Insanity Comes Naturally: Tenth Avenue North

Showing posts with label Tenth Avenue North. Show all posts

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God."

[Life's Soundtrack - Ep. 02: By Your Side by Tenth Avenue North]

Confessions

I have no words for you. Syllables, yes; I have many of those, but my pen will put none of them together into words. This stream of nonsense is all I can offer.

II.

I think I met you today, right when I didn't want to. I was angry, you see, at another piece of clay - or so I thought until I looked up and found myself spitting in your face. I needed you so badly, longed to be found by you, but I hated you for finding me in my neediness.

I am ablaze with contradictions.

III.

After I spat in your face, I ran away down the road from my house. I thought I could rebel by going where I've been told it isn't safe to go alone. I even left my mobile at home, but I couldn't leave you.

Some rebellion.

IV.

I cried out to you and you gave me only stillness for an answer. So I cried out again, this time against you, and again there came only quiet. I wondered that you did not justify yourself. Then I realized it was I who stood accused.

Your mercy knew no limits, and I was at once ashamed and absolved.

Once, I wrestled with knowing whether I truly desired you or just wore my desire for you to stave off the guilt of wanting Other Things more. Then you took my guilt away. Now I know the smallness of my Wantings could not have masked the depths of those guilt-rivers, much less taken them away.

VI.

I long to feel your hand leading me, to cling to it as solidly as ever I clung to Papa's. Yet even with that longing, I know that ever you hold me. Calvin comes and gives me hugs - lovely, warm little-brother hugs, and you are good but it isn't the same. Sometimes he mumbles funny little endearments to accompany the affectionate squeeze, but your Word is my lamp.

VII.

Is there ever a moment when at the root of all my fumblings there is not some trace of a desire to see your face? There are faces all around me - funny, beautiful things with speckled eyes and crooked smiles, and oh! you are so very good, but it isn't the same.

VIII.

Sometimes I think my heart will explode from the abundance of longing - and then I think, no, it will explode because it does not desire you enough. Perhaps when filling oneself with water from an inexhaustible well in answer to an undying thirst, these become the same.

IX.

Your presence is like the oxygen I breathe, running throughout every cell of my body and every part of the fabric of my existence. To know this is to wonder. And behind your ever-presence is your unquenchable, unfathomable, unconditional love, moving you like the tide moves an ocean.

To know this is both to wonder and to weep.

And what am I? What questions do I have that will not drop away as less than dust when your face is revealed to me at last? What desires are in me that cannot be eternally quenched by you? What dissatisfaction can I find within me that does not spring from the knowledge that to be satisfied is to be near you? Where shall I flee from your presence, or be hidden from your Spirit? What fraction of a fraction of a second have I existed that was not filled with your presence, sustained by your mercy, bound together with your love?

XI.

Where is my expectation - my hope - my assurance - my comfort - my nourishment - my existence - if it is not to be found in you? Surely there is no cry of my soul that any but you might answer. Surely everything that I hunger for and seek after is you, and surely in none but you will I find satisfaction.

XII.

My life is yours, and yours to do with as you purpose. I trust in your unfailing love.

Read More 1 Comment | scribbled by Unknown

"Christianity's not about having a bunch of right answers to the questions. It's about encountering a person named Jesus."

But don't you know who you are,
What has been done to you?
Don't you know who you are?

You are more than the choices that you make
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes
You are more than the problems you create -
You've been remade.

101st post! I thought someone else's words were more deserving of this auspicious place than my own. (Mike gave this talk almost word-for-word at the concert I attended... when he says something about still recovering at the beginning, that's in reference to being in the Christian school system. I hope the related song - which was excellent too; lyrics above - is on the new album. ^_^)

Read More 0 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

"When I bow to God, God stoops to me."

I wasn't going to write a post for every Tenth Avenue North song, and I'm still not trying to, but I was listening to Lift Us Up To Fall on Sunday afternoon and several images popped into my head. So I'm linking y'all to a Youtube video with the song - 'tisn't going to be on the actual playlist. This is just something that may or may not develop into a complete album-series. If I do actually make it through all the songs, I may have to try the same with an Andrew or Bebo or Fernando album. We'll see.

LIFT US UP TO FALL - Four Images

1. Mind-games. Most people have experienced or at least witnessed the wonder that is the drop-it game. If you haven't, try standing by the highchair of a not-quite baby, not-quite toddler. Wait for something to inevitably fall from the tray to the ground. It may be a sippy-cup, pacifier, blanket, spit-up rag, what-have-you--something non-breakable and (usually) non-edible. When the item hits the floor the first time, you grin a little and think "aww, poor (cute!) baby" and pick it up and give it back. But it goes over the edge again - and again - and again - and after the fifteenth time picking it up you begin to think "cute kid? he's manipulating me!" Fifty falls later, your spin begins to cramp, and so you decide to walk away. One step from the highchair and he begins to howl. You feel like a jerk.

No, this doesn't have any spiritual implications regarding our relationship to God - or at least no positive ones. Maybe we are all little, manipulated children clamouring for attention and throwing stuff around for God to pick it up. I like to think God wouldn't be fooled by that, that he is able to tell between those who sincerely seek Him and those who just want stuff (the Bible likes to think this as well). So this isn't really analogous to anything - it's just what I think of when I hear and lift us up to fall... Big, pleading blue eyes with a spark of malicious glee, waiting for me to pick up that spit-up rag for the gajillionth time.

Moving on...

2. My Sin. Paul describes the continual tripping-up of the flesh in Romans 6. When I hear this song, I can't help but think of the many times even daily that God takes me into his arms and lovingly affirms his promises for me, only for me to respond with betrayal and sin. Though I don't think this is the focus of the song, it works. God is strong to lift us up, and has done so in a powerful, eternally-changing way. At the same time as God sees the work of Christ in me perfected forever, I have a much more finite point of view. God sees that Christ has paid; I am still seeing why Christ had to pay in the first place. Andrew Peterson knows this well when he sings: I'm weak and weary of breaking His heart with the cycle of my sin. Still, he turns his face to me and I kiss it just to betray him once again." But the cycle of our sin does not continue forever. The song continues: Amen, Come Lord Jesus. One day, Christ will come and lift us up into heaven, and we will fall on our faces before him with a holy adoration that is wholly adoration, not streaked with shame or sorrow or guilt.

3. Mercy. My knees are shaking under the weight of my body. My head is light, and yet hangs heavy, sagging below my shoulders. I deserve to die; I know it. Any moment now I will hear the words Take her away! ridden with righteous anger and condemnation. I do not merit even a pleading glance in His direction.

Then He speaks.

"Take her away," He says. There is no anger in His voice. I half-look up, then catch myself. I dare not hope... "Take her away, and dress her in the finest of robes. She shall dine with me tonight. Her sins are pardoned." I cannot believe it--I, a murderer, an adulteress, a thief, I who spat in His face when first He offered me love and security--it is too much to bear or think that I have been pardoned, and yet He adds more! Garments--food--His own company...!

I think my heart will explode. He has exalted me, raised me from my shame, and I can stand before Him no longer. I throw myself to the ground at His feet.

4. Ministry. This essentially comes from the line in the song: You send the rain and life begins, so rain on us and reign within our lives again.

When I focused on that line I realized: isn't that how the Gospel works? We are lifted up, receive life-bringing rain from the hands of our Savior, and then given the commission to carry this life to the entire world. So lift us up to fall - raise us in Your life so that our joyful proclamations of that life may fall like the rain that gives life to dead seed upon a world of deadened hearts that thirst for Christ, the one whose rain and reign in us both enables and sustains the ministry of His body.

Draw us near, heal these broken hearts, and lift us up to fall

Before everything you are.

Read More 2 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

"Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness."

Life's Soundtrack - Ep. 01: Love Is Here by Tenth Avenue North

I've been thinking about pain a lot recently.

Few people like pain, and it's not just because all pain is extremely painful. The general aversion to pain is largely due to pain's universal ability to remind us of our finitude. We have very little control over our bodies and the sicknesses that enter and leave them. Oh, we're quite good at masking pain - if it's drugs you need for that, we have them a-plenty. But in the medical field, almost nobody talks about curing things anymore. They help the body along a bit and hope it takes care of the rest, and in the meantime here's a happy pill to keep you from thinking about the hole we made in your body while we were cutting the cancer out (we really hope it doesn't come back).

It's the art of making comfortable, and not the art of curing, that is the obsession of our time. This explains the abundance of painkillers. People don't want to be reminded of the peoplekiller (time) so they kill the reminder (pain). Time is in short supply for all of us regardless of age, but we'd rather kill the pain than have the pain kill the illusion of control. This is the real pain in pain: not that we are physiologically hurting, but that we are made aware of our soul-sickness and the consequences that sickness will reap after our impending death.

Like humanity in general, I have a problem with pain. But it's not the sort of problem you would think. I don't just hate pain, with the hatred increasing exponentially as the degree of pain increases. Lewis expresses my problem quite well in The Problem of Pain when he remarks that "everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment." We can make that more specific: Inky feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying her at the moment.

Keyword: annoying.

In my problem with pain, obnoxious pains are the worst. I have found that extreme sufferings - pain to the point of barely being able to lift one's head from one's pillow - awaken in me a sort of stoic martyrship. To a certain extent, I enjoy gritting my teeth and exhibiting a deathly pallor and wearing a (figurative) halo of gold while others tiptoe around me with hushed voices and praise my longsufferingness. But fill my sinuses and nose with mucus, or stick a dull pain in my gut, or even place the slightest soreness in my throat, and it's off with their heads to anyone who dares put one foot wrong in my presence. Break my leg in four places and you shan't hear a peep. Make my head ache and throb even in the slightest of ways, and I shall scream and rage inwardly and throw down my work and protest that I shall never get anything done, and my life is ruined - vanity of vanities, all ends in naught.

Regarding pain, it is as if I have pledged: Lord, thy bitterest pills I shall swallow gladly with the utmost and saintliest placidity; however, I reserve the right to pitch a royal fit should you choose to afflict me with head colds and indigestion.

Why? Why does the little stuff get to me? Well... what do I mean by little stuff, and what do I mean by it getting to me?

Let's take the latter first, returning to the idea of obsession with feeling healthy and its accompanying motives. When pain gets to me, it elicits an angry, ungodly response - e.g., lashing out at a person or circumstance in my life. I am angry at God because he gives me pain. I hate God because I love my own comfort more (serving the latter Master and hating the former). I hate God because I have bought into this obsession, because I would rather think of myself as the infinite one.

This leads to the former part of the statement, the little stuff. I mentioned how it is (relatively) easy to resist the temptation to wail and moan when the afflictions are extreme, especially if they are short-lived and not frequent occurrences. Extreme pain practically screams: "Curse God and die!" It's the dim, dull, obnoxious pains that are of very little consequence to anyone but ourselves that cause me (us?) so much trouble. Where big pain screams, little pain whispers. Where big pain is obvious, little pain throws in subtleties. Thus, "little stuff" is a misnomer. If little stuff were seen as it really is, the reason why it gets to me is obvious: it really isn't all that little.

I once used the analogy of a man who is offered the option to jump over a cliff only to realize he has already done so. The analogy was intended to describe a person who faces a blatant temptation and, standing on the edge of committing something terrible, realizes his heart had been turned against God in anger long before. So it is with an angry response to pain. My brother irritates me; I respond in anger, and then I am guilty the rest of the day. Perhaps I only snapped a "no" or "go away," but the memory is bitter with guilt not only because I just committed something wrong, but because I am now aware of a long-standing disposition of hatred towards God. This hatred is not limited to one action of anger. It is preceded by a host of uncorrected and long-cherished sins of the heart against my thrice-holy Redeemer.

So I not only obsessed with feeling good, but I have been buying into this anti-God obsession for a very long time. No wonder there is a deep fountain of bitterness in my heart that wells up and out against God every time something small and painful bounds into my life. My problem with pain turns out to be (as most sins do) a problem with God. As Orual discovers in 'Til We Have Faces, having a problem with God does not mean God has a problem. When I hate God, it is not because He is deserving of my hatred, but because I do not believe He is able at once to love me and to give me pain. When I hate God it is not because He deserves my hatred, but because I would rather be healthy than cling to Him as my Healer. When I hate God it is not because He deserves my hatred, but because I find my identity and security in how I feel rather than what He has promised to feel toward me: love, for all eternity, without alteration or retraction. God is not the problem. Like Orual, I am the problem.

If I am the problem, then I am certainly not the cure, nor can my efforts toward one have any effect. I have before resolved in my heart, time and again, to be quiet - to refrain from murmuring - to focus all my effort on keeping my mouth shut when I know the pain is at just the right level to induce anger. This, I can say with absolute assurance, does nothing. I cannot make myself stop being bitter. The sickness goes much deeper than raging, discontent appearances, and so must the cure be infinitely deeper than a placid and content outward disposition.

For this hatred of an infinite God and the obsession with lying to myself about my finitude - for these wells of bitterness and unbelief that come from the continual harboring of sin at its subtlest, most deadly form, there is only one cure - "only" one, but what a cure! Pain, which once whispered to my soul words of sedition and rebellion, now is the means to plant of a flag of truth within the fortress of my rebel soul (paraphrase of Lewis). The cure is the one who at once plants the flag and is the flag.

He is the one who reconciles us finite beings to an infinite God, so that we may not fear time but live in the hopeful expectation of eternity with Him.

He met sin and pain and death in battle and emerged victorious.

He crushed sin on the cross, and continually crushes it in my life through his intercessory work at the right hand of the Father on my behalf.

He is the Word, the Truth, and as the sharpest of any two-edged swords at once reveals and decimates the subtlest of lies.

The cure is Christ.

"...but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

On that very roundabout note (ha ha), my song for this week is Love Is Here by Tenth Avenue North (and before anyone rolls their eyes, I honestly intended to put this song first before I went to the concert). According to the band, Romans 5:8 (above, bold/italic) provided the inspiration for this - especially the present tense of the verb show.

The title of the song was a bit off-putting for me at first, so I feel a bit of defense is in order. See, I've heard Christians complain - mostly heard myself complain - that too much of Christian music focuses on the love of God and ignores other aspects of truth to much harm. In one sense, I agree. The love of God is but one aspect of God's character, and to assume that it is the only aspect is a very serious error - and repeating vapid declarations of how great we feel with no solid understanding of who God is and what he has done is at once irritating and useless. A song with the title Love Is Here in a time when songs that are abounding in love without any understanding of Who defines love just didn't seem that promising.

At the same time, I disagree with that. Take the following statement (something I've both heard and said myself): "Instead of going on and on about the love of God and how happy we are, more ought to be said about sin - about fighting for holiness - less of this feel-good stuff and more of the Truth." While I have nothing to say against songs with messages about the fight for holiness and Truth, I believe this is a false dichotomy.

See, there is no difference between fighting to know God loves us and fighting to (desire to) be as He is. Time and again the children of Israel are told to Remember! what God has done for them - not because they'll fail their history module and won't earn degrees and be employable, but because without remembering how God acts towards them in love they are doomed to hate everything He does and rebel against His every plan.

The fight to believe God loves us is the fight against sin, and therefore reminders of God's love are equipment for battle (provided they provide a true picture of said love, something TAN's songs do exceptionally well). Those who hear songs about the love of God and respond with only fuzziness (or even think that the only potential response is fuzziness) are missing something huge. To know that God loves us for who Christ is and not who we are is the battle. As a battle, it is the source of the blood in our mouths and the sweat pouring down our faces and the ache and strain in our muscles. There is nothing feel-good or fuzzy about it.

In The Knowledge of the Holy (ch. 8, "The Infinitude of God"), A.W. Tozer describes the love of God in terms of his infinity:

"The Christian witness through the centuries has been that "God so loved the world . . .”; it remains for us to see that love in the light of God’s infinitude. His love is measureless. It is more: it is boundless. It has no bounds because it is not a thing but a facet of the essential nature of God. His love is something He is, and because He is infinite that love can enfold the whole created world in itself and have room for ten thousand times ten thousand worlds beside."

If I could but cling to the truth that Christ's infinite love can enfold ten thousands upon ten thousands upon ten thousands of worlds, and thus surely is able to at once enfold and soak into every aspect of my life, into the pain and the comfort and all areas in between - would I not have killed the tendency to kick against God's plan? Would I not have killed my obsession with obsessing with things that are not God and clearly were not intended by God to be my Master?

As I began with the futility of earthly medicine, let me end with the all-sufficiency of our heavenly Healer. Christ stands in stark contrast to the obsession with making comfortable. He is not a painkiller designed to numb us into a false state of comfort 'till death destroys us. His cure is not free from pain, but once complete it will free us from all the pains of sin and death.

This cure is to be found in knowing that love is here - love measureless and boundless and infinite, and not love in some nebulous, dim sense. The love that has come is Love as defined by the nature of God and demonstrated by Christ in His death and life.

Such a Love is here, it is now - and here and now it is ours in Christ.

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. -1 John 4:16

Read More 4 Missages | scribbled by Unknown

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God."

"Christianity's not about having a bunch of right answers to the questions. It's about encountering a person named Jesus."

"When I bow to God, God stoops to me."

"Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness."

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