Christ – Sheila Dougal

We Bear the Mark

Since the legalization of abortion 45 years ago millions of women have bought the lie that the death of this new life forming in them will somehow save theirs. And now they live with pain and shame and mocking of that lie.

Today in thinking about being a woman, a mom, a sister, a daughter and bearing in my body the mark of redemption specifically as a woman in being granted the ability to die to myself, even to bleed so that another might live, I penned this plea to my sisters. Today they may especially feel the gnawing burden of their guilt for trying to save their own life by ending the one growing inside them.

Praying it’s a balm of healing to someone.

We Bear the Mark

by Sheila Dougal

We bear the pain
The slain
The stain
Laden with shame

It’s embarrassing
Better to say nothing
Pelvis cramping
Dark bloody foul seeping

A clockwork reminder
Pain and life together

Try to rip out the pain
With it hope for life slain

We bear the mark
Filthy rags rep the heart
Of corrupt man
And his proud plan

Woman you will bleed
One way or another
As a sign of mans vain progress
Or the sign of hope among us

But when you bleed
From sterile hands
Inserting instruments
Tearing life from your womb
Because of the lie that looms

Woman you bleed
Taking life from another
The very sign of your future
Meant to be a mother

You cannot bear the stain
The shame
The pain

Of saline burns
Or ripping limbs
Or sterile rod
Slaughtering
Your flesh and blood within

O woman
You cannot
Labor or bear
Your bloody plot

But there is One
Who bore the pain
Your murderous stain
your child slain

No drink no pill
Can your wound heal
No high position
No compensation

Your loud proud shouts
Your rights you tout
But your shame remains
You cannot picket it away

Every month maybe two
You bleed
Filthy rags testify against you
Self-sacrificing hope
Your menstruation once spoke

But now every pain
Every bloody stain
Cries out
Innocence taken

Is there hope
Now that life you smote
You were sucked in by the lie
If you cling to your life
Someone else can die

You swallowed the seductive fruit
You’ll be happier
Healthier
Wealthier
Have time to be wiser

But now bloody nightmare
Signs everywhere
Can’t escape
Worse than rape

Your bloody sign
You were supposed to die
Not that innocent life inside

You were made in the image
Of the One who bore your shame
Your stains
Your blame

He died he bled
Laid down his life
In your stead

This is the hope
In every woman’s bleeding
In every cramp and pain
In every long night no sleeping

Not that we can save ourselves
Or even our inconvenient progeny
But that we bear the mark
Of the Savior of humanity

He who bled for our sins
Placed this sign in our endometrium
To bleed for another
Life giving bloody womb of a mother

Oh dear woman
You may not know
But something inside
Haunts as it lies

You know your lost
Deep in sins pride
It eats you alive
And mocks while you die

You thought you could cling
To your life and be free
But instead
Holding tight bleeding death
You’ve lost your meaning

Wake up wake up
It is a nightmare indeed
But Christ has come
Giving life while he bleeds

Don’t stay in that trap
One more second don’t pass
There’s life to be found
Your guilt nailed thru his wound

You didn’t let your body be torn
So a new life could be born
Instead you were ripped
Dilated and delivered death

He knows
He was there
When the flagellum tore
Your homicide he bore

There is no escape
Unless you turn to him
Your pride grip on life
Will leave your hands dripping foul
Sliding down into deaths mocking howl

Let the blood of your womb
Take your mind to the one
Who took your guilt to the tomb

O woman
O mother
O daughter of Eve
You bear the mark
Not of you but of He

An explosion of praise reading Job

Job’s story always gets me. I feel so much of the sense that, “This just isn’t right! This guy didn’t deserve this!” And at the same time the sense that, “This is how God works. He is working something eternal and wonderful in us through suffering.”

I don’t claim to know even a fraction of the suffering Job knew. I’ve never had a debilitating illness or disease. I’ve never grieved the death of a child. I’ve never lost all my possessions. But I’ve walked through my own fiery trials and in each of them, mostly daily life stuff, I’ve known the presence of God there with me, assuring me, he is doing something much greater than I can see.

In Jobe 23, Job says basically, “I don’t see where God is, or what he is doing, but he sees me. He knows what I’m going through.”

“But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.” – Job 23:10

I may not see what God is doing in my struggles in my marriage and in the hard days as a mom of teenage sons, but the One who created me sees me. He knows the way I take. He knows and He is working all things together for my good to make me like the New Man- Christ!

This is the great joy and aim of every Christian. Greater than our pain is our desire to be made like Jesus! Greater than our trials is our joy in intimately knowing and being known by the Creator of the Universe who bore our sins in his bludgeoned body.

This is the peace beyond understanding that we have. This is the joy unspeakable and full of glory that we experience. This foretaste of knowing that one day, like Job, we will see our Redeemer in our flesh, with our eyes and all wrong will be made right and we’ll dive into the eternity of pleasures forevermore that dwell at God’s right hand.

This is not some ethereal dream. This is not a wish upon a star. This is the promise of the God-Man Christ Jesus who walked on this earth, knows what it’s like to be tempted and tried as I am, died bearing my guilt and shame, rose from the dead emerging as the beginning of a New Creation, a New Man… eternal life for me and everyone who loves him! And he’s put in me his own Spirit, guaranteeing that He will not quite! He will not give up doing this good work he started in me. He will try me, and test me and all so that in the end, I will come out as pure gold. I’ll be just who He’s making me to be.

Oh the riches and the wonder of the ways of our God!

How beautiful

How stunning

How beyond explaining

I’ll just look up tonight before I go to bed and recall, with unspeakable thanks, that I will see you One day Lord Jesus! And you will not destroy, you will embrace me. Oh what hope! What joy. What a Saviour!

A slow-to-believe believer’s thoughts on Good Friday

It’s Good Friday.

There’s a tsunami of meaning in those three words.

Maybe for you it’s just TGIF.

I get it. Honestly, I grew up hearing the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but for years it made no connection with my soul. If I’m honest the celebration (if you can call it that) of Good Friday has been odd to me at best and often it’s been an offense. Tim Keller said something I heard the other day to the effect of, “The cross of Christ is offensive in all sorts of ways, and if you haven’t felt it, if you haven’t ever struggled with it, I don’t think you get it...” That has been the case with me. Until recent years, I haven’t really stopped to face the ugliness and offense at the center of the Christian message: that Christ was crucified for our sins.

Years of questioning from dear loved ones who don’t believe has caused me to look that horrific, bloody, crucified, historic Jesus I love in the face and wrestle with the offense of the Christian doctrine of substitutionary atonement (Christ dying in our place for our sins).

I am a believer. But I understand unbelief. Unbelievers I love have caused me to examine what it is I say I believe on holidays like Christmas and Easter and Good Friday. And I’m very glad they have. I’m a slow-to-believe believer in Christ. The wonder and horror of what Christ endured and did for me, specifically, and for all who would believe in him, is palpably meaningful to me now more than ever. But I’m thick-headed and slow to get it. I’m sure the meaning of Christ’s substitutionary death will increasingly become more real for me since it is infinitely full of truth and life. Increasingly, substitutionary atonement is no longer two big, seminary-graduate words only to be heard from a pulpit. Substitutionary atonement is the bloody door through which I enter an eternity of grace upon undeserved grace!

But I digress.

I want to try to explain at least a cupful of my thoughts regarding Good Friday as I stand under the Niagra Falls of Christ’s substitutionary death for those who believe in him.

There is much to capture in thinking on what it means that Christ died in my place and satisfied the just requirement of God for me so that I will never experience rejection from the God who made me to know him as Father and friend. As I say, It’s like trying to stand under Niagra Falls with a tiny tea cup to grab a drink of water. But here I go.

It’s Offensive Because We’re Evil

Good Friday is about how we have perverted the glory of God and how he makes his glory known rightly again.

The thought that people are basically good and if we just modify “bad” behaviors we would all be happy and the world would be a better place is lost on me. I’ve had a 2 year old. I’ve lied so I could look good to another liar. I’ve been abandoned and objectified as a woman. And I’ve watched the news and cared for people broken by the evil in others.

We modify “bad” behaviors not because we’re basically good, but because like Imagine Dragons said, “No matter what we breed, we still are made of greed.” If we’re honest, we know inside us is a drive to make ourselves the center of life at the expense of others. It’s an insidious evil that seems to lie dormant, but peeks out it’s ugly head and beats its little brother so it can have the ball, or abandons it’s family so it can have a better life… or a thousand other birthed-evils that come out of our hearts. We have laws, and behavior modification techniques and self-help books, and therapists and jails and multiple forms of restraint and training in our lives because we are trying to tame the beast. Not because we’re all angels at heart that trip up every now and then.

And all the horror that comes out of us is not just horrible because of what we do to each other. It’s horrible because we were not random, chance products of evolutionary process. If that’s all we are then there would be no reason to call anything we do right or wrong. It would be simply part of the process of evolution: survival of the fittest. But we know we do evil things and we recognize evil in others because we are made to do good. To be good. To be godly. To reflect the glory of God in our lives like living testimonies to the universe and each other. Our human lives are to be like works of art that display the beauty and wonder of the One who made us. The evil in us is so evil because is a perversion of the image of God in us.

When I look at the cross of Christ and the horrors of his crucifixion and think about the why behind it- Why would God do that to save us? I realize, at least in part, that the reason the cross of Christ is so offensive and horrific is because billions of people (including me) have perverted the glory of God with our lives and made God out to be a liar and a murderer and a self-centered leech with a message that says, “Your life for mine!” The cross of Christ is justice. It’s a making right the message that has been wrongly proclaimed from sinful humanity. The cross of Christ says God is worth my life. God is truth. God is just. God is life. God gives life. God’s message is, “My life for yours!” The cross of Christ is a historical entrance of God into humanity saying, “This is what you all have done to me. This is the bloody truth about the evil that is in you that perverts the truth about who I am and who you are. I am bloodied and broken and bruised by your evils. You were made to glorify me, but you have defamed me. And I bear it because I am God and I give my life for you!“

On the cross Christ is taking the truth that, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” in his own body. His bloody, broken flesh on that cross is the embodiment of our perversion of God’s glory. He became our sin.

I know that’s not all the cross of Christ says. But it’s a few drops. It’s enough to cause me to hate my sin and love my sin-bearing Savior.

All Real Love Is Substitutionary Sacrifice

Good Friday is about what love really is and what only God can do.

In that same talk, where I heard Tim Keller say that if we haven’t really struggled with the offense of the cross of Christ we probably don’t really get what it means, I also heard him say something that captured a few more drops of the cascades of truth pouring from the side of my pierced and broken Lord. He said, “All love. All real love is a substitutionary sacrifice. ‘My life for yours’. Heart of the universe...” It’s true. It’s a truth we can all recognize. We all know it when we see substitutionary sacrifice. When a parent gives up their agenda for the day to tend to a child in need. When a soldier dies to keep an enemy from taking freedom and life from another. When a firefighter rushes into a burning building to rescue a trapped man. All of these and so many other examples speak of the universal truth that real love is “My life for yours. I’ll die, I’ll sacrifice, I’ll serve to make your life better, easier, richer.” Evil is, “Your life for mine. How can you die, how can you sacrifice, how can you serve to make my life better, easier, richer?”

But even though we see this truth in our lives, none of our little displays of the true message substitutionary sacrificial love can save our fellow man from the righteous judgement of God on the evil we all carry around inside.

There’s a line in an ancient Hebrew Psalm in the Bible that says, “Truly no man can ransom another or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit.” (Psalm 49:7-9)

It’s the truth. We all display little imperfect examples of the universal truth of substitutionary sacrifice, but none of us can be an atoning substitute for another human being. The only person who could ever pay the costly ransom required to love an evil human being and give them a life that lives forever in friendship and intimate relationship with God is God. I might die a little so that my son can live more. But only the God-Man Christ Jesus can die so that my son can live forever!

So there’s my little tea cup of truth. It’s just a drop from a fountain that flows abundantly with truth and life. Christ died bearing the evil I have lived out which has perverted the truth about God. And Christ did this for me because only he can give God’s life for mine so that I might live forever!

Maybe this Good Friday you can sip and taste with me and see that the Jesus who died so horrifically for our sins this day in history about 2000 years ago, he is good.

Let Down by God?

This past Sunday I stood in a high school theatre with dozens of people I don’t know looking up at the screen where the band was projecting the words to the songs we were singing to God:

You’re never gonna let
Never gonna let me down
You’re never gonna let
Never gonna let me down

When I get to church, the words of every song we sing confront me. And I hang on every word preached. I can’t mindlessly sing the songs. I can’t snooze through the sermon. I’m too desperate. I’m too thirsty.

So when the words to King of My Heart were on the screen Sunday, and I was singing with hot tears, “You are good.” I really meant it. I really believe Jesus is God and He is good! But when the words “You’re never gonna let, never gonna let me down,” came on the screen I stopped singing. I stood there with heart exposed to the Holy Spirit’s searching work and I knew I could not sing those words with honesty. Instead I uttered a prayer, “Father you know me. You know I can’t sing that. I confess I feel like you have let me down. But I know you are good. Help me to know you for who you really are.”

I think I have a pretty good understanding of the God of the Bible. I say that with much hesitation. What I know is a glimpse, a taste of an infinity of truth. I’ll spend eternity never exhausting knowing God. But I have been very blessed to have been taught by some great Bible teachers and mentors in the faith. I’ve spent many hours chewing on the Bible. I believe the Jesus I have never seen but love as revealed in the scriptures is the one and only God-Man, the Christ. My creed is the creed Christ’s historic and worldwide church has believed and proclaimed for thousands of years. So when I read words like the words written in the song we sang on Sunday I realize something is amiss. Either something’s wrong with me and my understanding of the God of the Bible or something’s wrong with those words cause I can think of 23 years of prayers unanswered that have left me feeling like God has let me down.

I’m not alone in my honest conflict with the words, “You’re never gonna let me down.”

Throughout the Bible God’s people have had to come face to face with the incongruence of the Sovereign God they believe in and the circumstances in their life.

Job had to reconcile the horror he was living through with the God he proclaimed. He felt the sovereignty of God in his boils and said, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face.” Job 13:15

Moses questioned God when he had obediently confronted Pharaoh and was mocked and blamed for making the people he was sent by God to free work harder. “Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.” – Exodus 5:22

Noemi said it was God who had emptied her. “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” Ruth 1:20-21

Even John the Baptist, who had looked at Jesus and declared, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” found himself in prison and sent messengers to Jesus to ask if was really the Messiah they were all waiting for.

And there are many, many more examples.

Blessed are the un-offended

When John questioned Jesus’ identity, Jesus’ response was to point out all that he was doing. And then he added, “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Gulp.

Was I offended at Jesus in the words, “You’re never gonna let me down?” Was I offended that Jesus had let me down by not answering my prayer the way I wanted?

The word offended sounds like scandalized in the language Jesus spoke it. skandalizō.

Blessed is the one who isn’t scandalized by me.

It means to be caused to stumble. To be caused to distrust the person you should trust.

Jesus is not a soft, yes man, who makes you feel good with positive affirmations. Jesus is the rock that many stumble over and are offended by. I stumbled over him on Sunday. And like Job, Moses, Noemi, David and John the Baptist I have a choice: leave him offended or let the mountain of truth that he is be to me a shadow in which to hide, a rock of refuge to which I flee.

Who Else Is There?

Peter and the other ragamuffin disciples of Christ tripped over him too. When Christ offered the saving truth that he had come to suffer and die broken, like bread, people were offended. Those who had thought Jesus was there to feed their appetites in the form of miraculous power couldn’t accept the idea that he had come to give life to their perishing souls in the form of a wrath-bearing substitutionary atoning sacrifice. When Jesus saw the offended folks leave he asked his chosen ones, “Are you going to leave too?” Peter- I love Peter, quick to speak and quick to trip and quick to fall Peter- opened his mouth and said words I say to Jesus not infrequently, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life. And we believe and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God”

Coming face to face with the reality of who Christ really is, is something we all must and will do. What we do with who he is is the test of who we really are.

The blessed, oh how happy ones, sorrowful yet always rejoicing, are the ones who look at his sovereignty in his willing brokenness and risen power and say with Job, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him.” We feel let down, but we look up and we hope in him. We believe and have come to know he is the only one with the words of life. We know there is no where else to go. We see his scars. And we hear his risen promise to dwell in us and with us and we aren’t offended. We love him. We want him. By his good grace we won’t leave him.

Chasing Normal?

My sister once told me she believed God appointed to me the hard things I’m walking through because he is using my life to encourage other people to trust and obey him.

I want that, but I also confess I don’t.

Part of me just wants a “normal” life with ease. No ongoing marital struggle. No conviction about things that the world around me, even my own family, think I’m being ridiculous about. But that part of me is a silent cancer in my soul and I choose to slay it with truth.

The truth is no one has a normal life. I get to hear lots of peoples’ stories as a nurse. When you start talking to people you find out the abnormal things that are in everyone’s lives. But the desire to have a normal life comes from something written in me, and in us all, that knows there is a normal. There is a life that is whole and right. There is a life that is good and desirable. There is a life full of pleasantness and pleasure. That life is Christ.

The idea that I should resist or flee the struggles I face to try and find a more “normal” life in another person, or a better income, or more convenience, or a better climate or withdrawing from people and getting back to nature, or whatever… that idea is a lie. It’s a trick. It’s a wild goose chase intended to keep you from facing reality. It’s a wasting of your life. The reality is we are all messed up people. We all have to face the wrongs we and others do and the damage it causes in our relationships and in the world.

Without knowing Christ, the abnormal lives we all live have to be explained and managed somehow. Enter religion, atheism, humanism, or any other ism people use to try and manage the mess we all are. But with Christ, we taste of the normal life we long for.

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! – Psalm 34:8

The Bible talks about a new man, comparing Christ- the new man- with Adam, the first man, the man we all come from. Adam and everyone after him live abnormal lives with a longing for normal life. Christ came into the world to offer us his life. Real life. Christ’s life is given to those who believe him and love him. As a Christian, I have the very life of the new man, the normal man, living in me. And whereas before, the first man, the abnormal man, was striving to hold on to some semblance of normalcy, chasing it wherever he caught a glimpse of it, the new man I am knows I have it already. So I can go through the trials and sufferings I face in life with an open heart and hand. I can do like Jesus said and let my broken life be used to bring new life.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. -John 12:24-25.

That’s a very strange thing to say to us abnormal people, holding tight to our lives, trying to self-preserve and keep our lives as normal as possible. But to the Christian, it is the new way, the normal way to live.

Jesus is God in the flesh. The God Man humbled to dying human cells in an abnormal human family in a world full of the abnormal people damaging each other and the world around them. He came bringing new life. A life-giving life. A life united with the God who made us. And the way he did it was to die and over come death as the God-Man. Now his life is in us who believe in him. And his way is now our way. We can give our lives away because we know we already have life in Christ.

C.S. Lewis said “Nothing you have not given away will ever truly be yours.”

I don’t know what Lewis was eluding to. I haven’t read the entirety of Mere Christianity yet. But he points to the truth that when you have life in Christ, you can deny yourself, you can loose your life, because its yours! Jesus said:

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? -Luke 9:23-25

We all want normalcy. But we all have to deal with an abnormal life. We’ll do so one of two ways- futile attempts at self-preservation and chasing glimpses of ease, comfort and normality. Or Christ. The normal life I long for I’ve found in Christ. Now I can let my difficulties and abnormal realities be opportunities to give away the life that is mine forever.

Thoughts On Abortion in America: Hope and the Gospel in My Crisis Pregnancy

Tomorrow is the 44th anniversary of the famous Roe vs. Wade decision by the Supreme Court which put into motion the legal killing of unborn babies in the United States.

From that date to today over 59 million babies have been aborted in this country alone. To put that in perspective, about 6 million Jewish people were slaughtered by the Nazi regime during WWII. That means the killing of babies in the United States is 10 times that of the precious lives taken in the holocaust. I wonder if we’ll ever look back on abortion in the United States with the same horror and shock as we do the holocaust. I wonder if we’ll ever think, “How could we have done that!!??”

My Mom’s Crisis Pregnancy

I was born the year after Roe vs. Wade was decided. I am my mom’s first viable pregnancy. I was thinking about that today. My mom didn’t have a crisis pregnancy as a teenager. She wasn’t pregnant as the result of incest or rape. But she did have a pregnancy that threatened her life.

My mom’s last pregnancy, I guess technically, would be considered an abortion. She had an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy that could have taken her life had the doctor not removed the ovary and fallopian tube where her newly developing baby was growing causing the rupture of her fallopian tube and emergency surgery. I’m sure the folks who defend a woman’s right to abortion would site my mom’s situation as one of the reasons abortion needs to be a legal, medical procedure in the United States. I guess people will spin things the way that serves them best. The doctor did not perform an abortion to save my mother’s life. He saved my mother’s life by stoping the hemorrhage from a ruptured fallopian tube. The life that was growing in that dying place died as a result of that place being incompatible with human life. She grieved the loss of that life and three others who died before they could breathe outside her womb.

I’ve been thinking today about the fact that neither my mom, nor I have any idea what it feels like to be in a crisis pregnancy, but in thinking it through I’ve decided we both knew crisis in our pregnancies. My mom was pregnant for the first 7 years of her marriage and married to a mill worker who provided a home, food on the table, and a car to drive, but it wasn’t fancy. Someone else in my mom’s shoes may have felt she couldn’t handle another pregnancy. It would cost too much. It could effect her health. It was emotionally distressing. I’m sure my mom felt overwhelmed. And each pregnancy did damage my mom’s body and caused financial strain. She suffers this day from horrible varicose veins that were tremendously worsened by her 3 vaginal births and 7 pregnancies. My mom struggled with hormonal changes, depression and emotional distress due to having babies. And there were times I remember that she came home with a cardboard box of government issued cheese, rice, beans and canned foods because my dad was laid off work and her small hairdressing, babysitting, housecleaning and flower arranging jobs were not enough to feed a family of five.

I’m so thankful for a mom who gave of herself for my sake and the sake of my brother and sister and the 4 in heaven.

My Crisis Pregnancy

I wanted desperately to be pregnant 10 years into my marriage and was told I wouldn’t conceive without medical intervention. My strained marriage didn’t need a baby to support and so my husband was actually relieved to hear he wouldn’t need to worry about that. But God heard my cries at 29 and I conceived Connor. My husband wasn’t happy. I felt the weight of burden increase when Connor was born. My broken marriage was barely holding together and now we had a child to raise. My body didn’t quite know what to do with itself in the months after Connor was born and at one point I was so sick the doctors thought I had Hodgkins lymphoma. But by the time Connor was a year old my body was starting to recover and I found out I was pregnant again. I’m sure that would be the point at which some might say I was in a crisis pregnancy. Maybe. I’d say it was 6 months later when my husband left me.

I was seven months pregnant. 28 weeks. Barely viable. I’m sure for some that would have been the crisis that led them to a Planned Parenthood where they would have been directed to make an appointment to terminate a 28 week pregnancy. Instead I was in a hospital getting turbutaline shots and Magnesium Sulfate to stop my preterm labor probably caused by the stress of my family falling apart. Ryland was my crisis pregnancy, but the crisis never led me to think I needed to end his life, rather it led me to call on the One who was knitting that life together in my womb.

My crisis pregnancy was where I walked with God like I never had before.

Hope and The Gospel of Christ

As I’ve been thinking about abortion in the United States today I’ve thought about how I can’t identify with the women who are choosing this. But I want to.

I think my lack of feeling a connection with women who choose abortion comes down to hope. I have hope. I had hope. I knew who I was and Whose I was and so when crisis came when I was pregnant, and when crisis came when my mom was pregnant, we depended on the promise of God- that we are his children, that he would never leave us or forsake us and that he would work all things for our good.

And it’s not just hope that is different in my case, it’s the gospel. I knew the gospel of Christ when my crisis pregnancy came and I clung to it! Christ died to give us life. I believe that. And I believe that is the life we are made to live- a dying-to-self life. A mom’s life is a bearing of stretch marks, weight gain, postpartum depression, grief and pain from babies who’ve died in our wombs and wombs that have died too. It’s a bearing of varicose veins, hormonally induced hair loss, emotional instability, painful periods, financial strain, relational strife and a thousand other ways moms die daily to take up our cross and follow Jesus as we love our children more than ourselves.

The women who choose abortion have no hope outside what they can do for themselves and they don’t see their life in Christ so that they know if they cling to their life (even at the expense of the life growing inside them) they’ll loose it, but if they loose their life in a thousand ways everyday for Christ’s sake for the baby that is being knit together in their wombs, they’ll live!

Abortion is a Symptom

The thousands of abortions performed in the United States today weren’t medically necessary abortions because a woman is hemorrhaging and a ruptured fallopian tube needed to be removed to save her life. The blood of our babies cries out because of our self-centered darkness. We kill our babies when we were made to die and suffer for them. Every life that ever lived was born by a woman. We were made to give birth to life though it rips us apart. We were made to be fed off of and give and give and give of ourselves that another might live and live and live. We were made this way because we were made in the image of God. Abortion is a symptom of the denial of that purpose. Without the conviction that were are image of God bearers we can create any sort of reality that suits us. But the truth is the truth. If we cling to our lives we’ll loose it. If we keep killing our babies to save our lives it will destroy us. But if we loose our lives in the image of the One who made us, we will live. Even though we die daily.

Moms are The Giving Tree

Have you read the book The Giving Tree? You probably have. It’s iconic. But if you haven’t you should. The Giving Tree testifies to the fact that we know it noble and right to give of yourself even if it costs you your life. We know this enough to write a timeless children’s book about it. Moms are the Giving Tree in the flesh! We are made to give life not take it. Even it when it takes life from us. Its beautiful. Its Christ-like. It honors the One who died on a tree to give us life!

I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do now. But after thinking about this all day I know I want to be more conscious of the high calling I have as a mom to the 13 and 12 year old sons I’m still bearing. And I want to be part of stopping the women who are stumbling to the slaughter, blindly going against the Christ-like nature they were created to display.

The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. -Genesis 3:13

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. -1 Peter 2:21-24

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter." – Martin Luther King Jr.

I have been silent. And this post probably won’t exactly be the voice heard round the world. But in a society where social media is the public square I feel like I’m trying to hide in the shadows if I don’t speak up even though I know speaking up will most likely get me rejection.

I have many dearly loved gay and lesbian friends and family. I just want to say I love you! My disagreement with the Supreme Court’s views (and society in general) about marriage and homosexuality is because I have a love for you that I believe comes from God. It’s not bigotry. It’s not hate. It’s not fear. It’s not prejudice. I disagree, but I love you.

I will listen to you and be your friend. I will never shun you because you embrace what I believe to be what’s not right. I know you are coming from a position of what you believe is right. I too am coming from a position of what I believe is right. I believe what is right is defined by God. I believe he is the one who created marriage. I believe he is the Creator of human sexuality and knows what’s good and right for us.

I believe there was a real man named Jesus of Nazareth who walked our soil a couple thousand years ago. He was the only right man. I believe He was the only God-Man. I believe he is the only one who has the real right to say what’s right and what’s wrong.

He was, and is, a friend of sinners.

I too was a lover of my own version of sexuality and my own version of what is right once. But when I heard Christ’s loving call to leave all that behind and follow him and I saw the love and the forgiveness and the offer of life in him that I could not resist.

And so I follow him. Not the culture. Not fear. Not prejudice. Not popular opinion. Not my own desires even. I follow the Friend of Sinners who calls us out of the tangled mess we weave of our lives into true freedom. True life. True love. True peace.

So I love you family and friends! You know who you are. I really do love you with the love that the friend of sinners has loved me with. I love you and I call to you with him to leave what you define as right for what he defines as right. He is full of love and truth.

And if you find this to be bigotry or prejudice or hateful I would just ask, would you have coffee with me? Would you sit down with me and listen, and let me listen to you, even though you don’t agree with me? Would you get to know me and see if my life is one that reflects the love I claim?

Quieted,

Sheila

Why I took my boys to see Selma

I took my kids to watch Selma today. Every year on MLK Day I purposefully talk with the kids about Martin Luther King Jr. I set out to rescue the day from the “just another day off school” it could easily become. Selma helped me do that in a big way today. But I didn’t just take them because today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I took my boys to see Selma movie for a four reasons:

1) I want to be purposeful about talking to my kids about history and social and moral issues. History is what they’re living and history is what they’ll learn from and repeat or change. And the social and moral issues of life will confront them unless they move to the Alaskan wilderness alone or hide in the basement playing video games for the rest of their lives. I pray neither of those options will hold any draw for them. The truth is, even though most of us don’t live in either extreme it’s easy to hide from social and moral issues. I don’t want my kids to hide. I want them to shine.

2) My boys are about as white as white gets. Blonde. Blue-eyed. Freckled-faced and have never been called a racial derogatory term in their lives. They have no idea what it feels like to have a “people” who’s history is full of not-too-distant slavery and segregation. They have no idea what it feels like to live in an era when segregation was commonplace. Neither do I for that matter.

3) Dr. King demonstrated the kind of gutsy submission I want my boys to have in life. I want them to be characterized as a Christian should be: as a submissive person. Submissive as Christ was. Submissive to authority. Respectful of those in leadership. Obedient to the law. Yet, like Christ, I want them to be willing to suffer when they have to stand up and against unjust laws. In a interview on Meet The Press after the march from Selma to Montgomery Dr. King was asked how he could justify going against a law that forbade him from marching when he himself proclaimed to be a peaceful, non-violent protester. King’s response is spot on:

There are two types of laws. One is a just law. One is an unjust law. I think we all have moral obligation to obey just laws. On the other hand, I think we have a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. I think the distinction here is that when one breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, he must do it openly, he must do it cheerfully, he must do it lovingly, he must do it civilly, not uncivilly, and he must do it with a willingness to accept the penalty. And any man that breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty, by staying in jail in order to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law, is at that moment expressing the highest respect for law.

Oh that we as Christians, even me and my sons, would be so changed by the goodness and grace of God and the excellence of his ways that we would be model citizens and when we must break a law that our conscience tells us is unjust, we would do so openly and cheerfully and lovingly and civilly and willing to accept the penalty and thereby express the highest respect for the law.

4) Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission and stand is a powerful and inspiring way to point my boys to Christ.

Dr. King’s stance against the moral evil of racial bigotry and segregation, and for the moral good of all human beings to freely live in their society, share equal access to that society’s economy, politics and social aspects as people created in the image of God no matter the color of their skin is important and life changing because it’s right! There is a right and there is a wrong. There is evil and there is good. There is sin and their is righteousness. God through Christ showed us what righteousness is. We human beings demonstrate over and over again what sin is. Out of our hearts comes all kinds of evil.

Forcing people with dark skin to eat in a different part of a restaurant, go to a different school, drink from a different sink; beating peaceful demonstrators for respectfully standing against legislated evil; preventing black people from voting… and the many more evils that were accepted as right by our society is deplorable. It should never be. But even when that evil is eradicated from the planet other evils persist. The killing of the unborn. Human trafficking. Child pornography. Violent and oppressive governments. Child abuse. Domestic violence. And the list could go on and on. All these are evils that have come out of the human heart. Dr. King pointed us to the One who’s glory is the only cure for it: Christ.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches were prophetic and jarring. He often quoted from the Bible in his speeches. One from Amos really struck me in the movie today, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” It’s righteous, God’s righteousness, Christ’s righteousness that will make things right. In our lives individually now, as much as can be this side of His kingdom come. And one day, on that great and glorious day, fully when we see him face to face!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. His glory is not merely racial equality and it is not less than racial equality. It is massive. It is transforming. It is the right we long for. And He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. All that evil. All that has poured out of our hearts for generations and has done horror upon horror to each other and this world and ultimately has spoken enormous slander of God’s name whom we bear as creatures made in his image. His wrath is coming against all that evil that we have done. And there is only one place to escape His wrath- His Son.

Christ did ultimately what King was a small shadow of. King suffered the evils of men to stand for what was right. Christ suffered the evils of men and the wrath of a righteous God against all those evils (to which men have held dear) to save us and make us right.

The hope for the black man and the white man, the Chinese woman and the Arabian woman, the African child and the Iranian child is the One who created them and died to redeem them all. Only His Kingdom come and His will be done will bring the ultimate of what Dr. King sought. Freedom.

Quieted,

Sheila

Advent meditation: Joy

(That was a sunrise a week or so ago.)

Well, it’s 10 O’clock, and everyone is in bed and it’s finally quiet so I can think. I’m trying to stave off some bug that’s decided to give me a dizzy-headache and sore throat in the last hour. Hot tea and lots of vitamin C I’m hoping will do the trick.

Today, joy. The third Sunday in Advent the preacher preached on joy. And I’m glad he did it the way he did. Cause it’s not that easy. It’s not a health and wealth gospel the joy of advent speaks of. It’s not, “Jesus will make you happy.” Or, “Jesus will give you what will make you happy.” It’s, “Jesus, Man of Sorrows, he knows. He knows you. He knows what caused things to not be the way their supposed to be: sin. And He came to take care of that problem. And believing that about Him brings something much more real than circumstantial happiness, something you can bank on, something warm and hopeful in you even when you feel sorrow: joy. Real. Lasting. Unstealable. Joy.”

I’m glad he did it the way he did it because honestly, I walked in that building today and when he asked the congregation if we had to pic an emoticon what would we be, I mumbled, “Depressed” under my breath.

It comes like a heavy fog that rolls in. There’s no control about when or how or why. Depression is a real deal that I’ve been dealing with for awhile now. And for the past several weeks it’s fog has been gone. Really gone. Light and pleasure and smiles and singing have filled my days even in the mundane things that can get a person down. But a few days ago it rolled in again. I felt it. I did a little inventory to see why. Is it a female hormone thing? (Note to self made about what day it fell on the calendar). Did I forget to take my medications? Is it my diet? Am I eating too much junk? Could be any and all of that and more. But this time, when it rolled in, I did not mindlessly keep wandering through the fog. I pulled over and preached to myself. “Self,” I said, “Why are you so downcast? Put your hope in God!” And then I sang it. Out loud. In the kitchen.

“Why so downcast oh my soul. Put your hope in God. Put your hope in God. Put your hope in Go-o-o-d. Why so downcast oh my soul. Put your hope in God. And bless the Lord oh my soul. Bless the Lord. He’s the lifter of my countenance. Bless the Lord. He’s the lifter of my head. Bless the Lord. He’s the lifter of my countenance. I will never be ashamed…”

The fog didn’t clear. But I was OK with knowing it was there and that, as in the past, it would clear. I’ll wait it out. The joy in me is the hope of Christ: He came. He destroyed sin and death’s power over me. He is committed to conforming me to the image of the Son and He has given me His Holy Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing that when I see Him, I will be like Him and I will be fully alive and live fully with him perpetually and not one drop depressed. No fog. No sin. That’s the joy of Advent. It’s massive. It’s greater than all our sorrows. It can handle sorrow and depression and loneliness and grief and pain. It knows Who came and Who’s coming again.

For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. -Psalm 30:5

Quieted,

Sheila

Unashamedly bragging

Photo credit

I’ve been thinking a lot about today. Today, 2000 years ago. The entire center and source of all things, all the purposes of time and history and existence culminating in one Man’s abused and slaughtered body hanging on a Roman cross. There is no god like mine!

All the religions of the world acknowledge that there’s something wrong with us humans. And they all give their prescription for making us better, which like Propaganda said is like spraying perfume on a corpse and pretending it doesn’t still stink. But for all the religions and the good ideas man has come up with for how we can be pleasing to God or just be better people, none of them propose what my God has done in Christ.

So maybe you scrap religion altogether. It’s a crutch that weak man needs, but you’re too intelligent for that. God, if he (or she) exists is just a nice concept to help us be better people. Ignoring problems never solves them. If we’re all just godless products of chance and time why do we even care? But I digress, that’s another blog post.

There’s no answer like the answer found in Christ.

The perfect One, swallowing up the sure judgement coming against me because I’m not right. I’m made to image God, but I don’t, and He has a right to scrap His creation turned against Him. But He doesn’t. Instead, He stands in my place. Stands between me and the place of my sure judgement.

Only my God redeems. Only my God does not count my wrongs against me and promises me a new heart. Only my God is working to conform me to the image of His Son. Only my God came, not to be served, but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many. Only my God became a man and knows what its like to bear the weight of my fallenness. Only my God bends down to lift me up. Only my God gives not just a way for me to live right, but the power to live that way by His very life living in me.

There is no god like mine!

What love is this.

To send His own.

To die for sin.

And take us home.

Got me feelin’ good.

Forget my feelin’s.

When you heard a story bout the hero dying for the villain?

– Trip Lee

So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. – 2 Corinthians 5:20-21

Quieted,

Sheila