re-calibrating

Sometimes I find myself in a place, like in a dream. I feel like I’m looking at myself from the outside, wondering where I am and what I’m doing. It’s like watching a movie but this movie is about me. It’s filled with suspense and intrigue. Like any good suspenseful film, I watch the main character—me—and I often worry that something is about to go wrong. There seems to be an ever present danger and it lurks just around the next corner, just out of sight. That’s fine, I suppose, because the real question is not whether or not this danger exists but what I will do when I happen upon it.

Do you ever feel like that?

In the first four chapters of John there are two characters I marvel at. First, there’s Nicodemus—religiously leader and general good guy, so far as I can tell, but a bit of a coward as he’s coming to Jesus in the middle of the night. When no one will see him. He doesn’t seem to catch on to metaphor too easily, either. Jesus has to explain the idea of re-birth to this guy several times and he still maynot be getting it. At the conclusion of their conversation he hardly seems any further along. But he means well, and Jesus receives him. Jesus encourages him. Jesus throws on a jacket and stumbles out into the night to meet him, and I feel like that says a lot about Jesus.

Then there’s the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman, and I feel like I know her. Sometimes I feel like I am her. Rejected and sinful, hesitant to believe much of anything. I get the impression that she, unlike Nicodemus, follows Jesus’ analogies about living water but chooses, when Jesus challenges her about the condition of her life, to side-step any kind of real interchange and instead asks a question about worship style. A question not nearly as invasive. A safe question. Isn’t that just like me?

Nicodemus won’t allow himself to really hear Jesus and this woman at the well, upon hearing Him, promptly changes the subject.

Jesus tries to speak with me often. Daily even. I can sometimes hear clearly the call of His voice and sometimes it is nothing but the sound of the fan blowing in my room while I fall asleep at night. But He’s there. Sometimes I insist on seeing this world, His world, my way. Sometimes I insist on a literal interpretation of everything and I miss the wonderful metaphor of life. Life is, after all, really a giant metaphor. Nothing matters but His love for us.

Other times I dare to sit with Him, sheepishly, of course, babbling about things that don’t matter until He stares me down and challenges me with the raw truth of who He is and how much I need Him. Then I find myself praying about the weather or selling some stupid deal instead of meditating on His nature, His Spirit. Sometimes I just lack the courage.

And this is what I mean when I say there is a danger lurking out there for me, a test coming. How can I live in His light if I lack the courage to step into it? How can I really grow closer to Him if I keep avoiding Him or changing the subject when He and I talk? This just won’t do. No, something in my life needs to be re-calibrated. Something needs to be changed. Something I feel quite certain He will have to change within me—it’s beyond the scope of my ability to change.

What strikes me most about those two people in John and their encounters with Jesus is that my inclination is to compare myself to both of them and try to learn something new about me. My first reaction is an attempt at greater self-awareness. My first response is basically selfish. The real deal in those stories is not how Nicodemus or this woman reacts, but what Jesus does and how He treats them. The real issue is who He is.

He is One who speaks truth, even if I avoid hearing it. He is One who knows me better than I know myself, even if I try to change the subject when that comes up. He is One who will meet with me in the middle of the night down some back alley or in the heat of the day out by a well—wherever, whenever—just so long as we meet. And He is One who does not seem to judge the success of such meetings as I would. His intent seems to be a genuine meeting. His agenda is just that something real happen.

It’s infinitely easier for me to sit here and type about that than to drop to my knees and try to do it. Much easier to critique Nick or this woman for their shortcomings in the face of Christ than to face off with Him, myself. The truth is it’s scary. The truth is scary, and He won’t spare me that. He will speak it, the truth, outright to my face and He will bath me in it if I let Him. He will immerse me in it—baptize me with it—allowing me to be consumed by it because only them will I really know Him. Granted, the pay off—knowing God—is well worth it, but getting there is terrifying.

That’s why Nick and the woman both balked. That’s why I often balk, myself. But Jesus doesn’t balk or flinch or walk away. He’s steady and steadfast and He’s ever waiting. My goal today, meager though it is, is simply to stand firm in His truth and to seek Him. Really, I don’t think I can do any better than that. I don’t think He asks for much more than that. And I hope that when the lurking danger finds me, it finds me ready, firmly grounded in God’s truth, living my life wholly in the light and ready for whatever challenges I must face.