Musings from Graceland

Wandering and Wondering
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My pal Heather is sold out to Jesus...literally sold out. A few months ago, God started talking to her family about leaving their comfy, secure, familiar life and moving away...moving away from where she's lived for what seems like forever...moving away from family...moving away from an established business...moving away from their culture...moving from the urban north to the rural south. They sold and gave away and said goodbye and left. They left to follow Jesus and His plan for them to reach out to troubled children and teens. They left because they love Jesus and they wanted to do whatever it took to obey Him and live a life filled with radical faith and love.

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Over the last few months, Heather has been sharing her path...a path filled with ups and downs, victories and defeats, laughter and despair. She shared in her blog this weekend about the confusion she has often felt during her journey to follow the Master. She has been kind enough to let me share this here at Graceland:

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I have absolutely no news to report in regards to our foster license.
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As that piece of non-news settles, allow me to expound upon that which has been really pestering me lately….
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My husband has always said I have a terrible sense of direction to which I protest vehemently. But the truth of that is becoming increasingly apparent as I try to navigate both the winding country roads of these mountains and the winding cognitive trails in my brain.

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What they have in common is a sense of how completely lost I am most of the time. .
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If you, like me, have lived in the same place for a very long time then you know what it means to never need directions. I knew where everything was and I knew how to get there and I could tell others how to get there with complete accuracy. But put me in a new environment and I wander aimlessly unable to discern which direction is the best route to take.

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So now that I am not only in a new state but trying to follow a new type of directions (i.e. “turn left at the big oak tree”, directions that cause even my trusty GPS device to short-circuit), I spend a lot of time wandering and wondering.

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There are many signs pointing to different roads I can take, signs telling me when I am arriving somewhere and when I am leaving that somewhere. So, in my usual metaphorical fashion, I started thinking about my spiritual journey.

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In many ways it has followed the same path as my physical journey. For a long time I stayed in one place, so familiar with it I no longer felt the need for any directions and never felt the desire to travel elsewhere, probably out of fear of being lost. Since leaving that cocoon of familiarity, I have wandered sometimes aimlessly and sometimes like I knew where I was going when I really didn’t but was too embarrassed to ask for directions.

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I am now at the point in my journey where I realize that I may get lost at times but I am no longer afraid of it. You see, I have spent so much time trying to read the maps others have given me, to follow the directions they have written down, all to no avail. Even when I followed their instructions to the letter I still never arrived at the destination I was seeking. I have realized that man has taken the map that God gave us and added detours, shortcuts and construction zones.

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Have you ever been lost and stopped to ask for directions from a group of people only to have them bickering over which is the best way for you take? That’s what I feel like after all these years of trying to find my way spiritually.

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I was raised in a tiny, rather legalistic denomination. They had it all figured out. They seemed to know better than anyone else which way was the right way and you knew whether or not you were going the right way if you followed their detailed directions to a T. So I figured if I didn’t wear any make-up or didn’t go to school dances or movie theaters or bowling alleys or wear shorts or consort with any Catholics then I would arrive safely at my destination. The interesting thing was that as I was traveling down the road they had pointed me to, I watched the direction-givers wander off into the ditch of adultery and the dead end of abuse and I wondered why they didn’t follow their own directions?

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So I set out on my own, determined to find my own way without any directions whatsoever. I would be a spiritual explorer and it would be an adventure. Right? Wrong. I ended up so lost in a jungle of sin that I thought I would never find my way out. I realized that I needed those directions. But where could I get some I could rely on?

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I went back to the familiar surroundings of church life thinking that if I could find some travelers who looked like they knew where they were going I could follow them. I told them all the places I had been and they smiled. Silly little traveler, those other churches were giving you the wrong directions but we know the right way…follow us. So I did. I traded legalism for elitism and put on the smug countenance of one who knows the way.

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I trailed behind them for a while desperately trying to catch up with those at the head of the pack but I never made it and I eventually stopped trying. I am obviously not of their caliber. I am not an Olympic Christian.

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So now I wander again and I look at signs and I watch for the boundary markers, the big lines drawn in the sand, that we have all set up so we can see that this is us and this is not you, the signs that inform me when I have entered one school of doctrinal thought and left another.

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You would think that if you asked a group of people who lived in the same area how to get somewhere, they would all give the same directions but for some reason, they all seem to have their own opinion, their own idea of what is the best way to go.

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I thought the same of Christians, too. It seems to me that if I ask a group of Christians what it means to be a Christian they would all give me the same answer. But instead invisible walls fly up all around them as they prepare to defend their territory, the imaginary land of only-we-know-the-truth.

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“I have tried to remove the plural form churches from my vocabulary, training myself to think of the church as Christ did, and as the early Christians did. The metaphors for her are always singular- a body, a bride….we’ve got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back and He’s coming back for a bride, not a harem.” (Irresistible Revolution)

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At the risk of sounding ecumenical (boy is that word going to set some people off), I have to agree. I truly do not believe that Christ will care one way or the other if you are Baptist or Methodist, Calvinist or Arminian, covenant or dispensational, pre-, post-, amillenial, hymns or contemporary, instruments or no instruments, King James Only, let your kids trick-or-treat, read Harry Potter, if females wear dresses or cover their heads, if you are at stay-at-home-mom or work outside the home, homeschool, watch TV, or cook from scratch every night. What will He really care about? Check Matthew 25: 31-46.

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“But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

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Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left.

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I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’

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Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!'

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Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

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Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’

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And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.”

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There it is folks. The directions I have been searching for were right in front of me the whole time. When the time comes for me to stand in front of Christ on judgment day, He is not going to question me about why I let my kids dress-up like Spider-man on Halloween and He isn’t going to ask why I wore pants to church and He isn’t going to ask why I attended a church that used drums and guitars during music. He will not ask what denomination I am a member of or what translation of the Bible I read. He is going to ask me about my love for others.

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Any time I feel lost, any time I see others walking in a direction that is different from the way this scripture describes but that they insist is the right way to go, I will consult the map God gave us. I’ve got a wedding to get to and I don’t want to be late.

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To read more about Heather's journey on the road not taken, visit http://www.heatherfischer.typepad.com/ .