The Tell Tale Heart

Perusing through some blogs this morning, I hit on a post by my friend Kendall here called “Inside Where?” In it, he tells of reading through a book called Neverwhere where the protagonist finds himself hurled into a world where things don’t make sense and he has to begin to simply accept the extraordinary for what it is rather than trying to understand it.

Kendall relates the story to his life, saying that he is left with the choice to try to make the life he experiences fit into his own expectations or to “start accepting the extraordinary and out-of-box realities of every moment.” Something he writes concerning relating to others hit me between the eyes. He says, “There are people I meet that, if I follow my prejudices and expectations, should be complete screw ups, and yet, are some of the strongest hearts I’ve encountered.”

I can’t quite say why, but when I read those words my eyes filled with tears, my heart convicted and I think compelled by the possibility of a new approach to some old relationships. And there are a couple of friendships I have enjoyed along the way that have lately done that very thing — grown old.

Often, I am crushed by the desparity between who I am today and who I know I will one day become. The worship song “When You Call My Name” by Brian Doerksen and Steve Mitchinson capture the prayer I often utter to Christ: “I am seeking true identity in the light of Your presence. I am longing to know how You see me. In the time that You have given me, release the strength to follow and the grace to be who You say I am.” It is a faith, I think, that says, Give me grace, Lord, to be not who I think I am but to be who You say that I am. That reality is often unseen, buried ‘neath the layers of “coats and hats” we put on and take off to protect ourselves from the world’s weather, as Frederick Buechner has it:

“The world sets in to making us into what the world would like us to be, and because we have to survive after all, we try to make ourselves into something that we hope the world will like better than it apparently did the selves we originally were. That is the story of all of our lives, needless to say, and in the process of living out that story, the original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Instead we live out all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.”

And this works for others, too. Everyone you see is more than just what you see, much more than what you may first encounter or who you may come to know even after years of friendship. Many of us are familiar with C.S. Lewis’s famous thought that you “have never met a mere mortal.” All of us are made for glory, and we are constantly being shaped either to bear that glory or to shrink from it.

I think the Body of Christ plays a crucial role in helping a person receive that grace to be who God has made him to be. I think God gives a man friends who can see the deeper heart, the man behind the mask, and can call that true man forth. The inner man, with a new and redeemed heart. But still coming into play are the insecurities and fears and wounds and old abiding places that keep that man locked inside his prison cell. It’s as if the door has been unlocked and swung open wide and Christ compells him to walk free. Jesus calls him out into the free air, and He asks His friends to come alongside the man and do the same.

But for how long? How long will Jesus remain calling a man to let go of his past life and the fears and guilt that result from it and embrace the new, robust, and glorious life that He has made available for him? Maybe this is what was going through Peter’s mind when he asked Jesus how often he was supposed to forgive a man (Matthew 18:21-22). Jesus’ response was, essentially, as much as it takes. Forgive as much as we have been forgiven. Embrace as much as we have been embraced. Love as much as we are pursued and drawn and loved into the free life.

And I am not even speaking here of strangers, but of friends along The Way, brothers of Jesus and sons of the Father, their hearts in some way ravished by the Gospel. Maybe not completely. They stumble still, broken and in need of healing, or stuck still in their prison cell, but God’s beloved bride nonetheless. Screw-ups, all of them. All of us. But chosen and beloved, hearts beating with if not love at least longing to be as loving as God, hearts telling the Tale of their rescue by the valiant Warrior-God. The Scriptures are full of such souls, as is the church today.

Rich Mullins must have wrestled with this as well. He came to the conclusion that loving doesn’t always set us free from our prisons, while even as prisoners we are still free to love. But Jesus has embraced us, His arms still “strong enough to reach behind these prison bars,” reaching to set us free to walk alongside one another with God and to join God at the feast prepared for us.

Though we’re strangers, still I love you
I love you more than your mask
And you know you have to trust this to be true
And I know that’s much to ask
But lay down your fears, come and join this feast
He has called us here, you and me

And may peace rain down from Heaven
Like little pieces of the sky
Little keepers of the promise
Falling on these souls
This drought has dried
In His Blood and in His Body
In the Bread and in this Wine
Peace to you
Peace of Christ to you

And though I love you, still we’re strangers
Prisoners in these lonely hearts
And though our blindness separates us
Still His light shines in the dark

And His outstretched arms are still strong enough to reach
Behind these prison bars to set us free

So may peace rain down from Heaven
Like little pieces of the sky
Little keepers of the promise
Falling on these souls the drought has dried
In His Blood and in His Body
In this Bread and in this Wine
Peace to you
Peace of Christ to you

And may peace rain down from Heaven
Like little pieces of the sky
Like those little keepers of the promise
Falling on these souls the draught has dried
In His Blood and in His Body
In the Bread and in this Wine
Peace to you
Peace of Christ to you
Peace to you
Peace of Christ to you