The Stranger in Between

Jesus was the name on everyone's lips

In my childhood.

The name in the songs.

The name the preachers shouted about.

The name Sunday School teachers told with reverence.

Remember how He died.

He loves you so much

He stretched out His arms and died.

 

Photo: Pixabay, Geralt

I knew Him in my childhood.

I don’t remember not knowing.

Savior of the world.

King.

God.

One.

I knew when His spirit filled me.

I knew when His name covered me.

I knew the words of eternal life.

I knew so much, but I didn't know Him well.

Not well enough.

 

My teens.

Don't just know His name. It's a whole relationship, the way you want to fall in love.

He already loves you. Just do your part,

And love Him with your whole heart.

My heart, skeptical but wanting to believe, settled into it,

Accepting that questions would be an ever-living fixture in it.

 

How unequal is a relationship where One dies for the other,

And the one receiving the gift says "Thank you?

I can’t love you back the same way.

I'll try to serve you and make little sacrifices sometimes.

Does that help?" 

 

That gap felt wide. I knew I was supposed to do my part, be grateful. 

To try and become who He made me to be.

The facts were strong.

But who was Jesus, really?

Why again did He die, and what did it have to do with me?

The world needs to know, but do they care to know?

I know, and I'm not even doing my part very well.

Shouldn't I be more passionate if I really know Him?

I kept doing my best, and it was all very flawed.

 

Jesus, the familiar stranger on everyone's lips.

Man without face.

Presence without image.

Words without voice, so I read them aloud

In my voice.

Memorized them. Quoted them. Dissected them over coffee.

Black and white words on a page, and red words.

His words.

Words that would never die coursed through my veins, my breath,

Alive again.

I tried to imagine Him better so He would be more real.

Spirit encounters forced me to know He was real.

I couldn't argue.

I knew Him the way you know the ocean by walking through the edge of it.

I knew He was real, and I began to see that depths

I’d never imagined were beyond me still.

There had to be more.

 

My college years.

I committed to my direction, dodging the worst vices.

I'd been warned of the red flags,

Taught how narrow the path is.

Like a goody two-shoes, I tiptoed through a strange land where Jesus was a foreign figure.

I knew Him. I knew things they wouldn't admit were real.

I saw the folly of their facades.

I saw the painful end of their rights and freedoms.

I saw through vain philosophies and bravado-heavy claims. 

What did they know? 

Knowing Him was a shame there.

They knew more than God, and I knew

That was a vice of its own, so I chose to walk by faith.

To be small. An oddball. A minority.

A stranger dancing to a song no one else could hear.

 

To know Him would be listening for His voice in small-town preaching,

And let it choke out the siren songs of prestige

And acceptance.

And pride.

To know Him would be letting Him unhook me from the long-toothed trap of consensus.

It meant discovering what His living words meant in my wilderness,

Digging for hours through intellectual underbrush until I found markers to

Point the way forward.

His words became a weapon against the lies,

Especially the ones I told myself.

I knew I could find answers to my questions, because He was the answer,

But the in between,

The marking trails to Him,

It was so much work.

I quested and searched and answered. But in the noise of my own making,

I felt the weight of what I couldn’t fully grasp,

And feared I would never:

He talks a lot about love. Am I missing something?

We did talk about this. We talked about love so often I forgot.

Love was on everyone's lips from day one.

We know His name. We know His power. We know His love.

It's all about love.

Why is my life so full of Jesus and His love, and so cold and barren too?

Why am I floundering in these shallows when the depths are singing out to each other?

How is this all supposed to work?

 

The answers arose again and again in words, books, songs,

And flowed out of faithful saints working their fingers to the bone at their humble stations.

Silly girl. God is not a problem to be solved.

He’s a whole being.

If you keep on, you’ll find Him.

So I did.

And I knew Him, but not well enough.

How could I?

 

Mary of Magdala knew this divide too.

She was healed by a nameless stranger.

What are the chances?

Surprise fell on her like a strike of pure lightning: You're whole.

Free.

He knew her name. He loosed her from demonic terror,

Un-chaining their authority and shielding her in safety.

He touched her soul before she could speak.

He knew her before she could know Him, and He loved her.

 

It's all so unequal. Unfair to the point of overwhelm.

Is this what it means to be loved? To be indebted beyond belief?

To be handed a whole new world? For free?

Maybe she really did say, "I will know Him for the rest of my life."

 

Did I, like her, mistake the relief of knowing Him for the end of all grief?

If He was God, shouldn't the meaning of one encounter last forever?

Why are we so bruised and fragile, always needing?

 

I could feel her devastation when He didn't erase her brain with amnesia.

He didn't transplant her into someone else's life, void of her identity.

The rest of her life would be knowing Him and healing from the scars.

Insecurities and bouts of shame would buck their backs like wild horses.

He didn't pave her a road free of disruption.

Temptation would sing its song.

These habits are harmless.

They are part of you.

They'll comfort you.

She would fall. She would forget, not the knowledge of what He did, but the feeling.

She would forget the lightning, and the relief, and the joy.

She knew Him, but not well enough.

How could she?

 

She had to learn not just who He was, but how prone she was to forget what she'd been given.

She couldn’t hear the cry of truth when despair shouted again

Into the serenity of her healing,

And she ran away.

She had to endure the pain of the inequality between them stretching impossibly again.

He couldn't be more holy, and she couldn't be more guilty.

She had to learn how Jesus forgives when we forget Him.

No literary master could contrive a juxtaposition this unbalanced.

 

The gap gets wider the more you know Him.

He is greater than you thought.

You are less than you thought.

You thought you were low before, but now look how much lower you feel

When you’ve known His voice, and you still forgot the lightning.

His Kingdom became familiar, and

God forbid, you let His face become mundane.  

The cycle continues... she had to be found again, and find Him again

And let Him embrace her again in the depth of her shame,

Wrapping His own righteousness around her like a cosmic hug

That makes no sense.

How could He possibly invite her into His story, when He is so pure and she is so broken?

 

Mary M.

She learned it from Him. And I learned it from her, and the others like her.

You can enter into that embrace, not because you can fulfill your part of a relationship,

But because He will make up the difference.

He will stand in the gap.

He will make you holy.

He will make you worthy,

He will answer your pitiful efforts

With ridiculous overabundance.

You’ll never know Him well enough.

The ocean of the I AM is too deep and too wide.

You can know Him

And be consumed by Him. 

 

She would invite us, wouldn't she?

She'd say, Stay with Him. Just stay and absorb as much as you can.

It takes time.

Listen through the teaching and the preaching.

Watch for the miracles.

Endure the soul-deep crisis of not comprehending his ways.

Witness the cross.

Wait for the resurrection.

Wait for the wind and the fire.

Wait for the Spirit.

Suffer with Him,

And let Him into your suffering

And surrender

With all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,

Until the power of His resurrection

Animates you and flows out of you like a river of life.

 

Be the disciple who never stops asking for more. 

You'll never grasp a shred of understanding how He could do it.

How He could stand on two hairy, dusty feet like any other man and

Embody all the power of the only throne in Heaven.

You’ll never master the mystery of how He got here.

 

But you’ll know Him for the rest of your life:

Lord and Sovereign, Priest and King.

You'll begin to entertain what infinity means,

The way nothing about Him has edges or endings.

The waves will swell until you can’t imagine any more of Him,

And you’ll shrivel, until you can no longer evaluate the divide between you.

 

You’ll nurture His words in the soft soil of your heart.

Roots and tender sprouts will press out from the seed

Birthing new desires, new decisions, new habits...

An entire new person,

Transformed. 

So different than before.

So full of life. 

When the voices tell you you're a dirty, broken little sinner,

You can answer as a saint, 

Because now He stands in between.

 

He'll bathe you in His own goodness.

His Spirit will tutor you.

He'll spark life-giving truths on your very lips

Spreading stranger to stranger, bones to bones,

So the fire never dies.

 

But if it starts to dissolve in you,

Remember the way you were,

And the way He intervened.

Remember what He rescued you from, and

The way he winked at your unease.

Remember His laugh at your relief.

Remember how you were never a stranger to Him.

And remember the trouble you wanted to make

The moment you realized who He was.

God forbid you forget,

But if it all disintegrates, 

And it breaks your heart to think of His face,

As long as you live

Remember how He’s standing there still

In the in between,

Ready in mercy to hold you again.

 

“I am the good shepherd.

I know my own and my own know me…”

(John 10:14 ESV)

 

The beginning of this piece was hearing the finale song of The Chosen’s Season 2: Trouble, by Matthew Nelson and Dan Haseltine. My view of Mary Magdalene is now shaped by The Chosen's fictional interpretation of her story, written beautifully by Dallas Jenkins, Ryan Swanson, and Tyler Thompson. Thank you all for helping me understand that she and I are soul sisters, no matter how different our stories.

 By Kristi Moore © 2021 Please don’t reproduce without permission, thanks!  

 

 

Speaking the Truth in... Excuse Me, What?

Speaking the truth in love is a fundamental element of Christian maturity. It’s also a great way to live all of life. Speak truth. Be loving. The way those words roll off my tongue though? It’s like saying the words, “Climb Mt. Everest.” 

The words are easy. The reality is complicated. 

Pixabay: Simon

It’s so much easier to get truth than to show love. Truth is input. Love is output. One is passive, and the other is active. Maybe knowing truth is like seeing the mountain, and love is making the climb. 

What would that look like in practice? 

Love needs wisdom. As a recent entry in my journal says: WISDOM IS A HARSH FILTER. Sometimes love is a boldness to speak up into a terrifying silence. Many other times it's a force that quiets, slows, squelches. Sometimes silence itself is an act of love. Wisdom knows the difference. Every word I let out is supposed to go through that filter. Oh, Lord. 

My intuitive reaction to the world is sometimes a mere microsecond of: I think it. I feel it. It’s true... Imma say it.

Speaking the truth is simple. It’s base camp. It’s a comfort zone.

Speaking the truth in love is leaving base camp for heights that will strangle the breath out of me. It's about me decreasing. It means part of me has to die. 

Pixabay: Russell_Yan

These questions (which I’ve posted elsewhere and combined here) articulate some of the filters that love would impose on my impulses:

• Do my so-called good intentions purify the words flying out my mouth, or through my fingers? Is this loving? 
• Am I so happy I hit a bullseye that I’m unbothered throwing darts at people’s hearts?
• Am I more concerned with being right, or with allowing someone to see the beauty of the truth in question?
• Am I focused on carrying a message, or am I just another snarky attitude?
• Am I rushing in to prove them wrong, or am I open to an honest, two-sided conversation?
• Am I listening? Am I willing to learn? Able to admit when I’m wrong or ignorant? Am I asking questions? 
• If people react negatively, are they responding to my attitude or the message itself?
• What can this relationship handle? Are they open and comfortable to ask questions? Am I staying on topic to what they are open to?
• Am I in a spirit of setting them straight, or of sharing hope?
• Am I so confident of a truth that I’m arrogant (and sinning) about being right?
• Was my motive truly filtered through wisdom, humility, empathy, kindness, patience…?
• Should I slow down and pause before responding? Did I give God a chance to direct me?
• Would it be better to delete the words or close my mouth?

In other words, it’s rarefied air up there. 

Pixabay: 12019

One more similarity between Everest and speaking the truth in love: Only fools go it alone. Climbers take Everest in teams, because rarely can it be conquered solo. They carry supplementary oxygen, because the peak is beyond the reach of most raw human power. The mountain is a force to be reckoned with. 

My own tongue is just as deadly a force, only more absolute. I can speak like a fire out of control, burning with the flames of Hell. I'm not being dramatic. That's in the Bible. My words can defile my body and cancel out my entire religion. My tongue--my language--is a force I can't overcome on my own. 

We sing songs like "God of miracles, signs, and wonders..." because that's who our God is. If I believe God can raise the dead, and heal the sick, I must also hold fast to the promise that He can manage the outrageous task of helping me learn to speak the truth in love. That will be no less of a sign, a miracle, and a wonder. 

"With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

- Matthew 19:26 

I Corinthians 13 for Writers

Though I write with the voice of an angel, and have not love, I am become as a forgotten word in a dying language. 

And though I have the gift of enchanting language, and can unravel all mysteries, and absorb all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could change the world by sharing my ideas, and have not love, I am nothing. 

And though I give a portion of my royalties to feed the poor, and though I put my reputation on the line for the Truth, and have not love, it profits me nothing. 

Love suffers rejection, and is faithful. Love doesn’t envy the success of others. Love isn’t prideful about accomplishments. Love isn’t puffed up. 

Love isn’t self-focused, doesn’t seek favor, is not oversensitive to criticism, is not easily threatened. 

Love rejoices at the success of others. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

Love never fails: but where there be prophetic writings, they will fail; Where there be inspired messages, they will cease; where there be magnificent stories, they will vanish away. 

For we understand in part, and we write in part. But when perfection arrives, then my scraps of writing will be washed away. 

When I was a child, I wrote as a child, I understood as a child, I reasoned as a child; but when I became an adult, I put away childish things. 

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I am known in part, but then I will be known fully.
  
And now I must write faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 

The Keeper's Crown, Nathan Maki

Although The Keeper’s Crown is fiction, I believe with all my heart that it captures the spirit of the First Century Christians, and their struggles against the fierce world they lived in. You will feel the power of the Truth they held dear and you will bristle at the intensity of the opposition they faced. For Christians, this is our history and our identity.

The setup is that Quintus is on a hero’s journey of sorts, but you can kiss clichés goodbye because the Kingdom of Heaven doesn’t work that way. (Side note: Have some sympathy Tylenol ready because Quintus and others will get hurt 4,000 times. Some content is not for kids or people with blood pressure problems.) He and Jael are both reaching for hope in their own way, but are living out a complicated brokenness as victims of a barbaric society as well as their own mistakes. Their story covers much ground on the theme of belief. We can know about Jesus, but what will we do about Him? Will we surrender? And what then…?

The Apostle Paul is one of my favorite people in all of history, and I was not one iota disappointed in his portrayal. I spent the first half of the book looking for him around every corner, when I probably should have relaxed and enjoyed the plot. Once he appears, he’s everything I imagined him to be. While we can’t unlock all the mysteries of who he was for sure, this is a beautiful and balanced look at a man who shaped words and ideas that live on in us today. Avoiding spoilers, I’ll just say Paul’s words take on a revived meaning in the context of his life story.

I hesitate to pass judgment, but in case you’re wondering – the time period, places, and people groups are shown vividly through excellent research. “Well-researched” is only a complement if the facts don’t overshadow the story, and in this case it’s all a perfect fit. The characters, their surroundings, and the events all blend together so smoothly into a singular message that as an aspiring writer myself I am challenged: This is what historical fiction is for. It speaks for both the living and the dead, memorializing their stories and challenging us to run the race with the same passion.

Among other golden qualities, I think my favorite fact about this book is that I did not guess the ending. I was off by eighty thousand miles. I read the last page with a mixture of emotions that I don’t think I’ve ever felt before, which is a sure sign of a unique story, well-told, and powerful far beyond the pages.

Read it, and get a friend reading it quickly because you will not want to experience this one alone.

To swallow a camel

Was Jesus funny? 

He had to be, didn't He? This blurb from “The Jesus of History” by T.R. Glover helped me think of Jesus in a new way. No thank you, Hollywood -- I can't imagine Jesus with blue eyes and a British accent. It takes work to reach back through time and language barriers for a more candid understanding like this, but it's so worth it. 

"A more elaborate and more amusing episode is that of the Pharisee's drinking operations. We are shown the man polishing his cup, elaborately and carefully; for he lays great importance on the cleanness of his cup; but he forgets to clean the inside.

Most people drink from the inside, but the Pharisee forgot it, dirty as it was, and left it untouched. Then he sets about straining what he is going to drink--another elaborate process; he holds a piece of muslin over the cup and pours with care; he pauses--he sees a mosquito; he has caught it in time and flicks it away; he is safe and he will not swallow it. 

And then, adds Jesus, he swallowed a camel.

How many of us have ever pictured the process, and the series of sensations, as the long hairy neck slid down the throat of the Pharisee—all that amplitude of loose-hung anatomy--the hump--two humps--both of them slid down--and he never noticed--and the legs--all of them--with whole outfit of knees and big padded feet.

The Pharisee swallowed a camel--and never noticed it (Matt. 23:24, 25). It is the mixture of sheer realism with absurdity that makes the irony and gives it its force.

Did no one smile as the story was told? Did no one see the scene pictured with his own mind's eye--no one grasp the humour and the irony with delight? Could any one, on the other hand, forget it?"

Imagery. Story. Metaphor. Jesus knew a thing or two about how to capture the imagination. This little revelation was only a starting point for me. I want to know more! But for now, that is all.

A Conversation with Jesus

Do you ever wonder what it was like to talk to Jesus one-on-one? In John 4 we have details of His conversation with a Samaritan woman. He asked her for a drink, and her response was to put up the guard of the cultural barrier between them. “Jews have no dealings with me.” Most likely she said this while looking at the ground between them.

He said, “If you knew who you were talking to, you’d ask me for a drink, and I would have offered you living water.”

She was skeptical. She asked, “Are you greater than my ancestor Jacob who built this well?”

He said, “Whoever drinks from this well will get thirsty again. I can give you everlasting life.”

He asked for her husband, knowing she didn’t have one, deliberately treating her with a dignity some would say she didn’t deserve. That led to discussing her marriage status. She lived with a man who wasn’t her husband, and she had had five husbands before that.

Jesus acknowledged the entirety of her past, but He didn’t berate her for it.

He saw the grief of a broken heart.

He saw her wounded spirit.

He saw self-esteem in shambles.

He told her, “If you knew who I was, and what I could give you, you would ask me for water.”

He talked to her in monumental terms of the ancient promises and world-changing prophesies about to be fulfilled.

She resonated with those words because she believed the Messiah was coming to reveal these things. She was perceptive enough to know that Jesus was important, but she couldn’t fathom that the Messiah was already close enough to touch.

Can you imagine her shock when He said, “That’s me.”

HE was the Messiah.

He didn’t elaborate on the gravity of her sins.

He simply offered her everlasting life.

In few words, He offered freedom from emotional bondage

He offered healing for her brokenness.

He offered fulfilment for her all her needs.

He made her a promise.

He gave her hope.

The next thing we know, this outcast sinner woman was running around town telling everyone, “Come see a man who told me all the things I ever did.”

Was she excited to tell everyone about her heartbreak? Her brokenness? Her sin?

No. She was excited because someone offered her unconditional love and eternal life. After just one conversation with Jesus, she was no longer ashamed of who she was. She wanted everyone to know about this gift of hope. 

As a follower of Jesus, I want to be able to interact with people like He did. I want a heart of compassion that will overstep the same boundaries and offer the same hope.

I can only speculate, but I would like to think that this lady in return gave her life as an offering to Jesus. I’m sure she was devastated at His crucifixion, and elated at His resurrection. I hope she was in the upper room for the first outpouring of the Spirit. Or maybe she was in the crowd when they asked Peter, “What should we do to be saved?” Either way, she had a story unlike any other. Her life changed on an ordinary day, in an ordinary place, after just one conversation with Jesus.