Yes, the cross is an exceedingly strange religious symbol.

Embarrassing, even. An instrument of humiliation and torture, after all. We celebrate a guy getting tortured two thousand years ago. Yay for us.

Seriously, have you ever stopped to consider how truly bizarre that must be for someone who hasn’t grown up with it?

We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Greeks.

Think about that. For Jews in the first century and for many other nations conquered by the Romans, a cross was a symbol of cruelty and subjugation. It must have been exceedingly offensive to have Christians celebrating it. For others, it must have been just plain dumb, like this woman who commented on this article. People are in the same place now, of considering Christian symbols offensive or of simply not having any basis of understanding about them.

I taught Christology and Soteriology, the study of Christ and the study of salvation, last semester at Continental Theological Seminary and in my preparation and teaching came to appreciate even more than ever before the bizarre and terrible and wonderful fact of the brutal murder of the Person we worship.

I was reading the Pentateuch at the time, those delightful and jolly books of Leviticus and Numbers, and I was also studying Hebrews, and in the combination of those two parts of the Bible, the concept of sacrifice and atonement in Leviticus suddenly came alive.

Leviticus is all about sin, human brokenness, human impurity, and how we who once walked freely with God in the world He created for us now have to perform all kinds of rituals of purity and atonement for sin in order even to approach the outskirts of His presence.

There is so much blood in Leviticus. Do we ever stop to think about how important blood is? The life of a living thing is in its blood. Blood carries oxygen, it carries DNA, it fights infection, it brings nutrients to a growing embryo; when it is shed, a person dies; when a donor gives her blood away, another person is given life. Shed blood is the price for sin, and it is the great and undeserved gift of God to cover sin.

“For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes the atonement.”
Leviticus 17:11

Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
Hebrews 9:22

Instead of sacrificing their own blood for their sins, God provided for people to sacrifice the blood of a pure animal. That in itself was undeserved grace. But those animal sacrifices and all the purification rituals of Leviticus only worked for the moment in which they took place. A person could go away from the sacrifice of an expensive animal and promptly encounter something or do something that would make him impure and unworthy again, and he’d have to do it all over again. He was never permanently cleansed, and even when he was cleansed, he still was not pure enough to approach the very presence of God. There was no single sacrifice that would be enough, no blood pure enough and powerful enough.

Humans caused the problem, the sin that separated them from God, and so needed to atone for it, but no sacrifice performed by a human could ever be good enough.

Until a Person came who was both human and God. Human to fulfill humanity’s need to atone and Deity to be the one good enough to do it.

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
Hebrews 9:11-12

For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Hebrews 9:24-26

We don’t celebrate the murder of some random guy who preached good things two thousand years ago. We celebrate the willing self-sacrifice of a hero, the life-giving donation of pure blood, the sacrifice that covers all sin once for all and brings us not only to the outskirts of God’s throne room but into the very presence of God Himself, no longer separated and soiled by sin but cleaned by the purity of that blood.

So,

We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
1 Corinthians 1:23-24

Not all the blood of beasts
On Jewish altars slain
Could give the guilty conscience peace
Or wash away the stain.

But Christ, the heavenly Lamb,
Takes all our sins away;
A sacrifice of nobler name
And richer blood than they.

My faith would lay her hand
On that dear head, of Thine
While like a penitent I stand
And there confess my sin.

My soul looks back to see
The burden Thou didst bear
When hanging on the cursed tree
And knows her guilt was there.

Believing, we rejoice
To see the curse remove;
We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice
And sing His bleeding love.

By Isaac Watts, 1674-1748

When I get overwhelmed, I retreat, ignore, and bury myself in a book. I feel helpless and harassed and only want to get away from what is causing it. Not the most helpful or proactive response, but part of feeling helpless is feeling helpless to do anything to stop feeling helpless.

This morning I was listening to some old favorite music. I grew up on Christian music greats of the 1980s and 1990s, and I get a great wave of nostalgia when I listen to certain songs I grew up on. A couple of them suddenly became an antidote to helplessness. They didn’t give me tips for going out and dealing with issues. They reminded me of the exquisite, brilliant, Good News, which is sweeter and stronger and more prevailing.

There is a Savior
What joys express.
His eyes are mercy,
His word is rest.
For each tomorrow,
For yesterday,
There is a Savior
Who lights our way.

(“There Is A Savior,” by Sandi Patty.)

And in His eyes, they glimpse the power
That sees the heart of all men.
And He knows His Father’s mind,
He speaks His Father’s words,
For He comes in the name of the Lord

There is strength in the name of the Lord.
There is power in the name of the Lord.
There is hope in the name of the Lord.
Blessed is He, who comes in the name of the Lord.

(“In The Name Of The Lord,” by Sandi Patty.)

A mighty Fortress is our God,
A Bulwark never failing;
Our Helper He amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe
Doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great,
And, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.

Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
The Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth His Name,
From age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.

And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us:
The Prince of Darkness grim,
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure,
For lo! his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly powers,
No thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours,
Thru him who with us sideth.
Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill;
God’s truth abideth still;
His kingdom is forever.

(“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” by Martin Luther.)

New Testament Greek is particularly vivid, I find. This is going to be a bit weird, but I’m going to put my exact, word-for-word translation here, not smoothed out into reasonable English. Your brain may stumble on it, because Greek word order is very different from English. The way the writer organized things in the sentences puts emphasis on different things. It may make you see something you hadn’t seen before, or be reminded of something you hadn’t thought of in a long time. It might just make you go, “Huh?” (Bear in mind that this is by no means a definitive translation. It’s just me wallowing in Greek.)

“For that very reason [what very reason? read the end of chapter 11] therefore also we, so great having surrounding us a cloud of witnesses, every weight/hindrance putting off/getting rid of and the easily entangling sin, by/with endurance we should run the set/lying before us race/athletic contest, looking with undivided attention at the one [who is] of the faith a founder/originator and perfecter Jesus, who against/for the sake of the set/lying before him joy endured a cross of shame/disgrace despising/disregarding [either endured a cross of shame, despising it, or endured a cross, despising the shame], and on the right hand of the throne of God he has sat down. For consider attentively the one [who] so much having endured from the sinners against himself denial/hostility, so that not you may be weary/discouraged in your souls, being exhausted/giving up/losing heart.”

The end of this especially stood out to me. We *do* become weary and discouraged in our souls. But rather than giving up, we should look attentively at Jesus [that word indicates turning your eyes away from all else, thus fixing them on something in particular], who is the founder, the originator, the forerunner, the one who went through everything first, who endured the hostility [this word indicates the verbal attacks] of sinners and the utterly degrading shame of the cross. He was there first. He has already suffered what we suffer when we grow weary and discouraged. And He won out and took His rightful place of honor, where He is always interceding for us, His brothers, His fellow-heirs.

I adore Hebrews so much.

Here’s the Greek, if you’re interested:

Τοιγαροῦν καὶ ἡμεῖς, τοσοῦτον ἔχοντες περικείμενον ἡμῖν νέφος μαρτύρων, ὄγκον ἀποθέμενοι πάντα καὶ τὴν εὐπερίστατον ἁμαρτίαν, δι’ ὑπομονῆς τρέχωμεν τὸν προκείμενον ἡμῖν ἀγῶνα, 2 ἀφορῶντες εἰς τὸν τῆς πίστεως ἀρχηγὸν καὶ τελειωτὴν Ἰησοῦν, ὃς ἀντὶ τῆς προκειμένης αὐτῷ χαρᾶς ὑπέμεινεν σταυρὸν αἰσχύνης καταφρονήσας, ἐν δεξιᾷ τε τοῦ θρόνου τοῦ θεοῦ κεκάθικεν.

3 Ἀναλογίσασθε γὰρ τὸν τοιαύτην ὑπομεμενηκότα ὑπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτωλῶν εἰς ἑαυτοὺς ἀντιλογίαν, ἵνα μὴ κάμητε ταῖς ψυχαῖς ὑμῶν ἐκλυόμενοι.

And what people mean by “something better” is something spectacular, something amazing, something miraculous, something that will burst over you all of a sudden with fireworks and magnificence and joyousness. A miraculous provision of funds. A perfect, European, missions-oriented spouse. A place in missions which will be all the better for the long delay.  God’s better must always be something that will make our hearts cry out in joy, right?

But then, what if it doesn’t happen? What if you prayed desperately for a spouse, or a baby, or a healing, or a miraculous provision of funds, or supernatural favor, and either it didn’t happen, or it didn’t work out the way you planned and dreamed it would? Does this mean God has failed, or didn’t care, or has been too busy to take notice of you? Does it mean “God has something better” is a lie? Should we just stop hoping?

By “God has something better,” people never mean, “You are just going to keep slogging on and on and on in the face of a stony silence in regards to miraculous outpourings.” They never mean, “Actually what you dreamed when you were 9 is never, ever going to happen.” They never mean, “You won’t get to the mission field until you’re 35, and then only by sidling in sideways.”

This is a gratuitous photo of the weather conditions on my last big itineration trip.

But what if that’s what “God has something better” actually means? What if God’s better is actually the thing that feels so much worse while it’s happening? What if the very thing that is undesired and feels harder and more painful and unfair and even traumatizing is actually God’s better, better for you than miracles and short cuts and open doors and being given what you want so badly?

Over my two years of itineration, I filled 12 journals with reflections on my journey. I was reading over them this week and realizing how many times I made plans that I was certain were what I needed. I was going to raise my budget and be in Europe by January 2015. I was going to raise my budget and be in Europe by May 2015. And when those plans fell through, how many times I wrote confidently that God was sure to do something miraculous just around the corner to cover for it. And He never did. Nothing miraculous and extraordinary happened to make up for the dashing of my plans.

This is a gratuitous picture of a mushroom in the rain.

I’m making more plans right now, because I am a natural planner and plotter and dreamer. I plan on getting my visa application into the mail by next week, and I plan for God to expedite the process through the Belgian bureaucracy, and I plan to have it approved in time for me to be in Europe before a big missionary conference that is happening on my birthday. It’s a brilliant plan. So reasonable. So logical. It could happen.

It also could not happen. Maybe I’ll spend my 35th birthday pouting to myself in my apartment in Missoula. Maybe nothing remarkable or joyous or delicious will happen in exchange for my lovely plans not coming to fruition.

This is not a cynical, hopeless blog post. It’s actually a joyous one. Because God’s better is better, no matter how it feels at the moment.

What’s better than instantaneous, miraculous provision that makes people glorify God? How could struggle and pain and lots and lots of crying and pouting and disappointed hopes and slogging and finally having to take the undesired route be better than miracles?

Because of this:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Romans 5:3-5

I actually never understood these verses before. I didn’t even like them.

But the hope for favorable events, the hope for our own (perfectly good and God-honoring) plans to come about, the hope even for miracles to get us out of our situations is a hope in circumstances. Such hope is easily dashed. Whereas the hope that comes from perseverance in the face of difficulty and pain, and the character and maturity God desires for us that come from such dodged, white-knuckled perseverance…that is a hope in God. A trust in His authority, His sovereignty, His wisdom, His superior plans. That hope does not disappoint us.

That is the better that God has planned for us: not necessarily (but not necessarily not) better external circumstances but rather better internal development into who He created us to be. Better maturity, better faith in His never-changing goodness, better submission to His will. It may be wretched getting there (or it may be brilliantly delightful—it may be both at the same time), but it is better. Better than having what we ask for and never getting there.

God did not give me financial and timeline miracles while I itinerated (well, maybe one or two little ones…), and He paid absolutely no attention to my brilliant and reasonable plans, and He did not expedite my process, except at the end, when He did it in a way I absolutely didn’t want. But He’s made me into a person who understands perseverance a whole lot better than I did two years ago and who is willing to say, “I want this awesome thing…but if You don’t give it to me, I trust You.” It took a great deal of whining and “Whaaaii aren’t You helping meeeee?” and no doubt I have more opportunities for whining and pity parties to look forward to in the future. But I have greater hope in God’s eternal character than I did when I started out itinerating with all my optimistic plans for Him to follow. I suppose that’s better.

This is a gratuitous picture of the sunset over the Pacific Ocean in Washington.

My memories of Advent from my childhood involve being given Advent calendars with chocolates behind each of the little doors by my Catholic relatives and being terribly excited about opening each day’s little door. That is the extent of my exposure to Advent for nearly thirty years. Though I was raised in a strong, Christian home, we were Pentecostal and didn’t celebrate the Christian Year, except for the normal Christmas and Easter. As an adult, I simply didn’t think of it, because it wasn’t part of my culture.

Until two years ago, that is, when I read a short editorial about it in the Religion section of the Sunday paper, and suddenly Advent took on a great deal of significance. The very theological concept of it intrigued and excited me, because theological concepts do intrigue and excite me. My soul is enlivened when my mind is stimulated by some lovely theological idea, and the idea of Advent certainly did that. But it’s also become significant over the last two years because of the current situation I find myself in, a kind of perpetual Advent.

Advent is a state of waiting. It’s a short amount of time that symbolizes the whole history of the Jews waiting for their Messiah, the whole longing of creation for a Redeemer. This is the time where we sit back and wait as if we were old Anna and old Simeon (Luke 2:22-38), recognizing God’s promises that He is going to change everything for the better and yet not seeing how or when. The Jews waited for thousands of years, and we Christians join them during Advent in waiting for Christ, the Messiah, to be born and turn the world right-side-up again.

Advent is a state of liminality, and that is where I find myself these days. Liminality is a term used in anthropology to describe a state of in-between-ness, and I have in a way reframed it to my own context. To me it means the state of waiting between the promise and the fulfillment, the period of time that stretches out for seemingly eternity while you wait for something to happen. It’s Christmas Eve night when you were a child and couldn’t sleep all night for anticipation of the next day. It’s sitting in the hospital waiting to find out whether your loved one is going to make it or not. It’s the time of numbness between a death and the funeral, of waiting backstage for your cue to go on, so nervous you think you’ll throw up, of the hundreds of years between Isaiah prophesying that the virgin would conceive a son and name him God With Us and the time when Jesus was actually born. It’s Christians for the last two thousand years saying, “Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus” and not yet seeing it. It’s me, stuck between a call to missions and that undefined, tantalizing time in the future when I will be financially in the position to go do it.

Tantalizing, aggravating, frustrating…just waiting. Waiting and hoping. It’s a time for hope, this liminality, and for trust. Liminality gives us room to learn a quiet trust in our Father, who is not slow in keeping His promises. Isaiah, the prophet we quote most when it comes to Christmas, says, “You shall triumph by stillness and quiet; your victory shall come about through calm and confidence” (Isaiah 30:15, Jewish Publication Society version). We’ve been given promises by the God whose nature we trust; I’ve been given a call to missions by a God who has never broken faith with me. I think of this little piece of Hebrews, in between two verses: “Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus…” (Hebrews 2:8c-9a). We see what God has already done, and that gives us room to grow in faith, hoping for a promised future we cannot yet see.

I am in a state of liminality, and Advent reminds me to hope that more is coming.

Proof of my struggles with math, from my journal, age 9, 1990. Note the gleeful grin of the anthropomorphized mathbook and the distress of the symbolic representation of me. Also Math has the curly hair I wanted as a child, while the figure of me doesn’t. Cruel. (You can click for a larger version that’s more readable.)

I am not a math person. Most school subjects come naturally to me, but every form of math was a struggle for me every year of school I had to take it. Numbers are nasty, slippery little things that don’t do anything they’re supposed to in my brain. That’s why when I want to distract myself from crying, I do simple math in my head, because it’s difficult and distracts me neatly.

So, last Sunday a testimony in church and a couple of lovely worship songs extolling the attributes of God combined to make me feel inclined to cry, because such things do, and I didn’t want to because I had very soon to stand up and deliver a sermon on the letter to Pergamum in Revelation 2. A strange thing to be all teary-eyed during. So I distracted myself by adding in my head: 2+2 = 4, 4+4=8, 8+8=16, 16+16=32, and so on, up into the thousands, losing my place a couple of times because numbers are slippery beasts.

Now, this is a mundane, ostensibly unworshipful thing to do during what we are pleased to call a worship service, but I have a philosophical and theological problem with creating a divide between “worship” and the rest of life. Human beings are designed to worship God with all that we do, and I think that assigning the title “worship” to the singing portion of a church service creates an unnatural category in our category-loving minds. Standing and singing worshipful songs to God becomes the totality of what worship is to us, when really it is only a tiny drop in the comprehensive ocean of what worship is*. Anything that is done for the glory of God is worship, and anything that causes a conscious awareness of the  magnificence and gloriousness and beauty of God is a thing that leads us to worship.

In this case it was very simple math, because as I concentrated on numbers instead of songs, I began to detect a pattern, and as I thought about patterns in mathematics I began to think about the logic and orderliness of mathematics in general and how it so clearly reveals the creativity, the orderliness, the intelligence, the very goodness of the Mind who put such precision and order into our world. I wondered how anyone could possibly love math and not fall in love with the Mind behind it and how anyone could possibly be a mathematician and an atheist at the same time. And so, thinking of mathematics, I worshipped its Creator.

I’ve always struggled with the worship service portion of church services. I’ve always felt guilty for my mind being busily at work doing all the things it does: observing, analyzing, criticizing, making connections, theologizing, anthropologizing—being “distracted from worship”—and only rarely doing what they say you’re supposed to do during the singing portion of a church service, which is somehow being so caught up emotionally in the sensations of being in love with Jesus that one doesn’t want to think or do anything but sing songs and wave one’s arms about. That doesn’t happen to me, or appeal to me as a thing to want have happen to me, and the popular conception of Heaven as a place where we’ll stand about having a church worship service for eternity sounds like a nightmare to me. I have in the past actually wondered whether I even loved Him at all because I did not tend to experience emotional sweepings-away in worship service settings. I can’t turn off my mind and its never-ending observing, pondering, and analyzing, and what’s more, I’ve come to a place where I’ve decided I won’t try.

My mind is my greatest asset in worship, whether it’s in the singing portion of a church service, in rejoicing gloriously in being alive while I’m riding my bike, in translating an enthralling Greek verse and contemplating its depths—wherever I am or whatever I’m doing that draws my mind upward to God. The songs that did and do move me are ones that cause me to think wonderful theological thoughts about the nature and person of God. In short, songs that awaken my mind and integrate with the way it works.

I have become convinced that worship is less about going to the right place and performing the right acts and having the right songs, and more about a habit formed of letting anything and everything point to God, whether it be ecstatic singing or contemplating mathematics. When this habit is created, we will worship in church because we already do so in the rest of life, and wherever our minds and hearts turn, we will find something to draw us to God. We will never do it perfectly, but over a lifetime of careful training—training of our minds, I am convinced— we will do it better and better and more and more naturally. Worship won’t be confined to songs and a brief period on a Sunday but will encompass all of life. All of our living. Perhaps we’ll find someday that worship in Heaven isn’t just standing about in white choir robes with harps being God’s eternal choir but that living eternal life with God and in His presence is worship.

*Quote stolen and tweaked a bit from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

I’ve just realized today what it is that turns me off to this sort of movement thing. It’s that “I Am Enough” thing. I am enough? I am enough for what? I am enough for me? I have everything I actually need? If I just dig down deep enough into my own inner soul I will find out that I am actually all I need, everything I need? I can fulfill myself? I have the strength and power within myself to do everything I need to do and face everything I need to face, and all I have to do is believe in myself?

I have spent my entire life being told I’m not good enough (mainly by my own brain), and I have spent my whole life trying desperately to prove that I am. I have never strayed from God. I have never done anything particularly bad. I am a responsible, pathologically polite person. I am very intelligent (probably not a genius, which is frustrating) and creative and quirky, and by George, I think I’m interesting. I like my own company, and I try very hard to never give offense to anybody under any circumstances and never to appear irresponsible or unable to do what I should be able to do. Criticism (especially constructive criticism) flays me alive, because it demonstrates that I am not as good and able and responsible as I should be. I am supposed to be enough for everything that is expected of me. After all, I am The Missionary. The Good Christian. The Intelligent and Rational Person. I have been Called. I have so much going for me. I should be enough.

I am not enough. Digging deep inside myself to find all those hidden reserves of magnificence and power and stuff, I have found that under the intelligence and capability and proper behavior and interesting, creative quirkiness is actually a very small, naked, frightened person who’s probably about 5 years old and has no idea what on earth she’s doing.

Someone has given this particular 5-year old a job, and that is raising $6,213.92 per month for 3 1/2 years. Doing so in a timely manner will prove that I am good enough to go do an even bigger job in Europe. I have applied to this job all the considerable resources I have, all the intelligence and responsibility and courtesy and analysis and new-found public-speaking ability and creativity and love of missions and new web development skills and writing skills and story-spinning ability and the story of my call and personal development and my emotionality and my rationality and my personal contacts and love of baking, and found…I am not enough.

Thank God for that.

Honestly. Having to prove that you are enough is so stressful. Always trying to be invincible and impermeable and infallible because that is what you perceive is required of The Missionary (Itinerating Edition)–it’s exhausting. Constantly living in fear of the disapproval of the people who review your progress every month…

I am not enough for the task I have been given. God never intended me to be. He didn’t give it to me because I would do it perfectly and instantly. I think maybe He gave it to me to teach me this:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

God has given me many strengths that will be invaluable in the work I will do. He really has given me a calling that suits who He made me to be. But I am still not enough. I will never be learned enough or good enough or an efficient enough fundraiser.

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
2 Corinthians 12:9

That’s the way it works, in those magnificent paradoxes that make up the Christian life. We are weak, frail, unable, fallible little creatures, and it is in our weakness, frailty, inability, and fallibility that the power of God carries out its work.

I am thankful for my strengths, for who God has made me to be. I am so thankful I can use them in the work He is doing in Europe. God’s creativity and kindness are revealed in them.

But I am learning to be thankful for my weaknesses as well. I am not enough for everything that life asks of me. Not sufficient. It is God’s grace that is sufficient and His power that is currently being perfected in my weakness. My weakness and lack of sufficiency and enoughness (new word; I invented it myself) provide a space in which God’s power works.

How nice not to have to be enough, not to have to fulfill all my needs all by myself. How nice to have Somebody Else to hand them to. (When I’m not busy taking them right back and cuddling them and pouting over them and worrying about them…) How lovely that the only Person I have to prove myself to is the only Person I don’t have to prove myself to.

We tend to see struggle as a bad thing. I know I do. I’ve grown up with money struggles, with struggles to be the kind of Christian I ought to be and figuring out what that looks like, with my perception of who I am as opposed to my perception of what society thinks I should be. Right now I am struggling with figuring out ways I can effectively raise my missions budget without being pushed into doing things that feel like a betrayal of who I am and how I approach life. I have tended to think that if I am struggling, it means I am in the wrong place, doing the wrong things, dealing with things in the wrong way.

But recently I read a blog post that put such things in a different perspective. It was called, “What If I Fall Apart On The Mission Field?” and here is part of what it said:

“But — what if that’s not such a bad thing? I mean, what if it doesn’t end there, with you at the end of yourself? What if all the stuff that surfaces is supposed to surface? What if the only way to know what’s inside your heart is for it to come out? And what if the junk that needs to come out wouldn’t actually come out in your home country?
So maybe those multiple breakdowns have a purpose. Maybe knowing your weaknesses means you know God more intimately. Maybe you are exactly where He wants you to be, right at this moment. Maybe living overseas means becoming the person that God created you to be.”

Can it be true that God has ordained this fundraising struggle for me? The fact that I am struggling means that I am dealing with something that needs to be dealt with. That God has a purpose for my wholeness and strength, and to get there, I must have this struggle.

It made me think of the familiar verses from Romans 5.

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

This struggle can be a reason for joy, because God is in it. God has a purpose in it. God is producing perseverance in me, creating in me the character I need for the life He has given me, developing hope that is not mere naive optimism but is based on the love He has poured out on me. Through my difficulties in fundraising, God is making me the right person to go teach future missionaries in Europe.

I’ve definitely not fully learned this yet. I’ve only just discovered it for myself, as if I were the first person who ever came up with it rather than hearing it over and over my whole life. But I’ve realized that whatever struggles are involved, I would rather be here in this place, itinerating, fundraising, struggling, than anywhere else in the world (except in Europe where I belong, of course).