What Tremendous Things

It's been a while. I know.

This last week has been a heavy one. One of my seniors, our most well known basketball player and a darling to all, got diagnosed with leukemia last Saturday night. All day Monday, I spent my classes processing through this devastating news with my students. It was an exhausting day, filled with many questions of, "WHY? Why would God allow this?" There's been wonderfully hopeful news to follow this up-- my student's cancer has been determined to be 95% curable; her doctor is considered the best in the world in dealing with this type of leukemia; and coaches from UCLA, UW, Gonzaga and the like are still bending over backwards to recruit this girl. Still, even this good news does little to soften the overall blow.

In the meantime, others close to me are dealing with their own gauntlets: family issues, marriage difficulties, spiritual doubts and so on. In my own life, I find myself tripping over struggles I thought I'd put to rest months and months ago. It's easy to join the choruses of people around me: why are we here again? Why would you allow this God?

Since I started teaching at my school, my September unit with the seniors has largely focused on Mere Christianity. This summer, re-reading it for the third time, I found myself getting SO much more out of it personally than I have before. This quote was one of many that caught my attention:

“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature."

The way C.S. Lewis describes it, all of everything boils down to what is happening on the inside of us. And although I read that quote back in August and have discussed it at length with my seniors, the apple-dropping-on-the-head moment didn't happen until this morning.

This is what I think. I think it all, all, all comes back to our eternal parts. We as humans tend to focus on circumstances, on whether or not we feel happy, on whether or not things are going well according to our standards. And why wouldn't we? We're evaluating our lives based on how well we understand living. But I'm not sure the question we should be asking ourselves is, "Does this make me happy?" Rather, I think the question we should be asking ourselves is, "What is this doing to the condition of my soul?"

Let me give an example. The struggle I myself keep tripping over is an old one-- I've mentioned it before on this blog. Simply put, when I feel afraid or anxious, I try to assert control over the variables around me-- usually people. I start giving instructions and making demands and drawing fences. I'm much better than I used to be-- I think my Fields of Grace analogy helped me considerably. But still: for me, fear begets a clamp-down.

Now: when my fists clutch, what happens to the condition of my soul? Fear starts calling the shots instead of the Holy Spirit. A hiss in my ear convinces me that God is NOT in control, and I have to do the job for Him. Anxiety inflames; my peace slips away. I find myself building Towers on my own, trying to construct a facade of safety. In those moments, the condition of my soul is horribly anxious and confined. I am listening more to the voices of darkness than the voices of light. Furthermore-- how do my demands affect other people? Rather than letting others pursue their own paths, under the shepherding of their watchful Lord, I try to play shepherd myself, and frankly-- probably do my best to get in God's way. How are others' opportunities to learn and experience God's plan impeded? How do my actions affect the conditions of THEIR souls?

To me, this realization deepens and enriches moments of exultation-- but it also gives meaning to what would seem like senseless tragedy. We ask why, because we are looking at the shambles around us. But the question isn't about those broken pieces; how many passages in the Bible remind us that this life is fleeting, that those things fade? What DOESN'T fade? Our eternal bits. And NOTHING mortal about us will last or persevere unless it knits itself with the eternal, resurrecting life of Christ. Feelings run out. Security runs out. Human reliability runs out. Health runs out. True: healing, faithfulness, safety, and true love can sweep in but if they're going to last, I believe they still must come from The Eternal Source. Our thoughts then, MUST be towards what is happening to the eternal parts of us. I must ask: what is happening to the condition of my soul?

The other quote I've read and re-read from Lewis' book again gets back to this idea-- and continues to speak to me in powerful ways:

"We must not be surprised [as Christians] when we are in for a rough time. When someone turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of their bad habits are now corrected), they often feel that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along... they are disappointed. These things, they feel, might have been necessary to rouse them and make them repent in their bad old days; but why now? Because: God is forcing them on, or up to a higher level: putting them into situations where they will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than they ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary; but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous things He means to make of us."

We scrutinize the dirt under our fingernails; the rain on the backs of our necks; the numbers on our paychecks. We care about the details. He cares about the details too I think-- but only insofar as they draw us to Him. Ultimately, He looks at the blazing, churning souls within us. He looks at the eternity we are becoming-- and if we give Him His way, He will do whatever necessary to make sure we become the tremendous things He's envisioned.