One
thing that children do quite often and even before they can speak is
to take something and lift it up to show you; a simple yet loaded
with meaning. It could mean something as simple as “look.” Or,
“Let’s play I give it to you, then you give it back or I'll
scream.” Lifting things up to adults is one way infants and
toddlers discover that their world is relational. They can interact
with it and have some influence in it. It can also be a way that
little ones invite someone to be their friend. A toddler will do
this by picking up a toy and walking it across the room to give it to
you and then go back for another. It may just be that they are
showing off their ability to walk, but it sure makes us big people
feel important that they want us for a friend.
As
William has gotten older I have learned that for him lifting an
object up to me is a key part of our interaction that is crucial to
how he feels about himself and his world. If he lift’s up a
picture that he has just drawn and proudly says, “Look Daddy”, it
means he wants praise. If I applaud him for it, it builds him up.
If I dismiss it or criticize it, I am in some profound way dismissing
and criticizing him. If he lifts up something to me as a gift, it
doesn’t just mean “I love you and was thinking of you.” He
also wants me in particular to love give him some love back with
praise and the assurance that I love him too. If something of his is
broken, he will lift it up to me believing that I am the only person
on earth who can fix it. I have to at least try because toys are
special extensions of the self; hence, IPhones, Blackberries, and
remote controls. Sometimes he will lift up a book or Play-Doh
wanting me to do that with him as a way of soliciting my
companionship. Children lift up things to us not simply because of
the height disadvantage. It is their way of creating and maintaining
relationship in their world and we are seriously remiss if we don’t
get it that the thing they are lifting up to us is the most important
thing in the world to them at that moment and it profoundly
represents for them their very self.
Then
there’s us, us adults. We don’t lift things up too often unless
it’s to someone we really trust. We think we have outgrown that
behaviour. If we sense an adult is lifting something up to us we
will be suspicious because we believe that for an adult to attach
their self to an object they are giving to another as inappropriate,
manipulative, infantile, narcissistic, or weak. We don’t try to
make friends at work by putting a stapler in their lap and then
return a moment later with a pad of sticky notes and then our pencil
sharpener. We don’t lift up to the boss the really neat bar chart
of useless statistics that we think is really cool but we weren’t
asked to do and say, “Look at this really cool bar chart I just
made, Boss. The black is profit and the red is productivity before
and after we went with one-ply paper in the restrooms. They’re both
down. Think there might be a connection." All the while
thinking, "Like me. Like me. Like me.” Things like that
don’t work. Instead, we are told not to attempt making friends
with the boss and don’t waste time on things we weren’t asked to
do. Moreover, let us not be found believing that a stapler and a bar
chart truly are representative of our very self. That’s nuts.
Right?
Yes
it is highly weird to attach our self's to staplers and bar charts.
But nevertheless we do attach our self's to things and lift them up
in a meaning loaded gesture. How does it make us feel when our
employer throws that project proposal back in our faces saying it’s
not good enough and then goes with another? What’s it like when
one of our children gets in trouble at school and it is for something
that goes beyond just being a kid? Me, I like to cook. I know what
it’s like to cook the best pork and beans anybody’s ever going to
eat and put it out there for people to pig on only to have my
Southern delicacy misunderstood and passed over. It’s not easy to
watch people pick through your beans with a turned up lip. Frankly
speaking, those beans are my soul. Then, with me being a minister
every week I attach my self to a sermon and lift it up to others only
to be met with mostly blank stares. Those ministers in those style o
churches where the congregation vocally respond throughout the sermon
really have it made as far as their egos are concerned.
But
anyway, just like infants and small children we attach our self's to
the things in life that we consider important for whatever reason.
We lift them up to other people in the same relational,
self-establishing way that children do with toys and…well...it’s
a dog-eat-dog world and we have to either learn to eat dog and/or
make sure our coping armour is impenetrable. Friends, this is right
at the very essence of the relational nightmare that sin is. Our
being as human beings is relational at its most basic level. We are
not solitary, self-determining, autonomous, rational animals. Human
being is being-in-relationship. This being-in-relationship is the
very place in and among us that bears the image of the Trinity yet
due to our sin it is a wantonly treacherous place for us to be.
Humanity has a beautiful relational way of being innate to us because
we are created in the image of the loving communion of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit and yet we mar it so badly.
We
have a soul problem. We attach our souls, our very self's, to things
and we get hurt and we hurt others in the relational exchange of
lifting things up to one another. Instead of our
being-in-relationship being in the image of the loving communion of
the Triune God of grace reflecting his glory in his creation,
humanity looks and behaves like a virus. Yet, there is a way to live
in this world that is in line with our created relational nature of
being in the image of the Trinity and there is a beauty at the heart
of this way that I hope you will seek and find. David writes of this
way in Psalm 25:1. “To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul. O my God, in
you I trust; let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult
over me. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame; they
shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. Make me to know your
ways, O LORD; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach
me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day
long. Remember your mercy, O LORD, and your steadfast love, for they
have been from of old.”
As
human beings we will lift up our souls. The human soul is the
entirety of who we are before God our maker – body, mind, heart,
spirit. Just like infants and small children we invest our soul in
and attach our soul to things and people that we hope will bring
friendship and fulfillment and it is in those things and people that
we put our trust. Thus, they become for us idols. Lifting the soul
up comes natural to us, but because of sin it inadvertently winds up
being that we love and trust the wrong things in the way we should
love and trust the right things which we in turn love and trust
wrongly because we love and trust the wrong things rightly. The cure
for sin can be experienced by lifting up our souls into the loving
communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Paul writes in Romans
5:1,2: “…we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through him we have also obtained access in this realm of faith into
this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of
God.” He also writes in Ephesians 2:18: “For through him we have
access in one Spirit to the Father.” Jesus has opened the way for
us in the Holy Spirit to stand with him before our Father in heaven
partaking of their love for one another in the Holy Spirit just as
Peter writes in 2 Peter 1:4 that we are “partakers of the divine
nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world
because of sinful desire.” David said “O God, I put my trust in
you”. Lifting our souls up to God is putting our trust into the
Trinity and more. It is letting our self be in the loving communion
that the Trinity is and open to God’s healing work upon our twisted
desires.
So,
how do we lift our souls to God? First, I recommend three books to
you: The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, the
anonymous work called The Cloud of Unknowing, and another anonymous
work called The Way of the Pilgrim. All these books are trusted
works for guidance in spiritual practice. They are all also
available online for free. Second, and this is what I do, think of
being an Old Testament priest lifting up a sacrifice to God before
burning it on the altar. Now, imagine lifting up your being, your
self, as if it were your heart from your chest and holding it there
before God. Be aware of the emotions you are feeling. Name them and
let them go momentarily forgetting them. Do the same with thoughts
that are preoccupying you. Start repeating over and over, “To you,
O Lord, I lift up my soul.” Let stillness and trust be your
companions. Sooner or later and it may take days or weeks you will
begin to feel love for the Trinity or loved by the Father as his
child as heloves the Son in the Holy Spirit. That’s where you want
to be. Sooner or later and it may take days or weeks a new world
will open up to you. You will need a couple of Christian friends to
share things with. Do this ten minutes a day to start. You will
find ten minutes goes quickly. Then read Scripture and say your
prayers and go about your day trying to pray without ceasing as I
have been telling you in previous sermons.
To
close, here’s a secret teaching for you. The Hebrew verb for lift
up, nasa, is also the word for “to bear away” or “to carry
away” and one of the Hebrew words we translate as “to forgive”.
Verse 18 of Psalm 25 says, “Consider my affliction and my trouble,
and forgive all my sins.” "Consider my affliction and my
trouble, and bear away all my sins." As we lift up our souls to
the Trinity, Jesus takes up our brokenness, bears it upon and in his
very self, and carries it away. That is what forgiveness is. Think
NASA and the space shuttle. Jesus carried/carries away our
brokenness like the shuttle taking something into space to send it
away forever. The Trinity has given us the means through Christ in
the Spirit to lift up our broken self to him and say, “Father, fix
me" and he does. He does. Amen.
