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Taste and Swallow

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Taste and Swallow

Reflections – week 5b

Welcome to the second half of week-five reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. This is week five of eight.
I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

Communion as Helplessness

Babies get spoon-fed. Adults with declining health get spoon-fed. Those who can feed themselves, feed themselves. Except at wedding receptions. Bride and groom hold out thin slices of cake for each other, while family and friends hold their breath—will it be romantically delicate, or smash-in-your-face fun? If they’re really brave, a couple will do the same with drinks. God bless them if they stain the wedding dress.

Holding a drink to another person’s mouth, or putting a bite of food on their tongue, is an intimate interaction. You’re participating in the entrance of a substance into another person’s body. The muscles in your hand and arm are ultra-focused, working in awkward tandem with another’s lips and tongue and throat.

In the Father’s House week 5 visualization, I’m invited to see myself at the table in Papa’s house, receiving communion from His hands.1 Imagine God Himself putting food in my mouth, holding drink to my lips, intimate, connected. This involves so much receiving, which I have never been good at. It involves not doing it on my own. Does God have time for such shenanigans?

As I swallow bread and drink, it occurs to me that tasting and swallowing are nearly the only bodily sensations I will experience with this food. After esophageal muscles carry the food to my stomach, it travels through my body unnoticed by me, yet is giving of itself for hours, sustaining my well-being. But over all this I have no control and very little awareness.

I wonder if my goodness—God’s gift to me—is this way. I hunger for belonging, rest, wholeness, so I open myself to receive. After tasting and swallowing, my mouth may return to neutral—no sensations—but a hundred things are happening inside me, producing life. Resting my hands in my lap and allowing God to feed me, trusting that I was made to receive, and trusting receiving to be life-giving and ongoing—maybe this will calm the hustle and quiet the perfectionism. Maybe being dependent will feel like peace, not prison. Maybe receiving as if I am helpless to do it myself will usher me in to abundance.

When I receive, I’m not generating something new. I’m depending on what already is. Swallowing is a surrender. I have invited something into my body, to become part of me. In the same way, receiving God’s goodness—my goodness—is a surrender to life. It’s not a structure I build brick by brick, but rather a piece of toast with butter and honey, sweet to the tongue, trusted to enter my body and do me good.

As Gregory Boyle says, “Then we stop being ‘spiritual,’ moving from here to there. Instead, we want to move from there to here.”2 God is inviting me to take up residence in myself and to taste my real life and allow it to nourish me. I am not trying to get somewhere so much as I am opening my mouth to partake.

I Declare

Father’s House encourages declarations—statements we can write down and speak aloud in order to internalize new ways of thinking. I’m not much for formulas, and I haven’t been practicing my declarations with any regularity, but writing them even once can be impactful. I had fun this week re-writing in my own words some of the scripture-based declarations from the book.

I am innocent.

I am powerful in my own self.

I live within the walled city of God’s love, my refuge and place of peace.

The greatest power in the universe is for me. All powers against me are lesser.

I am an abider.

I am whole, because this is Jesus’ gift to me.

I am alive. Good things flow through me.

I am an enjoyer of abundance.

God is never on the other side.

Jesus’ faith is my doorway out of law prison.

Slavery to the law falls off me like water off a duck’s back.

I am spirit-inhabited, married into the trinity.

My Papa is compassionate with me. Always.

Let Him Sing

Every week of Father’s House closes with a letter from Papa God, fresh with edibles for my hungry spirit. Excerpts from this week’s letter:

I am singing My promises over your soul. Let them wash over you and fill your mind and body with confidence.
I am putting opportunities in your life to grow your trust and faith in Me. How do I do this? By giving you endless encounters with My goodness.
The prize of My promises is a relationship with me.
… practice the language of possibility! You’re learning to be content using a new muscle – the muscle of rest and trust.
As you wait on My response with a carefree heart… I am holding you in my perfect embrace.

All My Love, Abba Daddy.3

Here’s to endless encounters with God’s goodness—bread and drink—and bulging muscles of rest and trust.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto: https://www.pexels.com/photo/girl-feeding-her-father-with-a-cake-4815325/

Endnotes:
1Father’s House, Session Five video visualization
2The Whole Language, page 84
3Father’s House, page 94

Give or Take

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Journey By Journal

I think God is trying to tell me something, but I’m not listening very well.

Prayer journal, April 28, 2020
Somehow we keep circling back to the same thing: You want to provide for me, and You are able to provide for me from Your riches and abundance. You don’t run out. You don’t forget. You are I AM. The most important thing about me today is that I am loved. Let that be enough. Teach me Your abundance. I’m still trying to be something, to earn. Teach me that You are really Something.

Prayer journal, May 5, 2020
Thomas: “Marry me. Marry me for my money. People do it every day.”
Joanna: “I’m not amused, Thomas, and I have a great sense of humor.”
Thomas: “Then marry me for love.” (from the movie Sabrina (1995))
You want to give me all that You have, but You want to love me first, and me to love You. You want to marry me for love. (Not for what You can get from me or what I can get from You).

Prayer journal, May 8, 2020
I come to You desperate, hoping to wring something out of You to get me through the day. I am sorry. I forgot You are God. Please have Your way in me. Remind me that being humbled by You is better (safer, more real) that being exalted by myself. It’s like You’re trying to make me something, but You can’t because I am so underfoot You can’t work. Please help me hold still and watch You. Teach me stillness again. Help me trust You to take action. You with Your abundant love and grace, Your “glorious, unlimited resources” (Ephesians 3:16), Your upside-down ways, Your crazy love. It’s like I’m blind and You’re trying to touch my eyes, but I’ve got my hands over them. Or I’m trying new potions or routines or seances to cure them. There is no room for You in this place overflowing with filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). Lord by Your grace I open my hands to You. After that there is nothing left to do. You will see to the blindness, the peace, the stillness, the humility, the abundance. You are worthy. You are worthy. You are worthy.

Prayer journal May 10, 2020
Today I came heavy with all things, and I started talking about how tired I am. You interrupted me and said, “Remember, I’m here to give to you, not take from you.”

Prayer journal May 13, 2020
Humans most often give gifts in the context of celebration: birthdays, holidays, graduations/promotions and so on. You keep on giving gifts when there is nothing to celebrate (or perhaps with You there is always something to celebrate?).

I Don’t Get It

If I know God is so eager to give, why am I so hesitant to sign up? Why do I keep hoping this is some sort of equal partnership in which I know what to expect from Him and He knows what to expect from me? Why do I want things to be “right” more than I want them to be real? I suspect two things.

First, my heart is still on the hard side. Still more stone than flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). I am like the disciples observing Jesus and just not getting it. Remember this story? They’re out in the boonies with several thousand hungry people and Jesus tells them to feed the people; they’re like “with what, Jesus?” So he tells them to round up what they can and they come back with five loaves of bread and two fish. Then Jesus feeds all those people and there are twelve baskets of leftovers. (When Jesus gets ahold of something the leftovers are more than you started with.)

After the mass crowd-feeding they’re still trying to find some peace and quiet (they were in the boonies in the first place to be alone, but that didn’t work out), and Jesus sends the disciples across the lake while He goes off alone to pray. Then He comes walking across the lake in the middle of the night, “but when they saw him walking on the water, they cried out in terror, thinking he was a ghost. They were all terrified when they saw him. But Jesus spoke to them at once. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. ‘Take courage! I am here!’ Then he climbed into the boat, and the wind stopped. They were totally amazed, for they still didn’t understand the significance of the miracle of the loaves. Their hearts were too hard to take it in.” (Luke 6:49-52)

Did you catch that last bit? “They were totally amazed, for they still didn’t understand the significance of the miracle of the loaves. Their hearts were too hard to take it in.” They watched Jesus feed several thousand people with one basket of food, and it went right over their heads. They didn’t even know what happened. That’s me. I just don’t get it. I see abundance, but I don’t really see it. My heart is too hard to take it in.

Receiving – Are You Sure?

Second, I value predictability. God is wild. He is rock (Psalm 18:2), but He is also wind (John 3:8). I cannot manipulate Him. I cannot predict Him. I find this unsettling.

I am like the Israelites asking for a king. God was a divine larger-than-life personality to grapple with, but a king, simply by nature of being human, was understandable. Predictable. “Give us a king to judge us like all the other nations have,” the leaders said to Samuel (Samuel 8:5b). Samuel wasn’t too sure about this plan, but God told him to go ahead and give them a king, “…for they are rejecting me, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer.” (Samuel 8:7b)

Then God tells Samuel to warn the people about what it will be like to have a king. The phrase “he will take” dominates the passage (1 Samuel 8:11-18, NKJV). God tells his people that the king will take their sons and daughters, their fields/vineyards/groves and what they produce, as well as their servants and animals. After the warning the people say, “No, but we will have a king over us… that our king may go out before us and fight our battles.” (1 Samuel 8:20) Hadn’t God already been going out before them and fighting their battles? I remember stories of walls falling and pitchers breaking – victories won by God Himself. Why so eager to have a king?

A king is a king, but God is God. I, too, am willing to trade a God who gives, for a king who takes. I know what a king will take, but I don’t know what God will give. In fact, I feel so much more comfortable being taken from than being given to, that I try to make God take from me. I want Him to bargain with me: you do this, and I’ll do that. I beg for Him to take my problems, and fear for Him to take my freedom.

But when I come to His presence I find a God who gives. This is good, and yet unsettling. Perhaps even nonsensical. Why would God be interested in giving to me? To quote the movie Sabrina again:
Linus: “You don’t deserve her, but she appears to love you.”
David: “Doesn’t that worry you a little bit? I mean, about her mental health.”
I worry about God’s mental health. I don’t deserve Him, but He appears to love me. I would feel much better if He would be proud of me for my accomplishments or disappointed with me for my failures. But He is unwilling to engage with me in this way. He insists on loving me. Full stop. No conditions.

Faith To Receive

Could I come to receive? Perhaps I could come to God’s presence to receive and give rather than to take and be taken from. What do I have to give? Trust is a gift. And reverence, and worship, and gratitude. Honesty – letting myself be seen. These are gifts. But perhaps God’s favorite gift of all is when I learn to receive – to accept the gifts He has for me without trying to deserve them first. Perhaps I could be grateful instead of incredulous.

Prayer journal, May 12, 2020
Faith is letting God decide what He’s going to do. Perhaps it’s time to let God give, and maybe I could even receive without arguing.

Give and Receive

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I am guarded with God. As much as I don’t want to admit it, it becomes painfully clear in those moments when I try to trust Him and end up exploding in anger. I’m still not sure He’s safe. Perhaps I am in a lifetime of recovery. Just as alcoholics are forever recovering, perhaps so are sinners.

I keep thinking God is expecting something from me – a life of service perhaps – and He keeps saying, “Let Me provide.” Why am I so convinced He wants to take, when all He has done is give? (And how presumptuous to think that I have anything of objective value to offer the God who made me.)

Always He is present. Always He is safe. Always He wants to be with me and love me, even though it makes no sense. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)

Perhaps this giving is an invitation to me to receive. Receiving is different than taking. God is not a shelf from which I can select whatever I need and take it. He is a lover, pursuing me with gifts – blessings – and each time I receive I am entering into intimate relationship with Him. God bless this holy mystery.