3 O'Clock in the Morning
June 25, 2008 At 3 0'clock in the morning the whole world is an broken old shoe. At 3 o'clock in the morning all your regrets sit quietly at the foot of your bed. At 3 o'clock in the morning all your old loves come to visit, your losses whisper their names, your youth skips stones from the other side of the river, all of it a peculiar madness cloaked in a seemingly ordinary sanity.
There is no ritual to rescue me from the existential emptiness that yawns like a cavern in the middle of this night, no incantation, no prayer that will suffice. I am Jonah in the belly of the whale, Jeremiah weeping at the bottom of the well, Saul searching for a boy David to sing a lullaby. I am a valley of dry bones.
I know nothing. Absolutely nothing. There was a time when I had the answers. I could explain biblical doctrines of ridiculous complexity with clarity and ease. I knew what the questions were. I knew where in the bible to find the answers to those questions. I was saved. I could tell others how to get saved. We could say the prayer, together, you and I . Then you could be saved. The deal would then be done, the bargain struck, the contract signed, the ticket punched. Then all you had to do was go to a bible-believing church every Sunday, read your bible every day, pray every day, study to show yourself a workman approved, always be ready with an answer for your faith, not cause a brother to stumble, know your mission field, say "here am I, Lord, choose me." Tonight? Now? In the compelling quiet of our little home, with the Resident Love Goddess sleeping so wonderfully and peacefully a few feet away? Well, let me tell you, I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing, I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about anymore. I've got nothing except that woman I love so much, and two red cats, and this broken old shoe and Jesus, somehow mixed up in it all.
I think about the same things all the time now. I think about preaching. I think about starting a church. I think about God, and Jesus, and the Holiness of Spirit, and about the pains and hurts and loneliness and lies and busted up hearts and lives that are all around, every day, and about how I just want us to put one in the hand of the Others and see what happens. I've stopped telling people about this in real life because they inevitably insist that I am doing exactly that and, while they're speaking, there's a voice in my head that wonders if it might not be better to just shoot myself in the foot with a nail gun, over and over again, rather than to try and explain what empty is, just one more time. The only thing I can do now with hurting people is talk pretty about Jesus, offering just enough information to suggest that maybe they ought to talk to him and not me, because I'm a truckload of destitute on the road to nowhere in particular. Sometimes folks here ask me to pray for them, and sometimes we pray together, an exercise in plumbing the depths of inner desolation that always ends with the same three words: God help me. Those with whom I bend the metaphorical knee seem grateful and comforted by this, and I have no explanation for that, either.
And so, here I am Lord. And it's 3 o'clock in the morning - again - and, well... damn.
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Reader Comments (41)
I haven't figured it out yet either.
Sometimes I just want to draw a distinction between emotions of the body and emotions of the heart. There's all sorts of surface emotions that don't really mean anything – nasty self-accusatory thoughts, giddiness, apathy, fury etc. that are caused more by hormones or lack of sleep than by anything else. These deserve little to no attention. And then there are deep emotions, like joy or peace or guilt, that are independent of the surface emotions, and which serve as a guide to what is going on in our hearts, where God resides. We ignore these at our peril.
So in the end, we can pay too much attention to emotions, and we can pay too little attention to emotions. Balance in everything, eh?
God bless.
lol. I think guys are as emotionally complex as females are. But guys don't think about, analyse, and generally pay attention to feelings the way women do.
Which, actually, may do something to explain why I objected to your saying that feelings are the bottom line in relationships. Many men would probably benefit from realizing to what extent they are influenced by feelings; but I think many women would benefit from thinking of love as something you choose to do, rather than as something you feel. Or something like that.
Adam G - Thanks.
Robert - This could be interesting - very, very interesting...
I think that feelings/emotions are the composite experience of the tone of thoughts that are often subconscious and physical sensations which can also be subconscious.
So for instance, I get in some nasty moods sometimes. And if I pay attention to everything flitting through my head, I realize that every other thought in some way is a self-accusing, self-hating thought. I can feel miserable without ever analysing the thoughts that are making me miserable.
At other times, I have felt really miserable and, after analysing it, realized that I was experiencing physical pain in my belly, or extremely vague sensations of fatigue. The very act of realizing this often made the overall sensation of misery go away, at least temporarily.
In general, I would say that feelings are always intertwined with thoughts at some level - but it is often a subconscious level of thoughts and emotions, so that conscious thoughts can be easily going in a very different direction than emotions are.
Both emotions and conscious thoughts appear to us unbidden, yes. And yes, we choose how to react to them. I would go a little bit further and say that if we consistently choose to reject/suppress a particular thought or emotion, then - over time - that thought or emotion is less likely to come into our heads. (And if we choose to dwell on it, it is more likely to keep coming up). I would also say that paying attention to what we are thinking and feeling can go a long way towards increasing our control over thoughts and emotions; a sort of first step in the process of building habits.
Love is an action. I think people's feelings often follow their choices, so if you choose to act as if you love someone, you are more likely to feel like you love them as well. But there's no guarantee that it will happen that way. If the feeling never follows the action, that doesn't make the action any less important or true.
I don't have scriptural references to emotions on hand; I haven't really thought about that before. It would probably be fun to develop a scriptural theology on the subject, if I had the time. :)
God bless,
Anna
I really like how you said our feelings may never appear in a specific way. Love is action, but since we are fallen sinful beings who struggle with our sinful nature even after becoming believers, would you say we have a continuum upon which our actions demonstrate our love??? Paul says in romans that the good he wants to do he does not do and that the evil he doesnt want to do he does. He speaks in active voice, present tense there. He leaves alot of room for conjecture on all he meant in that passage. I guess I wonder if God in His grace allows us a lot of room to grow in loving,even a whole lifetime. Thanks so much for your thoughtful respone anna!!!
I'm so glad you thought it was interesting. Much of what I wrote is the reflections of a somewhat obsessively self-analytical female mind. :)
I often think that psychology would be a lot better if it took God into acccount. We were created to know, love, and serve God. How can you expect to understand what's missing from people's lives, what their needs are, if you don't understand their most fundamental purpose? And who knows what we need to hear better than the One who designed us in the first place and knows our every thought? There's a book called Waking the Dead by John Eldredge where he talks about the role of the Holy Spirit as our personal Counselor. ("Counselor" being, if I recall correctly, one of the possible translations he gives for "Paraclete", the word used to refer to the Holy Spirit, for example in John 14:26). I think it's good to realize that this counseling, too, is something God can and will do for us, if we listen to him.
"Love is action, but since we are fallen sinful beings who struggle with our sinful nature even after becoming believers, would you say we have a continuum upon which our actions demonstrate our love???"
I'm a Catholic. One of the differences between Catholic theology and certain (not all) Protestant theologies is that we do not see salvation as a one-time event in a person's life, but as a process that lasts as long as the person lives. So yes, we struggle with our sinful natures all our lives, as Paul did. Virtue is a habit that has to be built. Our motives are a mixture of selfish and loving, on a continuum, as you say. Our walk with God is not a here or there thing, but a series of forward and backward steps in which we hope to have more forward steps than backwards.
"I guess I wonder if God in His grace allows us a lot of room to grow in loving,even a whole lifetime."
Of course! God offers his graces abundantly in many ways to help us grow in holiness and love. This way of thinking, incidentally, is why the Catholic Church puts emphasis on the sacraments of Eucharist and Reconciliation; these are two particular ways that God offers us spiritual nourishment and healing and forgiveness as many times as we need it.
God bless.
Certainly those who don't believe in God are inclined to see humans as masters of our own lives. But in truth, many Christians I have talked with think this way too. Sometimes I think we have lost some of the "fear of God" that we are supposed to have. And, too, it doesn't really make any sense to turn to God as a Counselor, or to submit to what he tells you, if you don't believe that he is speaking to you personally, or if you don't know how to hear him.
Luther might not have intended to start a new movement at the beginning of his career; at first he was just objecting to the corruption within the Church. But once he started playing the German princes against the king in order to get them to separate from the Catholic heirarchy, I think it's safe to say he intended to start a new movement.
And yes, God does like to do the unexpected.
I have been glad to share with you, too. If the question about the email was for me, then no, I didn't get it, but I think you were probably asking RWK that, not me. :)
God bless.
Rwk-i sent you an email, it must have not gone through i will try again
This is how I see Luther's story. The Catholic heirarchy was horribly corrupt at the time of Luther. I think the bishop(s) of Milan hadn't set foot in their diocese (the area they were spiritually responsible for shepherding) for a hundred years. There was a lot of Phariseeism where people focused on external acts of "goodness" while ignoring any real sincerity of heart (this, I think, was what happened with the selling of indulgences: donating money to build a church was externally good, but the priests used or maybe even encouraged people to do it for selfish reasons, if it meant they would donate money.)
And into all this, God sent Luther. Luther focused a lot on Romans, with Paul's talk there of works vs faith. It was exactly the message that the Church needed to hear; to refocus itself on interior holiness instead of paying attention only to how things looked on the outside. It was the message the Church needed to hear; but when Luther tried to bring it to people, the heirarchy didn't want to listen.
Hardly surprising: who likes to be told God is displeased with them? It takes humility to admit you've been doing something wrong, and humility was not a virtue much cultivated by the authorities of the time. Too, I don't know how gentle Luther was in proclaiming his message; he may or may not have been able to say it in a way that was more likely to be listened to. Either way, they tried to suppress Luther, forbade him from preaching, and refused to listen to his message.
And Luther, pushed down, responded by shoving back and becoming more strident. Instead of just saying that the Church was wrong in its attitudes, he insisted that the Chuch was wrong in its doctrines, as well. He declared "salvation by faith alone". And if the Church can get its doctrines wrong, well, then, there isn't much point to having the heirarchy in the first place, either. So he declared "sola scriptura" - the Bible as the only authority or source of truth. And he used his great political savvy to separate Germany from the Catholic Church.
In order to fix the Church, Luther broke it. Five hundred years later, the Body of Christ is still lying in pieces, split asunder and torn by divisions among its different members. In the last 50 years or so, great progress has been made towards restoring unity and reducing animosity between denominations, but we still have a long way to go before we have the unity that I believe we are meant to have.
There were other people, like St. Ignatius and St. Theresa of Avila, who reformed the Catholic Church from within, instead of splitting the Church. With all my heart, I would have had Luther do the same.
"Also, how do you believe we *hear* God???"
We hear him speak in our hearts. Much of what I think on this subject is laid out most explicitly in that book I mentioned earlier, Waking the Dead by John Eldredge. I think what he says there has pretty much matched my experience of hearing God. It takes (1) expecting God to talk to you, and (2) listening for him. It isn't something that happens all at once, but something that you get better at discerning as you *practice* it. For me, he often uses Scripture to talk to me, although it often comes through other people and straight from my heart, too. One guideline I find especially helpful is that God's voice is always gentle, even when he is reprimanding me. Whereas Satan's voice is always harsh, trying to make me believe that I am worthless, even if he's only telling me I forgot to do the dishes.
I find that, at least for now, it actually takes a lot of effort on my part to keep believing that God is talking to me and that I can actually know his will for me. But the payoff, in peace and lightness of spirit, is enormous.
God bless.
I have read Eldridges book and liked it very much. I have experienced His still small voice, sometimes it is hard to get still and listen close enough.How do you see the verse that says *perfect love casts out fear* applying?? Is there a way ne need to come to recieve that perfect love?? If we still have fear is it because we somehow aree blocking ourselves from His perfect love??? So glad to share with you here, join in anytime rwk lol grace and peace Anna
Making a story to fit into history is the easy part; the hard part is making sure you aren't ignoring details that change the whole story around. :) I have, at best, an amateur's knowledge of church history.
It is sometimes hard to be still and listen for God's voice. I find I am especially incapable of silencing my inner voices when I am tired. Which, in turn, has made me realize that God wants me to get enough sleep. :) This illustrates something else: God rarely if ever speaks to me as an explicit voice within; he generally speaks to me by illuminating the things I already know, but which I need to be reminded of. And this doesn't happen much if I am not paying attention to my life. Also, sometimes he doesn't answer what I ask him because I'm asking to know something he wants me to learn by trying, or because I'm asking something I don't need to know the answer to.
"How do you see the verse that says *perfect love casts out fear* applying??"
The OT talks a lot about fear of God as a good thing, and Jesus does the same in Matthew 10:28; I think this seeming contradiction needs to be explained. If you look closely, this fear of God is always being contrasted with a disregard for God. He who fears God does God's will; he who does not fear God does things which are evil. There are times when I think some Christians today could benefit from having more fear of God; it is a trembling awe of God, a mighty respect for him, which motivates us to not try to take into our own hands any authority which he has not given us.
But John, on the other hand, is not contrasting fear of God with a disregard of God. He has a different context, which he gives: "But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love". John is telling us that when our love is perfect, we will no longer be motivated by fear of punishment. We will love God for his own sake and want to do good because we want to please him, not because we are scared of what he might do to us if we don't. So a sort of scale is set up: fearing God is better than disregarding God, but perfection goes beyond being scared of punishment, into pure love.
We should not berate ourselves if we are motivated by an imperfect love of God, a fearful love. God himself is not above using punishments to motivate us to do good. (See, for example the previously mentioned Matthew 10:28 or Hebrews 12:1-12). If we do the right thing because we are afraid of going to hell, then we have still done the right thing. Our love is imperfect, but it is still real love. We should continue to strive for a more perfect love, but should not get caught up in being fearful about whether we are too fearful. (Ah, the irony.)
Again, I see this as a journey, not as something which someone is likely to attain in an instant. When we begin to live a Christian life, chances are good that we will be anxious about all sorts of things, including the possibility of going to hell, or the possibility of things God might make us suffer. So many people feel as if they have to get things just right, or God will come down on them like an angry (and I dare say, abusive) parent. It is over time and experience that I think people can grow away from this and towards a more perfect love.
As for how that can be accomplished, the context shows us some of that. It is in 1 John 4:18 that John writes "perfect love casts out fear". The very next verse says, "We love because he first loved us." It is only when we experience his love for us, that our love for him will grow. It is only as we experience his goodness, as we see the abundance of the gifts that he gives us, that we can let go of our fears and love with a more perfect love. I see this as akin to learning to hear God's voice; God pours his love out on us at all times, and we need to learn to see it. This reminds me of Eph 1:18-19 "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe."
One of the biggest things that gets in the way of our seeing God's goodness is, ironically, anxiety, a form of fear. If we spend most of our time thinking about what's wrong with our life, instead of what's right, how can we expect to see all the blessings God sends us? How can we be thankful and praise his name while we are worrying about how we will pay next month's rent, or whether a particular decision we made is going to come back to haunt us? So the first step to having a more perfect love is to practice letting go of our anxieties. The more we do that, the more we can experience God's blessings in our lives; the more we feel God's love for us, the more we will love him back.
And again, this goes back to an earlier part of our conversation, about feelings. Anxious thoughts and feelings will pop into people's heads without their consent. Our job is not to do the impossible and never think a fearful thought; our job is to recognize such thoughts as baseless and not dwell on them, to gently push them away whenever they intrude and turn our minds instead towards gratitude and thankfulness. And although practicing to not dwell on anxiety is likely to reduce how much such thoughts pop into our heads, I would not expect them to ever go away completely, in this life. Nor would I particularly expect someone to become perfect at pushing those thoughts away, either. That kind of perfection is much more likely to happen in heaven than be achieved now.
The other element I want to point out is that we need to look for God's blessings. How many times does the Bible carry the message to wake up, be on the lookout, examine ourselves? If we do not pay attention to our lives, to our needs and hopes and expectations, we will miss out on what God is doing for us. We need to see with those eyes of the heart that Paul mentioned in Ephesians. The example that comes to mind here is RWK's. He blogged recently about the salmon incident and how he knew that it was God telling him that He was here. How easy it would have been to shrug it all off as coincidence! Many people do that. Or, if they talk about it being God, they qualify it with “maybe”s or say that you can never really be sure of God speaking to you. Or they just take it for granted in the first place and don't take the time to think about it having been God who blessed them. This is why I say that we need to see with the eyes of our heart, to look with faith at what happens in our lives, or else we will never experience the fullness of God's love for us, in this life.
Maybe someday I will learn to say all that more concisely; this is a way long comment. :) God bless.