Month: June 2020

Replacing the Veil

God created us for intimacy with Himself. Why do we build back up what He died to tear down?

The trip down Howell Mountain was like a descent from heaven to earth, starting from above the blankets of cloud and finishing among the vineyards on the valley floor. In the ten minute ride down, you could see the best of the Napa Valley: the stalwart pines, standing tall and militant along the ridges; the winding forest roads, always green with moss; and of course, the vineyards, which occupied everything from the steep, mountain hills to neighborhood backyards and the endless commercial fields.

Strapped into the backseat of my family’s Honda Odyssey, I leaned by forehead against the window and stared out at the valley below. We had just visited church, but this wasn’t a normal Sunday guest experience. For one, it wasn’t even Sunday.

Prior to attending my Seventh-Day Adventist college to pursue an English degree, my family decided to take a trip to check out the campus, the music department, where I’d be auditioning for a scholarship, and the church—a reasonable move seeing how we weren’t even Adventist. That Saturday afternoon, however, some unfamiliar theology communicated in the message actually shook me.

At the time, I had been in the middle of my own Great Awakening and was on fire for God. I read my Bible constantly—not out of guilt, but with the sincerity and exuberance of someone newly in love. Having just figured it out, I prayed all the time and wept at the the idea that Jesus would give himself for someone like me. For the first time in my 18 years I felt right with God. Now, when confronted with things like food restrictions and celebrating Sabbath on the “right day,” I questioned whether I was right about anything I believed in.

These new teachings challenged what I had learned about God in the last year— and by challenged I mean that they reacted in my heart like baking soda does to a capful for vinegar. I walked out discouraged, closed off, doubting my salvation.

Untested and secure within the confines of my garden, I thought my faith was strong. But in this new arena of veggie bacon and 1860s prophetesses and “Happy Sabbath!” from strangers downtown, it only felt threatened. One church service and my developing faith took as many steps back as I had covered that year, and for a time, I shut out the God whom I now perceived expected far too much.

For a season, the question that plagued my mind was this: Was the God I was learning to love who I really thought He was, or had my heart been slowly warming to someone who was completely indifferent to me?

I didn’t dare run to Him. I was hurt. God didn’t like me, so what was the use talking to Him? Like a hospital patient in need of some privacy, I drew a thick curtain around my heart and with a flourish and put out a sign: Do Not Disturb.

Fear and Fig Leaves

Around Halloween 2005 I discovered the stash of King Size Reese’s my mom had bought at Costco for the slew of trick or treaters who would be swarming our small neighborhood in a matter of weeks. Having grown up without much sugar in the house, I took advantage of the situation in a way that any normal 8 year-old would.

For two weeks I woke up at 5am and enjoyed a modest 4 Reese’s cups while watching the news. Any and all evidence was carefully removed and stowed, not in the trash where my parents would see, but inside the rocking chair, between the couch cushions, and behind the entertainment center. I knew the Great Kitchen Table Judgement would happen eventually, but until then I was happy to give Elsa a run for her money, feigning the image of perfection and stuffing everything else away between the cushions. Turns out, I’m not the first one to try that. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve patented fig leaf couture when they realized they were naked:

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” (Genesis 3:7)

Sin has a way of making us feel exposed, and why wouldn’t it? Romans 6:23 warns us that the “wages” or payment for sin is death. Not one of us are righteous, and like the first humans, in our sins we feel exposed before the Lord.

So what happens when it’s God who comes near?

The Garden of Eden.

The Tabernacle in the desert.

The Temple.

All three scenarios were formed for the purpose of God dwelling with his people. And while the Tabernacle and Temple served as places where Israel could become right with God through blood sacrifice, they were not permanent fixtures, but foreshadowed the man who would both remove our sins and dwell among us. The prophet Isaiah prophesied this Savior 700 years before he was born, calling this man, “Emmanuel,” meaning God with us (Isa. 9:6).

This wouldn’t just be God in a cloud, or God hovering above the Ark in the Holy of Holies where no man could survive without being completely cleansed. This would be (as my friend likes to say) “God in a bod,” living among his people, touching their faces, healing their diseases, and bearing their shame for them (Isa. 53:4).

Into-Me-See

I once had a counselor break down the word “intimacy” into “into-me-see.” To achieve intimacy, you have to be vulnerable. And to achieve vulnerability, you have to be willing to share who you are, warts and all, with another.

Into me, see.

It’s terrifying, honestly. I’d much rather stuff all my not-so pretty stuff, not-so Christian thoughts and habits, and the questions I’m too embarrassed to ask God and others right down under the couch cushions like a wad of Reese’s wrappers.

But the issue is, without vulnerability, which leads to intimacy, we will never truly be known. And that’s the fear the whole world is trying to solve, one more shopping trip, beer, porno, or pay raise at a time.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 acknowledges our innate longing for a forever-love from a forever-God, explaining how God, “has set eternity in the human heart.” All our lives, we have this sense that we were made for something else, or somewhere else. A Garden, perhaps. Created with what Rick Warren calls “the God-shaped hole,” we desire to belong somewhere and to Someone; to know and be known, love and be loved. It is in our DNA and basic development (just look up the studies on children in orphanages suffering from impaired cognitive development, lack of growth, and other problems due to lack of parental nurturing.)

Our desire to be known and loved can only be fully fulfilled in Christ simply because we were designed to be complete in Him. There’s a reason the corner piece from my Statue of Liberty puzzle doesn’t fit into my Map of the United States puzzle; it was designed with a specific place in a specific picture.

Tearing the Veil

We were created by God, but also for God, a gift to himself. As it says in Colossians 1:16, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”

Because of sin, we were separated from God. Yet, it is the story of the cross that flips our story on its head, turning tragedy to comedy.

In the Tabernacle and Temple, one could not enter into the presence of God without being cleansed, and even then, because God was so holy, there was always the possibility that this human High Priest could die. That veil, woven in purple, blue and scarlet and beautifully embroidered with images of cherubim, represented the separation between Heaven and Earth, sinful men and Holy God (Ex. 36:35).

Yet, that changed with Christ.

At the moment of his death, this very veil in the Temple was torn in two, from the top to the bottom (Mk. 15:38-39). While the earth shook and the dead rose from their graves, the line between Heaven and Earth was being broken; the Messiah had not only given himself to atone for the sin of humanity: He had made a way for man to be with God once more.

Bride of Christ

I read somewhere that the history of the bridal veil has less to do with fashion and more to do with preventing the groom of an arranged marriage from making a break for it should he not find the face of his never-before-seen beloved not so…uh…pleasing. The idea was to conceal that face until you locked him down and he couldn’t escape.

In my own walk with the Lord, this is how I’ve sometimes operated. Some passing thought, new theological teaching, or even more seriously, my own sin causes me to clamp up, shut down, and throw that veil up over my face before God can see what a messed up doubter I am. Like Jonah jumping into a boat on a sea that God himself created, I pretend I can outrun the one who oversaw my creation in my mother’s womb (Ps. 139).

It’s not that I want to be apart from Him, per se. It’s just that my veil feels safer, more secluded from the eyes that have every right to judge me.

And yet, in Christ, it is now my right to approach the throne of God with confidence, as unveiled as Adam and Eve were unashamedly naked (Heb. 4:16). It is the grace of God that saved me from death, and the love of Christ which assures me that I do not need to hide—not from the One whose grace allows for repentance and true intimacy.

Not from the one who gave everything to become Emmanuel.

Not from the one who died to carry me in His arms and bring me home.

Yeast and Yard work

In the 5th grade, two things were certain. Hannah Montana was the best show ever created, and I would never have to get a real job because the world was ending in 2012.

I guess somewhere between my Disney Channel binges and listening to popular playground theology a’la Left Behind (and some conversations about the rapture with my dad), I had come to the conclusion that the end of the world was better than growing up choosing a career path I wasn’t sure I’d like. My mom and dad were both very fulfilled in their jobs as a teacher and millwright, so I’m not sure where I formulated this idea that the moment I started working, my life would be reduced to monotony. Perhaps it was from watching the adults who hated their jobs on TV? Maybe I can blame the Disney Channel binges after all.

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I write this from a moment in history which, for many, feels like the end of the world. The impact of Covid19 has been felt all around the globe, and if it has not affected your life via infection, it has at least impacted your work.

In the first couple weeks of quarantine yeast was scarce, which TBH made me feel like I was in the world of the Hunger Games. Side note: I bought my sister a bow for Christmas but forgot a set of arrows. Weeks ago when reports went out that meat was becoming scarce in the stores, I seriously considered ordering arrows—but then again, what could I shoot? Squirrels? Proof that Covid makes us crazy.

Anyway, it turns out that yeast wasn’t scarce because people were starving and truly needed to bake bread.

After being cooped up in their homes, they were bored. They wanted something to do!

The serial bakers weren’t the only ones. One family I know photographed themselves in monochrome each day, cycling through the colors of the rainbow in impressively coordinated outfits.

My sister has successfully started three quarantine projects, including painting a pair roller skates (each side with a different, famous Van Gogh work), decorating the covers of several hardback Bibles, and teaching herself ukulele.

In my own restlessness, and between teaching online and taking my own classes I put together a planter box, restarted my garden, and built the Taj Mahal chicken coop of my dreams (still to be finished).

Despite the economic impact, the devastation of the lives lost, not to mention the inevitable changes we will all adapt to once we’re finally allowed to reenter society, I can’t help but wonder if this is all making us more…human. 

Allow me to take you back to the beginning. Not the beginning of quarantine, or even the start of this tumultuous year, but to our beginning. Back to Eden.

In the beginning God makes the Earth and creates a Garden and places the man in it, “to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15).

Before sin even enters the world the man is given the Garden to tend and the animals to name. Many of us associate work with the curse and yet, Adam was called to work before the curse had taken hold. To many, the idea of work is Hell, and understandably so. In Genesis 3, after sin enters the world, God casts the man and woman from the Garden, relaying the resulting curse. Adam’s curse specifically has to do with his work (Gen. 3:17-19). No longer will the plants grow without effort. From then on, life would be hard, and work would be work.

Yet, going back to the time before the curse, it seems that work was part of God’s good plan for us. Right after Adam’s creation, his first task is to work:

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” 

Gen. 2:15

Could it be, then, that we were actually made to work? To create with our hands, to add value, and to make things lovely, because we were made in the image of the Father who does exactly that?

We learn of God’s desire for His creation to create when He says, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it” (Genesis 1:28). This is not merely a request that his children simply have more children, but a command to multiply all that is given in His grace. The command to work and to be fruitful is not a result of sin because it preceded the Fall. It means that as Christians, we are called to work. We are invited to create as our Father created, using our gifts, our resources, and our time to be fruitful and multiply, making God’s beauty and glory known to the world.

Going back to baking and gardening and, in my case, building a chicken coop, perhaps quarantine has been the reset some of us needed to begin working again–and I don’t just mean showing up to a job each day. There is a difference between dispassionate work as unto man and passionate work as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23). I was somewhat lucky that my job as a teacher was only slightly changed. In-person learning became distance learning, and my resilient and computer-savvy band of 7th graders were champs and learned how to navigate Google classroom in a matter of days. And while some friends of mine who were not so lucky settled into quarantine with nothing to pass the time but whatever they hadn’t already watched from their Netflix queue, I have been encouraged by the ones who answered that Edenic call to create.

As God’s creatures who are wholly dependent on Him to sustain us, we were made to rest, as demonstrated by the Lord on the 7th day of Creation. However, we were also made to work. It’s a desire that is simply built into us. And so, when we are displaced and told specifically not to go to work, we begin crocheting and baking until the world smells of crusty, yeasty bread and breathes a little deeper than it did before. I pray that this time brings about an awareness of the beauty and creativity of God, both for those who know Him and for those who don’t yet.

While an invisible virus sweeps the planet and unmakes our long held plans, may we be fruitful and multiply and make.

May we collapse from our crude scaffolds and fall backwards toward childlike dependance, building glistening, intricate structures from His abundance.

And may we reflect our Creator, using our newfound time to work and to create beautiful things.