Dust and Resurrection

A resurrected blog on the theme of resurrection... Most of this was written one Sunday afternoon in a hostel common room in Malaysia... Amazingly I chose this very evening exactly one year to the day later to log back in and find this draft. In my new anti-perfectionist resolution to resurrect this blog I have only tweaked it a little since it's original outpouring at that hostel computer! 

How do you feel when the testimony is about a golden handshake - "all glory to God"? How do you feel when the woman says she made 7 million in one day for her real estate company, "all glory to Jesus"?

How do you feel when she tells of her daughter's straight A passing of exams, "all Glory to God", of course?

Are these the successes that are testified to in the name of giving glory to God?
It's not impressive. It's embarrassing. Becoming a Christian is not an invitation into middle class, first world, good health and education.

Is this what we are to glory in? Is this what the church is to testify to?

Pity me as a Christ-follower if that is the case. I don't want to live a Faith that breathes out "Glory to God" in such painful tones.

Painful it must feel to the man who just lost the job he has loved and poured himself into for many years. "Where is the testimony of the blessing of God in my life?" this man may ask, after hearing these gold-leaf testimonies of financial gains and career-ladder climbs breeze out over the church.

Painful it must feel to the woman whose son with dyslexia is really struggling through certain subjects in school. Would she be welcome to give testimony and glory to God for her son?

Communion time comes and the man tells us Jesus died to defeat failure and sickness. If we have any of these things in our life we can get rid of them now as we partake of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Painful it must feel for the man with MS who can feel his muscles failing him more and more, week by week, prayer by prayer.

Painful it must feel for the man who buried his wife three months ago after a ten year battle fought joyfully and painfully with the disease that ate up her energy but not her beauty in Christ. Can he stand up the front also, his face lit up by the theatrical lights, and give Glory to God?

Becoming a Christian is not drinking an elixir to guard from all sickness and death. There is none of this sickly sweet success-juice in the recipe for resurrection. In the narrative I know, there is a cross and a death before a resurrection.

Pain can be beautiful.

She was the most beautiful I had seen her two weeks before she died. She knew she was dying. She was radiant, her face was glowing. The doctors thought she was in denial because she didn't show signs of fear or sorrow at the cancer overtaking her body. "I am getting a new body", she reassured them. 

They thought she needed counselling. She knew resurrection.

Pain is grotesque and messy.

His body was bloated and dried blood congealed around the dialysis lines in his neck. The tube feeding him air was sticking to his lips, causing bruising and sores. His eyes were wide open but not seeing. Standing at his bedside, reminded me of Mary and Martha at their brother's tomb saying "Jesus, you are too late". 

Thankfully, I knew what happened after their disgruntled greeting of Jesus.

There is no resurrection without death.

Thankfully, I could draw on that evidence to fan flickers of hope in the face of pain and fear. 

I believed in God's power to heal. 

But that is not the only cause for testimony.

He will die some other way, some day. I will weep then like Jesus wept at the graveside of Lazarus.

Yet then too, there will be testimony of God's goodness and glory.

He miraculously lives now, yet lives with pain and trauma.

The church is sick to think all is well.

I watched her coffin being lowered into a grave the day after my wedding. 

I got the call to tell me she had died while I was decorating the church, using lace she gave me from material used in making her wedding dress.

We followers of Christ are glorious, believe it or not. We are the radiant Bride of Jesus Christ as described in Revelation, but we are not there yet. We hold the invitation to the Feast but we have not arrived at the wedding just yet. We are and we are not yet.

Can we hold this tension?

Can we glory in achievements, skills, financial gain but even more so in God's presence and love found in the midst of pain and failure?

This sublime beauty in the midst of a thousand stabbing knives of pain tells us things are not as they ought to be. We ought not to be standing at this graveside. This doesn't feel right. And in that there is hope for something that ought to be different. Jesus was right to cry. Jesus knew there was something wrong.

But why did he weep if he knew he was about to conquer death?

Why did he not just call forth Lazarus and, as the man walked out of the tomb, give a flashy testimony about his followers overcoming all sickness and death (and making lots of money in the process)?

Jesus knew that there is no resurrection without death yet he called himself the resurrection.

"I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die." 

God in flesh calling forth his own death. God of the Universe breathing life into us dust creatures.

Dust to dust... and Life!

This glorious paradox; read at Christian funerals as the coffin is carried in, shoulders born down with grief and sorrow literally bearing the weight of death and loss. It's the disbelieving look on faces as the coffin is born down into the ground. We are haunted by the image of eternity imprinted upon us by our Maker.

This is not how we wanted it to end... not now, not yet...

I believe this is the Kingdom of God now on earth...

Now, and not yet.

The church can and needs to be an antiseptic in a world full of puss and grimy infection. The church does not need to be a sickly sweet antidote to pain and failure but a genuine anticipation of healing to come and a reflection of the healing that has come in Christ.

It has come, and it is still to come

It is now, but it's not yet

It is a beautiful mess

I am a follower of Christ in this Kingdom come...

Jesus was Breastfed.

I was feeling quite content with the originality of the title of my first blog post, that is until I began some cursory research (aka googling action) and discovered that the originality of my title was being challenged by the presence of at least one facebook site of the same name… not to mention other blog posts on parenting sites all over the web.

Ahh the recurring lesson of humility in the painful truth of ecclesiastes that there be nothing new under the sun.

And yet here it is: the unfortunately common title to herald the loss of my blogging virginity.

Although perhaps there is something original, even unusual, in the personhood of the blogger posting said title. I am no yummy mummy and my breast’s have never lactated. So why on earth would I, a mere heifer, to use farming terminology, speak the language normally reserved for cows? What right have I to partake in this maternal militancy?

Because, yes, I know the title will invite the ‘oh no here comes another militant hippy breast-feeding mother rant’.

Except I am not a mother, but I can’t promise there won’t be militancy in my words. After all I am an evangelical.

I write here as a child of God and a child who was breastfed. And on those rights alone I write these words.

It is not unknown to those who know me well that I love breastfeeding. I have been known to collect the appropriate helpful information from my breastfeeding guru mama and send it out in large brown envelopes to willing pregnant couple recipients. So far all of them have gone on to breastfeed with delight and gratitude for the information.

There are many organisations in Ireland whose diligent volunteers are committed to a labour of love in supporting mothers and families on their breastfeeding and child rearing journeys. La Leche League and Cuidiu are two with which I am familiar.

As I have journeyed in life as a breastfed baby growing into a child and now an adult who remains appreciative and in awe at the wonders of breastfeeding, I have wondered at the seeming lack of appreciation and celebration of this most obviously God designed feeding and bonding apparatus amongst followers of the Designer Himself. It baffles me that breastfeeding is associated most often with those who don’t give glory to the One who created their bodies to do this amazing thing. ‘Mother Nature’ (whoever she is when she’s at home) sweeps up all the credit in my experience. Which brings us onto the afeared cliche of the New Age hippies who all sleep together in one big bed and home school their kids. I can testify to the popularity of breastfeeding amongst those who are also interested in New Age forms of spirituality, and as for co-sleeping and home schooling well I’m not opposed to either actually but that is another conversation for another blog.

The fundamental question is, why do Christian’s seem so shy of breastfeeding? Surely of all people on earth Christians should be breastfeeding with freedom and joy. We celebrate and preach passionately about other gifts from God but when it comes to breastfeeding, well we squirm uncomfortably and if we do feed our babies with our own bodies we make sure we drape a big cloak over them in church. God forbid someone saw a baby suckling from a breast in church. Who are we listening to? God or popular culture? Culture tells us that breasts are purely objects of sexual desire but God made them to be that and so much more! Are we ashamed of how God made us? Are we afraid of letting others see God’s gift in action in public? Are we afraid that we may actually be leaders in challenging cultural norms? Are we worried that our children might begin to see breastfeeding as normal and play breastfeeding their dolls rather than sticking a plastic bottle in their mouths? Christians are so concerned with not embracing certain cultural norms and yet when it comes to bottle feeding we don’t really see it as ignoring an opportunity to celebrate God’s creation. Sometimes I think Christians are more prudish about the way God made our bodies to work so wonderfully than those pagans who seem more liberated to enjoy the fruits of the Almighty's Creation, without acknowledging it as the works of His hands. Wouldn’t it be amazing if women in Ireland knew that to nurse their child amongst Christians was to nurse amongst accepting and supportive people who believe that breasts were designed for feeding children?

Yes I know I could quote bible verses, but you can look them up for yourselves, the bible is FULL of breastfeeding, I don’t need to convince anyone of that, it is there for all to see. Plastic and silicone obviously were not available in biblical times, but now it is the norm in Ireland, and it concerns me when Christians think it normal to choose these methods over what God has designed and provided.

So as Ireland celebrates National Breastfeeding Week I want to call out to anyone who will listen that supporting and encouraging the most natural and God ordained way to nurture new lives is not something to be left to breastfeeding mothers alone. This is a call to those in Ireland who call themselves followers of the living God who made ALL things, including milk producing breasts, and called them GOOD. It is a call to my fellow brothers and sisters who seek to follow a most definitely breastfed Christ to use your minds, bodies and voices to glorify God in every way possible.

A caveat. I am not here to bulldoze anyone into anything, or to arouse guilt, but I do write this as a loving challenge to Christians to question their motivations and attitudes towards breastfeeding, especially attitudes towards doing so in public and with babies over six months old. I realise that the topic is part of a larger web of Christian attitudes towards the body, many of which I believe are in sincere need of examination in light of the Bible’s view of all things physical. I too am a learner in this field of bringing my attitudes in line with those of Christ Jesus.

Finally, for any conservatives out there who are still fearing the breast, turns out John Calvin was a bit of a Christian Lactivist, so to make my words seem gentle, I will leave the last hardcore words with him:

John Calvin, in commenting on Genesis 21 verse 7 states: 

". . .the Lord does not in vain prepare nutriment for children in their mothers' bosoms, before they are born. But those on whom he confers the honor of mothers, he, in this way, constitutes nurses; and they who deem it a hardship to nourish their own offspring, break, as far as they are able, the sacred bond of nature. If disease, or anything of that kind, is the hindrance, they have a just excuse; but for mothers voluntarily, and for their own pleasure, to avoid the trouble of nursing, and thus to make themselves only half-mothers, is a shameful corruption."