The Back Porch

She pushed this little piece of paper across the table to within a few inches of my arm, and I wanted to stand up and walk away from it.

It was nothing. The little loop of paper used to hold the napkin, fork, and knife all together at a restaurant. She had creased it on two axes, making it into the shape of a small 4 pointed star. But it wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t quite straight. When you pressed every edge, you could see that the corners in the middle didn’t come together symmetrically. It was every so slightly imperfect, and that bothered me. It bothered me so much that I could basically feel it staring at my arm as it sat there on the table. It was screaming at me with its slight imperfection.

But to her, this imperfection was intentional. It was not meant to be fixed, nor straightened, nor tossed aside and retried. All was exactly as it should be. Its purpose was fulfilled.

I sometimes wonder why I’m imperfect. I mean, God knows what He’s doing, and yet I’m still all messed up. I’m clumsy or I’m lazy. I let small details tear my mind apart. I get easily jaded, suffer terrible shifts of my disposition. I’m arrogant and I think I know more than most people. I’m foolish, and know less than most. I have a stripe of exceptionally short hair on the back of my head that I can’t explain. I can’t even remember the first 20 years of my life.

And God made me.

This confuses me to no end. Even still, but I understand it just a bit better than I ever did before. You see, I am an imperfect fold. My edges don’t line up and I’m asymmetrical. I screw up and fall down and make mistakes as much or more than anyone else I know. But that’s all part of the plan. It is part of the purpose. I wasn’t made to be this beacon of what people are supposed to be. I was made to seek God. I was made to learn lessons and to grow and to find my way. Perfect people don’t find their way. They wouldn’t be perfect if they were somehow not on it. If a perfect person wanders off the path and remains perfect, there is only one conclusion. The path was wrong.

But I’m not that person. I make mistakes and I know that for a fact. I don’t know where my life is going, and really for that matter, I don’t know from whence it came. But every time I stumble off the proverbial path, I find out where my path isn’t. I learn something about myself and what I can or cannot do. I learn something about God and what I can and cannot understand. I learn something about the people around me or the world in which they live. It’s all part of the process to becoming who we were intended to be.

I once said to a friend about a photo I had created… it was meticulously crafted and required a great deal of time in both shooting and editing. In fact, it took nearly 10 hours for this one photo. When I told that to this friend, she asked why I would spend such a great deal of time on the photo. “You will place your nose an inch from this print, and see no error, except where error was intended.” Every spot and blemish, every shadow and highlight had its place in that photo. Even those that looked unpleasant or unseemly were perfectly intended.

When you look at me, or more importantly, when you look at yourself, know this. You will see no error, except where error was intended. It’s in those errors that God makes Himself known, and there is nothing more valuable in your entire life.

Finding hope after months of despair is like nothing that can ever be fully expressed.

It is water for a man dying of thirst. It is sight for the blind; it is air for the drowning. It is the sight of someone loved after waking from a coma. It is peace.

Love always hopes. That expression kills me because it is so hard to let go. I loved, and was left. And she’s not coming back. So what is this hope for? What good is it?
I’m starting to believe that it is not such a specific drive. The focus is not that simple. The hope is not to be for that person but rather for what that person represents. Over and over Christ compares our relationship with Him and God to a marriage. That is love. All the forgiveness and faith and trust and patience that you need for marriage is needed with God. It is provided in perfection, and for perfection in its return we strive.

We do not hold hope in love for a person, rather our hope is for love with God.

Our love with God so easily suffers from abstraction. Love with God is difficult to see because so much of it is expressed in ways and forms we cannot see. But love with a person is physical. It can be seen, touched, and felt, though not always can it be quantized. It is a kiss, or a smile in a crowded room. Eyes locked so tight as though they were the only eyes present. Love is a shoulder soaked in tears or a joke at the most excellent moment. Love is a perfect hug.

It is in these things that God’s love is understood. In these things that God’s love is felt. I do not understand how God forgives me, but I understand when a friend forgives, and often that’s as close to understanding as I need to get. It is the expression of love and hope in those around us that causes us to fathom what God shows us, and what he wants from us.

My hope is not simply to love and to be loved by this person. My hope is to understand God’s love through it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about friends lately. I can’t really be sure why, as my mind it seems has a mind of its own. But I’ve been thinking much about how fortunate I am to have the friends that I do.

Looking back on the past year, I’ve gone through so much crap and trials and stress that it borders on ridiculous. I very frequently found myself asking where God was, or why He wasn’t helping me.

The answer, of course, was in the people I asked. God was right there.

I don’t mean to jump onto a string of blasphemy, so first of all I’d like to point out that my friends themselves aren’t God. But the simple truth is that God was present in those friends. When I wanted God’s comfort, he comforted me with friends. When I wanted God’s company or God’s advice, he gave me those things in the form of the people around me. And frankly, if I didn’t have that, I would be in a much worse way right now.

This issue of course isn’t so straightforward as to be a one-way street. If my friend is how God shows Himself to me, then I suppose that means I’m supposed to be showing God to my friend too, right?

Sometimes this is a really easy issue to grasp. All you have to do is be a friend. Most people have a pretty basic understanding of that. But it’s the times we don’t want to do it that it is the most important. When we just had a long day at work and really want to nap instead, or we’re spending time for ourselves, or in a “quiet time”. It is then that you need most to be there for people, and consequently, when it is most difficult, it seems.

I was talking to one of my most trusted friends just a few days ago, and she was telling me that she felt like she wasn’t a good friend at all, citing that she was frequently busy and overwhelmed with things to be done, often unable to come over when I was having people over, or the sort. And I said to her, “Yeah, you’re busy and you have far too many things going on for any one person. You have a small nation of people constantly competing for your attention. But you have always been there for me when I needed you most, whether by coincidence or divine appointment. I can’t be sure, but you have always been there when I hurt most, and thus have been the truest friend.”

This is just one facet of the way Christ intended His church to be. So often we talk about relying on God to provide all of our needs, which is well and good, but in that we sometimes cause it to be very abstract. In my life the biggest way I’ve seen God provide for me was by the simple generosity and friendship of His people. My friends.

Keep it real, folks.
Peter

Here is Brandon’s talk from Saturday night.

http://www.sermonplayer.com/c/thebackporch/audio/12760_2552.mp3

 Peace.