Birth Pains.  Why Birth Pains?

It seems “birthing” new, saved, whole parts of us hurts, much like creation is pained until we become God’s sons and daughters.  What is God saving in you now?  That question may be the same as a doctor asking, “Tell me where it hurts.” 

This truth describes much of life!  Let’s scour the verses to see what God hints at.  These verses are thick, and … mystical. 

Before I get too mystical, trust this.  Some say they have a way to God’s glory sans suffering.  They lie.  See the truth in these verses.  Let’s map them.  The Greek words are highlighted identically with the English words. 

  Romans 8:17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him
sumpascho; sum & pasch; suffer with.  (One Word!)
 

in order that we may also be glorified with Him.
sundoxazo; sun & oxazo; to join in approving, hence to glorify together. Again (One Word!)

  ¹⁸For I consider that the sufferings
pathema; from pascho; that which befalls one, a suffering, a passion.
We get our word for paschal suffering or the “Passion” of Christ.
 

of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is
doxa; opinion (always good), hence praise, honor, glory.
God’s opinion is the truest and best opinion of us.  His is the most glorious of us.

  With the glory that is to be revealed to us.
apokalupto; from apo & kalupto; to uncover, reveal.  (Apocalypse, Revelation)

  ¹⁹For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of God’s daughters and sons.
apokaradokia; from apo & kara (the head) & dokeo; strained expectancy, earnest longing. 
We have thoughts about the way things should be. 
apokalupsis; from apo & kalupto; to uncover, reveal.  (Apocalypse, Revelation)

  ²²For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
sustenazo; from sun & stenazo; to groan together.  .  (One Word!)
sunodino; from sun & odino; to be in travail or suffer childbirth pains together. .  (One Word!)

  ²³And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons,
stenazo; to groan within oneself, to complain, deep sigh, grief.
the redemption of our body.
apolutrosis; to release on payment of ransom; redemption. 
This is not the Body, the church.  It is me: my flesh.  It is my lusts, my angers, my humor, my soul. 

Now, read them again. 
Romans 8:17 We are heirs. We suffer with Him
that we may also be glorified with Him.
  ¹⁸For I consider that the sufferings
we endure now are nothing compared with the glory that is
to be revealed to us. 

 ¹⁹For the creation’s anxious longing waits eagerly for us to be revealed as God’s children! 
 ²²We know the whole creation groans and suffers childbirth pains together until now.
²³We also, having the Spirit’s fruits in us we groan within ourselves,
waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters
 — the redemption of our body.

First, these verses show God as Father (Abba).  They show our status as His children is unshakable. 

Now, from these thick, rich words, explore some depths.  A warning: this one may finish fuzzy.  Why? I don’t know these depths.  I am one swimming over the Marianas Trench.  I can say, “Tall waves!” when the powerful reality is I am seven miles above the ocean floor!

Start here: we suffer.  Paul takes it for granted: you suffer.  So see two parts of suffering.  (Part One) Life comes with suffering attached.  Ours is a fallen world.  Alcoholic parents, anger, abusive people, depravity, gossip, divorce, cancer, dying children, dying friends, dying parents, war, bigotry, sexual damages, dementia, child exploitation, porn, money troubles, anxiety, anorexia, allergies, cheating spouses, depression, new diseases teaching me their initials as they kill someone close, and accidental anything — all come as part of life.  Can you possibly be untouched?  Life comes with suffering.  We live in a fallen world.  Any Christian message not dealing honestly with suffering is faux, fraud, a lie, a scam. 

Any preacher saying God only gives the good drives a Mercedes.  Any message shouting all sickness comes from unconfessed sin is nuts.  Easy religion sells.  Beware of who says “There is no suffering!”  Yes, liars are bold, but see who is listening!  Hear their listeners!  They’re angry, broken, questioning, and suffering.  Paul wades saying, “Suffering surrounds us!”  We live in a fallen world. 

That is not all to this broken Paul with visions and spells befalling him.  It is not all he wants you to see on suffering.  (Part Two of Suffering) Paul suffers for Christ.  He catalogues his sufferings a couple of times, beaten, cold, stoned, cast adrift and in peril.  He suffered for Christ.

A warning.  If you won’t embrace your suffering and trust God in it: if you won’t choose to suffer for the Lord — then the rest of Romans Chapter Eight belongs to someone else.  This is hard.  I repeat.  Paul builds the rest of this chapter on embracing this world’s suffering and trusting God in it, if you won’t suffer for Him any sacrifice or discomfort — then the rest of this chapter belongs to those trusting Christ here. 

What is built on this suffering and trusting?

You want intercession beyond words (26)?  You want all things working for good (28)?  Like being more than conquerors (37)?  DO YOU LOVE that nothing can separate us from God’s love (38-9)?  All these follow suffering.  You can’t reach the heights and bypass suffering.  Life brings suffering and God is in the middle of it.  You won’t follow Christ and NEVER suffer!  Jesus costs some fights … others hurt you.  Christ costs you gossip. Others hate that you don’t gossip.  He costs you anger.  Others see you as weak, and it all hurts!

You can’t reach the great stuff bypassing suffering.  See suffering sown among these great promises!  Great stuff is out there in Christ.  None comes before some suffering. 

We don’t like it.  We disagree.  Be careful.  With whom do you then agree?  “Buy this car, and drive happily ever after!”  “Wear these clothes, and be cool!”  “Use this skin care so your face looks happy!”  “If the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!”  Did you miss Jesus’ holes in His hands?  Paul has welts on his back. 

Paul says suffering happens…can it compare to the coming glory?  Hmm.  We go to doctors like other patients, but we don’t tell them, “If my suffering passes into death’s portal into heaven, that will be glorious!”  More doctors would be shaken and come to Christ. 

Popular theology turns and twists everything.  I am not out to guilt you, but this is true.  We assume quietly, “God never intended me to suffer.”  The result?  More born-again Christians divorce in America than atheists! 

Do you hunger for God’s opinion of you?  Do you thirst for God’s great opinion of your kids, of you to be true?  Do you believe God’s opinion of (glory in) you is more real than your feelings about you?  Paul thunders, “Glory is truer in you!”  Hold out for God’s opinion!  Endure suffering beautifully, gloriously my child!   Why?

Glory is revealed to & in us.  That word revealed is the mysterious, convoluted word for Apocalypse and Revelation!  John’s Revelation is off the charts deep and mysterious.  He sees beings covered in eyes, winged beasts, horrors ride up from hell, unimaginable cities of beauty descend from heaven, and a wounded-in-love Lamb!  Mystical.  Magical.  Wondrous. 

Suffering men, women and children across this globe serve God and see healings, miracles, visions, and hope, and more suffering.  This painful, crazy mystery is building to an Apocalypse — a revealing of God.  We hunger to know the Apocalypse of eternity and Paul screams, “Big deal.  It’s coming.  YOU are the major mystery!  Who will you become?!”

(22) God hears seal pups groan to death for fur. God hears species extinguished.  Do you hear creation groan for us?  God hears millions of rainforest acres groan with a melting Antarctic.  They suffer under our subjection.  Creation sighs and suffers awaiting our being birthed.  They trust their Creator to make it worthwhile as we are revealed as sons and daughters. 

Hear the groans of children dying early.  They are now birthed as God’s daughters and sons.  On dying their glory is finished in Father’s face.  Children start, suffer, and leave us.  Jesus wept.  Either they die and their glory is completed before Christ, Who suffered for them or we’re a joke.  Do you believe their glory lies beyond their suffering?  Do you trust Christ enough to suffer through to His revealing what is truest, most glorious of you? 

Why is suffering so important?  Why is it so important to us as Christians?  Look at 22 & 23. 

We make choices in suffering.  Suffering is neutral.  Some men lose wives, rail at God, and discard their faith.  Other men bury a wife and draw close to God.  Some die of cancer testifying of the Lord.  Others grow angry at God over disease and leave Him. 

Don’t miss this.  All Creation suffers along with us, birthing us! 

The ideas are indissoluble.  Groans together with, and endures birth pains together with cannot be reduced.  “With” is built into “groan” and into “birth pains”.  No whale chose to be hunted, but suffers in its Creator.  A rhino killed for its horn so a rich Japanese businessman powders and drinks it … groans.  They groan with us… as parts of the creation.  See the irony?  We are attached to them as well.  We groan at some level as they suffer. 

Do you see the view from here?  We’re on top of the world here, in Paul’s letter.  Seriously, this is a pinnacle.  All creation, all that became through I Am, all that is spoken by the Word of God, Jesus, is for this single purpose: birthing God’s daughters and sons.  This is the climax!

My wife’s exertion as she burst blood vessels in her eyes and sobbed: her trembling as she regrouped, sweated and her face burned red tell me we are birthed in pain: in another’s pain. 

I see three painful truths.  1) Did you arrive where you are in Christ, costing other souls much pain?  Did you thank them for what they endured for you?  We are self-absorbed, but can grow to see their pain, and thank God for them, and thank them for Christ in them. 

2) We make lousy midwives.  We allay others’ pain, when God intends the pain to birth a new thing new in her.  We prescribe for each other, substitute ourselves for the Comforter, and preclude what God was birthing in them.  Hear God.  Suffering and pain’s demise are promised only in heaven.  Down here, suffering and pain may be God’s midwives at the birthing of a child of the Living God. 

3) Why so much pain?  I’m attached to dead things in me, and He must tear them from my living soul! 

God is, in verse 23, redeeming even our bodies.  I saw one man’s addiction to pornography transform into his burning passion to tell others of the Lord.  It hurt.  Oh, he suffered, but God birthed something eternal that has saved others.  Don’t sin as a Gnostic thinking God saves my soul, but the body is a loss.  God is buying back even your body’s most painful parts! 

How precise is He in redeeming?  8:1 tells us He does not condemn us.  In 8:3 He condemns sin in us. That means the Physician’s scalpel cuts only necrosis.  It assures us that His laser comes for cancer cells only.  It assures that arthroscopy snakes in me for necrotic horrors only. 

Everest climbers say the height is dizzying, the air too thin and dry and hurts, the sun too bright, the cold too piercing to stay.  Maybe suffering is too wonderful for them to miss, as they express awe, ineffable wonder from the roof of the world. This chapter, these verses form the roof of our world.  How much will you endure to see the view from up there?

The Bible warns that others will not want you to be birthed, or to help birth others.  (John’s Apocalypse, the 12^th chapter).

BLESSING FOR YOU:  If you cry out to Him in pain.  Look out from that height to be astounded at how high He brought you in your suffering.  If you exclaim how beautiful it is, be not surprised if He smiles to say, “That beauty is nothing compared to what I’ve done in you, My child,” as He hands you a mirror.  Go in that great grace.  Amen. 

Romans a hard truth: Speaking of Wrath and Beauty

Romans 1:18  God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

19  You see, what is known about God is evident within these people,

Because God made it evident to them.

20  Since the world’s creation God’s invisible attributes,

His eternal power and

His divine nature, have all been clearly seen, so that these people are without excuse.

His attributes, power, and nature have been understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

21  Even though they knew God.

They did not honor Him as God.

They did not give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations.

They did not honor Him as God, and their foolish heart was darkened.

22  Professing to be wise, they became fools.

23  They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.  They are without excuse

24  Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them, they are still without excuse.

25  They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.  They are without excuse

26  For all of this, God gave them over to degrading passions.  Their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural.  27  The men, also, abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.   They are without excuse

28  And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do things which are not proper, being filled with all

29  unrighteousness,

wickedness,

greed,

evil;

full of envy,

murder,

strife,

deceit,

malice;

they are gossips,

30  slanderers,

haters of God,

insolent,

arrogant,

boastful,

inventors of evil,

disobedient to parents,

31  without understanding,

untrustworthy,

unloving, (heartless)

unmerciful; (ruthless) and,

32  Although they know God’s ordinance’s, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice these evils.

 

The world began in beauty: the glory of a Garden: Eden.  It’s gone now, or hidden, or guarded. Maybe we get to see it in the end. 

The garden was closed due to sin.  We are good at sin.  God responded with wrath.  What does that even mean?

A flood followed by a rainbow washed evil people away.  Jews continued to sacrifice innocent animals’ blood sacrifices with no clear, lasting answer to God’s wrath.  God’s wrath is like my mom’s wrath, or vice versa.  The Greeks used two words for anger: thumos and orgae.  Thumos is flash point or score book anger.  Your roomie drops dirty clothes on the floor for you to pick up and clean…for a time.  However when time is fulfilled, when the last score fills your scorebook of stupid roomie tricks.  You explode.  Roomie says, “All I did is —” and you angrily say, “NO, you’ve been doing it forever!  Yelling shows this is thumos. 

Orgae originally covered all passions, all emotions.  In time it meant only the strongest passion — anger.  This cool to lukewarm anger waits to see how stupid your choices will be.  My mom had a facial expression I should have learned sooner.  Her look said her words were useless, her reasons unheard.  She relaxed a tad to hand me over to unseen consequences coming to me. 

God’s wrath, calmly, patiently will bring you to God’s righteousness.  See the two “worlds” below.

 

Under God’s Wrath                              Under God’s Righteousness

Creation Groans                                      (ch8) Creation is set free from our sinfulness.
Every imaginable evil reigns
but nature’s laws hold in witness to       God’s true nature as we respond to Him in Christ
                                               

We can “see” God’s wonder but            we must believe in Christ to be IN Him.

 

God first hands us over to our sin’s results, maybe those costs awaken us.  W cry out to Him.  In the Old Testament.  Israel and Judah chased other gods.  They did heinous things to themselves and worse to their children in worship of those idols.  Those practices were “all the rage” an odd word in this discussion.

God sent prophets asking, “You’re certain you want to worship this ‘god’?  This lump of stone can’t protect you from Assyria, Egypt, or Babylon!”  God asked despairingly, lovingly, anguished, horrified, and in anger (all the emotions all the orge!).  Then He removed His protection and the next conquering army extinguished lives, obliterated homes, and carryied away those left alive. 

The Jews who woke up chastened in Babylon later returned home.  The Jews who awakened in Assyria, well, they vanished.  Waiting for you to wake up in God’s wrath is dicey.  Hoping you can put the brakes on in the Prodigal’s Pig Pen is suicidal and stupid. 

Under God’s Wrath                              Under God’s Righteousness

What I wish for here                          is Good over here

is His Grace                                      beckons me to Him

God’s wrath is meant to wake me up and wish for the good I see in His righteousness!  People in wrath can’t get good things from the domain of Righteousness without taking the Righteous Father’s Son as Lord and Master.

God’s wrath isn’t flashpoint.  His wrath carries all His emotions: worry, grief, agony, pain, and a wrenching sense we haven’t bottomed out, yet.  God’s wrath sees our hopelessness, depression, self-destruction, and is sick when those are not enough to make us sick of ourselves and move to change.  God’s wrath leaves us to the inevitable.  Let’s read the passage. 

 

Under God’s Wrath Sounds like

   “God gave them over”

  

²⁴So God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts — that their bodies might be dishonored.  We’re overweight and anorexic.  We’re depressed, anxious and panicking.  Our infant mortality, malnutrition, and heart disease rates exceed some undeveloped countries.  We dishonor our bodies.  Pornography is rampant and licking at the screens of computers and phones.  We dishonor our bodies.  The APA intimates child molestation may not be all that bad after all.  Opening a way for us to dishonor many more bodies.  Jesus wept.  God’s wrath holds its breath.

²⁶For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.  Yui Lin sat shocked in our study:  “You mean all your parents did not throw you against the wall if you did something bad?”  We also push the due penalties of our sin into others.  We fill 40 to 50% of our hospital beds with psychosomatic disorders.  We receive in our own persons the due penalty of our error.  Jesus wept.  The Father’s anger wrenchingly wonders how much more we will take before we turn back to Him.  We multiply ways to inflict the due penalties of drugs and violence on us and our children’s bodies. 

“28b God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, that are 32 worthy of death.  They not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.” 

God gave us over to ever sicker entertainment.  He winces as we applaud someone making a buck with vile lyrics.  God cringes as depraved souls on talk showsappear urbane.  Jesus is furious as bizarre individuals open fire anywhere.  And God may consider apologizing to Sodom and Gomorrah as Howard Stern survives incredible gaffs because he’s a money-maker.  We’re drinking wrath.  We drink wrath’s consequence in us to create multi-billion dollar porn and rap industries.  We approve what they do by entertaining ourselves to death with it.  We redecorate in even more gruesome colors our wrath-filled world rather than repent.

In insurance we quantify risk.  Scientists, statisticians, and policy makers attach numbers to the risk of getting breast cancer, or multiple STDs at epidemic levels, to flying and food additives, to getting hit by lightning or falling in a bathtub.  Wrath skews our risk assessment. 

Some live happily on the San Andreas Fault, but fear riding a New York subway.  Some smokers can’t get near a fatty steak, and some women afraid of a birth control’s side effects have unprotected sex with strangers.  Our risk assessment is skewed in a wrath filled world. 

It’s as if we incarcerate petty criminals with zeal, while inviting mass murderers into our bedrooms.  If we want to put money on real killers, we’d go after suicide, not asbestos. 

Radon.  We twist the facts reassure ourselves.  Some see their risk is low in a new house; others, because their house is old.  Some see little risk in a house on a hilltop; others, because theirs is at the bottom of a hill.”

Three out of four baby boomers (born 1946 to ‘64) say they look younger than their peers, and 4 out of 5 say they have fewer wrinkles than other people their age¾statistically impossible.

Enough!  Downer.  Bummer.  So sad!  Why?  Paul explains in 2 Corinthians.  7:9ff Your sorrow led you to repentance.  For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way.  Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.  See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. Wrath brings Godly sorrow to you.

Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, all godly guys, were saddened by the world, confessing the sins of their nation.  God heard and powerfully responded to each. 

Let the truth bring Godly sorrow to you.

It’s hard to see why we need sorrow.  Hmm.  Most gospel tracts start with:  “God has a great plan for you over in His righteousness, but you’re stuck in wrath world.  See how wonderful He is by looking at Nature and at beauty.  You hate being in wrath viewing wonderful stuff from outside.  You were created to be inside His grace, inside His salvation!”

The Beauty in God’s Righteousness

Start with verse 19, “That which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that anyone is excuse.

Once, flying down the Gulf Coast of Louisiana I looked down out my window to see islands connected under the shallow water by strips of land.  On the surface, those links seem invisible: unconnected islands.  Likewise, Paul argues we see more from (God’s) elevated point of view.

Beauty. In Emmy Noether and Albert Einstein’s work we see physics truths based on symmetry: a deep beauty.  Soap bubbles meet at 120-degree angles, and two hydrogens and oxygen in water molecules meet at 105 degrees¾giving shape to bubbles and snowflakes.  Trees, blood vessels and rivers all branch in strikingly similar ways.

Beauty. Berkeley, geologist Raymond Jeanloz, impresses students with the power of large numbers by drawing a line designating zero on one end of the blackboard and another marking a trillion on the far side.  Then he asks students to draw a line where a billion falls.  (It falls near the chalk line marking zero.)

Wonder. The number of molecules in a pint of water placed end to end…. form a chain capable of encircling the Earth over 2,000 million times.

Awesome. A pinhead heated to the temperature of the center of the Sun, writes Jeans, “emits enough heat to kill anyone venturing within a hundred miles of it.”

Astonishing. A brain builds up all its gray matter by doubling.  To get 15 billion nerve cells takes thirty-three doublings of the first cell; to get to half that number takes thirty-two doublings ¾ roughly the size of an ape’s brain.  Your brain is but one doubling away from your simian relatives.

Beauty. When Smoot sought to verify he’d found the primordial wrinkles in space time. One of the most convincing clues was the fact that the wiggles he saw were scale invariant — meaning that each patch of sky revealed the same spectrum of wrinkles, from smallest to largest.

He wrote: … we’re born and grow in fondness for each other; we have genes for it.  We can be talked out of that fondness, for the genetic message is like distant music, and we can be hard-of-hearing.  Society is noisy, drowning out the sound of ourselves and our connection. Hard-of-hearing, we go to war.  Stone deaf, we make nuclear missiles.  Nonetheless, the music is there, waiting for more listeners.  (God said to know Him we must be still to know that He is God.)

A very slight cause, which escapes us,
determines a considerable effect which we cannot help seeing,
and then we say this effect is due to chance. — Henri Poincare´

Beauty. Even though Einstein’s theories focus on the universe’s invariant properties that never change, a popular translation came out: “There is no truth; truth depends on how you look at it”; or, “Everything is relative.”  Einstein’s hidden scaffolding holds nature’s many-faceted house up.  Instead of “everything is relative,” relativity says:  “Things look relative, but don’t let that fool you.”

We love creation’s symmetry even in the face of our asymmetrical treatment of others. 

Gross points out that Einstein’s great advance in his 1905 paper on special relativity was he “put symmetry first…..This is a profound change in attitude.”

Beauty. Emmy Noether’s theorem proved conservation laws to be symmetry’s laws — a huge breakthrough.  Since the laws of physics are symmetrical, they do not change over distance or time, in space or on Earth, on large scales or small, today or tomorrow. 

Emmy was not interested in calculation; in fact, she was so far removed from “pedestrian activities like calculations” that some people called her brand of mathematics “theology.”

Like Einstein, Noether saw Nature’s hidden structures hold seemingly dissimilar things together.  To honor her, Einstein wrote a letter to the New York Times describing her as a “creative mathematical genius” who discovered methods “of enormous importance.”

“What’s beautiful in science is exactly what’s beautiful in Beethoven,” said a physicist Victor Weisskopt.  “In the fog of events you suddenly see a connection.  It expresses a complex of human concerns that goes deeply in you, connecting things that were always in you that were never put together before.”

“To understand nature ¾ its rules, is equivalent to understanding its symmetries.”  “This is why particle physicists are obsessed with symmetry.  At a fundamental level, symmetries not only describe the universe; they determine what is possible, that is, what is physics.”

Symmetry. Symmetry also led our discovering antimatter.  Strange stuff — unknown here before the 1930s — made its first appearance as a minus sign in an equation.  When physicist P. A. M. Diary mathematically combined special relativity and quantum mechanics, the union produced twin symmetrical solutions — one with a plus sign, the other with a minus — two versions, each the exact mirror image of the other.

In 1949 Richard Feynman showed that mathematically, an antiparticle is the same as a particle moving backward in time.

So a thorny question arose:  If the universe came into being in a burst of pure energy, where did all the antimatter go?  It must have been there, because the laws of physics are symmetrical.  And if there was as much antimatter as matter, then every bit of matter would have joined with a bit of antimatter and annihilated each other into nothingness.  That didn’t happen since enough of something stuck around to evolve into stars, galaxies, planets and us.

Beauty. Blood vessels, trees and rivers branch in surprisingly similar ways.  The same simple patterns repeat over and over, growing from seeming chaos:  Jupiter’s serene red spot, sitting just below the giant planet’s waistline for centuries, is created by unimaginably turbulent storms.  Patterns of inheritance, like your father’s nose are recognizable in so many permutations.

Wrath is moving us to God’s righteousness where beauty exists. In God’s righteousness lies truth, beauty, symmetry: life.  How impossible is it to travel from wrath filled darkness and chaos into truth and beauty’s rightness?

The two dimensions: wickedness and morality, light and dark, wrath and righteousness. 

God’s wrath is His righteousness refusing to leave us in wickedness, darkness, or the carnage of our sin.

Small Thing

I walked from the hotel to the nearest viewing site for the fireworks last night in Chelsea, Oklahoma.

The air, cooled by afternoon thunderstorms felt heavy, pregnant with possible rain and almost fog.

Someone’s first skyrockets spiraled into the full moon peering through clouds. The moon seemed disaffected by the distraction, but it was beautiful.

The BNSF lead locomotive thundered bestially, looked like a leviathan snaking through the trees and circumscribing arcs into the almost fog.

I walked in a night of wonder. The newest fads in fireworks were baffling and beautiful, and all around me as I walked, people fired off big boomers, spiral screamers, and flourishes of small cracks.

At no time did I lunge protectively to the ground to escape impending danger.

No small gift that sense of safety.

May it be so in all our cities on all days for all our children.

Pain and Beauty

I teach creativity and imagination.  I know, why assign such topics to someone deficient in both?  Go figure.  Eat your heart out, etc.

I require some students to write reports on creators they choose from Daniel Boorstin’s The Creators.  Amazing book, and improbable to be equaled in a generation as he was the Librarian of Congress tapping an astonishing group of researchers to help research and tell the stories.  He achieved lucid, clear, salient story telling at its best.

So questions about creative people lurk in the literature.  Are they more avant-garde, anti social-conformity, rule busting people?  Are they more broken, prone to mind and mood altering substances?  Are they more gifted?

Sixty years ago Guilford showed a scatter graph supporting his “intelligent enough” theory of creativity.   IQ correlates positively with creativity up to @ an IQ of 85, and then any correlation vanishes.  Hmmm.

Creatives come from all manner of socioeconomic, religious and family backgrounds.

Now some research suggests we are “happier” in the left side of our brains, and “sadder” in the right side; and many associate creativity with that right side, although, in truth, when you’re in the creativity “zone”, your brain draws on the left and then the right side some — 300 times a second.

Also, remembering sadness, pain, or loss is easier than joy or happiness: which begs a question.

Do creatives know they live out their lives with more pain, or that creativity is born of pain?  Do we all sense that, and avoid or seek creativity based on a desire or fear of pain?

If you interviewed King David, The Rolling Stones, U2, Coldplay, Hip Hop Kings, Ray Charles and Billie Holiday, Rich Mullins, Michelangelo, and Da Vinci — how do you see them answering, “What percentage of your life have you been “happy” or “joyous”?

Even if their answers suggest beauty is born of pain, art is born of suffering — why seek to create, to innovate, to make art?  That provokes two hard questions for me.

One, did God know His stunning creation, and the people who he made the crowning aspect of that creation would bring Him unfathomable pain?  Why create anyway?

Why do some of the most haunting, intense, overwhelming things of beauty; why do they push us to that pain in the throat, choked tears, impossible to swallow, quivering smile that mimics stunning moments of worship for believers?

Have we been wired for far more than we dare create, hope for, or desire?

Borrowed Beauty. This borrowed photo comes closest to our yard.

This is how a small patch of my yard looks. Sometimes, I must write less and absorb more.

We have an artist in residence

Jill’s brother, Steve is staying with us while he does a commissioned painting. 

He has lived his art on Britain’s coast, studied the Masters by leaving college to walk the museums of Europe, obtained recognition from some of the world’s most respected judging boards, and camped and lived in some of the most gorgeous spots on earth.

He lost tallest man in the family this Christmas to one of his nephews, Bjorn; and goes a few rounds with Jill every day about the changing world of art and e-commerce.  Their conversations range from the technical to profound. 

Two things mark our most profound differences.  I am a believer in Christ, and he is not, but he joins in the rhythms of our home and joins hands and is respectfully quiet while others pray.  The more interesting one may be that I have spent much of my life accessible to up to hundreds of people. 

He has spent most of his life privately, guardedly even.

It makes most of our conversations exploratory, tentative, and interesting.  He sees the world in terms of color, light / lighting, mood, composition.  I have never heard him use the word: beautiful.  But make no mistake, he can take up brush and color and capture beauty on a painting almost as much as someone could describe its beauty and convey a feeling about the scene. 

I spent most of my life describing beauty and life to others, making it accessible to them. 

He has caused me to consider again, if I am able some times to pass a beauty through my eyes and writing to others, a reality, a loveliness for someone else to be moved by it — while failing to be as moved as the one to whom I made it accessible. 

I can only hope that Peter Jackson enjoyed the Lord of the Rings a fraction of how much I was moved to tears and cheering, having already enjoyed Tolkien’s descriptions and action like drinking deeply of a innebriating wine. 

So to you and to me, do you enjoy the world you are passing on to your children, again, maybe for the first time?  Are you touched by the Hand of God who moves you to touch others in His Name?  Mother Teresa was bereft of her visions and intimacies which had sustained her when she moved to Calcutta.

Yet she stayed. 

Yet she stayed and milions were moved because of her.  Even while the silence inside dried her soul. 

This is a simple prayer.  May you get to enjoy at least some of the beauty passing through you to others.  If you know how to enlarge that beauty to yourself, share with the rest of us.