Portrait of a Daring Woman (from Summer Academy 2014)

She has met Love.  Deep love, true love, voracious love.  Love that whispers into the depths of her heart that she has been chosen from the beginning—chosen to be loved into existence and chosen to be herself. 

She binds herself to Love, promising to go where Love leads her. Suddenly, in this act of binding she is gloriously free—free to be herself. 

When she surrenders to Love, Love teaches her how to love back.  The act of loving back hones her, chisels her, transforms her—so that she becomes more of herself.

Because no force can contain Love, because Love must fulfill itself in reaching outside of itself, when the daring woman binds herself to Love, she finds herself knit into the people that Love has made.  This people frees her to be, teaches her to be, and needs her to be herself. 

This people is a tall, tall, tower—rising, proclaiming, worshiping, witnessing unabashedly.  This people is a wall—solid, unmoving, protecting what is precious, not crumbling under fierce attack.  This people is a shelter —a resting place, a growing place, a transforming place where new life emerges in triumph.  This people is a bulwark, and their bulwark is a school for radical love.   The daring woman dares to learn this lesson. 

The daring woman dares to love her sisters—radically.  She loves them with a love which draws them in and knits them together. Her love ministers to their wounds, responds to their needs, and always reminds them of their infinite worth.  

 Because she is free to be herself, she is free to love her sisters with a love untainted by comparison.  When her head is full of truth, she has no more space for the long mental checklist by which she once tallied her merits next to others’.  The former envy has died, and the old smugness has run out.  She is free. 

She is free to love and free to receive the love her sisters have to offer her.  She is free to serve them in their needs and to let them serve her own.  She knows that sisterhood behind the bulwark means that she can share openly about her life (as it truly is)—the victories of grace and the struggles of sin—and she dares to do it, because she knows that her sharing builds her love and builds the bulwark. 

She knows the difference between a sister and a friend is not in how she feels, but in the bond of the radical love that she chooses, in the companionship of those called by Love.  She knows that their sisterhood is not yet perfect, but her love is bigger than hurts and disappointments.  Her love steadies her when she wavers and renews her when she stumbles.  She delights because her once-secret desire for more of the Lord has found its dwelling place in a culture of sisterhood that hungers and thirsts for the face of God and adorns itself in its pearl of great price. 

The daring woman dares to love her brothers—radically.  Because she is free to be herself, she is free to be a gift to them and free to honor the gift that has been given to her in them.  Her joy brings them refreshment and encouragement, and her beauty adds richness to the life they share as a people.

Her love allows them to take their place as men—to lead her, to guide her, to take the next step first along the path the Lord has marked for them to walk together. 

Her love submits to the mentorship of Wisdom.  Wisdom teaches her what to say, and what to leave unsaid.   Wisdom steadies her, helping her to cast her anchor in the endless sea of her Lord’s delight in her, and not in the shallow waters of men’s admiration.  Wisdom reminds her to love her brothers in the Lord’s concrete now, and not in her own dreams for the future, to protect her heart from attractions and longings that would cheapen or dissipate the greater love the Lord has for her.  Radical love helps her not awaken romantic love before it is ready, before it is time. 

The daring woman dares to love the world—radically.  Because she is free to be herself, she is free to love with a love that extends to all that she encounters and shows them the love of Christ.   Her love dares to make the first move, to risk rejection, and to give itself—to stretch across wide gaps with kind words and true friendship.  She says hello and means it to the woman at the cash register.  When she walks through the streets, her eyes search constantly for Christ in others, that she may smile at Him.  Each morning, she delights in small things while the barista in the coffee shop wonders about her unquenchable joy.  She asks questions about the person she sits next to in class, because she wants to know others as she has been known. When she meets brokenness, insecurity, and cynicism, she offers a humble dose of radical love.  Her prayers of intercession surround the professor who criticizes her beliefs, the coworker who tells her to have more fun, and the lonely looking girl who lives at the end of the hall.  Her confidence invites others to come behind her bulwark even before her words do. 

Her words say, “Come and see.  Come and taste the goodness of my God and the fullness of his life.  Come and find a home in his people, who are my people.  Come and meet the source of my love.”

Grace: A Play, in Three Acts

We all know that we’re looking for something, something shapeless but intoxicating.  The hunt for that something inspires books, movies, and music.  We draw pictures and hang them in galleries for searchers of something to ponder.  We build skyscrapers, hoping they might reach it.  A never ending search—elusive, maddening, frustrating.  And still, we look.  We all know we’re looking for something.  But sometimes, there’s a beautiful moment when that thing we’re looking for finds us.  For the Christian, that Something is a Someone, and that encounter with Him is called “grace.” 

Paul, that guy who wrote half the books in the Bible, had something to say about all that grace stuff to the tune of Acts 20:24:

                But I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry                 that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the good news of God’s grace.

Something captivated that guy.  Chancellor Nordenberg has a lot to say about how much he’ll give to make Pitt great, but he’s never announced that he disregards his life’s value for the sake of his ministry.  Ben Roethlisberger has never said that about Steelers football.  Paula Dean has nothing of the sort to say about the Food Network.  So what is it that grabbed Paul?  What exactly is the good news of God’s grace?

Grace is one of those words that 2,000 years of Christian culture has made trite.  Grace, Jesus, Salvation—heard that one a thousand times, learned it by heart, know it, check, what’s for lunch?  To a modernity vaccinated against the gospel, grace is how your Grandmother interprets everything, grace is a word that bounces off the walls of our churches like tennis balls, and Grace was the 7^th most popular name for baby girls in 2003.  But all of that doesn’t quite capture the drama of what grace is about, so let’s try it this way: let’s dim the theater, cue a spot light, raise the curtain, and tell this story as a play, in three acts.

            Act I.  Meet the characters.  You’re important to this story, or, more precisely, that truest most authentic part of you that we call your soul is.  The main guy in this story is Jesus, but you can’t really know Him without first meeting Grace, so we’ll start with her. 

Who is Grace? One of those women so lovely that her presence captivates a room, one of those individuals so mysterious that the experts who figured out Mona Lisa are baffled.

What is Grace like? Grace is warm, like having macaroni and cheese on a February afternoon— sometimes.  Sometimes, she’s more like the cold shock of being pushed into the deep end of a swimming pool when you’re least expecting it.  Sometimes she’s the gentle touch of a mom putting a band-aid on a little bleeding knee.  Sometimes she’s the harsh burn of hydrogen peroxide, killing toxins in a wound.

Where does Grace hang out?  Not where you’d expect.  Grace hangs out with tax collectors and sinners, frat boys and prostitutes.  Grace makes appearances with alcoholics and bullies.  Grace isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty.  Grace lurks in dark corners, waiting for someone to notice her.  She hides in dim alley ways, looking for action.  She dodges the blows of angry words and harsh judgments with the dexterity of a secret agent.  She sidesteps gossip, violence, and drunkenness.  Sexual impurity can’t defile her.  Pride can’t drive her away.  She watches it all, and she waits.  Sin hates her; Sin tries to subdue her.  Sin plays tricks.  Sin blinds us so we can’t see her.  Sin screams loudly so we can’t hear her.  Sin wants our hearts, wants to consume them, wants to slither in to little corners where we don’t notice or don’t care that he’s there.  Sin’s a smooth talker, and he makes everything look easy, quick, comfortable.  We let him in the door, and the next thing we know he’s moved in, and he’s playing video games on our bed, and we can’t kick him out because he’s kicking us where it hurts most.

We can’t kick him out, but someone else can.  Grace doesn’t play tricks, and she doesn’t blind us, and she doesn’t shout.  She doesn’t burst through the door, but she does knock.   Sin pretends no one’s there.  Grace keeps knocking.  Sin screams.  Grace usually whispers.  They both have things to say to you.

Sin says, “This is as good as it gets.  Grasp for what you can, and despair.”

Grace says, “You were made for more than this.”

Sin says, “You’re worthless; you’re not good enough.”

Grace says, “You have value.  Someone has chosen you.”

Sin says, “You can’t do this.”

Grace says, “You can’t do this—but Someone else has done it for you.”

Blow after blow, Sin versus Grace fighting desperately over you, for your soul.  You wield the power; only you can call checkmate in this battle to the death—or the life. 

If you side with Grace, then she’ll take your hand.  She’ll bring you to Someone, and show you His face and tell you His name.  He is Jesus.  He sees you.  He knows you.  Completely.  Whether you have reached Him crawling in agony or running in eagerness, He loves you.  Completely.  Whether your relationship with Sin was a petty flirtation or a wild love affair, He forgives you.  Completely.  You are broken, so He has allowed Himself to be broken with you.  You are bleeding, so He has allowed Himself to bleed with you.  You cannot defeat Sin, so He has conquered it for you.  He needs one thing from you: your allegiance.  Your love.  Your yes.

Grace is the sweetness of a surrendered soul.  Because once it’s out of your grasp, there’s Someone who can give your soul exactly what it needs when it needs it.  Exactly what it needs—and more.

Enter Act II.  The plot thickens.  There is more here than meets the eye.  Because when you have known Grace, then you can truly know Jesus.  Because your poor, battered soul needs Jesus, forgiveness, healing, and salvation—yes, absolutely, if you haven’t asked Him for that, do it right now.

But when the televangelist’s 40 minutes are up, there’s more to the story, and more to be had.  There’s more that you’re looking for.  Because that incomprehensibly, inexpressibly sweet encounter of your soul with Jesus should leave you wanting more.  Here’s the thing about Jesus: He’s not a limited time offer, and He’s not on sale for three easy installments of $19.99. Grace is out to make sure that you realize that when a paleontologist finds a bone, he’s still got a whole dinosaur to uncover.

Who is Grace? Grace is a red rubber stamp that says “eternity” on your soul.  Dear finite creature, you don’t really know what that means. You only know that you woke up at 9:03 a.m. and you’ll get to bed around 12:38 a.m. and that there’s an urgent, finite tick, tick, tick of 15 hours and 35 minutes in between.  Something you should know about Eternity: her Siamese twin is Infinity, and they always were, always are, and always will be together.

Eternity and Infinity—we’re hungry for them, and that’s why we hang up pictures of sunsets and oceans.  But we don’t really understand them, and sunsets and oceans don’t quite cut it, so we settle for the numb rush of the tick, tick, tick between appointments, tick, tick, tick between class and work, tick, tick, tick between our bits of fun and relaxation on the weekends.  We settle for the numb rush, and we call that life.
That’s where Grace comes in again.  Grace never settles.  Grace is voracious, ravenous, insatiable.  If you’re only mildly acquainted with her, you might not realize this about her, and you might think she’s warm and polite.  And she is.  Warm and polite Grace will often introduce you to Jesus, but she’s not gonna propose that you all sit around and drink tea and eat scones for the rest of forever, ‘cause that’s not her style.  Or His.  If your Jesus sounds a lot like Mr. Rogers, then you’ve got the wrong guy.  If your Grace looks like a fairy godmother, you’re reading the wrong story.

Jesus does not wear cardigans, and Grace does not wear pink tutus.  If you tell Grace that life sounds like the numb rush of tick, tick, tick, she’ll laugh in your face.  If you start spending more time with Grace, you’ll realize that she pushes her friends into the depths, and shoves her intimate companions into the abyss.  And waiting at the bottom: Jesus, the Real Jesus, The Infinite and Eternal Jesus.  Life beyond tick, tick, tick.  Life on His terms, not yours.  Life says, “Leave everything.”  Life says, “Come follow Me.”  Over and over.  Because you don’t just meet Him once and know Him.  You meet Him, and you learn to know Him eternally, and infinitely, more and more, deeper and deeper.

Where does Grace hang out?  Grace is right next to the man with the crumpled, withered arm when Jesus says, “Stretch out your hand”—and the man does it.  Grace is behind the impoverished widow who drops her very last two coins—clink, clink—into the temple treasury.  Because Grace is behind her, the widow knows she’s not giving anything up, she’s just trading it in—the stuff of earth, for the stuff of eternity, the meager inheritance of this world, for the bountiful inheritance of the world to come.  We can’t see that world with our normal eyes—we need Grace to see it for us, and to whisper what she sees into the depths of our hearts.

Act III.  Typically, the end.  But this is an atypical play.  The ending of this play is not quite a tragedy.  Sure, someone dies: your Old Self, the Self You Were Never Meant to Be, but that’s not the important part.  The ending of this play is not quite a comedy.  If the pieces of this story suddenly fit together hilariously and blissfully, that’s largely incidental. The ending of this play is a surprise, because it’s not over yet.  The ending of this play is also not a surprise, because we have some idea of where it’s headed, somewhere in the four-way intersection of eternity, infinity, resurrection, and absolute joy.  Meanwhile God’s writing this play, not Shakespeare.  This ending is a beginning, so there’s no neat resolutions—only a challenge—and a question.

God issues his challenge through the mouthpiece of Grace. (Who is Grace?  Grace is a stick of dynamite—don’t mess around with her if you’re afraid of explosions.)

Shakespeare didn’t ask Hamlet whether or not he wanted to die, but God sends Grace to ask us whether or not we want to live.  Grace interferes all over the place.  Grace was there, for example, in that moment when God hit the pause button on the history of salvation and waited for a young virgin’s invitation, “Let it be done to me according to thy will.”  Grace hit play.

Here is the challenge Grace utters:  Go further; go deeper.  Meet Jesus; meet the face of salvation.  But then, let’s get to work.  Let go of the tick, tick, tick you call life.  Stop walking around with your arm hopelessly dead and mangled; stretch it out and let Jesus heal it.  Let go of the two copper coins you cling to as your treasure.  Drop them, and stretch out your hand.  Reach for something more, for Someone more.

Here is the question Grace asks:  Will you do it?

Why I do What I do

First week of school!  Associations: bouquets of newly sharpened pencils, binders snapping closed around freshly printed syllabi, planners full of neatly written resolutions.

Alas, no new pencils for me.  However, I get something better.

I get a list full of names (read: possibilities that could dramatically change the shape of my life over the next year).
I get to talk to voicemail after voicemail after voicemail.
I get to craft carefully worded text after carefully worded text, punctuated with smiley faces so that their recipients know I'm friendly and I mean it.
I get to indulge in intemperate amounts of coffee and ice cream as I meet perfect strangers in shops all over campus.
And I get to spend a lot of time on my knees, encountering the most beautiful Presence that animates me and fills me with all that I need for the work.

When I get tired, I beg for the grace to keep going.
When my mind whirls, I stop and sit at the feet of the One who calls me.

In spare moments, the craziness of what I'm doing hits me: I am trying to forge fairly intimate relationships whoever's willing on a list of 38 names (mostly incoming freshman).

Why? Yes, I want to recruit new members for UCO, but that is too base, too simplistic, and not the heart of it.  If this were the bulk of my motivation, I would dry up quickly.

This is the heart of my outreach:

• I love because He is great:  I have seen so much of the Lord's mighty work of salvation.  So much that is good, true, and beautiful.  As my heart becomes more and more converted, I burn with the desire to be a witness.  To sit in Starbucks, and--through my speech and conduct and my very being-- to hold up a mirror that points beyond myself, reflecting to glory of Someone greater.  That as a student leaves from an encounter with me, she would be struck with the thought, "Yes, there was Katie--but there was something else..." and that the something else, the Someone else, the grace, the beauty, and the infinite love would captivate her as it has captivated me.
• I love because this is a season of potential: Ask any freshman at the end of her first year.  There is a rather impressive chasm between highschool and college.  There is a potential for loss.  Here, Christian students, even zealous ones, are most likely to lose their faith.  There is a potential for great gain.  Here, in this unique season, Christ can enter students' lives in new and unexpected ways, to completely transform them into mature Christians, an army disposed to do His bidding.  In this chasm, I am eager to build a bridge wherever I can, for the urgency of what is at stake.
• I love because He is a relational God and a master artist: I pray to see each woman with His heart.  And, oh, what beautiful masterpieces they are! They are passionate--they long to bring good things to the world.  They love deeply--people, values, places, ideas.  They are lovely--unique in how they engage the world and how they piece together the mysteries of life. As I work with women, I see how the Lord pursues each one as she most needs it.  How He values her as an individual, as his own prize creation.  Women are complex and challenging, and sometimes it is exhausting to meet woman after woman and engage each one on her own terms. Sometimes, the work is frustrating.  But when I remember the Lord's heart, then I can see my endless stretches of meetings as a tour through the gallery of a master painter, and there I discover the deepest joys of my work.
  
  In this season of busyness, it is a joy and a privilege to be exhausted for this work.  As I'm driven to my limits, I'm able to see more clearly what motivates me.  And I learn how ill-equipped I am, how incapable I am of producing good on my own, how little my efforts can actually achieve.  And with that lesson, I learn more about the greatness of the God I serve, and how much He can achieve.  And I am driven to seek Him.
  
  
  
   Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
  Psalm 127:1