Yesterday was a beautiful day, and a simple one.
I went to a local wildlife reserve with my husband. We looked for birds through the blinds provided by the preserve. When a sudden spring storm sprang up, we huddled in a shelter and watched the gray curtain of the rain fall over the wetlands. On the way home, we got warm drinks to share.
Later, I listened to an artist I love who sings beautiful liturgical music and hymns. I re-read part of The Paradise King. I crocheted and worked on an art piece I’ve been trying to finish. I chatted with my husband, joked with my dad, made a good dinner. I prepared a few small packages to send out to those in need of some encouragement.
I did not pick up my phone. I did not dwell on work drama or the latest gossip. I did not enter the maelstrom of the local or national news. I did not read any essay critiques on the church. I did not pay any attention to the upsetting behavior of my neighbors.
And I realized that, in many ways, this is a map to sidestep our culture of death.
Because we do live in a culture of death. The first chapter of Isaiah provides a description of what this looks like in a nation:
Why should you be stricken and punished again [since no change results from it]?
You [only continue to rebel].
The whole head is sick
And the whole heart is faint and sick.
From the sole of the foot even to the head
There is nothing healthy in the nation’s body,
Only bruises, welts, and raw wounds,
Not pressed out or bandaged,
Nor softened with oil.
Isaiah 1:5-6, AMP
From the top to the bottom, the body is ailing. We destroy everything we touch: the earth, ourselves, each other. We beg any number of saviors to help us—our political systems, our medical systems, our technology, our science—but there is no remedy, only more death and destruction. The ache is clear and apparent. So is our inability, as a culture, to recognize God or turn to Him to mend it in spite of all our rhetoric to the contrary.
I have heard it said that Satan cannot create: he can only pervert or change what has already been made. Destruction and degradation are his purview: beneath his hands everything must stagnate, decay, or become twisted to ruin. In that blighted landscape, what turns the eye and draws the heart?
Life.
Growth. A green leaf unfurling from the ashes. Generation, creation, emergence: the opposite of all that darkness is and does. And, not coincidentally, the signs of God’s presence anywhere and everywhere. Where He is, there is water, renewal, promise, newness.
And what does that look like in the day to day? Making, doing, creating. Focusing on the good, the beautiful, and the true—and introducing that into the world with our own hands. Becoming an oasis in a world gone mad. Giving and rejoicing and producing. Dancing in exile.
In spite of my best efforts, I miss this.
I wake up on a work morning and I pick up my phone; I grow weary just looking at the headlines. I read a critique of the American church with grim empathy and shake my head. I get tangled up in conversations about bad actors at work. I think about everything I have to do. I groan under my tasks. And then, because those things make me feel bad and tired, I pick up the phone even more to distract myself.
Many people seem to think establishing the kingdom of Christ on earth is about fighting. Like Peter, with self-righteous anger, they draw swords and charge the strongholds of darkness, believing that God wants us to take in bloody arms the business of bringing the kingdom to earth through force, or politics, or sheer strength of will.
But Christ tells us the kingdom has come.
Maybe, then, what will speak to the presence of the kingdom is the force of our joy. Our ability to make and do and laugh and love and enjoy in the midst of a dying world. The presence of life, of creation, of promise and brightness: of good, lovely, wonderful things. A singing, dancing, giving, joyous people: what would that look like, now?
All the believers I have loved, who poured life into me, were radiant. They loved their lives and they loved giving their lives away; even in sorrow they wore joy. Empire troubled them little; suffering they expected; they faced it with uplifted faces. They walked in the image of God, and even those who did not believe could see it. They didn’t need to speak a word of testimony, though they would and could; their lives testified.
I have often thought to myself I don’t have the ability to live like that. But I think I do, when I draw from the right wells. On a day like today, when I abandoned the things that drew me into darkness and cultivated the good and the beautiful and the true, I brim over with joy and calm. Nothing has changed, but God speaks to us in and through these spaces.
To be the work of the Spirit in the world, we must draw from the Spirit—not every now and again, not five minutes a day, but as deeply and frequently as we are able. To demand from ourselves a focus on the good, the beautiful, and the true orients us to become that ourselves in the world.
Where is that, in your life? Where could there be more of it? What can we abandon to exchange for life and joy and richness?
Surely being intentional in that godly focus will change the people we become, and allow more room for Christ to shine through us in a world that so badly needs it.
Samaritan's Song 