A New Light

After reading my last blog post, a friend messaged me on Facebook.

"I was wondering: I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about Old Testament Messianic prophecies. In the section of Isaiah 42 you quote, God is speaking to the Servant, whom we now know to be Christ. How does that fit in with applying the passage to us and saying that we should open blind eyes, bring out prisoners, etc.? Is it because Christ perfectly did all of those things, and we are called to be like Him?

It doesn't seem to me that the passage can be applied directly to us because of the part that says, "I will give you as a covenant for the people." I don't believe that can apply to us at all. However, I do believe that the passage as a whole puts forth a lifestyle that we should strive for. Currently, with the limited thought I've put into the matter, it seems like the link between the passage and us is Christ--He fulfilled this passage, and we strive to follow in His example as well as fallen humans can.

What are your thoughts?"

This is what I said back:

Thank you so much for your though provoking question. I've been reading through Isaiah and finding a lot of encouraging passages, but not paying as much attention to the context as I should. I didn't realize this until I read your message. I re-read through Isaiah 42 (as well as John MacArthur's commentary on it) and the passage is talking about the Messiah. Before, I had thoughtlessly assumed it was speaking of the nation of Israel, since most of the book of Isaiah is. I believe the promises to Israel apply to Christians because we are grafted into the promise through Christ (Romans 9 & 11) and are now God's nation (1 Peter 2:9-10). Isaiah 42 isn't talking about Israel, though, it's talking about Jesus. I misapplied Scripture in my post without realizing it.

I do believe that being saved means confessing Christ as Lord (Romans 10:9-10), and it also means that we are called to imitate Him. God has called us to conform us to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29). So our purpose still applies, but not directly through the Scripture passage I used.

I'm going to go correct that on my blog. I am so thankful for you pointing out my misinterpretation. Scripture is the Word of God, and the last thing I want to do is distort it in any way!! You've also challenged me to start reading the Old Testament with more thought, care, and research.

     In a way, I'm thankful I misused the Isaiah 42 passage. That sounds terrible, doesn't it? But I am thankful, because I hate making mistakes. I hate being wrong. It's humbling for me to be confronted on an error, and I desperately need humility. Day in and day out, I find pride keeping me from serving God as I should because I'm more focused on my image, my agenda. Even the smallest chance to learn humility is such a blessing. I'm thankful for a friend (who I honestly don't know well at all) who is brave enough and loves Scripture enough to point me towards truth. I'm thankful for the example to me, because that's the sort of friend I want to be. I'm thankful for the challenge to study Scripture more carefully. 

     Oh, and above all, I'm thankful that Isaiah 42 is talking about the Messiah. Because the Messiah is Jesus Christ, my Savior, my Lord. I'm one of the prisoners He rescued from the dungeon. I'm the darkness His pure light shone to. As I study through Isaiah more carefully, there are treasure troves of verse I never noticed before, pointing towards Him. My purpose still stands: to shine, to speak the Good News. But the light I shine needs to be all His because His light is the brightest, and the words I speak need to be all His because only His name brings salvation.

Full

      I've been to a lot of places since I last wrote, places like stress and exhaustion, and stillness and warmth. And in a more literal sense, I went to Oral Roberts University for the NCFCA national championship. I arrived at nationals feeling wind-swept and desolate. A sense of finality hung around the car door slamming and the hotel doors opening and the elevator trip up to our room. I arrived empty, but I left full.

Mollie<3

Hannah's hotel ballet

    What I love about my speech and debate friends is the warmth, the acceptance. If I say something that comes out wrong, there's no uncomfortable stares or awkward silence-it's painted over with a laugh and becomes an inside joke. Everybody hugs everybody. There's no pressure to conform-poets and baseball players and classical musicians and rappers and computer geeks genuinely appreciate each other's different interests and abilities. 

     Conversations are interesting, about personality types or the truth about Abraham Lincoln or the effects of music on behavior. It's really refreshing after being daily deluged with dozens of canned exchanges about weather, sports, celebrities. And conversations are deep, probing the flaws in humanism and the truth of creationism and personal struggles. Questions like "What has God been teaching you?" and "Why do you not watch TV?" are refreshing after the halfhearted "How are you?", asked by someone who doesn't really seem to care how you're doing. NCFCA people care.

     Of course, there's plenty of hilarity, too. Like Larry the Cucumber becoming a vigilante in Switzerland, and Ben's unforgettable Christian pickup lines. Oh, and this:

         Nationals brought competition up a level, but it also brought the relationships up. Maybe it was the "common enemy" factor-Region IV was finally competing against other regions instead of itself. But more than that, we got to spend time together outside of our suits. Monday night after checking into the hotel, we went out to dinner at this burger restaurant called Mooyah's (according to Ethan, that's the sound the cows make when they die, 'cause that's not demented at all). A group of us decided to walk back to the hotel, but ended up playing in a ditch instead. It was a ditch running in front of a private school called Victory, so there was a regal stone bridge with shimmering golden letters crying "VICTORY" arched over this pathetic trickle of mud. We laughed for a long time about that one. Anyways, after the clumsier half of us got our pants soaked, we decided it would be better to swim in a real pool. We ran to Wal-Mart to buy swimsuits, reflecting our excellent, well-cultured sense of homeschool fashion. Really, it was just because Wal-Mart was on the other side of the ditch.

   The next day, intense outdoor games of ultimate Frisbee and capture the flag turned us white kids into giant tomatoes. Swimming and theological discussions were our respite. During the tournament, there was much coffee consumed and much cafeteria pizza eaten, because almost everything else in the cafeteria was quite cardboard-esque. The tension of competition offered lots of opportunities to trust God, and lots of chances to encourage and be encouraged. At the end, some sported radiant trophies and other a flimsy certificate or two. I learned from both kinds. At the after-party, trophies and the lack thereof were drowned out by the stomping and the clapping of the Virginia reel. A handful of us stayed until past four in the morning, discussing suicide, Biblical counseling, and the balance of grace and truth. And making goat noises. And building introvert caves under tables. And watching Doctor Who, or rather, watching Greg and Grace watch and recite each word of a Doctor Who season premier.

    Some of my best memories have been forged at Oral Roberts University, but they are carried in the hearts of dozens of dear people I wish I could see more often. It's times like these that I am indelibly thankful for texting and for social networking. I know I won't be able to keep up every friendship, but I hope that someday we'll bump into each other on a university campus or city sidewalk, and then it will all be the same. I'll never forget you.

My Region IV family<3


"I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view or you participation in the Gospel from the first day until now. For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. FOr it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart...since you are all partakers of grace with me. For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."~Philippians 1:3-11~

The Art of Holding On

            Except for a smoldering orange patch crowning the hill which had hidden the sun, the whole sky was a grey twilight-blue. And I was in the middle of it, standing on the peak of a sloped gravel road. My shoes were in my hand; I felt the roughness of each sharp pebble beneath my feet. The ground all around me sloped downwards and sideways until the it vanished altogether, popping up again as trees and hills in the distance. My private gravel road was an island in that sea of trees and hills. The wind pushed my hair back from my face. Lifting my hands, I could feel it rush through my fingers. It laced in between each one of them, blowing through like silk ribbons. No matter how tightly I clenched my fists, I couldn’t catch hold of the wind-ribbons.

They made me think of Dicey’s Song, a beautiful book Mrs. Brock gave me to read a week or two ago. I have a nasty habit of reading quickly, devouring the plotline and the characters in one late, lamp-lit night. Dicey’s Song is the sort of book I’ll have to go back to, stretching it through afternoons and rainy days. Dicey felt the wind-ribbons, too.

“She thought to herself, she had to let go of what had gone before too, didn’t she? The people of last summer. And who she had been. Dicey felt as if she was standing in the wind and holding up her hands. She felt as if colored ribbons blew out of her hands and danced away on the wind. She felt as if, even if she wanted to, she couldn’t close her fingers around those ribbons. Dicey knew that she was sitting very still on a train, moving across the night. She knew her hands were wrapped around the wooden box that held the ashes of her momma. But she felt as if a wind blew through her hands and took even Momma away. What did that leave her with? The wind and her empty hands. The wind and Dicey.”

            Lisa and I were stretched out on my bedroom floor, reading through the names on the back of my Regionals t-shirt from 2010. Some people I thought I would hold onto for a while have slipped through my fingers. Other names, names that were only strings of letters to me then, have blown back around in the wind and become woven into my life without me hardly realizing it. I feel helpless.

            Lately my life has been tossed by the wind, fragmented. I leap between the world of speech and debate and my regular, San Antonio world. Sometimes the leap leaves me with a bit of jet-lag, and I don’t know how to connect to people in one group when I first leave the other. Ribbons are slipping through my fingers, out of my reach.

Words make more sense on paper. Writing doesn’t puff away as easily as thoughts. I wish I could write everyone I know a letter, telling them exactly what they mean to me. (Because even the people I talk to only once or twice have a place in my heart, especially if they are one of the many who took the time to draw me out when I felt most alone. That’s a lot more often than anybody would realize.) But the wind keeps blowing, and time and friends and words and emotions are snatched away and jumbled and sometimes blown back. Other times they are tossed from my island forever. I’m left with two ribbons that manage to stay wrapped securely around my heart.

            Dear friend, please don’t let me go. Even if I seem absent when I talk to you, even if I joke or forget to text or act like I don’t care. Even if I’ve just met you, or if we don’t know each other well yet. Please try to hold onto me. I need you, I want to know you, all of you.

            And even if the wind blew away everything I thought to cling to, this would stay constant: 

“As high as the heavens are over the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to His children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him. For he knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.” (Psalm 103:10-17)

Sometimes I wonder what Dicey wondered-

“You tell me to let go. But you told me to reach out, you told me to hold on. How can I do all those things together?”

            I can’t hold onto all the ribbons on my own. But if I cling to Him, everything will eventually be woven together with His love, for His glory. My God is faithful, from everlasting to everlasting.

Voices

I haven't written in a while. I haven't had anything to say, and I haven't had time to say it. Sometimes I think one of those causes the other.

There have been tournaments...

 

 

and concerts

...and LOTS of prep for the above. Solo concertos to learn, ensemble pieces to mesh, choir parts to memorize, speeches to polish, rounds to debate, CX questions to prepare. Unique opportunities to lead and teach have also come up which I am so thankful for. But they, too, devour time. And then there's choir tour this weekend. Regionals the week after. And this little thing called school I've got to squeeze in somewhere.

    All of it amounts to noise in my head. "This is due in two days!" "Your concert is tomorrow and you're still not hitting the harmonic." "You won't pass the geometry test because you haven't had time to study." I'm glad I have an organized brain and I've always been good at focusing, getting things done, but blessings can be curses. I can't get the voices to be quiet. This season will pass, life will settle down. The voices will sleep. But what frightens me for the now is that all that noise will drown out the one Voice worth hearing, the voice of God.

    His voice says the most important thing is to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength" (Luke 10). Loving God comes out in spending time with Him, and in "love your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10, too). But the leeches of schedules and responsibilties have attached themselves to my heart and mind, sucking out my soul and strength. God gets the residue, the leftovers, when He should have the best of me. So I'm struggling, struggling to find the balance between my commitments and God's priorities. The one thing I know I can't let go of is my morning quiet time. I don't even turn on my phone before I've read the Bible, and prayed. Still, those voices nag at me, keeping me from really soaking in Scripture and really pouring out my heart to God.

    I like being busy, but busy with writing and friends and God's work. Honestly, I'm looking forward to when this wave of life subsides.  Until it does, though, I know I need to glorify God where I'm at. I pray that He will show me how.