Enter. Rest. Pray.

For the past few months I have been thinking a great deal about church. In our absence from Vancouver Michael and I have been intentional about discussing and praying together about where God is calling us in this next season of life (living in Burnaby, being new parents.) A couple of weeks ago, while Michael met with Oxford colleges, I sat down and tried to put my very complicated emotions about God and Church into words. No simple task, for me at least.

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I’m sitting on a Tuesday morning sipping a hazelnut latte on Ship Street in Oxford. I’m staring out the window at a narrow lane. Three bicycles lean chained in front of a stone church nestled in this busy bit of Englandshire. A sign outside says: Enter. Rest. Pray.

Amen. This is what church should be: An open door. 

I feel so broken by my experience of church. It has changed how I see God. It has stripped the mystery from His face like the curling of paint: unwelcome moisture lacing papers, slowly. 

I carry regret and hurt like a stone. 

I have quieted my voice. I fear my words sifting through air, like a vapour: gone. Can words change anything? (Actions speak louder than words…) 

So many friends have been hurting, and disillusioned. Now: J, M & A. Then: K, J, P, R, dozens of others. Still, I’ve stayed steadfast.  

God gave us the entirety of the Bible with all of its mysteries. There is no room for mystery, innuendo, or questioning in our community. I feel we are pale and one-dimensional because of it. 

Is this the Gospel? The Gospel that has spilled from century to century, confounding the wise of every known culture? Is this the Gospel that whispers beyond the heavens? Beyond creation?

To my mind, reducing God to a five-part sermon is a serious sin, the greatest act of treason to the cross, to Jesus, to His sacrifice. 

How dare we take the depth and complexity of His everlasting love for us and reduce it to a simile? 

I sit in a city where brilliant men like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein spent their lives in wonder, discussion and service to our Lord. These men dedicated pages, chapters and books to their questions, their struggles with this Jesus, and yet remained chaste to Him.

Should this not be our model? Should we too not reach out to touch the Teacher’s cloak? This encounter is a beginning. Our lives here, and beyond the grave, are for the knowing. And the knowing and being known lead to praise. 

There is much that I long to know in this life but it all pales in comparison to a moment, an hour, shared in the presence of God. 

His wisdom sustains and guides.

As I walked through Oxford’s streets this morning, brought to smiles by penny whistles, busking, and the birds, welcoming spring, I heard the whisper of these words:

“In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.”

A truth I have neglected too long. 

In every step of worship God fulfills our heart’s desires. We need not fret over the trajectory. In mystery and devotion we worship, and God fulfills.

I long to be a part of a community who is free to be lost in the mystery of God, the beauty of His creation, the marvel of His plan, the pain of His sacrifice and the depth of Christ’s commitment to his father’s will. 

This Jesus is not an abstraction. If we let Him, He can become our life’s obsession. A man who in every moment set His desires aside for the best of others. This, He, is enough to sustain a lifetime of study, questions, mystery and emulation.

I am grateful to people whose life work, they feel, is to simplify the complexities of the Gospel so that those — children, teenagers, and adults who have never encountered the Bible — have a starting point. 

But the Gospel (that is, the good news) extends far beyond the introduction. What rests beyond our first meeting?

Enter. Rest. Pray.  Let us begin.