Creation Cries Out & So Do I

So, as promised before, I want to talk a bit about the book Velvet Elvis, which I completely devoured (and will now be rereading, highlighter in hand. Yes I’m a dork). The fact that I’m even reading this book is kind of a miracle in itself, as it was so highly talked up by friends who’ve read it, that I was ready to never give it a chance. And no, I’m not one bit a stubborn German! Add onto that fact that the first Rob Bell book I read “Jesus Wants To Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile”, frankly, was a huge disappointment and you get what I mean.

Instead of being a stirring socio-political plea to the church for a new way of seeing and relating to the world around us, I thought “Jesus Wants to Save Christians” was a high-level version of the Gospel from beginning to end, complete with teary eyed altar calls. So, I was skeptical to read his other uber-popular tome for the closet-Emergent movement. I thought, if so many people are saying it’s this good, then it really must suck. Yes, always the optimist!

But being stuck in a van for 8+ hours/four days straight will iron out the most stubborn of my kinks, and by day three I was coming to the last chapter of Velvet Elvis, and surprisingly, I found I didn’t want it to end. There was so much I got out of that book! Including joy, as I mentioned before, as Bell talked about finding God’s glory in the things that bring us joy. He asked the question “What makes your soul soar?” and just hearing that question felt so freeing and liberating. To hear him acknowledge the reality that God delights in our delight made my own soul feel like someone had reaffirmed something I’d known for a long time, but could never express. It was the elation at finding someone who shares a secret with you, and in that moment I only wanted to dig in more. I am trying to describe how much that one sentence moved me, and failing miserably. Let’s just say I’ve been asking myself that, “Trinette, what makes your soul soar?” for days now.

For the first time in a long time I remembered that God is calling me to have utter and pure joy in the things that He has created and placed around me, creation included. Sunday, it hit me once again, as I worshipped at Hope and they belted out (literally) the words to “Make A Joyful Noise/I Will Not Be Silent”. How many times had I sung that song at that church? How many times had those words passed over my lips, and all I got out of it was that it was a pretty song, about God’s pretty creation? But the words Bell had spoken came back to me at that moment, as my soul soared and I sang along to the floor shaking, bass driven, amazingly loud and passionate worship. Words that were nothing new reawakened in me something I must have known deep down, but never processed or “got” before. This isn’t singing about just the beauty of “bare feet on beaches white”, but is truly singing out to the Lord acknowledging the need for the redemption of all creation. Because, as Tim put it, if we didn’t sing it out, the rocks would, and no rocks were gonna cry out on our shift. Amen and preach it brother Tim! (BTW – I couldn’t figure out what brought me more joy yesterday, visiting their worship service – listening to Danny play, or the look on Tim’s face as Danny played. I think it was a bit of both. God has indeed created us for joy and his face reflected my heart that morning.)

And this eye-opening conviction about God’s creation crying out for redemption came on the heels of one of the most amazing trips of my last few years.

Ok, before I even get to it, can I just say that I am thoroughly convinced that I have a pulsing, throbbing, aching case of Wanderlust. If I could spend my days on the road driving, windows down, breeze blowing, visiting places I’ve never been before, marveling in the beauty and awesome magnificence of the American landscape and creation around me, well, I’d pack my bags now, for a nomadic lifestyle and never come home. More than anything else the last few years have seen and heard me begging to take a road trip to Jackson Hole, WY. And if I ever get a boyfriend (I just snorted iced tea through my nose at that hilarious thought), flowers and candy and sweet affectionate words won’t mean as much as the sentence “Honey, pack your bag, we’re driving to Wyoming this weekend” on a Friday afternoon.

Anyway, the Colorado Trip gave me the undeserved opportunity to worship God amidst a part of Colorado I’d never seen before, in all it’s rugged, mountainous glory and beauty. Purple mountains majesty, above the fruited plains indeed. And while marveling in the joy that God’s pine tree dotted, A River Runs Through It nature brought me, I stumbled across this quote, as one of our guides for the week directed us in a moment of appreciation for our surroundings:

“A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and
free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough... It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again," to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again," to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” – GK Chesterton

Today, as I sit stuck in this office, because legions of Vikings fans outside our building have made it impossible to get through the street that would take me to the library and lunch, I am impacted by how little most of us get to experience the joy in creation that was so lovingly and thoughtfully placed around us. For our joy, and His glory. I'm glad I had that opportunity many times in the recent months, and specifically with a group of squirrely young people lately.

My wanderlust today has not as much to do with the fact that I’m bored and frustrated in certain things, as much as my soul is crying out to soar in a setting full of silently crying out rocks and trees and rivers. Redeem it oh Lord, oh soon will You redeem it?

Why I'll Never Be A Good Christian Girl, And It's Prolly Not Why You Think.

So, if you’ve been keeping up here lately, you’ll know that I’m on this Joy kick. It all started a few weeks ago, on the Bike 2 Camp trip, when a good friend (ok, R for Roommate) was struggling with some interpersonal conflict with another person/group of people, and I was processing with him about not letting turd-like-people rob you of the chance to experience joy in your surroundings or your service. The whole “robbed of joy” cliché has been so overused in the Christian community, and yet as I said it to him, I realized I hardly had an idea of what it meant. I felt bad for even using it, at the time.

So, I started processing a lot about joy, and a few posts and weeks later there you have it.
In all this processing, one of the things that happened was that an insatiable urge to read and devour books about this Christian walk surfaced in a way that was unexpected and unprecedented for me. Usually I try to avoid a lot of the “Christian literature” out there, for the fact that I just get frustrated by all the ignorant hype, the fact that marketing to a solely Christian audience feels more like selling crappy animals in the temple, and how eager the Christian community is to pass off anything Jesus-related as a life-altering necessity, when in fact a lot of it is just repetitive, small-scope, Americanized bunko. Three books you definintely will not find on my bookshelf are The Purpose Driven Life, The Prayer of Jabez, and The Shack. Urgh.

And while I may be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, my temper boils whenever I walk into a Northwestern Bookstore and see aisles of cheesy sloganed tee shirts, clichéd fridge magnets and even Christian breathmints (because you know, they must use Holy Water in making them or something, as if Orbitz is just too risqué with their lewd and provactive commercials). To even mention the fact that most of the women in there look like they just stepped out of a circa 1974 Sears catalog & should be driving a 15 passenger van full of their Quiver-full homeschooled brood, instead of normal, respectable, moderately fashionable people, would be besides the point, and only make me look like a GAP (*gasp of shock*) snob. Does that make me, somehow, not a Good Christian Girl? Oh well.

But despite my personal opinions (and that’s all they are) about modern Christian lit and culture, and “exclusive to the saved” bookstores, I picked up a few books from the library before my recent trip, and within days had polished them both off. The first one, “Save Me From Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs & Lived To Tell My Story”, by Brian “Head” Welch was a pretty easy read, as ¾ of it was the author telling of the depravity of his life in the rock & roll scene, before he started following Jesus. The last ¼ of the book was filled with a sweetness that one senses in a child, starting wide eyed in wonder at a field of flowers all around him. That’s the sense I got as Head talked about the love he has for his Savior and Friend, Jesus, and the appreciation in his heart as someone who truly has been “saved”. It was not the intellectual think tank proposal of the year, but a good read nonetheless.

The next book I read was “The Myth of Christian Religion” by Greg Boyd. This was a great glimpse into the work of Boyd, who I’ve been curious about for quite a while. And while there were parts of this call to rebellion against anything incompatable with the way of following Jesus that felt more liberal than what I expected, it wasn’t anything that played out for it’s own sake. Rather, it was a completely valid argument to embrace a practical view on practicing the presence of God, which sounds more cliché than it was in the book. Anyway, more on that to come, and not because there wasn’t much to discuss in this passionate plea to the church but because the one book out of the four I’ve finished in the last fortnight that I really wanted to get into and yet was most skeptical about was Velvet Elvis, by Rob Bell.

And though I’d love to begin a review of Velvet Elvis right here and now, I found that I had so much to say about it, and went off on so many bunny trails because of all the subjects that it brought to the forefront of my mind, that I had to split my review of it into two additional blog posts. They follow ….. wait for it …. NOW!