This horse is Icelandic. You can find them grazing out in the remote countryside. I did not take this photograph, but I saw them live and in living color on a hiking trip to Iceland a number of years ago. They’re beloved by Icelanders (Íslendingar), can withstand the high winds and brutal cold, and wade into glacial rivers.
Their uniqueness and mystery epitomize a gritty kind of beauty. I mean, just look at it! Its gaze says, “I know I look different. I know I’m beautiful. And you know you want to ride me out into the snowy wilderness.”
Scared of What God Might Ask
Previously in this newsletter, I wrote about spiritual minimalism, defining it as the idea that a Christian can reduce distractions in her life that impede her communion with God. I looked at the spiritual discipline of fasting as a representative pathway of spiritual minimalism.
Fasting addresses our appetites and cuts right to our reliance upon luxury, whether that be eating or consumerism, to satiate our hunger for whatever it is we think we need. Fasting exposes our flabby spirits—at least it has exposed mine!—and shows us that, indeed, we rely upon ourselves and our money more than we rely on the sustenance of God.
I wrote about this at length in an article published on Christianity Today, in which I confessed my moment of conviction: that I needed to fast as a way of life; that I needed to rely on God, not luxury; that I needed to cut the fat from my spiritual and physical life.
I entered this journey with a healthy bit of fear. I told my wife, “I’m scared for what God might ask of me—what he might ask me to give up.”
I am nearly three months into this new commitment, and it’s revealed my weak spiritual heart, while at the same time it has uncovered a newfound spiritual grit.
Let me explain.
A Rugged Paradox
There is a rugged simplicity attached to the Christian life. I’ve been thinking about this for some weeks now. It’s rugged because it’s paradoxical. It’s a way of life filled with apparent contradictions.
On the one hand, we find a beautiful invitation in the peace that passes understanding. And on the other hand, we find the risk-laden imperative to take up our cross and follow him. Peace and death.
We also find this paradox in the famous words of Mr. Beaver to the Pevensie children in C.S. Lewis’s classic tale The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The children don’t know who this Aslan character is. When Mr. Beaver finally tells them Aslan is a lion Susan asks if Aslan is safe. Mr. Beaver, incredulous, answers, of course he isn’t safe—he’s a lion! But he is good. “He’s the king I tell you.”
If we take Aslan as a picture of God, we see and trust that God is good. We experience this in his love for us, that when we were dead in our sins, he sent his one-of-a-kind son to die for us. Lewis bears this out in one of the most gripping scenes in fantasy literature when Aslan gives himself up for the traitor Edmund. The great lion meets The White Witch at the Stone Table to fulfill his obligation, is shaved and muzzled and bound and stabbed with a stone-like knife. God’s actions towards us embody a kind of love nearly incomprehensible here on earth—that of total surrender, even unto death.
But God, like the great lion, is also not safe. Another iconic Lewis scene from The Silver Chair puts Aslan across the stream from Jill, who is desperate for a drink.
“Are you not thirsty?" said the Lion.
"I am dying of thirst," said Jill.
"Then drink," said the Lion.
"May I — could I — would you mind going away while I do?" said Jill.
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
"Will you promise not to — do anything to me, if I do come?" said Jill.
"I make no promise," said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.
"Do you eat girls?" she said.
"I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
"I daren't come and drink," said Jill.
"Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion.
"Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then."
"There is no other stream," said the Lion.”
There is a wildness and untamedness to God that unsettles us, even threatens us. Why is this?
The Wildness and The Goodness
Because God is so different than us, that’s why.
He’s not a god we can pick up at Target on our way to the grocery store. We might describe the wildness of God as his holiness. God, in his holiness, is completely other, what theologians call sui generis or ganz anderes.
Following Christ reflects the poles of holiness and love, wildness and goodness.
It was God’s love for us that, through the Holy Spirit, drew us to him. That love we experienced ignited our hearts with a power we find hard to explain. Think about the way you felt early in your faith journey. Experiencing God’s love was monumental.
For me, His love swelled in my heart with untameable strength. So strong was it that it created a passion in me, a fervor, a confidence that knew that no mountain was too big, no river too wide, no valley too deep, that I would not continue on in my pursuit of this wild and beautiful God.
Following Christ feels like splashing in ocean waves; at once drowning in the delight of the crashing shoreline, while also feeling the terror of wading out into an unfathomable depth not knowing what lay beneath.
It was what the Pevensie children felt when Mr. Beaver first uttered the name, Aslan. They immediately grew in their bravery and courage. Their confidence swelled. They felt their wholeness perhaps for the first time.
Was this the way of it for you as well?
Child of the Wild and Beautiful
At times, in our pursuit, we experience uncommon peace. But at other times, we feel the weight of the cross Jesus told us to bear. It is the pain of life that challenges our faith. But it is unending love that enables us to continue when all seems lost.
Somewhere between the peace and the cross, the wildness and goodness, we find the grit of our faith.
The word “grit” reminds us of the armed forces remaining vigilant in battle or a sports team overcoming incredible odds and winning a championship. Angela Duckworth says grit is about passion and perseverance. It is this unwavering commitment to never giving up hope.
In the Christian life, grit grows in the beautiful hollow of love’s first embrace. It is the air surrounding our falling tears and the tremble in our legs as we try to keep walking the path before us. It is the unquenchable desire for heaven and the eerie stillness beside the grave of a loved one. It is that place where beauty and terror collide. And it is in every single one of our hearts.
But we live in a world seasoned by nonchalance and numbness; despair and cynicism. And these forces can glaze over our grit and make it seem like something that is too tough to maintain. To endure? To persevere? Why continue in pain, when you can just numb it?
But the world did not count on running into you. You, a child of the wild and beautiful King. And it did not think that you’d care to lift your voice, but you will and you do.
It did not count on a kingdom of cross-bearing peace givers, of wild and free beauty hunters, of pain-scarred rejoicers.
Spiritual grit is the precise aspect of your faith where passion meets pain and gives birth to joy. It is our spiritual grit that ignites our hearts to fight for what we love.
Grit in the Face of Fear
Today, your spiritual grit might feel weak, even nonexistent. But those feelings are the lies of hell. The globe faces two faceless enemies: a virus and fear. Armed with God, we have nothing to fear.
So, today, on this day of days. Remember your extraordinary constitution and the Rock from which you were hewn.
You are fierce.
You are wonderfully made.
You are God’s friend.
You are God’s treasure.
You are God’s pleasure.
You are famous to Him.
You are worth the fight, and so is your family, your friends, and your neighbor.
And nothing, not height nor depth, nor sword, nor fears of today or worries of tomorrow, not demons nor angels, not hell, nor powers from above or below the earth, nothing can separate you from God’s love.
And this time, this moment, this day is no different. It is this love that invigorates our spirits with a holy grit uncommon and otherworldly.
In your toil, fear, weeping, and isolation—all appropriate in such a time as this—remember that feeling when His pleasure rose inside of you and you felt the moment of your creation—that whisper of God in your heart saying, "For this I made you."
Run towards it. And give it everything you’ve got.
So let us pray, fast, look to the heavens and get to work on earth, to bring heaven down to a world in need of hope and glory.
In it with you, my friends.
Blessings,
Tim
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