Ok, here’s how they’re all connected… Justin and I are Facebook friends (yeah, I’m throwing that out there again…) and he posted on FB a link to an article from the Rabbit Room’s website. The article was about the author’s last five months spent touring with Steven Curtis Chapman (SCC). What intrigued me about Justin’s post was the title, “Steven Curtis Chapman is not a Good Man.” I clicked on the link and read the article and discovered that SCC is NOT a good man! I love how the author penned it:
The proof is in the pudding. Everyone I know in Nashville who knows Steven has said to me something like, “I love Steven. He’s a good man.” But from the first week of the tour I discovered that Steven isn’t a good man. He’s as sinful as the rest of us. He wears his weakness on his sleeve. He’s quick to share his pain and his struggle. That doesn’t make him mopey–he’s quick to share his joy, too. But what’s so wonderfully subversive about the Gospel is that our ability to honestly bear our grief and woundedness just makes room for God’s grace to cast light on all that shadow; it makes room for us to love each other. When we encounter that kind of grace we come away remembering not just the sin but, overwhelmingly, the goodness, and the grace, and we say, “I love that guy. He’s a good man.” What we’re really saying is, “I love that guy. God is so good.”
As I read the article, I found myself thinking, “Yes, Lord, I want to be that kind of person.” I want to be honest about who I am and transparent about my inadequacies so that others can see God’s goodness and grace.
I was also taken by this section of the article that touched on the death of the Chapmans’ daughter Maria and how they are dealing with the grief that never really goes away.
It’s hard to imagine more honest writing. But it isn’t just honest. It’s faithful. And that’s what’s inspired me that most. Father Thomas McKenzie said in his recent Rabbit Room Podcast that there’s a faithful kind of doubting and an unfaithful kind of doubting. The unfaithful kind sees doubt as evidence that Christianity is a farce and should be dismissed. The faithful kind of doubting costs us something. It harnesses the questions like a sail in the wind and drives us on rather than away. It reminds me of Chesterton’s quote:
Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
One of the beautiful paradoxes of Christianity is that it is at once incredibly simple and infinitely intricate. Faith bridges the chasm between our understanding and the truth we feel in our bones.
That part about faithful doubting as opposed to unfaithful doubting really hit me because there are moments when I doubt, wondering why I’m going through something and what I’m supposed to be learning from it and wondering when it will be done and what I can do to be done with it and then reading that statement that “it costs us something” makes me realize that God is using the difficulty and the doubts to work out His plan for His Glory and for my satisfaction in Him and that realization helps me see that I am to take that doubt and wrestle with it and work through it and let it “drive me on rather than away.” And it may be done with tears and heartache, but that’s ok, too. Jesus wept in the Garden before he went to the cross. Tears are ok as I bear my cross… because of the vav, the “and yet.”
Michael Card’s book A Sacred Sorrow talks about the Hebrew word vav. It’s a word that means “and yet”, and is a crucial ingredient in almost every lament in scripture. Again and again, when you read the psalms, you hear the psalmist crying out against God, shaking his fist at the skies, demanding justice, wailing and abandoned, all but accusing God of being unworthy of our worship–basically, the psalmist is throwing a fit. Then, as if he’s exhausted himself, he says vav. “And yet, I will praise the Lord.” In spite of all evidence to the contrary, I believe in my bones that you are good. Your intentions for me are loving and kind. I believe in your presence though it feels like you have forsaken me. And yet. And yet. And yet. Those two desperate words may be the most faithful prayer we ever pray, and our most triumphant battle cry, though we whisper them through tears.
And yet. My prayer for today, through all the doubt and the madness that envelops me, is that And Yet. And yet… I will praise you, Lord!
