How fully can you surrender and not be afraid?

My teacher, Dato Pambaya, told me this week that a good Muslim ought to utter the sacred word for God, every time he begins to do anything, to sleep, or walk, or work, or even turn around. A good Muslim would fill his life with God. I fear there are few good Muslims.

But so would a real Christlike Christian speak to God every time he did anything - and I fear there are few good Christians.

What right then have I or any other person to come here and change the name of these people from Muslim to Christian, unless I lead them to a life fuller of God than they have now? Clearly, clearly, my job here is not to go to the town plaza and make proselytes, it is to live wrapped in God, trembling to his thoughts, burning with his passion. And, my loved one, that is the best gift you can give to your own town.

I look up at this page and it is not red hot as my soul is now. It is black ink. It ought to be written with the red ribbon. You will not see the tears that are falling on this typewriter, tears of a boundless joy broken loose.

The most wonderful discovery that has ever come to me is that I do not have to wait until some future time for the glorious hour. I need not sing, “Oh that will be glory for me” and wait for any grave. This hour can be heaven. Any hour for anybody can be as rich as God! For do you not see that God is trying experiments with human lives. That is why there are so many of them. He has one billion seven hundred million experiments going on around the world at this moment. And His question is, “How far will this man and that woman allow me to carry this hour?” This Sunday afternoon at three o'clock He was asking it of us all. I do not know what the rest of you said, but as for me, I asked, “God, how wonderful dost Thou wish this hour alone with Thee to be?”

“It can be as wonderful as any hour that any human being has ever lived. For I who pushed life up through the protozoa and the tiny grass, and the fish and the bird and the dog and the gorilla and the man, and who am reaching out toward divine sons, I have not become satisfied yet. I am not only willing to make this hour marvelous. I am in travail to set you akindle with the Christ-thing which has no name. How fully can you surrender and not be afraid?”

And I answered:

“Fill my mind with Thy mind to the last crevice. Catch me up in Thine arms and make this hour as terribly glorious as any human being ever lived, if Thou wilt.

“And God, I scarce see how one could live if his heart held more than mine has had from Thee this past two hours.”

Will they last? Ah, that is the question I must not ask. I shall just live this hour on until it is full, then step into the next hour. Neither tomorrow matters, nor yesterday. Every now is an eternity if it is full of God. - Modern Mystic by Frank Laubach, March 9, 1930

I am not yet at the same place as this “modern mystic,” with my soul as burning out as the outdoor sun and my soul filled up to the last crevice. And the only red in this Word document is the spellchecker protesting my made-up words.

However, I have caught glimpses of those Surprised by Joy golden moments.

Fellow MCC team members cannot quite understand why I would possibly prefer walking back and forth, up and down both sides of Two Sides Road, on my way to school, on my way to the office, on my way to the grocery store or home again, home again, jiggity-jig. It is pretty dang hot and dusty.

But I am in my full-bore Travel Act of Worship mode. And somehow, as I wander through new places and new peoples it reminds me of God’s great creativity, His great love, and His great longing for restoration. His Greatness. His How Great Thou Artness.

And I know with more than a theoretical knowing that this perspective does not have to come from far away. Actually, I had ridden myself into this awefullness even in Tucson, with my every morning bike ride up and down Broadway. Even though I was trying to be very careful to keep an eye out for potholes or cars making sudden righthand turns or pulling out into traffic from strip mall parking lots without looking, I still caught glimpses of His (more or less) one billion seven hundred million belovedness experiments chasing down sheep one by one so that they can each experience His gift of present joy.

And much like that moment on Saturday when I stood in front of the faded photo of Kurdish villagers, my too-brief connections with this heavenly Christ-thing that has no name comes from noticing the woman struggling to sleep among her parcels at the bus stop or the elderly man sorting through a recycle bin for aluminum cans. Laubach thinks that as a rule the poor have less callousness for Him to overcome than have the rich, that they are closer to the brink of glory.

And a young priest invited us all out for ice cream last night, his very favorite place. And we all marveled at how the counter clerk was not terrified to work under a very most massive chandelier.

Then we teacher types settled in for a long evening of lesson plans. We are an introverted bunch and can spend three or four hours together in a room silently, with just our thoughts and the clanking of the swamp cooler.

And pretty much our full day of assessing students’ prior knowledge was way overwhelming about the humungous task that lies before us. There are huge holes of understanding that we cannot even begin to wrap our brains around. And last night there was no internet, so our thinking was pretty limited to whatever resources were already saved onto our laptops, and at last I took my weary thoughts to bed pretty early and pretty tangled.

Only to slam dunk awake at two this morning with a fairly clear vision of where I needed to head this morning. Thus I have spent the last two and a half hours sifting through thirty years of PowerPoints, lesson plans, grading checklists and rubrics and sample student outcomes. And seating charts. Dozens of seating charts designed to wrangle classroom order out of herding cats.

And the point of that digression is that I had full-to-the-brim moments all night long as well, as I sorted through all of those names of kiddos who have tromped through my life and got stuck in my heart… Jacob, Rachel, José, Roman, Victor, Mya, Adriana. Wow. Liberty. Grace. Desert. Wildcat. ACSI. Doolen. Imago Dei. Presidio. Bonillas.

Who needs a passport to travel?

I need not sing, “Oh that will be glory for me.”

Thank You How-Great-Thou-Art God for each of Your experiments that You have allowed me to be a part of in my oh-so-rich life. I know that I prefaced many a school year by explaining to the bright-eyed rows of neatly name-tagged students that they were my little rats, and I was all about conducting experiments on them all year long to try and figure out what instructional tools and methods and activities worked in changing how they perceived the world around them.  I gave that opening bravado ever-so-many-times, and it a fresh realization this morning that I was taking part in His experiments, how to open their perception, their eyes and ears and thoughts, to Him and His great love.

And that is the best gift I can give to my own town, my own dusty Old Pueblo town.

Outside the sky is alight with golden sunset. To me that is God, working on the sky, as he has worked so wonderfully this afternoon within me. -Frank Laubach

Outside the sky is alight with golden sunrise. To me that is God, working on the sky, as He has worked so wonderfully this morning within me. -Christy Voelkel