With unveiled faces

Because I read 2 Corinthians 3 today, and it was too beautiful not to share.

You’d think I’d kind of “get” the Bible by now. Not all of it, I mean, the bits about prophecy, or free will and the sovereignty of God, those mysteries we only expect to really understand to a certain point. But, then there are bits like 2 Corinthians 3.

At first glance, it seems pretty straightforward: new covenant vs. old, and ok, that’s cool, thank you Jesus I don’t have to kill sheep anymore (because really, yuck!). I never looked deeper than this. But oh, I missed the point to such an incredible extent!

Today I read it again, and I found it, the buried (but not really, I just wasn’t blowing the dust away) treasure. It’s about transparency. Seriously, that’s what it’s about. It’s about being so confidant in your sufficiency in Christ, that you can finally expose your heart. It’s about not having to hide anymore, not having to be afraid of what people will see when they look at you. It’s about freedom.

Do you remember, in the Old Testament, when Moses came down from meeting God on the mountain and covered his face with a veil? Do you know why he did that? It was so that no one would see the glow of the glory of God fading away.

He wore the veil to hide his insufficiency.

I am still wearing a veil. I hide my brokenness, I hide my failings, the awkward, unfortunate bits of my personality. I hide it all, and in doing so, I hide what God is doing in my heart; I hide the beautiful things too. Why do I do this? Why don’t I believe everything God has said, about how He is my sufficiency now, about how he has and is changing me, bringing me from glory to greater glory?

Why don’t I believe that?

Why do I hide my heart and try to fake my own righteousness, instead of exposing it and trusting that people will see the good things that God has, and continually is, putting there? Why don’t I believe that’s enough?

2 Corinthians says my heart is a letter, and God is writing it. And it’s not really for me. He’s writing it for the world he loves. But I’m holding it back, securing it away behind a veil, because I'm scared; I don’t really believe what God has said.

And that isn't fair.

Even my weaknesses are fair game for God to write through. He wants people to watch as all my petty weaknesses are overwhelmed by the greatness of Christ in me. He wants them to see, because He wants that joy for them too.

He died to bring us that; a life of freedom out from behind the veil.

There was another veil (but really, in all the ways that matter, the same veil) in the old temple. It’s purpose was to keep people and the glory of God separate from each other. When Jesus died, in the midst of the darkness and the earthquake and the dead walking, that veil, it tore, top to bottom--higher than any human hand could reach.

And here I stand, 2000 years later, clutching the torn edges closed like a fool.

In the words of our favorite Disney movie, “Let it go”.

After three years, these are the things I find myself holding.

Flowers in Empty Places                                    

It’s not that I forget, but after a while the tragedy of it all starts to slip between heartbeats. There are building foundations laying empty at my feet. Shattered glass and bits of lives glint all around in the dirt and weeds between them, but I’m on my way to work. To my right, painted flower petals on pieces of broken pottery blend into the real flowers growing out of the ruins of someone’s bathtub. 

At the volunteer center I laugh with the team of young people who’ve come to work with us for the week. As I show them what to load into the vans, we talk about how to act with the survivors we’re going to meet. They hardly blink as they listen, all strung-taught excitement and solemnness. It’s sweet to see, but I realize I can’t remember their names. Since the first year, the flow of volunteers has slowed to a trickle, but there have been so many of them. I can’t seem to keep the current names floating on the surface anymore.

It’s a cold day, fall closing in from the ocean. I shiver as we make our way through the straight, utilitarian rows of the temporary housing complex to the meeting room. There’s a cluster of curly gray heads waiting for us inside. I take a seat next to one of the old women, and she smiles at me, her head nodding in a polite little bow. I introduce myself in my awkward Japanese, and she gives me her name in return. It slips down to pool with the rest before I can remember to hold on to it. She tells me she’s from a town called Rikuzen-takata. Her old eyes are small between folds of sun and sea-salt worn skin. There’s a deepness in them though, filled with black water and bones when she says the name of that place. She blinks them back down and smiles. 

I don’t manage to follow the conversation for long. The elderly are always hard to understand, with thick, countryside accents and archaic vocabulary. As she tells me a story, her cloudy eyes distant, mine wander to craft projects tacked to the wall behind her. Next to them are pictures of school buildings behind crowds of smiling children, and flashing festival colors--snapshots of daily life before the tsunami came. High in a corner above them, a wide, photo-edited smile beams down from an autographed poster of some obscure singer. Under her name and the white gleam of her teeth, she’d written “you can do it!” in a cheerful, looping scrawl. 

There’s the skeleton of a sports gym still standing in Rikuzen-takata. A memorial, ringed in wilting flowers, mourns silently outside the front doors. The building had been a designated evacuation center, but it wasn’t far enough from the ocean. Gaping holes with jagged, twisted edges mar the walls, and inky mud covers everything. It stains the jumbles of clothes, books and photographs pushed in piles against the walls. There’s a car, half-buried and crumpled, in the middle of the court, surrounded by an audience of empty, mud-encrusted seats. Survivors say the water rose so high inside, people were holding onto the rafters in the ceiling. 

I’ve heard it was the younger people who were caught in evacuation centers. The older generations ran to the mountains instead. From the largest hole in the stadium wall, where the car was swept inside, you can see a school, listing and broken against the hills. It wasn’t back far enough either. I don’t know if that’s why we meet so many elderly people in these places, and so few of their children and grandchildren. We’re not supposed to ask though. As the woman beside me finishes her story, I re-fill her coffee cup instead, counting the minutes of the passing hour until it’s time to pack everything back into the van and move on.

 As we leave, she is the only spot of color in the gray afternoon. The clouds loom heavy and ominous in the sky, and behind the gray walls of the temporary housing units, the ocean mirrors them. They evened out the ground with gravel, and the pavement that winds between the straight lines of the compound is just this side of black. As the van pulls away from the parking lot, she follows, waving. Her shirt and smile are small and bright, like a children’s song. The gray looms around her; the walls and the clouds and the sea all bending hungrily around her graying head. She can’t see me through the tinted glass around the back seat of the van, but I wave and smile too, because it feels like she shouldn’t be alone in the middle of all that.

We take the team to another town, tromping over its bones to a furrow in the ground that used to be a train station. The team gathers on the old platform, cameras clicking, voices a little hushed in the broken emptiness of the place. I find myself down in the furrow between the platforms, dodging the spiders that have made the place their home. Small and bright, flowers at my feet catch my eye. Kneeling down, I wipe the dirt away from painted red petals and sunshine-yellow swirls as they trace the edge of a shattered bowl. I set it back down with a strange reverence, the flowers tilted up toward the gray sky. There are blue flowers, half buried a few steps away, and beyond them the curving tail of a tiny dragon hidden in the weeds. They seem too precious to leave, but there are far too many of them to carry away in my pockets. I pick up one sunny piece and steel myself to leave the rest. When I stand up, there’s an aching hollow place my chest. I tighten my grip on the jagged edges in my palm until I can feel my heartbeat against them.

Just a not about the pictures: These are mostly representational. For example, the woman in the picture below the 

description of the woman from RikuzenTakata is not the same woman. Also, photo credit to Deborah Quek, The Butterfly Project (Burton Sue) and Lina Oshio's iphone.

Stay by my cradle 'till morning is nigh

When I was younger, I used to have night terrors. I’d lie awake in my bed at night, too terrified to sleep. It felt like something terrible would happen as soon as I was unconscious and defenseless. It was embarrassing – what kind of teenager is still afraid of the dark? I think I've gotten a bit more secure now, because I can readily admit, it happened again a couple nights ago. It’s funny though, because do you know when the fear stopped? While I was sleeping (which, unfortunately wasn't until the wee hours of the morning, but nevertheless…). I had a picture in my head, when I woke up to the weak dawn light. It was of God, standing over my sleeping self with a drawn sword.

“It isn’t your job to keep yourself safe, sweetheart. That’s what I do.”

Sometimes God waits until we stop trying to defend ourselves to step in and fight the battle that was always His to begin with. Not because He likes to see us afraid, but because He wants us to know it’s all, always Him. That’s a truth I can rest in, because He’s a lot stronger than I am. Also, He doesn’t need to sleep. I really do. When I don’t I get all grumpy.

I don’t know where the

Darkness comes from.

From deeper shadows outside,

Or my own

Faith-lacking, shallow-beating heat?

It doesn't really matter though

Because You,

Like dawn breaking,

Soft and unstoppable,

Pour across my quaking,

Restless shoulders

And rock me to sleep

In the safe, still, constant dawn of

Always with you.

“Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 8:37-39

Break open my fish bowl

I remember the first time I came through Narita airport. Stepping through the terminal doors felt like stepping out onto a stage, in the middle of a play. Everyone around me seemed to know their characters and lines, and there I was, caught without a clue or a script, but trying so hard to pretend I knew my lines. Every interaction felt like a scripted scene, the people around me distant, like characters on a TV screen. I was only half there, really, peering out at it all from behind a glass wall. I loved it though, the excitement. It felt like magic.

It doesn’t feel like magic anymore. The glass wall cracked and shattered quietly somewhere along the way. I don’t remember where, exactly, but I remember it hurt. Even now, my hands sting from the little cuts the broken glass made when it fell. It hurts, but I’m coming to think maybe this small brokenness isn’t such a terrible thing after all.

Today I passed my ticket to the bus driver, and a spark of static electricity along with it, jumping finger-to-finger. He jumped and I apologized, chuckling, and he did too, smiling under his hat as he handed my ticket stub back. There was no glass wall. There was no script. Just two people momentarily together in a funny moment.

That’s all we are, really; people standing face-to-face with an ocean between us until the glass breaks. It’s so strange, the things we allow to divide us. Language? Temporary. Culture? Even more temporary. Economics? Education? What do any of these things matter against the weight of eternity? Because people, the real us that we are when there’s nothing else, that is eternal. That matters. That’s why Jesus spoke to a Samaritan woman, in the face of Jewish culture. That’s why he chose fisherman and harlots for friends, and healed the children of Roman oppressors. Because people are more important, so much more important than the things that separate us.

 I don’t want to forget that. I want to remember the scars much deeper than mine that broke his hands to crush what separated us from Him. I want to hold this truth like a sledgehammer against every glass wall.

In-flight Eggs

I flew back to Japan today. In most ways it was a really good trip; uneventful and about as quick as a flight from Seattle to Tokyo can be. In fact, my greatest complaint with the entire journey was with the eggs. I don't mean to be picky, I am extremely grateful for the ease of the rest of the trip. I'm convinced though, that even if there had been some tragic event, the eggs still would have been stand-out terrible.

I don’t know why I fell for it again. I swore a year ago to never again choose to eat eggs on an airplane. There’s something about airplanes and eggs. Put a perfectly normal omelet on an airplane and suddenly it turns into something else, shaped vaguely the way you expect it to be on the other end of the digestion process and colored an unnaturally bright yellow. And the taste. I can’t talk about it yet, I need some time to recover.

This time was even worse than usual. They tricked me with their terminology, you see. Usually, they call the airplane eggs an “omelet”. Got that once, never again. This time around, they told me it was “scrambled eggs and vegetables”. Sounds pretty good, right? Certainly reeled me in. It even sounded somewhat nutritional! Ha. There was one, sad little cherry tomato buried under the most horrible piece of brown not-meat I have ever seen. And then the eggs themselves. So. Bad.

Don’t make the same mistake, my friends. Just say ‘no’ to airplane eggs! 

The God who comes searching

Almost two years ago I volunteered at a Franklin Graham festival held in the tsunami-ravaged city of Sendai. I was on the security team (I know, not sure how I pulled that one off either), standing at the doors right at the front of the stage as Franklin Graham gave the altar call after sharing the Gospel with the packed auditorium. I’ll never forget the face of the first woman who came to the front. Because she ran. She ran to the front like someone going home, and when she got there, she looked back at the crowd, and I could see her face when she realized no one had run with her. She looked back at those still sitting or walking forward, and she was shocked. Her face said, “Didn’t you hear what he said? Why aren’t you running up here too?! How can you stay sitting there?!” I will never forget that face.

On Wednesday it was a normal day at the café. I didn’t even notice the rhythmic clapping sound and the accompanying chanting, it just sort of faded into the background. In a quiet moment I looked out a back window and saw a family gathered around the large black memorial stone set up in one of the many empty foundations surrounding the café. They had been clapping and chanting for hours. I asked my Japanese co-worker what they were doing, and she told me they were praying to the dead, asking them to please leave earth and move on to the afterlife. I looked out at them, bowing and chanting and clapping in front of that black rock. I thought about my own prayers that morning over a cup of coffee, the warmth and beauty of meeting with God. “Christianity is so different,” I commented to my co-worker, “They’re carrying such a heavy burden, but our God takes our burdens away.”

Today (Saturday) we held a Christmas concert at the café. A volunteer with an incredible singing voice came, and interspersed with the Christmas songs we explained the story of Christmas. At the end the pastor stood up and gave a Christmas message. It was a beautiful message; he talked about the meaning of God coming to us as a baby, not wrathful and powerful, but humble and small, kneeling down to sit with us in the dust. “God, the true God, is love,” he said, “Please remember that; God is love.” Across from me I watched the face of an old woman in a pink sweater. She hung on his words, hope and tears breaking softly across her face. She looked the same as that woman two years ago.

We forget sometimes how incredible the truth is. Worse, sometimes we get the truth mixed up with lies, and we start trying to earn what Jesus already died to give us freely. We fall into the worldy, hell-spawned pattern of religiousness, and we forgo the very thing that sets the truth apart from every lie. The truth is that God is love, and love gives. God gave us His Son, and in His Son is salvation-- freedom from sin, from being trapped in a place away from God. It is a gift, and as soon as we start trying to earn it, it is no longer a gift and we have lost the truth. I do this so often. I stop living in grace, I start striving, I inevitably fail, and when I do, I turn my face away from God in shame. And then God comes after me. He turns my face back to him and he says, “Christina, why are you hiding?”

“Because I was ashamed, Lord,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because I failed” (because I was naked, and the leaves aren’t covering anything)

“What are you talking about?” he says, “What leaves? None of that mattes anymore,” and he straightens the collar of the white clothes he dressed me in a long time ago, “It’s already done.” And it’s then that I see again the holes in His hands, “All you have to do, is stay here with me.”

It’s true, what he said; His yoke is easy, His burden is light. It’s His arm, tucked around my shoulders, as I choose to trust in His love and stay there with Him. When I remember to look at Him, I know there’s nothing else I’d rather do anyway. This is what Christianity is, and there is nothing like it. Sometimes I have to see it on the face of someone hearing it for the first time to remember, and then I remember why I want so much for everyone to know.

First snow

Do you ever have those moments when you're just going along, doing normal life things, and suddenly it feels like time just kind of stops for breath? You're left standing there in the stillness between moments, staring eternity in the face, and suddenly everything else makes perfect sense, or maybe just doesn't matter as much as you though it did.

I had this one a few weeks ago:

Today was the first snow of the season. It was just a little bit, you had to squint to see the flecks in the air. Mippa had decided not to wear a coat.

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked her as I carried her home, craning my neck and boosting her up on my hip to see her face.

“Yes I’m cold!” she declared, wrapping her arms around my neck and snuggling determinedly into my coat.

I tried to wrap my scarf around her, but it was awkward, with just the one arm available for the task. She seemed more interested in the snuggling anyway, so I hugged her close instead as we walked.

We were passing the old bike shop on the corner when I noticed the snow in the air. It’s a funny place, that old shop; a piece of Japan left untouched since at least 40 years ago. The dingy yellow light glowing from the crumbling awning out front caught the white flecks against the darkness of the old wood and the shadowy interior, and I stopped.

“Mippa,” I said into her dark hair, cool against my cheek, “It’s snowing.”

She pulled back, turning the wrong direction in my arms to look out into the street, “Where?”

“Look, right there,” I told her, pressing my face close to her little one and looking into the bike shop. She aligned her face with mine, and we stood still for one moment in the cold street, waiting. Two flecks fell, catching the light.

“Ah, hontto da,” she said, sounding just a little bit delighted, and rested her head back on my shoulder. Through the dusty glass I caught the curious eye of the old man at the back of the bike shop as he looked up from his ancient TV set.

I think I smiled.