God and try to “cover your back” all at once. You either possess your life or you don’t. You either believe God or you don’t. He either put it in your heart or He didn’t. Either you walk on this earth serving God or you don’t. There is no middle ground here. Don’t make the mistakes Abraham made. Believe God, right now. Believe that what he has declared to you is truth. Hold on to it with everything you’ve got, for years if need be. But always remember that the Dreamgiver is bigger than the dream. Hold on to things, but remember to keep a loose fist. There are two questions you need to ask yourself here: 1, Am I willing to remain faithful to what God has spoken to me regardless of how long it takes? 2, Am I willing to give it up completely if he asks me?
Friends, don’t wrap up your heart’s desires inside the “coffin of your selfishness”. Rather, boldly stand firm in what God is speaking to you. This message is for me as much as anyone else. I’m starting to feel clinically insane about wanting to serve God in Latin America. But I have to be faithful! God has given me the word. Not only of leading worship but of being a missionary. So I HAVE to wait for Him. Obedience has but one opposite; it has no lower forms.
What has God spoken into your heart? What dreams are you so ashamed of that you’ve almost given up on them? If God has given you the dream of being a doctor, don’t lose it in medical school! If He has spoken a ministry in your heart, don’t get bogged down by church politics. Hold on to your dream. And be willing to throw it in the air when and where God tells you.
Enjoy the adventure!
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