Suffering and the Triumph of God

Here is the audio file of my senior sermon, “Suffering and the Triumph of God,” which I preached at Great Lakes Christian College this past Tuesday (3/31/09).

Seven Months.

It’s been about seven months since I got back from my summer internship in St. Louis.  Seven months of living, of moving about, of learning, of loving, of talking, of listening, of dreaming.  Seven long months of distance from the experience that, on the one hand, continues to shape me and, on the other, continues to haunt me.  Or perhaps I just repeat myself.

There isn’t a single day that goes by that I don’t experience something that sends me immediately hurtling backwards through time, space and thought to my lonely room in an empty old convent, to the playground swings, or to the church steps upon which I used to read Barth and Merton — steps which have since been sprinkled with blood.  And what about the sirens?  And the gunshots echoing in the distance?  What about the children laughing in my ear as I carry them upon my back?  The unmitigated brightness in the smile of a four year old blowing bubbles beside me?  Such aching brutality and tear-evoking beauty and grace; such things I cannot escape, nor would I if given the chance.

All of this is to say that I am still thoroughly wrecked, in my own manifold way, by whatever it is you want to call the summer that I was twenty-two.  I can’t look at anything the same.  I can’t do anything the same.  I can’t even be a person the same way anymore.  I don’t know if that’s good, bad, or some strange amalgamation of in-between.  But as I sit here in a cafeteria quickly filling up with my peers and friends, writing this and trying my hardest to fight back tears, I can’t help but be reminded that I am entirely messed up, marred almost beyond recognition.  And for all of this, I don’t know what else to do but blame Jesus.

And I began to weep.

On the first day of Christmas break, which has presently just ended, I spent the entire day in bed.  I read a short book cover to cover; it was C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce.  I purchased this book from the used bookstore in the mostly neglected basement of an old small-town library in Elk Rapids, Michigan sometime this past summer, before or after St. Louis and all that came with it, though, I’m not sure.  In hindsight, I wish I knew and I’m not entirely sure why.

Though far from my favorite novel, it was a decent read and served its purpose.  In the end, the story found between its covers is not what will remain with me; instead it is the incidentals and existential bit of treasure found within that I continue to think about.  It is an old edition of an even older book.  Whoever owned it prior has no doubt seen many more years than I; the book — the object itself — with it’s distinctive smell of peace and age, is the unwavering proof that someone else has turned the pages before me.  An old book can remind you of many things, but chief among them is your perpetual youth.  No matter how road-weary and weathered you might become, someone has passed this way before you.  Long, long before you.

All of these things were instantly crystalized and set to incubation in my mind for the past three weeks the moment I turned the page somewhere in the first third of the book and, out from the crease of the elderly spine, fell the stiff receipt of a money order made in the 1960’s.  The sense of time long past and things faded and lost was immediately too much to bear.  And I began to weep.

We are constantly seeking out something that can weather the storm, stand the tests perpetual of time, and remain as day gives way into night.  We are looking for something to find ourselves in, know ourselves by, and call our own.  We are always seeking new things, that they might in turn become old things; that they might remain near and alive when other organs and relations begin to fail and fall away.

In a world full of variables, all we want is a constant.  All we want is to not grow old alone, like the long-forgotten receipt in the broken spine of a long-forgotten book.  All we want is the familiar, the foundational, the safe and secure; all we want is to be loved.  To be loved, and loved, and loved — and never, ever forgotten.

The Wonders of God and the Crisis of Identity

Having recently finished an independent study course covering the book, I have found an ever-increasing appreciation for the Psalms.  Though I am far from an expert on the Psalter, I think the theology of the entire book can be succinctly summarized by three monosyllabic words: “The LORD Reigns.”  (In fact, a book has been written on this subject with that same title.)  It is a simple way of articulating the complex: in all things — through laughter, guilt, tears, and joy — the LORD reigns.  Poem after poem, this truth is ingrained into our minds: above all things, the LORD reigns.

This world-establishing truth, though, is made most manifest in the way Israel and her psalmists retell and are shaped by their own recited history.  To establish or to build a world, though, comes with a contingent: to build a world with one hand means you will destruct a world with the other.  I’ll turn now to an example, Psalm 136 (NRSV):

¹O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures for ever.
²O give thanks to the God of gods,
for his steadfast love endures for ever.
³O give thanks to the Lord of lords,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;

⁴who alone does great wonders,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
⁵who by understanding made the heavens,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
⁶who spread out the earth on the waters,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
⁷who made the great lights,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
⁸the sun to rule over the day,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
⁹the moon and stars to rule over the night,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;

¹⁰who struck Egypt through their firstborn,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
¹¹and brought Israel out from among them,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
¹²with a strong hand and an outstretched arm,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
¹³who divided the Red Sea^* in two,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
¹⁴and made Israel pass through the midst of it,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
¹⁵but overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea,^*
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
¹⁶who led his people through the wilderness,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
¹⁷who struck down great kings,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
¹⁸and killed famous kings,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
¹⁹Sihon, king of the Amorites,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
²⁰and Og, king of Bashan,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
²¹and gave their land as a heritage,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
²²a heritage to his servant Israel,
for his steadfast love endures for ever.

²³It is he who remembered us in our low estate,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
²⁴and rescued us from our foes,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
²⁵who gives food to all flesh,
for his steadfast love endures for ever.

²⁶O give thanks to the God of heaven,
for his steadfast love endures for ever.

After being captured by Babylon, Israel was forced out of the Land (Canaan, Zion, The Promised Land) and into exilic captivity.  This was a punitive period of supreme disorientation: no longer did the old religion make sense, all of the familiar signposts and identifiers were no longer conversant with the present hardship; Israel felt as if she had been abandoned, left for dead by her God.  During this captivity, Israel went through a profound season of purging and it is reflected throughout the exilic prophets and psalms.  This was a time of intense, harsh-yet-purifying furnace flame meant to purge Israel of her past sins, to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to make the faithful once again proclaim their allegiance to the Sovereign One.

In the wake of the exile, however, we find Israel’s faith refreshed and renewed.  With one hand, she has reconstructed the world of her fathers, the world of faith in God and, with the other hand, she has pulled down the idols and deconstructed the world of her Babylonian exilic captors.  It is here that we see Israel has moved from her exilic disorentiation to her post-exilic reorientation (thank you, Brueggemann): her lamentations at the rod of Babylon have shifted into psalms of thanksgiving in which she extols her God for his saving power.  Judging by the allusion to ‘low estate’ in verse 23, it is very possible that Psalm 136 found its original placement in the post-exilic era in Israel’s history.  It is for this reason that the re-telling of Israel’s history — through creation, the Exodus, and the giving of the Land — is most poignant.

This psalm, in summary, is the sworn affidavit of the Community of Faith that the history of Israel has happened only because of God’s steadfast, eternal love.  Verses 5-9 detail God’s creation act; 10-15 recall the Exodus out of Egypt; and verses 16-22 recall the story of how Israel found a home.  These three stories are recurring themes throughout all the Psalter: it is in these stories — these histories — that Israel finds her identity.  Even though generations and hundreds of years separate the post-exilic community from the Exodus, the story is still drawn upon to bring meaning to the now. Past and present, recorded history and present identity; perhaps the two have been isolated from one another in the contemporary Church in ways which might just be unfaithful.

All of this matters because I believe we, the Western Church, are in the midst of a great crisis of identity.  We are disoriented, almost completely unaware of our present exile and all of the familiar signposts and identifiers have ceased to make sense.  When we think to pray as Peter and John, in Acts 4:30, asking God to “Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus” and find such a prayer odd, we’ve given in to a culture that is increasingly doubtful of the wondrous power, work, and signs of the mighty living God. We have allowed our identities to be shaped from the outside-in, instead of allowing ourselves to be formed by the story of the Scriptures from the inside-out.

I wonder which world we are constructing — and which world we are deconstructing — when faith is placed in the common, the established, and the consensus-defined ‘greater good?’  For my money (which, admittedly, ain’t much these days), I think we’ve got a lot to learn about history, identity, and what it means to be the global Community of Faith.  Those who have passed before us have endured much greater times of struggle, much larger looming shadows of calamity, than those of us to whom the current economic problems present a pressing concern.

As for me, I am probably the most culpable amongst those counted as guilty of this present crisis of identity.  You will rarely find my praying for a miracle because, simply, I haven’t got the faith in me at this time to believe in them.  I haven’t been formed, I haven’t found my self — I am still lost amidst the flotsam and jetsam of a world wrought in tempest, dysfunction, and distress.  Perhaps I, like the Church I am addressing, have forgotten how to construct and deconstruct worlds, as well as the urgently and soteriologically important distinction between these two acts.  Perhaps we should all re-learn our history: the story of the continually-redeemed people of God.  The story of us.

A bit late.

I had planned to write something last week to commemorate and hopefully come a few steps further towards understanding the greatest tragedy of the country within which I find myself planted has ever encountered. To be honest, I don’t really even remember what direction I had planned to take that writing in, but I remember watching a minute-by-minute documentary of The World Trade Center’s collapse last Tuesday night long after I had planned to go to bed; tragedy and suffering, you see, are very hard to ignore.

And now I find myself still thinking about this great modern day Babel, writing about it, but four days too late. Isn’t that how it always happens, though? When confronted with the horrific aftermath of all our idolatrous ways, aren’t we always just a bit late in remembering how to blush? Perhaps these words are perceived as harsh; with that I would agree. Such words are abrasive even (or perhaps especially) to the one who writes them.

The truth of the matter is man was meant for two things and two things alone: to love God and to love fellow man. Anything — any thing — that takes the place of either of those commandments takes on the form, function, and power of an idol. Pathetic little man-made gods. I have mine; you have yours. Still somehow tethered to those strange foreign shrines — even in the reality of the Kingship of God — I find myself confused, hurting, and lonelier than ever I ought to be. And to think, it’s all because I adamantly refuse to live up to the potential we were all given: to love God and love others.

None of this, though, comes close to answering the question at the forefront of many of our minds — even seven years and four days too late: why does calamity find us? Where is God when the lights are out, when the towers fall, when evil and heartache seem to hold reign? Where is God then?

The truth of my beliefs is that God remains a constant force in a world seemingly ruled by chaos and variable. The pain of September 12th, 2001; the day after the loss of something cherished, something coveted; the first April morning of a new life in shambles and casual disarray — all of these are like the moments after home-made stitches have been ripped out: the wound — that infected gash we’ve been carrying around for years — reopens, pouring blood down, down onto our surface-polished life. The stitches, the foreign things upon which we made ourselves dependent, fall in tatters and we are crushed beneath the bloody, opened pain of being revealed for what we really are: pathetic little physicians trying in vain to heal ourselves. But still, where is God as we weep, as we bleed?

If these things that fall upon and crush us beneath their weight are idols brought low, then there is only one logical place for God to be: upon his rightful throne. You see, with judgment comes grace; through the storm comes the first ray of brilliant sun to warm the faces of those who survived the night. But do I believe God causes these storms to rise or actively brings about the circumstances by which the idols are shattered? I surely hope not; such a belief would be incongruent. I believe that the fall of Babel, of the Towers, was inevitable and only a matter of time; even at the height of their power, all idols are still bound by a shelf-life. It is merely the natural course of things for such foreign gods to come back to the earth from whence they were fashioned.

As I think back to all of the horrors of September the 11th (or, feel free to supply your own personal, selfish tragedy here; I know I will), I cannot help but feel the desire to tear at my shirt, to roll around in ashes, and don the sackcloth I’ve so long neglected. With my idols, I, too, have been brought low. In the wake of such calamity, my idols’ mouths have been found shattered, never to speak again. My own tongue, though, has somehow retained its function through the storm and with it I will weep and I will wail, albeit four days late; for the first time in far too long, I will feel the warmth of a face flushed red: today I will remember how to blush.

Jeremiah 3:21-4:1
(21)A cry is hear n the barren heights, the weeping and pleading of the people of Israel, because they have perverted their ways and have forgotten the LORD their God.
(22)”Return, faithless people; I will cure you of backsliding.”
“Yes, we will come to you, for you are the LORD our God. (23)Surely the idolatrous commotion on the hills and mountains is a deception; surely in the LORD our God is the salvation of Israel. (24)From our youth shameful gods have consumed the fruits of our fathers’ labor — their flocks and herds, their sons and daughters. (25)Let us lie down in our shame and let our disgrace cover us. We have sinned against the LORD our God, both we and our fathers; from our youth till this day we have not obeyed the LORD our God.”
(4:1)”If you will return, O Israel, return to me.”

Moving.

I realized today that I hate moving, but not simply for its labor, sweat, and headaches: I hate it because it is representative of a process of change in which a person trades in a long list of familiarities and taken-for-granteds for a structure of open-endedness and variable disguised as a rental house.  I am thankful for the new place and for my close friends who I get to now call “roommates” and I am excited for what twelve months on the east side of Lansing will do, but I hate being in transition.

It seems my entire life is one transitory experience strung up to and followed by another.  It’s true, my living experience is constantly bettering itself on an upward slope, but the summit seems elusive from wherever it is exactly I am right now.  It’s also true that I would not trade what I’ve got now for anything ever I’ve thus far had; I wouldn’t turn back the clock, not for one damn minute.

I was crouching down in the lake yesterday — water up to my chin — trying to take in the beauty and internalize the experience that I might draw from it when winter’s chill comes to rob me of my warmth and sun when I realized that I’m no longer a child.  It will be almost a year before I find myself up at the cottage again.  I wonder what will have happened between now and then.

Probably many things.  Probably many, many things.

Proclaiming Lordship in a Land of Many Kings…

I decided that I rather like writing, keeping a blog, sharing my thoughts, opening discussion, and all that. So, instead of letting the City blogs die off quietly, I thought I might keep the site around for a while. There are some obvious changes to my reasoning for having such a site and I would really like to bring them to light now, to whatever limited readership I’ve got:

• The City blogs started as a way to keep in touch with my friends and family while I was away on internship in St. Louis, MO. I’m home now and can keep in touch with you people quite literally, so an attempt at open, honest, real human communication this is not.
• The City blogs acted as a means by which I could share part of my story in St. Louis. The things I saw and the things I did there were supremely impacting on me and I wanted to share that with you. June 1st, 2008 – August 11th, 2008 was a period of time quite outside the ordinary and I thought it something that should be shared. This page is quickly becoming a place of every-day reflection on every-day things. In other words, there are many other more exciting and important things you could be reading than my half-baked beliefs and ideals.
• The City blogs existed to paint a portrait of a short missionary journey. Declared, Bannered is the journal of a missional life beginning to be sought and ultimately sorted out.

I’ve been home from STL for thirteen days now and, while I finally unpacked my clothes and did my laundry, I still have not fully unpacked my heart and made sense of the entire experience. St. Louis lit a fire in me and has profoundly changed the way I view myself, my world, and my God.

I used to view myself as a relatively good person, capable of accomplishing relatively good things in the eyes of relatively respectable people. I now view myself as a servant flying a banner, who enjoys the simple and unassuming acts of blowing bubbles with children and reading books.  My future is open ended and I rather like it that way.

I used to view my world as a place full of enemies — of people who were wrong and people who were right. It doesn’t take an astounding amount of brain-power to guess in which camp I thought I pitched my tent. I now view my world as a wholly broken one. I look at America and all her figurative machines and ache for the countless millions caught up in the gears and bloody macabre. I look at the world and see a vast pantheon of meaningless gods whose existence came about only because we first built them a shrine. One has to begin wondering when the falsehood of such idols will come to light and just what will happen when it does.

I used to view my God as an entity that could be easily defined and confined within the neat boundaries of language and metaphor. I will of course spend much time thinking of and writing my thoughts out on God, but I’ve changed my metaphors and altered my linguistic angle a bit and — more importantly — I’ve all but abandoned the idea of nailing it all completely. I’ll leave that hill to the scholars and preachers who have grown too tired to go on; as for me, I’ve got much more living, loving, growing and blowing bubbles to do.

I used to view my God as a Divine Creator who only intervened in His creation at key moments in world history; most importantly at places like the Exodus and the cross. The only change I would make to that statement now is the simple omission of the word ‘only’. God broke in then — and continues to break in now — to our reality to shake things up and to point towards His supreme lordship over all things. Through the Gospel proclamation and shared suffering of His gathered people, I believe Jesus continues to dethrone those worldly powers (both flesh-and-blood and not) who wrongly asserts themselves as in-control, moving all of Creation towards its prescribed end in which the world is finally, wholly put to rights.

I used to view my God as a great many things. Now I just call him Lord and that seems to cover it.

Numbers in the City

What follows is the farewell address I gave to my Church family at North City on my last day. I wrote this on Saturday night and delivered it at Church on Sunday. I believe it is as good a capstone as I can come up with to make sense of this experience, so this might be it for the City blogs. We’ll see what happens as I unpack and process. Enjoy.

“All too often in Church and missionary circles, the emphasis and judgment of a particular movement, ministry, or experience is based on numbers, on results, and on the quantitative harvest that it yields. Our culture embeds this ideology into our brains. In world missions, it is not uncommon to find supporting Churches offering threats of ended support if the given mission does not meet a conversion and baptismal quota. As the American business world would put it, “if it isn’t making dollars — or converts — then it isn’t making sense,” so, too, would the wrong-headed missionary. I think here at North City, though, where we are each seeking to live the life and fly the banner of Jesus together, we easily find where such a philosophy is lacking.

But please allow me, for but a moment, to entertain this flawed, numbers-driven philosophy of ministry. After all is said and done, I do believe that in numbers we can find no failure: as the saying goes, the numbers never lie. My disclaimer, though, is this: in the figures that follow, I ask that you give me a certain degree of wiggle-room and leniency. My totals are representative approximations; that is, they are merely the best guesses and numerical values that I can come up with to describe and quantify my concrete experiences here in the city with you.

Since June 1st, I have blown 1008 bubbles with roughly ten-to-thirteen little girls — many of whom became regular attendees to my impromptu bubble-blowing gatherings at Vacation Bible School. I’ve pushed twenty-four children on the three swings out in our courtyard, for about thirty-six to sixty-two swings per set. I have given eleven piggy-back rides and held about twenty-nine little hands. I have tallied 4,897 individual smiley-face and exclamation-point stamps (which comes out to 48,970 points, all totaled) for 147 young VBS- and Church-attendees. I have run through the sprinkler across the street nineteen times with six of my youngest neighborhood friends. I have gone on twenty-three early-morning runs around the block and have been recognized, waved at, and heard a bright and lively, “Hey, Mr. Danny!” called out to me by thirteen little neighborhood kids. Over the course of the summer, I have taught ten lessons to twenty-seven different students, aged eleven all the way up to twenty.

With you on Sundays, I have sang well over a hundred songs, read fifty-six passages of Scripture, prayed at least forty different prayers, and listened to ten of Robert’s sermons as well as one sermon from Cody. Just yesterday, I bore witness to four different baptisms into the mystical, miraculous Body of Christ. I have said grace, broken bread and shared meals with you on at least one hundred and forty-nine occasions. I have thrown one hundred and two football passes to eight of my teen-aged brothers, eighteen of which resulted in touchdowns. On the basketball court, I took seventy-three shots, resulting in perhaps only five actual baskets.

But before we all grow tired of counting my summer’s activities like so many little bedtime sheep, allow me cut my list short. I believe that I could go on for hours — days, even — and still be far from describing my experience here with you with the degree of accuracy that the use of numbers would imply.

My point is this: from where I stand today, looking back on my experiences from June 1st until now, I am overwhelmed. In trying to create an accurate tally, my brain, it begins to hurt. As I seek to attach the meaning so richly deserved to these numbers, my heart, it begins to burst. And here, I believe, we see where the numbers begin to fail. Because in each of these separate accounts, though staggering they may be, the numbers do not tell the full story. They do not tell of the smaller differences my time has made in your lives and more importantly, they can never fully describe the gigantic differences that each of you have made in mine. You see, the Kingdom of God cannot be quantified because the Kingdom of God cannot be contained.

As I look back, I find myself overjoyed at the memories of such rich and ripened blessings. You have all changed me, shaped my mind and my heart and I know that, as I leave this place tomorrow, I will never, ever be the same.

With all of my heart, I love you, Church, and I will never forget you. Peace be with you.”

BRB, Camp!

Tomorrow I leave for six days at Camp Ne-O-Tez, where I will be helping lead and teach the teen boys’ group.  I am teaching three lessons (Monday – Triumphal Entry, Tuesday – Cleansing of the Temple, and Friday – The Resurrection).  Please keep these lessons in your prayers.  I hope to articulate my passion, beliefs, and knowledge well.

As some of you may know, I am without a cell phone (long, sordid, stupid story) so if you call or text me and I respond to neither, please blame Alltel.  I should be back in the land of the wirelessly-connected when I come home on the 11th — nine days from today!

Peace be with you, brothers and sisters.
Danny

Please — No Food or Drink in the Auditorium!

I went to an all-day youth rally at Florissant Church of Christ, way out in the suburban counties, yesterday and it was, for me, an experience that anyone who’s ever been to a youth rally and subsequently grown up can relate to, on one level or another. On another level — a bit further out than that last one — for me, it was an experience that anyone who’s struggled with their faith in God and in the Church ever since its inception can, perhaps, relate to.

I have disliked the rigid structure and dogma of the American Church for a very long time but I do not really value my own opinions on the matter to begin with (since – whore or not — the Church is still Christ’s bride), so I will not waste my time unpacking them here. I will, however, tell you that I was struck by something at Florissant Church of Christ, way out in the counties, yesterday. You see, posted above all of the doors leading into the sanctuary, there is a sign that reads: “Please — No Food or Drink in the Auditorium!”

To all of us, I am sure that this is normal enough fare. We all grew up in homes (or were at least familiar with homes) that had one room that was off-limits to the children and their messes: for some it was a dining room rarely dined in, for others a living room, but for all of us it was well-understood that — whichever room it was — it was for grown ups and was meant to be kept neat and clean. My parents both frequent this page and, I believe, would be very offended if they thought I was insinuating the existence of such a room in our home — so let me be clear: the Yencich’s have lower standards and I ate in, played in, and systematically made a mess of every single room in our house. I had friends, though, who weren’t quite so lucky.

When I saw that “No Food or Drinks” sign posted above the sanctuary door, I drew a mental picture of a middle-finger and imagined myself giving it to whoever thought I shouldn’t be able to bring a can of Diet Coke into this train-wreck of a youth event but, being by nature quiet and mostly [outwardly] peaceable, I went in without causing the slightest hint of a scene. There are other hills upon which I might one day wish to die, anyway.

Once inside, I sat down just in time to enjoy the latter half of a long set of worship songs. One thing that must be made clear for the uninitiated is the reiteration of the fact that this was a Church of Christ youth rally and, in the Southern Midwest (and all points further south), ‘Church of Christ’ translates, roughly, to “NO WOMEN, NO INSTRUMENTS.” So there we were, about a thousand or so of us, being led through these songs by one guy on a large stage with a headset-microphone and a flashy Powerpoint. Color me uninspired.

What really got me, though, was when the worship leader starting praying. His language was soaked in cliches meant to manipulate the people of God, “drawing them in to worship”, and spoken in a tone reserved only, in my mind, for the worst of all the bad actors. If you’ve ever been to a large Church and felt like you were being duped, you will know what I’m talking about. But all of that I can easily ignore because, as I looked out at the crowd, I saw people enjoying it, reacting to it, and in many cases, being blessed by it. I don’t dig it, but whatever: I go home to Blacksoil in two weeks and life will be good.

What really, really got me, though, was when the worship leader — still praying! — invited God to come into the Church. I mean it, man: the dude was really, truly asking God to be physically present there. To many, maybe this is normal; maybe this is just what we do, what we say at Church and, if this is you, you will have to excuse me. The idea is absurd — mockery, a burlesque, and affront to what it means to worship: the thought of inviting YHWH into the presence of those who, out of fear and reverence for their carpet, post signs to keep out renegade food and drink. We won’t use instruments in our worship, we won’t let women lead, but O’ God, the One who created both women and drum-sets, we want You here, so please, won’t you make Your presence known? We want the God whose radiance is stronger than ten billion suns, the God who is more powerful than any nation, who is Master, King, and Lord of all things ever we could conceive of — that God — to show up? If that is the case, please excuse me while I make my frantic escape, for I have much greater things at stake than the sanctity of the carpet: my sins are hidden beneath the floorboards.

If God ever shows up, I am utterly convinced that we — and our carpets — are screwed.

Perhaps, though, if God never does decide to literally make an appearance in our Churches, our clean carpets will live on long after our dirty hearts as a final testament to our [ir]reverence, [in]fidelity, and [un]faithfulness to the God who Is.

Wipe Your Shoes and Abandon Faith, All Ye Who Enter Here,
Danny