Twists and Turns along the Straight and Narrow

Did you ever play the lava game? Usually, the game took place in your parent’s living room on a rainy day or on the sidewalk as you walked to school. The game is simple — suddenly the ground became lava and your mission was to navigate your way across the molten death-trap by jumping from couch to couch, couch to chair, chair to the table, or by balancing your way through the neighborhood on the curb of the sidewalk. Growing up, many chairs (and subsequently many lives) were lost and knees were skinned trying to avoid the unpredictable volcanic activity of central Indiana.
We also played in church. Though the church version of the lava game was sequestered mostly to minds and hearts. There are many, many memories I have of Sunday School growing up as a pastor’s kid. Probably chief among those beliefs was how easy my teachers/leaders/pastors made finding the way to Jesus appear. Now I say “appear” very intentionally because as we all know, much of life is learning nuance, finding what is real in appearance. Growing up, the road to hell as a highway filled with everything the world had to offer, but at the same time — for anyone with sense to see it — was so obviously wrong and evil. Getting to heaven, on the other hand, was like walking a tightrope. Everything moved at one speed and in one direction, always forward, never back, and always on level footing. Life became one big lava game, everything was about avoiding getting burnt.
As I reflect more on this way of depicting the spiritual journey, something failed to resonate. What I was told would happen ended up being much nicer, much neater than what actually occurred. It was the lava game with one key difference — my own attempt left me actually burnt, actually wounded and asking bigger questions than I knew how to answer. Questions of God’s goodness, my own darkness, doubts about God’s leading and presence have all been regular companions.
Even in recent years, reflecting on my spiritual journey has been a heavy task. Certainly, there have been victories; looking back through journals and notebooks, posts, and prayers, in a very tangible sense I am closer to Jesus than ever before. I know him better. He seems more familiar, more at home with me. That sense alone is comforting, freeing even. At the same time, heaviness set in. I am less recognizable, and not in the sense of “he looks more like Jesus.” I wonder if somehow the “straight and narrow” has been lost to me. I wonder if the mess of my life could have and in fact should have been avoided for a person of faith like me. I think I do look more like Jesus, just not the snow white, smiling, everything-is-fine Jesus. Today I look in the mirror and see the scarred Jesus; the beaten and torn Jesus. Today, I am far more aware of my own woundedness than perhaps I ever have been.
Perhaps that, in and of itself, is a lingering evidence of Grace. I can see wounds in my soul and in the souls of people around me and know that he felt them first. Before I was wounded, He was. Before I got myself good and lost, there was prepared for me, a well-worn path home.
The Psalmist in Psalm 85 begins with this same sort of reflection, longing to rediscover an ancient path:
“Lord, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people; you pardoned all their sin.” -Ps. 85:1–2
The first thing worth noticing is that none of this is happening in the present. This prayer comes from the hearts of men and women reflecting back on something they are unable to see and experience in their current circumstances. As I read this, I feel a resonance with the psalmist’s remembrance and celebration of the life lived with God in the past. I know there have been times in my own where God has been near and his activity has been very apparent both in me and around me. Like the psalmist, I feel the pull to yesteryear. Back to when joy and relief were seemingly easier to come by. Life was lighter, less confusing, at appearances brighter, more clear.
In the middle of this reflection, the author bids us “Selah,” stop and dwell here for a moment. Remember that these feelings and experiences aren’t only found in ancient stories, but are experienced now, in lives of real people. Even if they are little more than a memory now, they are still real.
When Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened,” He assumed we would grow weary, discouraged and disheartened along the way.
- Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
This is the truth we all experience in life, but not the end of it. The psalmist wisely decides not to linger and wait idly remembering that “hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Prov. 13:12) Just as the Three-eyed Raven once reminded us, “It is beautiful beneath the sea, but if you stay there too long, you’ll drown.” God does not operate in a vacuum, our past becomes the next step on the journey to where we are going.
“Restore us again!” becomes the cry that launches the psalmist into the next verse of her story. The memories of God’s past activity become the bread crumbs leading the psalmist back home. What the psalmist has already seen give him an indication of what to look out for on the journey ahead. Chief among them: what she hears.
Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people. . . .The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase. -Ps 85:8,12
God speaks peace. What He speaks lands like a rock on the surface of a lake, and ripples through our world in mysterious ways that point and draw us back to their source. My prayer today is that we would be able to find the breadcrumbs within our own story; the ripples that guide us. The small evidence of a life we have maybe only tasted long ago. That we would listen to the peace that God continues to speak over us.
And follow that voice home.
