gospel Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

Flesh in the Game

I did not intend to stop writing.

I wasn’t even sure I could stop writing without having a serious emotional breakdown.

But that’s exactly what happened. Shortly before Mother’s Day, I wrote a piece that would be my last for several months. After that, I simply stopped writing.

I didn’t plan it that way. In fact, I tried to get back to my keyboard to release the words that kept dripping into my brain, but I couldn’t do it. I felt I owed readers an explanation, at the very least, but I couldn’t do that either. Just as soon as I thought I had words to say, God said, Wait, I’m not done talking yet.

God was doing something in my quiet, and every time I tried to put words to it, I stopped hearing. That’s the thing about listening: you can’t hear yourself and someone else at the same time.

Besides the fact, the hearing was hard:

Are you serving me or protecting yourself?

Are you using your talents or building your reputation?

Are you caring for the lost sheep or feeding a fat flock?

Are you willing to hear me without explaining away the very thing I just said?

Are you really willing to leave everything behind, take up your cross, and follow Me?

I was wrestling through all of these questions when God hit me with the knock-out punch.

Kristen, are you willing to be the Word incarnate?

Flesh in the game

Wait…what?!

Word. Incarnate. He said it over and over again in the quiet because I am so good at hearing and not listening. Are you willing to be the Word incarnate?

I had no problem with the first part of that equation. Word. High and lofty, timeless, creative, powerful, awe-inspiring: Words! I love them.

But incarnate? That’s where everything gets messy. Besides, I was pretty sure the whole incarnation thing was Jesus’s job, and I was glad to let him have it.

Not that I wasn’t grateful–don’t get me wrong. What a mess I would be in if God stopped with the one and not the other, if he was only Word and not flesh. But he wasn’t. Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus Christ, Creator of heaven and earth, willingly stepped into his own spoken word for me.

That is the gospel.

That is the gospel I heard and said I believed while living exactly like it didn’t apply to me.

And God was calling me out on it.

He knew I spent more time justifying my lifestyle and feeling smug about my “ministry” than I did in actually considering what he said and doing it. Widows and orphans? I cried real tears for them. The least of these? I was going to do something about them just as soon as I figured out who was using the system and who was not. Care for the sick? I had just made a pot of soup for a friend with a kidney stone, I kid you not. Feed the sheep? Yep, I’d written a post or two about that, and I was pretty sure my words were generating a lot of sheep-feeding excitement in the virtual world, and I hadn’t had to interact with any actual lost sheep to make it happen. That’s what I called leveraging my energy.

According to my calculations, I was rocking the incarnation. I mean, I blogged about just about every aspect of my life, as honestly as possible. How much more incarnational with the word could I get?

But God was having none of it. Stop hiding behind your words, Kristen.

It was completely ridiculous of God to say that to me because I wasn’t even doing that.

“God, I’m not even doing that.”

Yes, you are.

“No, I’m a writer. Words are the way I use my gifts and talents for your glory.”

Ahem.

Words are the way you have been distracting yourself from my calling.

“I thought writing was my calling!”

No.

“What?”

No.

“It sounds like you’re saying…yeeeeeeeesssssss, but you need to speak up.”

No. Writing is not your calling.

This is not (ultimately) your calling.

It’s hard to have a conversation with a deity who doesn’t make sense, so I just shut up. Strangely, it seemed like my silence was what God wanted all along.

You are called to be like me. To love like I loved, to minister like I ministered, to be more than just word—to be flesh among flesh. Because it wasn’t just the Word that saved you, child. It was my body. My blood.

And when I tell you to go and do likewise, I don’t mean just write an essay on it.

“I think I already wrote an essay on that…”

If you want to be like me, you need to become the Word incarnate.

“Oh.” I had no idea what was happening but it was scary and confusing and I felt a little like a kid who didn’t know her dad’s favorite color wasn’t hot pink until just after she made him a Play-do creation in…hot pink.

Kristen, you are the Body of Christ.

“I know, Lord. I’m the mouth.”

How about you start acting like the hands.

“What do you mean?” (That was just a stalling tactic. I was hoping God was going to think it over and tell me to write a book).

I mean, it’s time to get some flesh in the game.

That’s what I was afraid of.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” I decided I’d let God in on what I was thinking.

BE NOT AFRAID.

That was my phrase for the year. Fear not. Be not afraid. It was completely unfair of God to remind me of it when I was actually afraid because I had picked it when I was feeling brave.

I considered throwing up.

But before I could, the God who took on flesh for me opened a door for me to take on flesh for him. He silenced my mouth and opened my hands. I’ve been silent on the blog but only because I haven’t had a moment on the sidelines to catch my breath or find the words.

Until now.

*Stay tuned to hear what God’s been doing in the quiet.

Keeping No Record of Rights

The first time Jenny came to church, she wore her neediness like an only dress. You could see where it had been mended over and over again along the same creases, and the places in the hem where pride had been stuffed in to hide the holes.

For five minutes, I loved her with a godly love. I cared about her burdens, and I carried them. I took her into my home and sat her on my couch and thought to myself that it didn’t matter what kind of broken she was, I could love her back together again. It was all very good and terribly Christian.

I’d send her home with a casserole or a hand-me-down for her daughter and all the while, I thought I was sewing her up better than any seamstress she had ever known before.

Then the day came when all the stitches ripped out and the fabric I had tried to save disintegrated in my hands. It cut me wide open in a way I didn’t know fabric could and I watched all that neediness dissolve into nakedness and all that nakedness reveal a horrible disfigurement that I was vain to think I could cover up with a casserole.

It smacked me hard and I stumbled back. I loved her…how could she not love me?

“I am not your project!” she had yelled on her way out the door with nothing on.

“Good,” I thought. “I don’t need a project.” But I said, “Of course not. You’re my friend.”

“Really? We’re peers?”

Well, no…

I paused to think of something sufficiently pious to say, but in that split-second, she opened her mouth and vomited back every good thing I had ever done. Every bit of my love had been chewed up and churned over until it was unrecognizable. She spewed the bitter, sour contents of her wrath all over me until it was all out, every single bit of it, and she had nothing left to say.

I stood on my porch dripping in bile and watched her go.

Of course I will forgive her, I thought in the afterglow of my piety. Even as the words came into my head, it was done. She was forgiven. Love keeps no record of wrongs, I reminded myself.

I cleaned myself up as best I could, but my heart ached. I grieved for her, for this person God had brought into my life to love. Only, she could not receive love. I had poured it into her, but it did not sink in. It only sat there and putrefied.

I thought back over all the times I had listened, all the times I had dropped everything and rushed to her rescue, all the nights my husband had to feed the kids because I was feeding hers. How quickly the list of rights began to mount because I had kept track of them all and I really didn’t think I deserved to be treated the way she had.

I was sure of it.

And oh, I didn’t love her very much right then.

Because just as much as love can’t keep a record of wrongs, it can’t keep a record of rights either. It cannot be good and godly and gospel while running a tab.

It is the same in ministry as it is in marriage or family or any time you begin to think someone owes you something for your kindness, anytime you begin to feel that someone should behave better because you behaved the way you ought.

Secretly, in the recesses of my heart, I had been keeping accounts. According to my ledger, she owed me the change I expected to see in her life. What should have been a work of the Spirit had become a work of my flesh. I had the receipts to prove it.

Only it didn’t work. That kind of love didn’t bind us together. It wedged a debt between us that became harder and harder to reconcile.

I piled works all around where grace should have been because it was easier. It was easier to mend her dress than to dwell with her in her nakedness. She was broken. She was offensive.

She needed me to cover a bit of that up.

So I thought.

Only, she didn’t need me. She needed Christ in me. It’s a fine distinction. One makes casseroles and expects a transformation in return.

The other is the transformation.

All my right deeds and all my right words could not do that for her. Only Jesus could do that. The One who redeems rebels as sons and harlots as brides—that’s what she needed to see in me. He does it over and over again and tears up the receipt every time.

But I robbed the cross when I wrote up her debt, as if she owed me anything for the goodness I gave out of the grace I had been given.

Every time I scribbled my good little deeds into the margins of my Bible, I mared the gospel. As if I could add anything to the gospel with that kind of love, as if I could earn my way any closer to Christ than through the work He did on the cross.

As if I could secure anyone to Him by indebting them with my self-righteous works.

The only place for my record of rights is at the foot of the cross, where all my doings are wrapped up in His “Done” and the only thing I know is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

It is the only record of rights that is truly love, and the only record of rights that will ever be enough.

Take Me Instead

All of my children shook their heads and looked at me innocently. “I didn’t do it, Mom,” they each said.

“Do you know who did?”

They looked at each other and shook their heads again. “No, Mom.”

Someone was lying. I held the uprooted seedlings in my hand and stretched them out for the kids to see. “One of you pulled these little plants out of the dirt. Which one of you did it?”

Again, all five children claimed innocence.

I had my suspicions, given the nature of the crime, but I could not tell for certain. The only thing I knew for certain was that one of my children was holding onto a lie and betting on the protection of the pack to keep it hidden.

“I’m sorry,” I said to all of them. “One of you is lying to me. Until that person decides to tell the truth, you will go up to your beds and stay there. No books, no toys, no lunch. If it takes until the afternoon, you will also miss gym class.”

Ten saucer-eyes stared at me. They adore gym class. I felt sorry that all five might miss it at the expense of the one. But what could be done? I couldn’t let that child get away with hiding a sin behind his siblings.

The children trudged upstairs. I could hear them talking. The Grand Inquisition was going on across the two rooms, but no one was budging. A chorus of, “Well, it wasn’t me,” echoed through the living room.

Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. Lunchtime came and went. I ate my leftover salmon and salad in silence so I could hear the second-guessing in my head.

Parenting stinks sometimes.

Finally, I called each one of the children to me. I held each one’s hands and asked him or her to be honest. Four of them were. One of them wasn’t.

“One of you is being very selfish,” I said. “You are letting your brothers and sisters be punished along with you because you love yourself and your lie more than them.”

“Maybe it was the kitten,” Paul whispered sadly.

Obligingly, I inspected the little seedlings for evidence of feline foul play. There wasn’t any: no bite marks, no cat hairs, no spilled dirt. Each seedling had been extracted carefully and placed across the dirt like a little corpse. I could only wish our kitten would be so considerate.

I sent Paul back upstairs and locked myself in the bathroom to cry.

I heard a gentle knock on the door. “Mom?”

It was Kya.

“Mom, what would happen if someone who didn’t do it said they did so the others wouldn’t have to be punished?”

I gulped. “Well, Kya, that would be a very hard thing, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah. But would you let me, if I decided to do that?”

I thought for a second. “Yes, I would,” I said slowly, fresh tears springing up in my eyes. I didn’t want to let her. I wasn’t sure I should let her.

“Okay,” she said. “I was kind of thinking that’s what Jesus did.”

“It is.”

She nodded slowly, fear swimming in her eyes. “So I think that’s what I should do.”

Sweet, gentle Kya, who loves her siblings with a loyalty that surprises me sometimes, was willing to take the punishment she did not deserve in order to spare the others. She was even willing to suffer for the betrayer, the one who did not care enough to spare her from the same thing.

It was so unfair, so agonizing, so beautiful.

It was the gospel lived out in the curly-haired visage of my middle child.

“I think,” said Jonathan, when he heard of her plan, “that Kya is a lot like Jesus.”

It’s not that she is saintly or without faults. She suffers from the same humanity as the rest of us. She did not want to take a punishment she did not deserve. I could see her wrestling with the weight of it. She would be the guilty party. She would be the one who uprooted her mother’s plants. She would be the one who would suffer while the real offender got away with it.

It was not just.

It was not right.

But in her mind, it was worth it to suffer for a sin she did not commit in order to free her siblings from punishment.

That’s what made it so beautiful. She chose pain in order to grant freedom.

And oh, how the gospel filled our home the moment that blotchy-faced little girl looked up at me and said, “Take me instead.”

Some people like to think that Jesus did not suffer when he took the punishment for us, or that his sacrifice did not come with the agonizing submission of his own will to something he was not naturally inclined to do. They think, perhaps, that Jesus felt less than the rest of us, that his sense of justice was toned down by an extra-human dose of empathy.

We looked at Kya’s tears and we knew that wasn’t true. Jesus actually, truly suffered for us. He agonized over his sacrifice. He wrestled with his flesh before he laid it down.

We rob him of the sacrifice when we allow ourselves to think Christ’s holiness anesthetized his humanity. We steal away the awful beauty of the cross when we believe that it didn’t cost him as much as it would us, that somehow, his sacrifice did not come with the same ripping of the soul that it would have if we had offered ourselves.

He suffered under flesh and with flesh and he of all people knew the disparity in the sacrifice. He felt it.

The miracle is, he did it anyway.

He chose pain in order to grant freedom when he stretched out his arms, looked up into his Father’s face and whispered, “Take me instead.”

I looked at my child and felt a great uprooting in me, the kind that should come in light of that kind of sacrifice. Someone stood in for me, and crushed him.

I have forgotten.

I have been indifferent.

But by His grace, I have been reminded in the curly-haired visage of a little girl who said, “Take me instead.”