I could tell that morning had come. It wasn’t the light forcing its way through the curtains that told me. It wasn’t the cough from the children’s room, it wasn’t the dog yawning in her bed. Not even the fitful stirrings of my wife laying beside me told me. No, those things didn’t really tell me anything. Yet I knew that morning had come, and despite the inevitability of it’s arrival, I found myself heaving a deep sigh.

I knew that morning had come because my usual “host” was applying its usual pressure; a rhythmic throbbing inside my head that seemed to possess a twisted sense of delight, saying “it’s morning, and there isn’t a d#*$* thing you can do about it!” It pounds at my head, it pulls at my neck refusing to be ignored.

Another morning has come whether I like it or not. At least if I sit up, the throbbing in my neck will ease. If I get something hot to drink the headache will abate. If I move around and try to stretch a little, the other various pains will dissipate.

But physical aches are not my real concern. With the right spirit, they can be managed. Yet who can endure an ache of the soul? The bodily pains are just a symptom. The real ache is the God-awful reality that yet another empty, meaningless day has begun.

It is a cycle of futility, measured by the movement of the sun, marked by frustration, confusion and battles with despair. How can a man muster the courage to fight his way up a hill when he doesn’t even know which hill to take?

I feel as if I am in the middle of a vast, cold ocean. I look in one direction, then another, then another, then another, in a slow, 360 degree spin. Yet I can find no land in sight, only an infinite horizon all around me.

I don’t know which way to swim. So I tread water, circling, looking all around but taking no real direction. If I choose a course and pursue it with all my heart, I might be wrong. I might exhaust all my resources and drown–and if I drown, I’ll take my family down with me.

On the other hand, if I don’t choose a course, I will certainly drown. But what if I set off in one direction, go for it and at least try? No, no, I can’t. I know myself too well. Too many times have I swelled up with hope and enthusiasm only to start out–and then panic, change my mind and start swimming in some other direction. The result: I end up swimming in circles, one false start after another. And if I do that long enough I will drown even quicker than if I stay put, treading water. At least by treading I can conserve my energy while trying to figure out which way to go. Yes, that’s the thing to do. Don’t strike out until I’m sure which way to go.

But I can’t figure out which way to go! And if I don’t do something soon, I will drown. Time is running out!

Occasionally, I see a piece of drift wood off in the distance. It’s too tempting to resist, so I swim for it. Gathering some wood here and there helps me stay afloat. Besides, it takes my mind off of the confusion. It gives me the illusion of progress. But I know that the wood or an occasional broken down raft or other floating object is not the answer. They can’t keep me afloat. They can only afford me a short rest.

Drift wood and the like seems like a God send…. or is it? Am I wasting valuable energy swimming here and there and everywhere gathering up “drift wood” when I should be spending that precious energy on figuring out which direction to go–and going there?

So there I lay in bed. Morning has forced itself upon me. And with it comes the endless ritual of treading water, trying out one direction, getting confused and/or tired, backing up, trying another direction, searching, looking, pleading, begging, crying out for guidance.

But I get no answer. Nothing.

No sign pointing in the direction I should go. No plan, no guidance, not a hint or even a whisper. Not even a general principle from which to draw my own conclusions. Bodily pains I have relative hope of enduring, but what soul can withstand the cold vacuum of “nothingness”?

It is as if My Paper Jesus is slowly being freeze-dried and crumbled up by the cold “reality” that there is nothing out there. Is it true what they say, that the spiritual universe, much like the physical one, is essentially an enormous vacuum, deep, vast, empty and cold, so very, very cold? It may be punctuated by the occasional “star” of inspiration or “galaxy” of wisdom, but those little points of light are the exception. The very essence of the universe is that of overwhelming emptiness–and soul crushing silence.

That’s how my day started. Pretty typical actually. But after pulling myself up out of bed, and eventually finding myself in the kitchen, then the shower and then the car, I found myself at the library parking lot (it was time to try some job hunting). And there I was, struggling to get out of my car and get started when, despite my best efforts to avoid Christian radio stations, I heard a song on K-Love. Not just any song, but one where the lyrics declared “all my devotion to You.”

That was just about the last thing I wanted to hear. I could not possibly relate to a devotion so strong, so full of energy when I wasn’t so sure God is even there. It certainly didn’t feel like He was there, and I couldn’t point to anything that shows me He is there. Perhaps I needed to face the cold reality that I’m alone. Maybe like so many of my atheistic and agnostic friends and acquaintances (all of whom handle life much better than I do), I needed to buck up and stop acting like Winnie the Pooh, always looking for Christopher Robin to come in and bail him out. They would say I need to realize that there is no Christopher Robin; that I’m on my own.

Yet in the midst of that song Someone spoke to me. I kid you not. You must believe me, I’m not saying this to put a rosy, Christianee ending to the story. It really happened. What He said was, as usual, not at all audible. And as usual, it was brief. But it was clear, oh so very clear. And it was powerful, like a gentle whisper, like a light spring breeze. It was a spark of light in a dark tunnel. It was as if He said “get up.” That was it, just “get up.” And with that I felt this need to just put one foot in front of the other and simply trust Him.

My reaction, I couldn’t help but reflect what the song on K-Love was now saying: “I will serve You.” I said it out loud, I had to. But I knew full well the irony of that statement. I don’t have the foggiest idea how to serve Him. But that’s OK. Somehow, in the midst of treading water, still gripped by the fear of drowning, still confused (still a bit angry, truth be told), I could not help but say out loud, “forgive me Lord.” Even now, while telling you, dear reader, what happened, I cannot help but feel His love, His joy even. Joy in the midst of pain. Comfort even though I am still confused. Peace, even though my heart still wants to rage.

I guess now I can actually say, and say it with integrity, “this is the day that the Lord has made.”

I still don’t know which direction to go. I’m still concerned that I’ll do the wrong thing–or worse, do nothing–and then drown and take my whole family down with me. But at least the despair is gone…. actually, held at bay for now.

Epilogue: (or, Even More on This Subject)

In “The Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers” (movie version) Legolas the elf exchanges heated words with Aragorn, a fellow warrior. The situation at Helm’s Deep was hopeless, for a massive army, the likes of which that land has never seen before, was about to pour itself out relentlessly upon their refuge. Legolas declares that most of those who fled into the fortress are either too old to fight or too young, that they are farmers and wood choppers, not trained soldiers; that they are terrified–and that they will all die. Finally, Aragorn shouts at him “then I will die with them!”

Later Legolas apologizes, “it was wrong of me to despair.” Aragorn’s commitment to valor, to right and wrong, to defending Helm’s Deep and all in it to the point of death, won Legolas over. The commitment of one stirred up a renewed commitment in the other.

Maybe that’s what happened to me. Maybe the strong commitment declared in a song that says “I’m giving everything to You” was just the right tool at the right time for Someone to speak to me. That Someone was none other than the Real Jesus.

Yet again my “paper Jesus” failed me: my head knowledge crumbled under the weight of life. But when I opened myself up to God and confessed that my intellectual assent was being ripped to pieces, the Real Jesus met me in my hour of need. And this time all He said was “get up.” But it was lembas bread for the soul. (If I just lost you, click on “lembas bread” and read about it in Wikipedia)

What an incredible day this has been. I never would have dreamed that it turned out this way–never. It’s now time to relax and then turn in for the night. For once I’m rather eager to see what tomorrow holds!

Hey…. my headache is gone. Well, whaddoya know.

Isaiah 61:1-3  The Real Jesus will provide for those “in Zion” a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

Isaiah 61:1-3 (New International Version)

Isaiah 61
The Year of the LORD’s Favor
1 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
[author's note: does that sound rather familiar? Check out what Jesus read--and proclaimed in Luke 4:14-21]

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners, [a]

2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,

3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the LORD
for the display of his splendor.

hello...

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles…. guess what happened last night?!?–and this morning, actually.

Let me explain. No, there’s too much. Let me sum up: It was as if Miracle Max was saying to me “It just so happens that your friend here (pointing to my laptop) is only MOSTLY dead.”

You see, last night one of my sons asked to borrow my Macbook Pro. He and his friends needed another computer so they could play online games together.

Why not?, I thought. Soon I’ll be ripping its guts out anyway. What could he do to it, melt the logic board?

So he logs in with his account (his, not mine, mind you) and suddenly says, “Hey dad! Look! The display problem is gone.” Son of a widget, he was right!

This meant there was no way it was a hardware issue. The problem had to be somewhere within my account’s preferences. So, this morning dutifully brought the laptop to one of the Geniuses as they had asked me to do last Thursday. But before we dove into more hardware diagnostics, I told him what happened last night.

“Sounds like your preferences to me,” he said. So I asked, “What if I deleted all of my .plist files in my account?” It’s a bit of overkill, sure, but I didn’t want to mess around trying to find the which preference was causing the problem.

“Any harm in that?”, I asked.

“Nope,” he replied, “that should do it all right.”

Sure enough, as soon as I deleted all of my .plist files under my account, voila! The case was solve-ed. 

The moral of the story: You rush a miracle man (or Genius), you get rotten miracles.

But the fact that they were rather booked up last Thursday was exactly why they asked me to bring it back today–so they could take a more careful, more thorough look and talk it over, etc.

And the real moral of the story for me is: don’t despair.

Sure, it could have turned out differently, like actually needing a new logic board, or worse. The important thing is that this little issue flushed the dragon out into the open. God made me see who I am, so He could help me work through it.

PS: I also think this was a case of the Real Jesus saying to me “see, that piece of your paper Jesus, the one that says ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ Look at Me, look carefully. Now do you believe that?”

I think I’m starting to.

There I sat, working on my PMP class, trying to ignore the lousy display/text issue, when I noticed my Macbook Pro’s fans. Hmmm… that’s odd. Why can I hear them? Are they speeding up? Sure enough, according to iStat pro, their RPMs were climbing. Then rather suddenly, the little beasties got so loud that the laptop resembled a jump-jet attempting to lift off from my desk! The CPU heat climbed dramatically, utilization pegged–and stayed there! And I wasn’t running anything! Honest!

In the midst of all this, the operating system froze up. I had to do a forced shutdown. When I powered it back up, it went right back into crazy-mode again! I was able to do some quick analysis and noticed that the mdimportserver was acting like a demon, virtually possessing the entire computer (it’s CPU utilization was 98%).

I shut the laptop off again, went to another computer and called upon the greatest sage of our time for help (Google) and found… a solution. Yes! Rebuild the Spotlight database and all will be hunky dory again. Sure enough, that solved the problem.

Oh, and by the way, in the midst of all this, you would have been so proud of my demeanor. Calm, at peace, knowing that God is in control, that He cares about my eternity and that trials like this are good for me…. NOT!!

Man, was I fuming, and mad and … well, you would think that after the way things turned out yesterday I would be better at slaying the dragon within, but nooOOooOoo..  Oh, man. It was bad. I said in my last article that the dragon never really goes away; he just looks for a new opportunity (that is to say, I’m still quite capable of reverting back to my old self). I meant it, but I didn’t really believe it. 

When it was all over I felt pretty stupid for how I reacted. You would think by the way I felt during this little “crisis,” that I truly had abandoned all hope. After all, I was sure that this must be related to the logic board issue, that my laptop is about to do a China Syndrome on me, that God has abandoned me and doomed me to computer h-e-double toothpicks. Once again, a classic case of my head knowledge failing me. When my Paper Jesus gets dinged by little trials like this, that’s when I revert back to being a dragon.

Whatever the case, the silence has been deafening.

All speculation aside, it’s a scary thing to realize that a faith founded primarily upon head-knowledge just won’t cut it anymore. It tends to rock one’s boat. It’s rocking mine, that’s for sure.

Take the other day. While looking through some applets posted on the “gadget” page of a very popular search site, I came across one generates a daily devotional thought. I was inspired! That is, until I read several of the comments left by visitors of this very popular search site.

Wow! Talk about venomous! Talk about hostile!

“Stupid! Ignorant! Backwords fools! God-people, go to H*ll!” and on and on the various comments went.

It was as if someone walked up to me, saw my Paper Jesus and decided to smash it head in.

My Paper Jesus cannot stand up to challenges like that. It just can’t. I have tried to bolster My Paper Jesus with tools like “Evidence that Demands a stronger Paper Jesus” or “The Case for a Resilient Paper Jesus” and all that. Mind you, those are great books! But I don’t think I was using them as the authors intended. It’s not their fault, but I don’t need to schlock more glue on My Paper Jesus or reinforce it with cardboard, etc.

My Paper Jesus can’t withstand the onslaughts of our culture, but my REAL Jesus can. And that’s the whole point. Doctrinal beliefs should introduce us to Jesus, but we must go the next step. We need to receive a real, viable relationship with Jesus. Intellectual assent can only bring us to the door.

In the past one could get by rather well using “head-faith.” For one thing, everyone around you pretty much believed the same thing, even if they didn’t actively participate in said beliefs. But gone are the days when society itself bolsters one’s concepts about Jesus. And that’s actually a good thing! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Today things are different. And bringing up the fact that today there are many ways in which one’s belief system is threatened seems to evoke varied reactions amongst Christians, the main one being silence.

BUT there is another time when the silence gets really deafening!

Many a Christian that I have come in contact with can be rather vocal when it comes to societal issues. They can rather loudly stress our need to return to the “good old days” when we were “a Christian nation”. In other words, there is a strong urge in some to get back to the days when society did not threaten their Paper Jesus; where society even helped hold their head-faith together.

But ask some Christians “how are you doing with loving those around you and rescuing them with the love of Jesus?” Silence…… (insert crick chirp sound effect).

Silence, like the trees in Narnia when Prince Caspian shows up. The book Prince Caspian (unlike the movie) is actually a very sophisticated story. To the point: when the main characters from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe show up again in Narnia, they find that much of the wonder and awe they knew is gone. What’s worse, the Golden Era of Narnia that they (Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy) brought in is nowhere to be found. Everything is run down, drab, oppressed. Lucy notices that even the trees, the trees that she used to dance with, were silent.

But–and here is where the movie fails terribly–Aslan did not bring the Pevensie children back to Narnia to restore it to the “golden age.” Rather, his assignment to them was to assist the new king, Caspian, as Caspian rescues the Narnians from their oppressor, the Telmorines.

Allow me to say it again,they were not– I repeat NOT–brought to Narnia by Aslan to restore Narnia to its Golden Era. They were brought there to assist in a “search and rescue mission.”

You and I, if you call yourself a Christian, are *not* on this planet to try to bring about a John Calvin style Kingdom of God on Earth. We are here to participate in God’s great Search & Rescue Mission.

So I plead with you dear Christian reader: can we please become less vocal about our supposed need to be a nation of Christian values—and get much more involved and effective in rescuing a lost society, one person at a time?

“So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”     Acts 1:6-8

Jesus’ followers, even after He was resurrected, still were pre-occupied with returning Israel to it’s former glory. But what did Jesus do? He told them not to concern themselves with that, but rather to go on a world wide Search & Rescue Mission. The guideline that we have today for Christians is still Acts 1:8!

Do you think that C.S. Lewis had this scripture in mind when he wrote Prince Caspian? It’s possible. Narnia scholars have noticed that each book of the Chronicles of Narnia (when read in the order Lewis had them published) follows a Seven Step path of spiritual growth that was well known to Lewis.

Isn’t it interesting that Step 2, as it were, is to look at the world around you and seek to rescue it?

If you’re an older Christian like me, maybe it’s time to look around for the Caspians in the world (younger Christians who are stepping up into leadership) and support them as God leads them in their missions.

Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy had a very big challenge on their hands when they returned to Narnia. For one thing, the very first person they met was an atheist. Trumkin the Dwarf, didn’t believe in Aslan, the White Witch, or any of those old stories. He didn’t even believe in the Pevensies, and when he saw them, he was greatly dissapointed in what he was looking at.

Trumkin was anything but a bad person. He just openly stated what most Narnians felt. How could there be an Aslan when Narnia is in such a terrible condition?

Pevensies’ challenge, however, was much deeper than a largely agnostic, downtrodden Narnia. Their challenge was to avoid trying to restore what they so loved about “their” Narnia and instead humbly serve Caspian as Caspian restored all things. Restore Narnia, yes. Return it to its glory days? no. There is a very big difference between the two goals.

What silences some Christians, like the Narnian trees before Caspian rescued them? The thought of reaching out to a hurting world can do it. What say we all make strides to “wake up” our spirits, love whoever God puts in our path and focus on our Search & Rescue mission!