The Four Fears of Moses

I’ve been reading through The Story this Fall. Here’s what I saw this morning from Moses’ life.

On the most ordinary of days, an extraordinary thing happened. Moses was at work, tending to his sheep, when God spoke to him from a burning bush. He called Moses to a great task: to free His people from slavery in Egypt. God tells him to go and do so, but Moses has four excuses.

1. Who am I to do this?

This is Moses’ first reply to God’s plan for his life. He says, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Essentially, he is saying “God, I am small! I am a nobody! I am useless! You really don’t want to use me.” But God says to Moses, “I will be with you.” Knowing God is with him should be enough, but Moses has another question.

2. What about the details?

Moses worries about what to say to the Israelites if they ask him the name of the God who sent him. “What shall I tell them?” Moses asks. We worry about what we will face two weeks from now instead of what we’re facing now. We often don’t want to make the first move until everything is figured out, but God works in a different way than us. He seems to say to Moses, “Don’t worry about the details. Those are mine to deal with.”

3. I am inadequate!

Moses says to God, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” Moses fears that his weakness will make the task impossible. He is not a good speaker, so how could he free a nation with his speech? But God fires back and says, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” Even after this, Moses has one last holdup.

4. You’ve got the wrong guy!

Moses says, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.” Moses feels as though God chose the wrong person for the job. But God angrily replies and says that Aaron, Moses’ brother, can accompany him on the task.

——————–

I wonder how many of us have these fears and excuses when God calls us to do something. And I wonder what could happen if we listen to what God is saying to those fears:

I am with you, I will work out the details, I am the one who created you, you can do the task that I called you to.

Exploring Sacred Space: Learning from the friendships of Jesus

“There was reclining on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved.” -John 13:23

Recognize the scene? This took place at the last supper, and the disciple who is resting on Jesus’ chest is John. Before this, Jesus had been anointed with perfume by the woman who dried his feet with her hair, he had entered Jerusalem on a donkey with people praising him and he had foretold of his own death in John 12:27. Here were the disciples, with their feet likely damp and tender from Jesus washing them just moments before. They were reclining at the table together for one last meal before Jesus went to die. This truly was a sacred moment.

To add to the sacredness, Jesus’ closest, most intimate friend was laying on his bosom. Someone’s bosom — or chest — was considered a place of honor and blessedness in Jesus’ time, and I think it is safe to say that it still stands as true today. It is a place reserved for those you are closest to. It might not be coincidence that when one reclines on another, like John did with Jesus, they are close to the other’s heart — they can hear their heartbeat.

From this scene, I observe a curious thing about friendship. It seems that one’s closest friends somehow deepen the sacredness of a space. John’s presence appears to have an integral role in setting the atmosphere for the last supper. When you have someone who can hear the heartbeat of Jesus, the mood is bound to be different. But I also observe another thing: not everybody is leaning on Jesus. Not all 12 disciples, not even the main three — but one. Only John leans on Jesus, because there is only room for him. Part of the sacredness of the moment is due to Jesus having only one close friend who’s leaning on him. This is an important lesson for us. Let me explain.

Over the years, and especially here at college, I have learned that we have the capacity and brain space to invest in, at most, a couple of close friends, if not just one. You can have up to three or four main friends and you can really only have one best friend. Sure, you can have lunch with a different friend every day, and you might have deep conversations with many people here and there — but when it comes down to it, you can only have one or two people with whom you sustain a deep relationship. There are only a few in this world that you will know to the core, spend the most time with and love with all your heart. Humans have limits.

I imagine that for a lot of you who are reading this, it is hard to deal with the fact that you can really only have one or two of these intimate friendships. You want to be this kind of friend to everyone. It is a worthy ambition. I have had the same desire myself. I am a people pleaser and I don’t want anyone to think poorly of me because I can’t spend extensive time with him or her. It causes me great pain, sometimes, to think of all the people I do not have the time to have deep relationships with.

So if one has the desire to have 15 best friends, what does one do? The first thing is to realize that he or she cannot have that many. If you try to sustain that many deep relationships, you would eventually have no time left to live your life — it would all be spent going out to coffee and talking for hours upon end. And since you are not living anything that resembles a life, you would have nothing to talk about! Not only that, but the friendships you tried to deepen would most likely remain sub par because there are simply too many to handle at once.

Once we come to terms with our limited capacity for numerous deep friendships, we need to seek out the few people we want to invest in. Jesus did this with his most beloved disciple John, as it says in Matthew 4:21. Amid those few people is the one — the person we love most in this world. There is no telling when or where we will find the Johns, but I believe that God will lead us to them in the right time and place.

Once we find that person, the next step is to begin the process of knowing them deeply, which requires a lot of time, energy, patience and desire. You have to want it, even after knowing that all deep friendships bring pain and joy, rain and sun, darkness and light. When you enter a friendship, you agree to go though life together, which, as we know, is not a forever-lighthearted, happy-all-the-time journey. You agree to bear each other’s burdens, heavy as lead. But you also agree to share in each other’s joys, light as hummingbirds.

Friendship is an agreement to go deeper into life while growing deeper together. It is no easy task, but I am certain it is a rewarding one. It is from this one deep friendship that leads to increased sacred space. With them, all spaces where both of you dwell are spaces that become sacred. The dual presence of your souls in one place transforms the area into something sacred — a place where all of life can be experienced.

I come back to Jesus. He had his 12. He had his three. And most of all, he had his one: the most cherished and intimate friend. So I ask you now: Who is your one? Who is your John?

Exploring Sacred Space: The Blue Chair, C.S. Lewis, and A Sacred Place

Next article is up online!

If you want to stay at my place, however, I have it below…with my sister‘s pictures that were in the print edition. Gorgeous photos.

Exploring Sacred Space:
Seeing God in Everyday Life
The Blue Chair, C.S. Lewis, and A Sacred Place

I have this favorite chair at home. It is a big, comfy armchair with dark blue fabric, and it has been with my family ever since we lived in Vancouver, Canada over 10 years ago. On the wall beside my desk, I have a picture of my dad and me from the ’90s at our home in Canada — he’s sitting in the blue chair, drinking coffee and I’m across from him on my kid’s chair, drinking apple juice out of a mug, trying to be like daddy. The blue chair has a history that spans all the way back to my grandpa.

Whenever I come home, I am drawn to my room because that’s where the chair sits. But what is so special about that chair? Why am I drawn to it? Why is it different to sit in the blue chair than any other?

Power of memories

I do not believe there is anything special about the chair itself. It’s just a chair. The thing that is special — the thing that draws me to it — is the memory attached to the chair: the memory of two generations before me, sitting, thinking about their lives, reading their favorite books; the memory of the times I’ve had in the chair, at peace, in turmoil, in confusion, in clarity. So much life has been experienced in the chair, so many sweet times with God.

I think this is why I’m drawn to it still — I have the hope that more life will be experienced, felt and seen. I am drawn to it because I am drawn to life itself. For 20 years, I’ve been going deeper into life and this chair helps me — it helps me grow. It helps me see clearly and it helps me struggle with the thoughts that sometimes plague my mind. With hot coffee on the table and sometimes a candle lit, I pick up the next book that will help sort things out for me or help me see life in a new way. Over the next few hours, I make more memories and the chair takes on deeper meaning as I dwell there.

Everyday places become sacred spaces

How do spaces, like the blue chair, become sacred? What is it that causes the change from normal to sacred? Over time, I saw that it is our repeated presence in a certain place that makes the area sacred — our presence makes it special, personal and filled with memories. Everyday places like a couch or a kitchen or a bedroom become sacred places where we dwell there often and meet with God. It’s important for everyone to have a space like this — one that is unique to who you are, and one in which you can retreat from the world to be alone with God.

When I was in Oxford a couple of summers ago, I visited The Kilns, the home of one of my great heroes, C.S. Lewis. There, I had the opportunity to walk around his house and visit each of the rooms — the kitchen, his personal study, his bedroom, the common room and all the others. Thanks to the C.S. Lewis Foundation, it is not a museum, but a working household, which makes for quite a warmer experience. Besides my childlike giddiness, the other feeling I had was a strong sense of Lewis’ unique presence in the rooms, in the walls, in the fireplaces — his spirit was in that place and there was no denying it. When I looked at his writing desk, I could see him in my mind, scratching down his latest thoughts on Christianity. But was I just crazy? Was I just seeing things?

I think not. There is something to be said of knowing you are in a sacred place when you enter one. I knew from the moment I stepped through his front door that I was entering a house that I would never forget; The Kilns was a sacred place for Lewis and I could feel it. I was entering the place where he lived, laughed, wept, ate, read, wrote and thought. The Kilns was where Lewis spent most of his life, and to me, where you spend your life becomes very much a sacred place — perhaps so sacred that your presence never leaves, even after you do.

Presence and sacred space

You say, “You’re too mystical sounding, Carson.” I say, “Try visiting your childhood home without feeling anything inside, without sensing the presence of your family members — try resisting the memories, the sounds, the times you had, the years you experienced, the lessons you learned and the weight of it all.”

I imagine few can.

In this life, where we choose to dwell — where we choose to put our presence — is either life giving or life draining. I hope we all find a unique place to meet with God, and meet with him regularly enough for the place to take on meaning — for our presence to be felt there by whoever comes after us.

*Photos by Shannon Leith

Exploring Sacred Space: Keeping the Sabbath

My fourth article in my series for The Chimes Newspaper is about keeping the Sabbath. For this one, I didn’t write much of my own thoughts, but interviewed a friend of mine to get his take on the Sabbath. His name is Gabe. and he has been attempting to keep the Sabbath every week. It was fascinating for me to listen to his answers as he shared honestly about the struggle of keeping a Sabbath amidst a college schedule and the benefits of doing so.

You can read the interview here.

Also, if you’d like to check out more of the series, click here.

And of course, if you want to read it here at home, you’re more than welcome to:

Exploring Sacred Space
Seeing God in Everyday Life
The Practice and Benefit of Keeping the Sabbath

Meet Gabriel Choo, a junior Torrey student who double majors in business and philosophy while holding a part-time job. I sat down with him to ask about his experience with sabbathing. He observes the Sabbath weekly, which was fascinating, since it seems like very few college students manage to keep a Sabbath regularly.

Sabbathing is an important, yet often-neglected practice. God invites us to experience true rest by fixing our attention on him and communing with him. He wants us to thrive, and in order to best do that, he created this time where he can recharge us. The interview that follows was done to understand the importance of sabbathing through learning about Choo’s experience.

Q: When you were young, did you observe the Sabbath?

A: Growing up, I didn’t have a very big conception of what the Sabbath was. Everybody in my church would take a Sabbath, though, but I didn’t know what it meant. In my mind, the Sabbath was a time where you didn’t watch movies, didn’t play games and in general, didn’t do anything fun. I thought of it in a negative sense. I remember waiting until sundown when I could have fun again. There’s definitely a legalistic way to keep the Sabbath, and that’s what I don’t think is right. Legalism with the Sabbath can ruin relationships with others as well as your relationship with God.

Q: What’s the wrong way to approach the Sabbath?

A: The wrong way is to treat it negatively. The Sabbath is not a list of don’ts, it is a single do: do rest. When you put it positively, then it helps you determine what is good. But when you’re legalistic about it, it’s all about the rules. For example, since my family wouldn’t watch TV on the Sabbath, I’d binge out on “Veggie Tales” [laughs], and watch it over and over.

Q: And what is the right way?

A: Finding out the purpose of what the Sabbath is. If you know the purpose, it determines everything you do to get to that purpose. The purpose of sabbathing is to commune with God in a way that’s different from what you do during the rest of the week. Humans are such that we need cycles and we need rhythms. We need times of work and times of rest. Even biological sleep is built in; we need it. I think the Sabbath is part of what it means to live in Christ. If there are not times of rest in a person’s life, I don’t think they can fully serve God right. Rest takes intentionality. It takes a certain will to say, “I’m not going to think about all the hundreds of things I need to do right now. I’m going to spend this time actually resting physically, mentally and emotionally from the week and devote it to God.”

Q: How does your time with God differ between the six days and the Sabbath?

A: On the Sabbath, I say “no” to any sort of normal work. I spend time at church in community and also in silence and solitude. I get the opportunity to experience space and spend time with God in a meditative, quiet, extended form, which is harder to do during the week. And of course, I enjoy getting more sleep on the Sabbath, too!

Q: What does a normal Sabbath look like for you?

A: Well … OK, confession: I’m not perfect in keeping the Sabbath. But here’s how it goes. Friday evening comes around, I stop working and start resting. Ideally, you prepare for the Sabbath. I don’t always keep it perfectly, but I usually rest from my work and begin the process of winding down — not for sleeping, but for entering the way of rest. There is a way that you could mindlessly Facebook the time away in which you don’t actually rest. This is a time where you have the intention of setting time aside for the goal of finding peace with God in your soul.

Then Saturday morning, I go to church. It’s the equivalent of a Sunday for most. Afterward, we usually have a potluck at the church. Lately, after lunch, I enjoy going home to read my Bible, pray and meditate. Then when the sun goes down, the Sabbath is over. It’s like this 24-hour sanctuary that God gives. Not everybody can go to a cathedral, but everybody has a cathedral in time if they use the Sabbath correctly. It’s this space that God ordains in the Bible.

Q: What would you say to those who think they are too busy to observe the Sabbath?

A: Think of it as a discipline of fasting. When you fast from an activity, it regenerates you more than if you were working through the whole way. If you keep an engine running continuously and don’t take stops to check it up and let it rest and cool down, it’s going to overheat and get messed up. It’s the same thing with sleep. If you deny the body’s need for rest, things are going to catch up with you.

Q: Why do you think it’s so hard for us to observe the Sabbath these days?

A: Because we’re afraid. We’re afraid that we won’t get things done, we’re afraid to trust that God has our back. I, personally, am afraid that my destiny will somehow drop off the face of the earth if I don’t stay on top of things every single second. But I think Sabbath is coming to acknowledge that I’m a part of something larger than just my work. God made me for more than being a machine. Sabbath is a time to acknowledge that I’m not in control and that the world will keep going if I step back and don’t do anything for 24 hours.

No phone = incredible

Read my sister Shannon‘s experience of losing her phone and loving that she lost it.

I can’t get enough of this concept because of how I was positively affected by it last summer in Canada. No phone for a whole summer was incredible. It meant having so much more real life, face to face conversation. It meant really living in the present. It gave me a new eye for what was right in front of me….at that moment in time. When you can’t pull out your phone to text, it leads to going to actual people around you and having conversations. Much more discovery, wonder, adventure, creativenesss, freedom. Just try it for an afternoon. Or a day. Or a weekend. A summer! Oh, and I remember being so much more productive without the constant buzzing of a phone in my pocket.

I could rave about it forever. But for now, just read my sister’s blog.

Tolkien’s Normal Living Amidst Fame

I ordered the book after a trip to the UK in the late Summer of 2010.

Cambridge, specifically.

Since then, I have been reading it steadily in the pockets of the day, and in the dark of night before bedtime. Last year, I could only afford a couple pages at a time. At the end of the day, with all my immediate energy already spent, I would reach deep into my soul to find the backup energy stored there for times like these. I’d pull out just enough energy to read for fifteen minutes or so. And with my roommates sound asleep, the lights out, and the clock nearing midnight, I would savor those few sweet pages that took me away to a far off place called England where I could clearly envision the life I was reading about being lived by the man I deeply admired.

I was reading the biography of J.R.R. Tolkien. Through the “pocket method” (reading books gradually by utilizing the pockets of the day), with hiatuses here and there, it took me just over a year to get through this biography. I finally made a last burst for the finish line yesterday and today, and finished it just an hour ago. I find myself yearning to just pack up and move to Oxford for a couple of years. Maybe some day…

I resonate with many elements in Tolkien’s life. Like him, I have my fair share of gloomy nights and wandering days. Like him, I have my bouts of sadness and cycles of over-thinking. But like him, I remedy those things through my relationship to Jesus. I remedy them also by creating works of art. I write books, stories, songs–anything to give me hope. I think everyone has methods to keep going. Methods to inspire yourself. The main point is to not give up. We can all learn something by knowing Tolkien’s story of laboring nearly his whole life toward what was to become, essentially, one project. He faced the temptation to give up many times. He thought his little story called The Lord of the Rings, or The New Hobbit as he referred to it when talking to friends, was useless. Many of his colleagues made fun of him for what they thought was a childish project. He was, after all, the Professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford. Wasn’t he supposed to be doing Philological work?

Tolkien doubted himself many times. In 1938, he wrote to Charles Furth at Allen & Unwin, the publishing house that eventually published The Lord of The Rings: “The sequel to The Hobbit has remained where it stopped. It has lost my favour, and I have no idea what to do with it.” As Tolkien started writing LOTR, even he had no idea where it was going or what the story was about, an encouraging thought to all those who create. He was a confessing perfectionist, which contributed to the many delays in the publication of LOTR as he poured over miniscule details, rewrote the story numerous times, and made sure everything was consistent, even going so far as to spend hours making sure the phases of the moon in the story were accurate and realistic. On top of all that, he wasn’t sure that many people outside of friends and family would read anything so long.

If Tolkien had let these doubts control him forever, we wouldn’t have the masterpiece that we do. Sure, the gloom and the doubt got ahold of him many times, which led to multiple halts in the process, but Tolkien found the will to keep going. My brother Jason pointed out that the section titled “Success” in the biography is only about ten percent of the book. That’s something to dwell on. Most, if not all of life, is a messy struggle to come out alive and well. If we experience success at all, or any sort of fame, it will last for five, maybe ten percent of our lifetime, and then it’s gone. Even if we write Lord of the Rings, it’s still ten percent. Tolkien still cared most of all for his wife, Edith. He moved away from Oxford for her benefit, he spent less time with his male friends so that he could spend time with her, and he made most decisions based on what would make her most happy. His chief concern was her well-being, right up to the day she died.

Amidst the fame, fan mail and fortune, his relationships still took precedence. Tolkien still enjoyed the ordinary pleasures—a good smoke, a good beer, and male company. After fame and money came in, he still lived in a cramped house on Sandfield Road, overflowing with books and papers. He still took time to spend with his family and friends. Fame confused Tolkien, and even after he was known internationally, he sought normal living. Interesting, how normal people desire fame, and if they become famous, they desire normalcy. Maybe we ought to not care what we are, but rather care about who we are.

Reflections from Kurt Simonson’s article on chronos and kairos

I was flipping through a magazine earlier, which is something I don’t often find myself doing. But today, it was worth it. Because I found and read and article that really moved me.

In “Chronos, Kairos and Tea Breaks“, Kurt Simonson shares his experience of seeking after rest and sacred space every summer at a place called L’Abri Fellowship in Hampshire, England. He differentiates between two types of time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is clock-driven. It’s the time we’re used to, especially as college students. Chronos is time used to get things done and go to meetings and be on time and etc., etc., etc. Kairos, on the other hand, has “nothing to do with chronological time,” as Madeleine L’Engle explains in Walking on Water. It is those moments in life where all time and ticking clocks simply fade away as we experience life to its fullest, realizing after that two hours just went by. “The saint in contemplation…the artist at work…the child at play”: these people, L’Engle says, are all in kairos. And kairos time is what Simonson is saying we need to embrace more.

I agree with Simonson full-heartedly because I know that in my own life, the best and most sacred times were those “unhurried moments”, “moments without the pressure of time”–both phrases that Vanauken used in one of my favorite books, A Severe Mercy. Vanauken states that “all our most lovely moments perhaps are timeless.” I love sitting at night with a single light on and thinking about that phrase.

It’s time we take off our watches and seek kairos. Why, though? I think the answer might be that through kairos, we are truly living life in its deepest form. We are experiencing others and the world in the way we were supposed to. Through kairos, we become who we were made to be.