Involving fad fady.
I think I’ve committed a fady in the pen world. Out of crazed diabolical whim, I tested to see if the 0.38 Muji pen core (side note: I see why they’re uber popular now) would work in a 0.38 Signo DX chassis, and vice versa… result (*drumroll*): they do! A boon, because Signo DX refills are more than an entire American dollar cheaper than Moma Muji pen refills, apiece. So I won’t have to miss the feeling of sturdy matte plastic once these pens get drained dry by the parched maw of cardiology note-taking.
Do people care about pens? (*raises lonely hand* I do!)
This week was a little discouraging. First, our school is trying to teach us all of cardiology (physiology, pathology, pharmacology, histology, more) in three scant weeks. Upper-years are emailing us helpful (read: incredibly unrealistic) study guides that really only serve to highlight how little I am able to do in the hours I have at home after (mandatory!) class each day. It’s not that we aren’t given enough time to do so—it’s just that once I get home, unlike my classmates, I imagine, I have to finish tasks associated with moving out of the house into another, cleaning and furnishing the new house, coding for a research project in the summer, contacting students for tutoring, filling out grant applications. Don’t even get me started on shoveling. I can’t help but think, “Do my classmates have to do this? Does doing this put me at a disadvantage? Should I work even harder to catch up?”
When I spend time with the Lord, I feel like I’m playing whack-a-mole. I’ll be talking to God. Then, “Hey, I haven’t texted x about her interview yet.” Whack. Lord, I’m back. “If I mix my sourdough starter now, then I can bake in—” whack. Lord, I turn my heart to You. Take the veil— “I wonder how many minutes left of Pathoma I have.” Whack. Augh, I can’t do this, Lord! Why can’t I clear my mind? “There’s no food in the fridge. But Mom has the car—” whack.
Or the even more insidious thoughts. “If I spend 30 minutes each of morning revival, reading the Bible, reading the ministry, and spending afternoon prayer time with the Lord, what are my classmates doing with that time? That’s two whole hours to work. Man, if I had a car, I wouldn’t be spending an hour each day walking, either. What if I pool my walking time to be my afternoon and morning time, and then I’m only about an hour and a half behind everyone else? What about tutoring? I gain time by x, y, and z…” The calculations go on forever.
In the end, I just have to praise God. He does all things well, and my circumstances are included. Whether the playing field is even or not is not my problem. If I’m on a mountain or in a pit, the most important thing is God’s presence. It’s not anything in me that wants to praise God, of course, so it takes a wrenching effort to choose to agree with the Lord in my spirit. He who is joined to the Lord is, indeed, one spirit (1 Cor 6:17)!
Today at the weekly campus meeting, we were reading 1 Corinthians chapter 6. I was very much touched by verse 11. Verses 9–10 are very clear about the standards of the kingdom of God. They are the standards of God Himself, and thus are absolute, and unyielding. But Paul says a strange thing to the fledgling church in Corinth: “These things were some of you.” It is tempting to boast in one’s new, transformed, sinless life after receiving the blood of Jesus. But where did we come from? In light of that history, how can we judge anyone else? Was it of our own power that we were washed? Was it for our merit that we were sanctified or justified? If another stumbles, falls, does that make that one weaker than us?
In the context of the chapter, this reminder of the universal sinful nature in all people is meant to help the saints with their offenses with one another. Some people in the church were suing each other, probably over legitimate and large offenses. If Jesus taught us to forgive, how do we do so? Paul asks, “Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?”
It’s easy as a bystander to say, “Oh, yeah. No problem, I’d totally forgive my brother. After all, I’ve been forgiven all by Jesus.” But in the ardency of the fight, how can anyone give such a cool, detached judgment? It must not have mattered much to that person in the first place. No, the origin of this forbearance can’t be from us. In our flesh, nothing good dwells (Rom 7). Even if we wanted to forgive that person, and even if we fooled ourselves into thinking that all was forgiven, the One who searches the hearts would know that deep down, something remains clenched.
No, we need to reach deeper down than our will. We need to retreat to the deepest part of our being, our human spirit, which is mingled with the Spirit of God. Why? Because the Lord Spirit (2 Cor 3:16–18) is living in us, the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil 1:19), who is forbearance itself. Philippians 2 describes how He, existing in the form of God, did not consider being equal with God a treasure to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming in the likeness of men… and humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, and that the death of a cross. The highest Being in the universe allowed Himself to be beaten, spit upon, blasphemed, and ultimately killed like an animal. And now He lives in our spirit. In fact, the very same chapter in which Paul urges us to be defrauded has a verse later on that tells us, “he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit (1 Cor 6:17).” We have to believe that this fact. We have to believe that its veracity is deeper and truer than how we feel, than our bitterness, than our “rights”, than our stubbornness. We don’t have to believe that we can forgive that person. But we must believe two things:
- Jesus Christ lives in us (2 Cor 13:5).
- We are one spirit with Him (1 Cor 6:17).
Then whatever He is, we are. Whatever He has done (including forgive that person), we have done. We just need to stay with Him.
One of the students raised a good point. He said, “I believe that, but I don’t think that’s practical. I don’t think that will really happen.” I didn’t know how to answer him. Inwardly, I had some of the same thoughts, I just didn’t voice them. But I think the journey to experiencing any truth of the Bible needs to start with knowing the facts. Then comes the second, hardest step: to believe them. Then the third step is experience.
Mark 9:24 Immediately, crying out, the father of the child said, I believe; help my unbelief!
I think our Christian lives are too precious to give up on something before we’ve tried.
