When everything you're reading and everything you're processing is all along the same theme, do you think it's because God's trying to teach you something? I'm beginning to think that's gotta be it.
One of the first things I did after I made the decision to move to Brooklyn was to buy the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Not because I had any idea what it was about; I just remember my cousin reading it when we were in high school, and it's been on my "to-read" list ever since. What better time than when I'm actually living in the place where the story is set?
Back in the fall, when one of the girls in my girls' group suggested that we read A Praying Life, I didn't think much of it. It, too, was on my "to-read" list since multiple friends had mentioned it in passing. I started reading the book with the rest of the group, about one chapter every couple weeks. We didn't finish it before I left for New York, so I've committed to finishing it this summer on my own.
Two very different books. But really, they are just two different approaches to the same theme.
"Everything struggles to live," muses Kate, the mother of the heroine in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. "Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong."
Paul Miller, in A Praying Life, focuses on the spiritual aspect of our struggles, arguing that it is essential for growth and strength. If God loves me, why does this all have to be so hard? is a question I have wrestled with again and again over the past year. Why isn't he answering my prayers? Why are people around me suffering? If God is supposed to be for me, why does it seem like he's actually against me? Miller addresses these questions, because he has asked the same exact ones. His conclusion? "God takes everyone he loves through a desert. It is his cure for our wandering hearts, restlessly searching for a new Eden. . . . Desert life sanctifies you. . . . The desert becomes a window to the heart of God. He finally gets your attention because he's the only game in town."
At the end of the book, Kate's daughter, Francie Nolan, sees the same tree her mother had observed years earlier--
The tree, whose leaf umbrellas had curled around, under and over her fire escape had been cut down because the housewives complained that wash on the lines got entangles in its branches. The landlord had sent two men and they had chopped it down.
But the tree hadn't died... it hadn't died.
A new tree had grown from the stump and its trunk had grown along the ground until it reached a place where there were no wash lines above it. Then it had started to grow towards the sky again.
Annie, the fir tree, that the Nolans had cherished with waterings and manurings, had long since sickened and died. But this tree in the yard-- this tree that men chopped down... this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up its stump-- this tree lived!
It lived! And nothing could destroy it.
I think I always want the life of Francie's fir tree-- I want to be taken care of and given all the things I need without any pain and without having to fight for them. But I love the picture here-- how the cherished fir tree isn't as strong as the "deserted" one that has to fight for survival. And it's the same with the Christian life, isn't it... I would love for everything I pray for to be given to me without having to struggle through a desert period of unanswered prayer. But God's not content just to have me be happy; he wants me to be strong, and the only way for that to happen is for him to change me. Maybe by not giving me what I ask for, maybe by making me wait for an answer, but always by weaving his story in my life.
Miller sums it up really well: "When God seems silent and our prayers go unanswered, the overwhelming temptation is to leave the story-- to walk out of the desert and attempt to create a normal life. But when we persist in a spiritual vacuum, when we hang in there during ambiguity, we get to know God. In fact, that is how intimacy grows in all close relationships."
I've written about the Black Hole of Communication that I loathe so much. While I usually use this to refer to emails or phone calls that have gone unanswered, I'm afraid it's also how I often perceive prayer-- sending prayers into the same Black Hole. Except that ultimately it's easier not to hear from my fellow humans than not to hear from God. Because if I start to believe that God doesn't hear me and doesn't care enough to respond, then it will shake the very foundations of my world.
So I guess the important thing is to continue to struggle. Use whatever metaphor you want-- a tree in Brooklyn, a girl in a desert-- either way, the struggle is what causes the growth.
It's cool to think that the indestructible tree is an accurate metaphor of the Christian, too. Sure, I'll never be invincible here on earth; but "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Rom. 8:31).
And God is for us. God is for me.
I will fight to believe that.
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