death

After a relatively short bout with cancer my grandmother died this morning at 3:40 am. That sounds kind of harsh, I know, but I’ve never really liked euphemisms. Obviously I’ve been thinking a lot about death but, surprisingly, I’ve actually found myself thinking more about life. Perhaps it puts your life in perspective to see someone close to you die. I know every time that I went to see her while she was in the hospital and in hospice I walked out living life a little bit more than when I had gone in. It may be cliché, but seeing someone close to you die really does put things in perspective.

Speaking of cliché, there sure are a lot of clichés surrounding death. At the heart of “she’s in a better place” and “I’m glad she didn’t suffer too much,” there is truth, but I think we too often get stuck on just the superficial.

Justin and I were talking awhile back about war metaphor. Ever noticed that? Among other things, when someone is sick we always use phrases like “she’s battling cancer” or “she fought the good fight.” When I had cancer I remember saying things like “I’m going to beat this.” I remember getting myself pumped up before going into chemotherapy or radiation by listening to hardcore music and getting angry at the disease that I was determined to conquer. As a graphic designer, I’ve been openly exposed to the power of these kind of metaphors. Metaphors force us to think about things differently. In this case, with the war metaphor, I think it has really warped our thinking about death. Especially if you’re a Christian, death shouldn’t ever be seen as something that we fight against until inevitably it drags us away victorious.

One of the coolest thoughts that I’ve had in all of this stuff with my grandmother is that for those of us who live in Christ, death is a triumphant and overwhelming victory over sin and evil. Once and for all, two-thousand years ago, God “conquered” death for us through Jesus. There’s no need to fight. Everything—everything—is held in the palm of God’s hand, including (and especially) death. As frightening and as mysterious as it is, death is not beyond His control. When we die, we die to a messed up and sick world. We get to leave all that stuff behind. Death has no sting because we’re—*cliché alert*—going to a better place. I love the Message translation of Philipians 1:21. Paul says, “Alive, I'm Christ's messenger; dead, I'm his bounty. Life versus even more life! I can't lose.”

I like to think that at my grandmother’s memorial service on Saturday that she’ll be there looking down on us, proud to see the impact she’s had on so many people. But I don’t think she will be. At 3:40 this morning, she walked into the perfect, unfiltered, ever-consuming, indescribable presence of God. I truly believe that all she will be able to do for the rest of eternity is fall down at the feet of God and worship and worship and worship. And I know it’s sort of hard for me to understand, but she will be completely and utterly whole and satisfied with this. I think that the reason that we know so little about death is that if we knew what the heaven was going to be like, we’d be literally slitting our wrists to get there. Death shouldn’t be a battle. It’s a passage. It’s a change. And when we don’t know all the specifics, that change can freak us out and we go into fight mode. But for those of us who live in the grace of Christ, death has no victory. Because there’s nothing to win. The war was won long ago. And it was won by a Being who has compassion on our pitiful, messed up souls and allows us to cheat death with Him for the rest of eternity.

dreams

The other day I read a great article on Relevant (relevantmagazine.com) about a girl who is in almost the same place my wife and I are right now as we look towards my graduation in May. In about two months, I'll enter the real, working world. It's exciting, yet scary at the same time. In this article, the author mentions a Bible verse: Psalms 37:4. It says “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” The basic idea of the article is that we all have dreams—dreams that God has given us. To realize those dreams, we have to learn to delight ourselves—or take joy in—God.

I thought this was pretty interesting because it seems so counter-intuitive. To achieve our God-given dreams, we’re supposed to focus more on Him. We’re not supposed to try harder or spend more time striving to achieve these things, we’re supposed to focus on Him. We’re supposed to delight and take joy in Him.

Taking joy in God is something that I really believe can revolutionize my faith in God. In the end, it’s not about doing good, or being the best Christian I can be, or praying a lot. It’s about learning to take joy in God. I was thinking about how it is that we do that. Or how, in my life, can I learn to find joy in God.

I came in to our studio this morning and I was just dreading project we're working on. I'm at a complete stand-still and it's due tomorrow. I was trying to get myself pumped up about it and I realized that today is the day that I’m going to make something. Today is the day that it’s going to break open. The last two projects, these frustrating kinds of days have been the absolutely coolest experiences for me once I push through my creative process. I finally get to a point of making and I just go crazy until something is formed out of a chaos that I’ve relinquished control of.

And then I realized, it’s the same way with God. Just when we get frustrated and we’re not sure how in the world everything’s going to work out, we must shift our eyes to the joy of trusting in God. We have to relinquish control to God and wait patiently for beauty to erupt triumphantly from the chaos. So with that in mind, I step up, confident that something will come out of this chaotic project and even more importantly, that these frightening transitions in my life right now will ultimately be doorways to the future that God has implanted in my dreams.

dale

The summer after I graduated from college, I interned at a non-profit organization that worked with at-risk youth. This was an incredible experience full of incredible kids. One of these was Dale. Dale was the kind of kid you knew was in the room the minute he stepped into it. He was loud, he was funny, and he didn’t shower often, so he was a little gamey. Dale was developmentally disabled and 15, although you’d never have guessed he was that old. Sometimes we had the hardest time with Dale, because he would get mad at another kid and walk off and pout, or he’d yell at the top of his lungs. Or he would constantly ask you if he could come play Playstation2 at your house that evening or if you’d take him swimming in the river. One time in the van, Dale somehow got on the topic of politics, and said “I think we should bomb the whole country of Iraq, just wipe them all out. And then bomb George W. Bush too. This country is going down and it’s his fault.” Like I said, you always knew Dale was around. But I loved this kid. I know when you work with kids, you aren’t supposed to pick favorites, but it’s inevitable. Dale was my favorite. This doesn’t mean there weren’t times when I wanted to strangle him or tell him to shut the hell up, but all that didn’t matter, because this kid had a heart of gold.

One morning, we took our group to a lake to walk and play some games in the park before lunch. We were walking around the trail, and the rest of the group was way ahead of me and Dale. All along the path that goes around the lake, there were these huge trees. I’m no expert on trees, so I couldn’t tell you what kind they were. But they were massive. I’m sure redwoods are much larger than I imagine, but these were redwoods to me. They were beautiful and stretched out over the lake, their branches hanging down as if their arms could sense the water below them, stretching their fingers down to drink. We were walking quietly, looking at these natural towers, when Dale made an observation that would put any Yale trained thinker to shame. He said, in the simple way only Dale could, “You know how God made trees to be trees?” I nodded. “Do you think God made me to be Dale?” This hit my heart like a pile of bricks. I replied, “You know Dale, I think that’s exactly what God did.” He took complete comfort in this, smiled big, and kept walking. Here was this fifteen-year-old developmentally disabled kid from an unstable home, who had to share a bedroom the size of a walk in closet with his brother, whose handwriting was that of a seven year old, who smelled bad and who was constantly picked on at school. A kid who, by societies standards, had nothing going for him at all, and yet he knew that God had made him special and had made him the way he was for a very good reason. I cannot think of a better way to describe the nature of our Creator than how Dale did that day. When you strip away society and all the voices telling you what is important or why you need this or need to get rid of that, and you listen to the voice of the One who created you, you will find that He created you uniquely and intentionally in His image.

silence

When my family lived in Chile, we worked with a congregation that met on the back porch of a house. Sunday school classes were held inside in the living room or in a bedroom. This family’s house literally was the church. This was stuff straight out of Paul’s letters. The children’s Sunday School class was held outside. Before class started, we would prepare milk and bread for the children to eat. For many of them, this was their only breakfast and possibly one of the only things they would eat all day. These mornings seemed so alive. Everyone was excited to be at church, even the children. It wasn’t something their parents pulled them by the collar to. In fact, many of their parents didn’t even come to church, they came on their own. Sunday morning was a blast.

There was one morning that wasn’t exactly sunshine on our shoulders. In fact, it is one of the saddest things that I’ve ever experienced. There were two brothers that came to church every Sunday morning on their own. Their home situation was pretty rough. Their dad would come home from work and take out his frustration on their mom. He’d beat her. They witnessed this probably every day of their young lives. One night, their mom was fed up. She’d had enough. When the father came home, she hit him upside the head and tried to stuff a handkerchief down his throat to suffocate him. When this didn’t work, she did something that blew my seven year old mind. She split his head open with an axe. All of this with her two younger sons in the room. These two boys witnessed their dads head getting split open like a watermelon. That in itself is one of the most terrible things I can imagine a young kid witnessing. As if that wasn’t enough, their older brother decided that to show the shame of having a mother who axed your dad, he would force the two young boys to shave their heads. All hair gone. Complete humiliation. This all happened on Saturday night. Sunday morning came and the two young boys came to church. This was where they knew to come. I remember some adults talking to one of the boys while he cried. I went over to the other brother and put my arm around him. We walked in the field next to the church, not saying a word, our arms around one another. We went down to the creek and stood. We both cried and neither of us said a word.

There are moments in our lives when the pain is so overwhelming, our world completely torn apart, that there are no words that can heal our hearts. I can’t begin to imagine what was going through those two boys minds that day. I can’t fathom what it must feel like to witness such an awful thing. My seven-year-old mind couldn’t come up with any words, any Sunday School answers. The only thing I knew was that this boy was hurting deeply and the only thing I knew to do was walk arm in arm with him and keep him company while he cried. I think I need that seven-year-old mind to teach my twenty three year old mind a lesson.