The Secret to Life (At Least for This Week)
Photo by: Sacha Styles
Photo by: Schmid-Reportagen
Did you know that we rely on microscopic diatoms to produce our own oxygen and that many of those diatoms come from melting glaciers? How many of us, other than perhaps those in that very specific scientific field, are regularly visiting glaciers to see if they’re melting fast enough or checking how many diatoms there are and freaking out about if there is enough oxygen for our next breath?
How many of us have wanted, at some point in time, to sigh and arm an argumentative “yeah, but” after reading the “don’t worry” section of Matthew 6? Don’t worry about what you’ll eat or what you’ll wear or about tomorrow. Worry feels responsible sometimes even when we know beneath the surface that it’s not productive. We’re so adult if we hum with the anxious awareness of all of the things. Insurance. Climate change. Interest rates. Violence in the Middle East. The Keto diet. Early signs of Alzheimer’s. Antibiotics in chicken. Unclean surfaces in restaurants. You name it, and it’s something screaming that it’s worth being on your worry radar. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not advocating for a “stick your head in the sand” life approach. But, I have been pondering lately just how deep the thread of dependency courses through all of life and if leaning into that dependency rather than fighting it is the key to what we seek—joy, innocence, wonder, etc.
Photo by: NASA Imagery
When you consider the point of view of an astronaut floating above the earth, when you consider the vital roles bees play in our existence, when you consider the imagery of the vine and the branches, and when you consider just how many times it is echoed in the Bible, “Do not fear,” it’s undeniable that while we’re all seeking self-sufficiency, nature is subtly reminding us that we don’t know what we’re going after. This isn’t actually a post about worry. I’m not interested in chiding you with the obvious “worry is a waste of time and energy, blah blah blah.” This is only a post on worry inasmuch as I feel that the underlying solution is what I’m actually holding in my heart, which is dependency.
I love my dog, Rocky. We didn’t name him; Rocky arrived, already an adult Doberman-lab mix and already trained, as a free gift to Raúl. Rocky was trained to be a guard dog, and unfortunately, he was given away because he was too good at his job. (Can I just say, as a side note, that my pup seems to be a perfect example of how dogs reflect their owners’ dispositions? Rocky is still a guard dog, but he’s also loving and obedient and, in comparison to his earlier stories has mellowed greatly under our care. He’s protective but with loving purpose.) My pup spends every day just chillin’. He moves from the porch to the sidewalk. He shifts positions, rolls in the dirt, and greets trusted people. (My favorite thing at the end of a long day is how excited he is to see me and when he meets me at my car to walk me to the door.) He may explore the surrounding hills just a little bit, but most of the time, he’s lounging in the sun or barking alerts across the neighborhood. If I have the door to the house open, he will come check on me every 20 minutes or so. He combs through the entire house until he finds me. He is very affectionate and demanding of attention in the sweetest way possible, and he is also very grateful. After he eats his food, he likes to come thank me by laying his head on my leg. When I think about my dog, I think about how refreshing it would be to be that free to be yourself. He just does his thing. He’s delighted to just be close to me. He doesn’t ever worry about earning his keep or keeping tab of how many hours he’s just been laying around. He doesn’t get embarrassed when he’s barked at nothing of consequence. And, he is totally dependent on me to give him water (especially now in the dry season), food, and medicine when he’s sick, and that dependency not only doesn’t bother him, it’s his most normal life. I wish I could be more like my dog.
So many seemingly unrelated things in life this week all coincided with a similar message reminding me of how fragile, needy, and inter-connected we all are. On a personal level, I’ve been simultaneously digging deeper into the truth of who God made me to be even in practical ways and pulling back from the striving attitude that I have to make things happen to be successful or of value. I’ve been observing almost like an impartial fly on the wall and holding the tension of the ways that ministry or life isn’t working out for myself or others as any of us thought. I’m in a season of walking the tightrope of heightened uncertainty, but grasping to peace rather than entitlement and using stillness as my weapon of hope. In the face of all of my questions, I’m learning to lean into dependency rather than fighting it.
The opening facts of this post were touched on in the documentary, One Strange Rock—something I recently started watching on Netflix. It is astounding how detailed the earth is. The ways in which forms of life depend on each other for existence is so precise, but it’s entirely based on God’s creation simply being what the Creator set them into motion to be. God has thought of truly everything in His provision for us, so down to the letter that we even have enough security in relying on oxygen that we have enough freedom and breath to complain about the weather or our lumpy mattress or how God is letting bad things happen. I cannot fathom the frailty of humanity. Is it any wonder that all of creation is crying out on our behalf as it says in Romans 8:19-20?
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
Photo by: Angelo Wagan
Creation already knows what it is and what its purpose is. It resides in that place of the freedom to just be, but how even more astounding to know that its still awaiting further freedom from decay. Yet, the mountains can’t make Jesus come back any sooner. The birds can’t list their entitled demands. They are dependent on God’s will and timing and also dependent on us and how seriously we’ll take our Great Commission.
At Bible study recently, we were talking about the book of Malachi and how hard it is to understand God’s silence for 400 years before Jesus arrived on Earth as a baby. How many generations of people died still hoping to see the fruition of so many prophetic promises? It served as a reminder to me that God is telling a story about Himself. It is a love story to humanity, but humanity doesn’t get to decide how or when it plays out. For someone who struggles with striving, there is an element of that that provides relief. It means that so much more depends on God than on me. I don’t have to have the answers. But, even in the midst of the tension and perpetual question of “When, Lord?” that the Israelites carried in day-to-day life, we see plenty of examples in the Old Testament that God didn’t cut off the people who earnestly sought His friendship. He may have been silent on a national, prophetic level, but given how He visited with Enoch, was friends with Noah, and delighted in David’s worship, I don’t think that the individual Israelites who truly were looking for God weren’t finding Him at all in some way, shape, or form during those 400 years.
And, as foreign as the idea of waiting 400 years to see something you believe to be true may be, I was reminded while watching another documentary, The Most Unknown, that there are people who don’t even believe in God who do it every day. There are scientists seeking to know the answer to many questions but who are willing to give their entire lives to even just the possibility of discovering the answer to one specific question. Does dark matter exist? How are we even conscious of ourselves? Is time just a perception? What else exists in the universe? At least one of the scientists talks about being aware that a discovery may not be reached within his lifetime. Yet, he continues to work. He continues to study and hypothesize. He continues to believe that even if he doesn’t live to see it that what he is doing is valuable because someone else will be able to build upon his life’s work. That takes faith and perseverance. And, as someone who can feel encumbered by the desire for results and justification, it was encouraging to me to feel that, yes, what they do is valuable and to believe that God delights in their wonder, curiosity, and search.
Even as we all walk through ongoing waiting, decay, and uncertainty, God exists in that sweet spot of personal relationship. The power to hold that tension comes from focusing on Him in that secret place. If we try to look at the bigger things—the overwhelming, unending needs or our grand plans of triumph—we’ll either be overwhelmed to the fetal position or we’ll get puffed up with pride in our accomplishments and often end up as fools in ignorance. It’s when we keep our eyes on the God who is closely with us that we remain both grounded and challenged to believe for bigger things. It is completely acceptable and good to get excited about reaching the masses or long-term visions as long as we keep protecting and treasuring our own intimate relationship with God as the most sacred. It is from that place that He leads and also tells us His secrets.
And it is precisely that relationship that enables us to walk through suffering. In Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend’s book How People Grow, they talk about the role that suffering plays in human growth. That applies both physically in our muscles, and it applies emotionally and spiritually as well. Part of taking hold of suffering is learning to recognize the difference between the consequences of our own poor choices and the nudges we’re receiving to change in positive ways and the aspects of life that come from the evil choices of others or from living in an imperfect world. In both cases, denial and avoidance don’t bring growth. While we often want to run from suffering at all costs, the growth that comes through suffering is often what most inspires us as humans. It’s the young amputee that learns to walk with a prosthetic. It’s the mother who loses her son to a gunman’s sin but chooses to forgive. It’s the person who loses everything in a fire, but uses her suffering as compassionate fuel to start a ministry that helps other housefire victims get back on their feet again. It’s the drug addict who walks the hard road to sobriety and rebuilds his life with help. The point in all of that inspiration is that you must walk through it, but it should also be said that God is there to walk with us. Thus, the leaning into dependency once again. How much faster and more deeply and effectively do we grow when we admit our weakness, accept our need for help, pursue the resources to help us heal or grow, and walk the road to recovery and to being a fuller, more whole person on the other side?
Not only is God there to walk with us, but Jesus actively entered into our suffering as the Bible said that He learned obedience through suffering. I was human so as to be the perfect advocate for us, to understand what we walk through. With that considered, I often wonder if He wasn't a bit like a superhero discovering what He could do and who He was. There's nothing truer to the human experience than self-doubt and navigating who we are and what our purpose is. Part of suffering is also waiting and having time be out of our control. Perhaps Jesus knew for a long time what His purpose was before He could actually begin acting on it. And, while Jesus knew on a prophetic level that He would be resurrected, His prayers about His cup of suffering reveal that He faced the same emotions we feel about fear of the unknown or fear of physical pain.
On a personal note as a missionary, suffering to grow has meant laying down my best plans. It has meant crying in the secret place in the midst of losses I never saw coming. It has meant praying in the resources for someone’s school tuition. It has meant grappling with my own value as yet another ministry vision falls through or another relationship doesn’t work out as expected. My seasons of greatest growth have been when I’ve chosen to lean into dependency. My seasons of lost time have inevitably been when I’ve stubbornly harped on my own demands, have refused to acknowledge that I was suffering, or have avoided God’s presence to avoid facing my own pain.
God gave us the Great Commission, but as Matthew Backholer asserts in his book, Global Revival, Christian history shows us that even in our mission we are totally reliant on God for the greatest moves of the Holy Spirit that lead to the masses having an encounter with the real God. He refers to Charles Finney:
Charles Finney wrote: ‘It is altogether improbable that religion will ever make progress among heathen nations, except through the influence of revivals. The attempt is now to do it by education and other cautious and gradual improvements. But as long as the laws of the mind remain what they are, it cannot be done in this way. There must be excitement sufficient to wake up the dormant moral powers and roll back the tide of degradation and sin.’
While some of that language may seem outdated, and I would certainly caution on relying on emotions as the dictator of what is deeply spiritual or not, as a missionary in her eighth year, I can say that he is right. Even what takes place in one individual’s soul when they come to know God personally and believe in Jesus is something that no human can do. It’s a revival of that person. When I look back on meeting Esthefany, one of the young people here I’ve known the longest and who has had such a drastic transformation, while I can tell you that I was myself with her and have spent many hours counseling her and have invested in her education and have treated her like a daughter, I cannot claim that her transformation came about apart from the divine work of the Holy Spirit in her heart. And, I know that it was all Him because I’ve done the same kinds of things for many many other young people who have not experienced God in the same way or made the same choices she has.
Matthew Backholer continues:
Jesus should be at our very core, the power plant and fuel of our very existence, if we do not want to please Him, then who are we trying to please? It was Henry David Thoreau who said, “It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?”
So as a missionary who is dependent on God even for the harvest, as someone who has seen sponsored students not graduate, sober (former) addicts return to drugs and the streets, and religion brow beating people so desperately in need of love, what can I be busy about? If I cannot make a revival magically appear, what can I be busy about? As any human who has great plans and lofty desires even for the greater good but who regularly sees life not working out as planned and hoped for, what can that person be busy about? When a cancer diagnosis is delivered to a person who gives their life serving others, when a car accident takes a loved one too young, when the financial rug is ripped out from under someone who has been generous, when you are holding God’s promises and prophetic words close to your heart but see the opposite happening, what can you be busy about?
Leaning into dependency. When Jesus was about His Father’s business, He was still only doing what He saw His Father do and saying what His Father was saying. He got away from the crowds because His spirit was so utterly dependent on God’s presence as His life-giving fuel. Jesus came as someone dependent. He was a baby who had to be fed before He could feed the 5,000. Leaning into dependency doesn’t mean throwing in the towel. It means going deeper into the secret place. It means choosing to bring your broken heart into the Holy Spirit’s comforting, mending presence. It means laying down the best laid plans on the altar of sacrifice. And it means receiving, admitting weakness, and asking for help. And it also means embracing the freedom to be you without obsessing over making anything happen. Free, like the diatoms who are blissfully unaware that all of life depends on it. Faithful, like the sun that keeps rising and the tide that keeps coming in. Persevering, like the scientist who keeps experimenting with no guarantees. Delighted, like Rocky, just to keep close to Him, ministering to Him with our wonder, our worship, and our love.
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