Imagine who you could be and then aim single mindedly at that
Exodus 2: 11-25; Matthew 5:8
Imagine who you could be and then aim single mindedly at that
(Slide 1)A man who we thought went back to a life of desperation and addiction showed up at church this week. He was sober, fit, calm, collected and employed. He had what anybody would recognize as a spark in his eyes, a life energy and a will to live. Ever curious I had to ask him about the turning point in his life that happened just before he got involved with this church of ours as well.
He told me the following story. His descent from high school to age 38 when he ended up on the streets was very gradual. One day he just decided he has had enough. Enough of trying to pay the bills and adult responsibilities. He told his family he is leaving to live on the streets. And he followed through. He lived on the streets for 12 weeks. He learned a lot. He got to know the people on the streets. Their care for each other, their struggles and also their dark side. At night he preferred to be by himself. He mostly slept down by the Fraser river. One day on his way to his spot at sunset, he came across a shopping cart. In it was a Budweiser box. He peeked inside and there were 8 ice cold beers in it. Nobody was around so he thought it was his lucky day. He took the box of beers and went on the Pattullo bridge. He sat there opened a beer looking out on the river with the sun setting. What happened next did not so much change his life but it set the trajectory of his life in a whole different direction.
As he was sitting there he got a vision. When he told me this I immediately asked if that was drug induced. He told me this was the strangest thing. He was on drugs but that day he used it very early so he wasn’t high that time. More than that the vision he got was unlike any typical drug induced illusion. He struggles to bring it under words but says that where drugs gives one a surreal experience, this gave him a hyper real experience.
He momentarily became completely blind. Then the vision formed in the darkness. The vision was of various black roses sprouting and growing until it made a dense bush. But then a bright light shone through the rose bush. The light formed a path of light throughout the bush and engulfed it. With this he got this overwhelming feeling of love. He found part of himself protesting and actually said to himself: “No way, I am going to do drugs instead” but what he said seemed futile, laughable in the face of this overwhelming, all encompassing love he felt.
It wasn’t as if this moment solved all his problems instantly, but he said this: (Slide 2)“In that moment I got a glimpse of what life can be, and about what I can be and it was so beautiful that I couldn’t go back to drugs or the life I lived up to that point. My ego started dying”. After this experience he went to Mike at SUMS and Mike told him about the church on the Hill. He came and heard Terri sing a song that warmed his heart. What he describes of his experience at the church, is if I understand him correctly, was that the community between the people was the same substance of the love he felt on the bridge. It helped him and it healed him. He now wants to get involved again because of that experience. He is still on this journey of healing and wholeness, but he is a much better man than when he found those beers. (By the way, he didn’t even finished the one beer he opened that day)
I love these stories. Everyone has something surprising and unique in them. Like the cold beers in this man’s case. But if you study them closely the stories of transformation also has ingredients common to all. In fact the story I just told you even echoes the story of Moses so many years before. What are the common ingredients of real transformation?
(Slide 3) Confronting Reality
Conflict is a key ingredient of a story of transformation. Moses had conflicting identities. On the one hand he was privileged. He grew up as a prince of Egypt would in the household of the most powerful ruler. Education, good food and the best Egypt had to offer was available to him. On the other hand, he was aware of his origin as an Israelite. The Israelites were treated harshly and unfairly by the Egyptians that enslaved them. So, in one sense he was treated better than he deserved to be treated but in a way his people also got treated worse than they deserved. In the middle stood the young adult Moses asking himself: “Who am I?”
Or did he? The way he acted out against the Egyptian hitting an Israelite shows not a well thought through response but an impulsive response of somebody that avoided dealing with something important for too long. It landed him in grave danger.
(Slide 4) Recently I got a ticket for speeding. I am not proud of it. It is a horrible feeling sitting on your motorcycle waiting for the RCMP officer behind you knowing full well that you are indeed guilty. And so I was expecting something in the mail. When it came I put it aside. I know what was inside would confront me with the reality that I will need to pay a fine and would probably have an increase in my insurance installments. So, I refused to open the envelope. One day I held it in my hand and felt this urge to shred it. The longer I avoided opening the envelope, the bigger deal it became to me. When I finally opened it, got online and paid the fee it wasn’t pleasant but it there was this sense of relief. It was much better than just ignoring it or throwing it away. Both of those options would have just made my predicament larger, not smaller.
(Slide 5) Community
Our lives send us envelopes we do not want to open. Things we are confronted with that is unpleasant. Because of what we did. Because of what was done to us. If we keep on avoiding dealing with reality, it catches up with us. Like people refusing to admit the reality of the pandemic, didn’t wear masks and then ended up on ventilators. Like Moses killing a man and suddenly finding himself at odds with the hand that fed and privileged him. Reality is a long distance athlete. It always catches up with you. You are better off opening the envelope and confronting its painful contents.
Sometimes those contents are so painful and the experience so overwhelming that you get knocked down if you go about it alone. This was what happened to Moses. The next movement in his story is him finding a new community or tribe. Like the man I told you about was directed to a community, Moses was lead to one. That community became the empowering agent that helped him deal with his conflicting reality and identity in a more constructive way.
(slide 6) Imagination
That day on the bridge the man I told you about got a vision of how his life could be different. An image of who he can be. And even though he was far from the man he saw in that vision, it put him on a road towards meeting…becoming that man. Imagination comes from the word ‘image”. To have imagination means to see an image of something that does not yet exist but could. It is not to be confused with a delusion. A delusion would be to see an image of something that could not be. Drugs give delusions. God gives imagination. Imagination is rooted in reality and takes you further from there. Delusions is rooted in the ego and takes you down with them.
For Moses it came a bit later. We kick start our imagination by paying attention. An odd burning bush attracted Moses’s attention in Exodus 3. It drew him into the very mystery of who God is. You do not really choose what draws your attention. It is like it chooses you. God brings us to places and things that grabs our attention so that he could kindle the fire of our imagination with that. God strips us of things that distract us. That is why the places he often succeeds in getting people to pay attention is deserts. Sometimes it takes a long time for God to get our attention. He is not scared off by that. Moses tended goats for a long time before he paid attention.
(Slide 7) And then imagination stays just dreams if it is not acted upon and articulated in words. When our imaginations are kindled it makes us act differently. Even though some old habits might stick for some time, we find ourselves thinking and doing things differently. A little girl enacts how to be a mother with her dolls long before she could articulate what motherhood is. But it will serve her well to before she does eventually go into real motherhood later, articulate in words what is involved in it to herself and others.
Moses eventually put into words and stories what he paid attention to, acted upon and where the journey took him. We won’t have Exodus if he did not, and he might have gotten lost along the way if he hadn’t put it into words. Looking back and articulating what God did in you and through you is sometimes a way to recognize what the next step is you should take. Even God used words when he created order from chaos. Poems, stories, speech are all ways to help us in our journey of transformation.
Close
This week I read Jordan Peterson’s second rule of life that goes: “Imagine who you could be and then aim single mindedly at that”. It sounded like good life advice but when I listened to Afroz’s story I realized Peterson missed something. Yes, we should do what we can to imagine and focus. But we need something more. The courage to confront unpleasant realities around us and in ourselves, the love of a community to support us to unpack that and the imagination to imagine a better version of ourselves. And these things are not in the first place human achievements. They are gifts of God. Gifts he gives not only to Moses and Afroz, not only to starry eyed young idealists, but to us.
(slide 8) Then I read Matthew 5:8 where Jesus says: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God”. I read up on this pureness of heart. Although we have a strong connotation to sexual morality when we hear “purity”, it actually relates to “singleness” as in being focused. This beatitude could be translated as: “Blessed are those with an undivided heart, because they will see God.”
What Afroz saw that day and the gift he got was that it was all about God and his love. It is that realization that changed Moses, Abraham and Paul. In Philippians 3 Paul acknowledge that it is Jesus that blessed him with a better vision of himself and the world. He doesn’t feel he has arrived, but he is sure that God has set him on the right path. Listen what he says in verse 10:
(slide 9) “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death and so somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead.
Can you see? It is all there. Paul wanting to be like Christ in his death, is him willing to confront reality and chaos. Him wanting to share in the fellowship of Jesus’s suffering is Paul embracing community as part of his journey. And his hope to attain resurrection in different forms and ultimately one day is Paul walking towards that imaginative vision God has unlocked in His grace.
The pandemic tells us of many things we cannot do. Let us today be reminded of what we can still do. Regardless of our age, socio economic status or health. We can look reality in the eye knowing Jesus is right there with us when we open that scary envelope. We can love, embrace and contribute to community, friendships and relationships. And we can imagine and move in the direction of the beautiful pictures God shows us. Maybe that is all we need to do right now.
May your heart be undivided in its devotion to who Jesus is and who you are becoming in Him. May we all be transformed or renewed like Afroz on the bridge that day. By the grace of God.
AMEN
Gabriel J Snyman
April 14th 2021