CHARACTERS

For various reasons they land at our local animal shelter. Some came from litters, some found as strays. Some were given up, perhaps because an owner died or could no longer care for a pet.  And some were abused or even, well, bad.  Every week our small-town newspaper features “Adopt a Pet” ads where shelter cats’ and dogs’ positive qualities are extolled. But just to keep truth in advertising, the write-ups include cautions.

*Some have Cage Trauma, like these cats: “Shelter life is hard for this gentle feline.” “This kitty has been frightened of shelter life but is gradually finding it’s not all that bad.”

*Some have lots of energy that needs directed: “This dog is very intelligent and will need games to stimulate his mind.”  “She’s a show dog or rather a showoff dog who loves to entertain you and your friends.”

*Some were abused:  “This dog is crazy in love with humans and it’s a wonder since he hasn’t been treated well in the past. He is looking forward to a nice big doggie bed and someone to love.”

ABOUT THOSE CHARACTER GAPS....
Reading these made me think of those “love connection” websites where the whole truth about character isn’t always revealed. Some have done okay with such sites; others have stepped into minefields. That’s because “compatibility” is more than shared interests and hobbies. It also involves integrity and personal growth issues, as described in best-selling Christian author-psychologist Dr. Henry Cloud’s leadership book, Integrity (Harper, 2006).

Cloud observed that some people have gaps in showing good character “because they are unwilling to make the shifts that character demands. They kind of ‘flip off’ reality, the light, wisdom, or whatever influence comes into their lives.  They have a stance that is past resistance and is defiant.  For them, we can try to motivate, but ultimately, they have to make a choice.” Some people blame their past or genes for bad character. But Cloud challenges those excuses, saying each person can make decisions to change the negative parts of who they are.

If only people were as easy to retrain as pets.  If only a comfortable bed and appetizing kibbles made a difference.  Changing the negative parts of a personality and world outlook is hard work. As for those who’ve tried to help people who struggle with life and relationships, Cloud adds: “If you are trying so help someone, and he is not responding after many attempts by you to help, he may just be resistant. You might do better to spend your time with someone who really wants to change" (p. 278). 

Does that remind you of some of the sick people Jesus encountered? Like the disabled man who hung out by a Jerusalem water reservoir begging for alms, unaware that the Healer—the One able to bring spiritual and physical wholeness--stood in front of him (John 5:13)?

There are no guarantees that those animals offered for adoption will work out in their new home. Animals can be resilient but also stubborn.  So, too, a human—except for the amazing grace of Christ who’s in the business of transformation, building the character that honors Him.

STRETCHED

“If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.”  I’m not sure what the author of that saying intended, but it takes me back to a book that profoundly impacted me as a young adult. It’s The Shadow of the Almighty, the biography of missionary martyr Jim Elliot, written by his widow Elisabeth Elliot. The book traced his passion for sharing about Jesus (including the remote Ecuadorean tribe that killed him and his colleagues in the 1950s) and shared his devotion to God in journal entries that included quotes like this: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”  About three years after reading his biography, I found myself on the campus of Wheaton College, where he graduated decades earlier and where he had first met “Bets” (Elisabeth) and knew she was the one—but not quite yet. (They would marry years later in a simple civil ceremony on the mission field.) I hoped to earn a master’s degree in communications at Wheaton as a door to work in Christian publishing. But often as I walked on campus and gazed at the same buildings where he studied, I wondered if I could ever have such audacious faith.

            I had no idea how God would stretch me—to give what I could not keep to gain what I could not lose. My neat-and-tidy plan to sprint through the program was interrupted by my parents’ deaths just six months apart. I found myself stretched in new areas through nearly unbearable grief and intimidating after-death tasks, including emptying the very full family home.

            A year later, I returned to graduate school. At times I wondered if I’d make it—physically, intellectually, and financially. Then, as graduation neared and I finished my thesis, I started job hunting. One by disappointing one, my inquiry letters trickled back with curt “not hiring” replies.

            That faith-stretching time of my life is one reason I resonated with “If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.”  Those bewildering, stretching, humbling years of higher education left me with this important lesson: When life belittles, God is bigger.  My job offer—a God-thing--came just days before I had to vacate college housing with no place to go.

            That job was a good experience, but marriage and motherhood changed my address and vocational direction. Four diplomas hang on the wall in my bedroom (high school, college, Bible school, graduate school). But I’m still “in school” for a degree that Jim Elliot described in his journals: the A.U.G.—“approved onto God.” He took this from 1 Timothy 2:15-16:

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

            Or, said another way, don’t resist when God is taking the “raw you” and stretching you spiritually and vocationally to better serve Him. People who don’t change and grow, stagnate. Those who turn away from challenges backtrack…and lose, not gain.

HOLD ON TO THE 'YET' (Psalms 42-43)

This pier on the Columbia River symbolized for me

the emotions of being launched into unknowns

(An ongoing series on the 48 psalms listed as “recommended reading” for times of depression, as listed in counselor/pastor David Seamands’ book Healing for Damaged Emotions.)
Despair and hope thread through this duo of psalms, which scholars say should be read as one. Their link is the thrice-repeated refrain:

Why are you downcast, O my soul, Why so disturbed within me within me? Put your hope in God, For I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (42:5, 11; 43:5)

The phrase “been there, done that” rings through my heart when I read these psalms. Bible teachers say the author (attributed to Korah’s sons, who served in the tabernacle) was apparently away from his work and home, possibly north toward Mt. Hermon. He admits to crying day and night (42:3), suggesting some real physical and spiritual lows—yes, depression.  He misses his temple work, which kept him in an attitude of worship and joy (v. 4). He’s been subjected to ridicule by people who mock, “Where is your God?” (42:3, 10). Such people are ungodly, deceitful, wicked, his enemy (43:1-2).

It’s hard to live for God when your assaulted by so many negatives. He chose a picturesque simile when he compared his feelings to a deer that’s panting with thirst (42:1).

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? (42:2)

I know people who live in the past, in “glory years” when their skills brought approval and admiration.  But life isn’t static. There are deaths, moves, job and financial changes, family adjustments, or health crises--and if we can’t adjust to our new “normal,” we’re candidates for depression. We can’t expect to forever “meet God” in the old comfortable and maybe stale ways.

STUCK IN THE PAST

The writer opens his song pining for the “good old days”—when he led worship processions in Jerusalem. But he ends it with a vital truth: that God can be worshipped wherever we are, in new ways as He grows us spiritually. For the psalm-writer, the new place is finding God’s light and truth where God has placed the believer (43:3).

Circumstances change. People change. Churches change! Hopes are raised, hopes dashed. But the constant is God, who never changes but whose character would take more than a lifetime to discover and savor.

That’s why I latch on to the little word “yet” in these two psalms. I can rehash my troubles and questions, but at the end—in the “yet” of life—I need to come back to praising Him, claiming Him as my joy and delight (43:4).

It’s a verse worth writing out on a 3x5 card and putting where you’ll see it regularly, maybe next to your computer or the bathroom mirror:

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.