(8/25/09)This follow-up is taking a long time to come out. It was easy enough to write out the appearance of things–well do I know that in the eyes of the world I am on a downward spiral.
(9/2)Actually, more than a downward spiral: simply by taking the Bible literally on what it says about riches and poorness and how we are to spend our lives, to those concerned lookers-on of my life, it must look very much like I’ve taken a deathly plunge from all that is secure and realistic: with no thought of the future (we aren’t supposed to concern ourselves with our future security, though–He says so,) I’ve leapt off the precipice we, in general, stay sensibly atop of with an invisible parachute. And I know there are those terrified of the crunch and splatter they expect I’ll make when it turns out I was wrong.
(9/3)Anyway, yes. Easy enough to describe appearances. What’s really going on, though, is such an unfolding work that it’s hard to comprehend. I can see the path behind me when I glance over my shoulder, but to piece together the present steps when I can hardly see where I’m going is somewhat of a different story. Like this quote from Oswald Chambers in tonight’s teaching: “Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.” And yet, I want to make sense of things, if only for the benefit of the folks dreading the splatter.
I get such wonderful glimpses of what’s going on. I am praying for the Lord to prune this branch so that it bears abundant fruit–yet unlike the insensible branch that feels the effect of the blade yet can neither see the gardener that wields it nor the purpose in mind, I’ve been praying to see the gardener–to be able to understand a little bit of what’s going on. And so, these glimpses.
I’ve already recorded how all my job applications and resume-sending forays always seem to come to nothing. I sometimes feel pretty small for making as little money as I do. And yet–it is enough for me to live on at this stage of life. The Lord has undoubtedly provided–and I have enough left over to give abundantly. I think I am being kept poor so that I must trust and rely.
I’ve struggled with being a college dropout. Almost the first question anyone asks you when you’re this age is, “So are you going to school?” And sometimes when I answer that no, I’m not, I feel like a peculiar mixture of Fail and grey-green sludge. Yet why did I drop out? I attended for three semesters as an English major. I would have probably have ended up a college professor if I kept on in that direction. Maybe I would even have made a name for myself–I was said to have considerable talent and effortless skill. Yet how self-serving. Academia began to disgust me. Of what use or goodness is academic going-around-in-circles and quibbling when people are dying? Does it help a single soul to write thirty-page papers on dichotomies in Shakespeare?? I dropped out because it wasn’t right. It was too self-serving and useless.
But I didn’t know how to serve. I still don’t know how, or what my purpose is aside from the general commands to worship God and love as He first loved us. But I’m learning. I may not be in school, but I have a better Teacher than my money could buy at a 4-year university. He is teaching me to serve. He is teaching me to be the least and lowest and not to mind or even notice.
This is a season of waiting and learning and practice for me. I don’t know how long it’s going to last, but so much work is being done that I eagerly await the beginning of the harvest.
A few quotes found in Amy Carmichael’s Gold Chord:
“Why should I start at the plough of my Lord, that maketh deep furrows on my soul? He purposeth a crop.”–Samuel Rutherford
“This sacred work demands, not lukewarm, selfish, slack souls, but hearts more finely tempered than steel, wills purer and harder than the diamond.”–Pere Didion
Sometimes I’m impatient. It can feel like, “Come on, Father, can’t we skip all this and get to the good part already?”‘ I know I’m not ready yet. I have still a stubborn independence and self-reliant streak. I know I need to get to the absolute end of my rope and fully realize the misery of trying to go it on my own so that I might give up on myself entirely and give ALL unmitigatedly to the Lord–it just hasn’t sunk in yet. Knowing it must be so doesn’t make it so. And so I’m impatient, and pray to reach the end of that rope soon, no matter what the anguish–not because I’m a glutton for pain, but because I yearn to be useful, to have a specific call and to get on with it.
But truly, there is no skipping to the good part; this is a good part, too. I was thinking about the famous Psalm the other day–”He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.” The word maketh is interesting. I think sometimes He makes us lie down in green pastures whether we like it or not. And exploring the shepherd metaphor (once an English major, always an English major, huh?) I have to remember that it isn’t the sheep deciding where and when to go–they must simply follow the shepherd. And this is good, because let’s face it: sheep are dumb.
Something that lifted me up yesterday, also found in Gold Chord:
“When a soul sets out to find God it does not know whither it will come and by what path it will be led; but those who catch the vision are ready to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, regardless of what that following may involve for them. And it is as they follow, obedient to what they have seen, in this spirit of joyful adventure, that their path becomes clear before them, and they are given the power to fulfill their high calling. They are those who have the courage to break through conventionalities, who care not at all what the world thinks of them, because they are entirely taken up with the tremendous realities of the soul and God.”
Joyful adventure, indeed. I love it. In these past few days especially, I have tasted so much of the love and wonder of our Lord.
I know it looks crazy, I know. But please don’t worry about me–I’m taken care of. 
Nope, not crazy at all. Just beautiful.
However, I started to ponder something when you said “Does it help a single soul to write thirty-page papers on dichotomies in Shakespeare?? I dropped out because it wasn’t right. It was too self-serving and useless”. Now this is just coming off the top of my head, completely un-thought through, but perhaps it isn’t always useless to do that. What if you did become a college professor? You could do it to the best of your ability to God’s glory. And if you made a pretty penny from it, you could use that to bless people in need, support missionaries, donate to sick people who can’t afford their medical bills. I think we should all be involved in caring for the hurting, suffering people in the world, in blessing the poor, in saving the lost. But Rissa, who is to say that as an English Professor you couldn’t be a “missionary” too? What if God used you in that position, and brought people into your life who you could minister and witness to? Being a missionary doesn’t necessarily mean being a foreign missionary.
And suppose this. Suppose that every Christian decided it was more noble to become a missionary than anything else, and we all did that? Who does that leave us as professors teaching others? Scary thought. The world needs Christians who are involved in every aspect of it, shining their light where God plants them. I think the vast majority of us fail miserably at shining our lights brightly and unashamedly and with faith that God is doing something. But what if you did? What if you were the most beautiful, humble, joyful English Professor there was? What if you were a conduit for helping others see Jesus on every page of life, including Shakespeare? If there is anything good in Shakespeare, it comes from God. Shakesoeare’s complex brain and amazing style are a testimony to the fact that we have a Creator who made us in His imagine and gave us incredible gifts and abilities.
God has given you a gift, Marissa. Take everything I’ve said with a grain of salt, as I know you shall, but still, don’t put God in a box with what He might be calling you to do. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands” 1 Thessalonians 4:11. What a novel concept–a quiet life!
A couple weeks ago, we had an afternoon shower, and I had just finished a book I had really enjoyed and been blessed by, and I went outside and stood in the rain and opened my hands to catch it. And I had this overwhelming sense, everything honing into one point, that HE was the adventure. God is a glorious adventure! An exquisite romance! We’ll spend forever exploring the wonderfulness of our amazing God. All the adventures we think we want to go on, they’re all on a quest for that richly satisifying something. Which is Him! He is it! He is the adventure!
Maybe I’m tangenting here. But for a tangent, it’s so… conclusive. To me it was.
But anywho, my whole point with this rambling epistle of a comment is that you can live a life of sacrifice, seeking ways to bless every person you come into contact with, be it the clerk at the grocery store, each of your customers at the ice cream shop, your housemates, the woman you see walking her dog at the park, or the lady you sit next to on a plane. Sometimes, we miss what is right under our noses.
And maybe in the end it isn’t what we do at all, but who we love. Not to say that in the midst of loving Him He isn’t going to call us to serve others! “If you love me, feed my lambs”. But is that where our eyes should be? In the end, there will be no starving children to feed and lost souls to rescue. Just an amazing God to delight in for all eternity.
I can see where you’re coming from and the truth in a lot of what you say–theoretically, anyway, it sounds great. . .But I’m still pretty confident that I was right in ditching the system.
I was getting more and more disgusted with academia. Think of the millions of dollars–maybe even billions, who knows–spent every year on college tuition by people who want to secure their future success and stability. For my part, it seemed like an utter waste to be spending even just $10,000 a year on the cheapest 4-year university I could find in the state for the quality of education I was receiving (or rather, NOT receiving.)
If you go to school to get necessary training for a job where your primary motive is to serve and love rather than attain that three-car garage in the suburbs or the glamorous loft apartment, then okay: that’s good. But I feel confident in saying that 99% of the people going to college are there for the wrong reasons, or getting shoddy training–and usually both. The education system as I experienced it is broken. Self-advancement is the single goal. An ineffective, unchallenging “education” (i.e. jumping through a few hoops to get a piece of paper with some credentials on it: that’s all our college system does as far as I can see) costs a ludicrous amount of money that could be so much better spent.
Liberal “tolerance” and special interests take the day. The professors (in English, anyway) sit on their pinnacles of worldly wisdom peering down at the world through dusty spectacles and pointlessly chattering about whether Emily Dickinson was a repressed lesbian or not and how this contributed to her genius. To fulfill a science requirement, I decided to take chemistry because I’ve always hated biology and have a low tolerance for the condescending tone that creeps into teachers’ voices when they talk about creationism. Chemistry seemed safe, right? I’ll take stoichiometry over Darwinism any day. Well, the whole term, my professor (a witty young fellow who would have been nice otherwise,) taught his chemistry very ineffectively and used the rest of his class-time to lament his upbringing in Pennsylvania among the “Bible-beating, gun-clinging Christians.” In his mind, the metropolitan centers of New England, and the West Coast (think California) are apexes of enlightenment. And the rest of the country is composed of ignorant, red-necked Believers. He espoused this belief with great vehemence, and dripped pity and disgust for the rest of the unenlightened world.
The education system is dominated by liberals. I think that where there are conservative Christians in academia, they keep silent and equivocate, because to be a Christian is to be close-minded, and to believe in the Bible is to by ignorant and behind-the-times. And academia, of course, prizes open-mindedness, up-to-the-minute information, and a limp-wristed wishy-washy tolerance that they propound will bring about peace.
Yes, this denotes a great need. . .but. . .it seems almost like it would be better to start from the bottom up. I don’t think college professors change lives or thinking all that much. By the time you’re in college, I think you’ve generally adopted your prejudices. I’ve thought of going back to school maybe to be an elementary or middle school teacher–THOSE teachers can have SUCH an impact. Even high school teachers can. But the education system is so “of the world,” that one almost hates to have anything to do with it.
Anyway, I haven’t altogether crossed out going back to college. I fear the possibility, because college as I experienced it was soul-killing and fruitless. . .but I’m trying so hard to seek the Lord. If He tells me to go back to school, I will, and I know He’ll go with me—but at the same time, I’d really need Him to tell me in no uncertain terms that that’s what He wanted. I don’t think you need a degree to change the world. Since I left college, I’ve been learning so much more than I learned while there, and I’ve been doing so much more, just by loving–truly loving, or at least learning to love–the people in my life, from my family, to the next-door neighbor, to the people who come into Penguins for coffee and who will just blossom if you give them a radiant, sincere smile and care about them.
Anyway, all that to say that I’m sure I was right, and even led, when I dropped out of college, but I definitely agree with you that, “you can live a life of sacrifice, seeking ways to bless every person you come into contact with, be it the clerk at the grocery store, each of your customers at the ice cream shop, your housemates, the woman you see walking her dog at the park, or the lady you sit next to on a plane. Sometimes, we miss what is right under our noses.”
Check out this heart-breaking video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZiMlwXU6fQ&feature=player_embedded –we watched it near the end of our last Bible study. . .It’s hard. We can serve God anywhere, yes, and should and will–but with numbers like that, it always feels like it isn’t enough. That just to stay here and live out our lives in comfort is just too easy. I guess we have to remember that “I will never be enough. But the Lord IS.”
To be ready and yielding and willing for whatever the Lord desires–that’s what I want.
For a long time, I struggled with the idea of foreign missions–it seems when people get on that tack, they forget about the people right here, next-door, under our noses. It seemed unfair and negligent to me. But over the past few months, I’ve been realizing that we live amongst a stiff-necked, hard-hearted people. This is a nation of people about whom the Lord has said, “Their eyes do not see, their ears will not hear.” So I guess the key it to be ready and willing to Go, but to keep our eyes open and not to miss a single opportunity to love while we are staying here on familiar territory.
You know, I agree with absolutely every single thing you said.
I’m no friend of college myself, that’s for sure, and I think you explained some of the major problems with it perfectly! It sounds like God has definitely told you that that isn’t where He wants you.
“We can serve God anywhere, yes, and should and will–but with numbers like that, it always feels like it isn’t enough. That just to stay here and live out our lives in comfort is just too easy.” I was thinking about that, too. I don’t think that living here has to equal comfort and easy living. That’s our choice, wherever we are. But for me personally, and probably for a lot of people, it would be SO infinitely much easier to part with everything when daily faced with the reality that there are people with literally nothing. That atmosphere inspires one to give and give and give. Whereas here it is SO easy to fall into temptation and grow luke warm and just be lazy and live fat.
I guess I am torn between two concepts– whether we should live in America brightly shining God’s light, or whether we should shake the dust from our sandals and go to a less stiff-necked people.
I just thought of something. The con of living here is that instead of Christians shining brightly, our light tends to dull and fade, always being snuffed out by wordly influences bombarding us at every turn. God wanted Israel to be pure, to get rid of ALL of the Canaanites from their land, which they didn’t do, and not to intermarry.
Perhaps our salt is losing its saltiness.
And yet, there really are so many people here with great need, so many people God is changing and redeeming, but just have to know where to look. I suppose it’s all a matter of where He wants you.