If I Did Not Have the Hope of Heaven, I Could Not Go On One More Day

The skeptic in me says, “Hope of heaven? Yeah, you hope.”

Last Sunday our son Nate and his wife Jayne canceled dinner with us because he had a migraine. Or maybe the flu.

On Monday he went to the doctor and was given migraine meds.

On Tuesday he went to urgent care, who told him to go straight to the ER. They did a CT and sent him home.

On Wednesday morning he returned to the ER. The doctor casually inquired, “So, how long have you had this tumor?”

On Wednesday afternoon he was flown to UC SanFrancisco with a definitive diagnosis of a brain tumor. He couldn’t see anymore. His vitals were so wonky, he was struggling to even keep his eyes open.

On Thursday his family filled the Neuro ICU and prayed and hoped and wished and cried.

On Friday he had surgery. They pulled that nasty tumor right through his nose.

On Saturday and Sunday he was cared for and given an eye patch and reminded how to stand up and walk, and on Monday—this afternoon—he was home.

We’re all feeling a little sucker-punched. We’ve got your standard panic attacks, stress eating, and anger. Everything hurts.

Hope of heaven.

Yeah. Because we’ve been this road once, twice, three, four times before already. It’s a bad family joke when you’re wondering which Fletcher kid is next.

We’ve weathered a deadly virus and permanent brain damage, a car accident in which I ran over a child, a ruptured appendix and sepsis, and crippling mental illness. And those are just our children. In the past three years, we’ve had our own cancer scare and tumor removal and wept for two precious family members fighting their particular cancer battles.

It’s rough, folks. I’m sick of sitting in ICU waiting rooms. I give up.

Hope of heaven.

I woke up one night in a hotel room in San Francisco last week and heard the words of a John Mark McMillan song we sing sometimes at church:

I could lay my head in Sheol
I could make my bed at the bottom of the darkness deep
Oh but there is not a place I could escape you
Your heart won't stop coming after me

I felt as if my head was lain in Sheol. In hell. I felt hopeless. That last line, though, is the truth of the gospel and the hope that flickers a tiny, tiny atom of light: His heart won’t stop coming after me.

I decide to rest there. It’s all I have.

Some days my theology is rock-solid but most days it isn’t. Most days I’m a skeptic and I question the Bible and I push the cute Christian sayings off the cliff and I cover my ears and chant, “LA LA LA LA LA!” I stamp my foot and put my hands on my hips and square off with God. And still, his heart won’t stop coming after me. His heart. I can sit here in my skepticism and still understand that he loves me.

It’s all I have, folks. The hope of heaven.

If we’re being honest, it’s all any of us have. We just have to ask him to help us believe it. If we can’t, then what hope is there?

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What to Do When You Just Can't Read Your Bible Anymore

Recently in this space, I wrote a post titled, “What to Do When You Just Can’t Do Church Anymore”. It was written for those who earnestly love the gospel of Jesus Christ but who have been so turned off in one way or another by the church, they just couldn’t bring themselves to be there anymore.

Overwhelmingly, it was helpful. I’ve had plenty of feedback from readers who have been thankful for the grace and space to breathe and a chance to heal from whatever the hurts and issues have been, and who are finding a way forward.

Also, I’ve received some hate. Blogging is an open forum to write what you believe to be a helpful, gospel-saturated piece that can then be immediately torn apart by those who believe themselves to know better. I’ve grown a thick skin over the years, but I have also been around the block for nearly half a century, which is long enough to recognize when arrogance runs the ship. Usually, when there is an immediate dismissal of a grace-laced article written with an intent to point readers back to Jesus, the antagonist has not himself been broken enough yet. When our faith is tested, we tend to have gobs of grace to let others figure things out for themselves, too.

But let’s move on to the reason I’m writing this particular post, and I’ll begin with the same caveat that I wrote in the related post about church:

I am not the Holy Spirit.

Take everything I write with that big sentence ringing in your ears.

So while I am not your Holy Spirit, I can stand here as a compassionate reminder that you can seek truth, and being one of the people who point you back to Jesus is my heart’s deep desire and the reason I write in the first place. I’m no substitute for God.

That having been established, these are the truths I know about being in an emotional space where you just can’t open your Bible anymore:

1.

You don’t have to open your Bible anymore.

Don’t write me off yet. Read the rest before you start sending comments my way.

When we left our rigid, rules-loving church community, I went through a painful time of reassessing everything I knew to be Christianity. It wasn’t just about the 10 years we spent in a culture of behavior-based religion. I had to re-examine my Evangelical upbringing, too, because while I had parents who passionately loved the gospel and earnestly believed in God, there was a lot of gobbly-gook tied in with all of the things we did.

From Sunday School to youth group to summer camp to small groups, and yes, to Bible study, my brain was busy cataloging all of the ways a good Christian woman behaves. For me, the list included everything from spiritual disciplines (fasting, prayer, Bible reading) to Western Christian cultural norms (contemporary Christian music, involvement in para-church organizations, dressing a certain “acceptable” way).

It was a lot to bear. Several years into my adult post-college life of raising and homeschooling a million kids, I remember sitting in my van one day crying out to God, “You say your yoke is easy and your burden is light, but this feels like oppression!” And it was.

But God had not burdened me with the endless list of “required” behavior. I had. At the top of that insufferable list was Bible reading. Being “in the Word”. Usually in some sort of daily “quiet time”. For me, reading my Bible was not only a checklist item, but it was also a badge of religious achievement, something I could sling around to showcase my Christian prowess. If I could start a conversation with, “I was reading in the book of Galatians today. . .” I earned gold stars or jewels in my crown or something.

So when it came time to sift through the religious chaff of my own planting, I had to shut my amply-underlined Bible. I stopped reading altogether. Until I could come to a place where reading it was driven by God’s , I just couldn’t bring myself to go through the motions. I shut up about how much I’d read, too.

And then the time came. Three years (yes, years) later, I wanted to read my Bible again. All of the Scripture I’d memorized over the course of my lifetime had served me well in the interim, but now I knew it was time to jump back in because I had a desire placed in my heart. I wanted to open it up and read with other people and discuss it and chew on it and let it change me.

If my story shares similarities with your story, let me encourage you. Stay close to Jesus and watch how he draws you back to the things that are going to continue to mold you into the likeness of Christ. It’s okay to crumple up the to-do list and train your ear to listen for him, instead. In fact, it will be better.

2.

When it’s time, you might find that approaching the Bible in a new and different way is exactly how you need to approach the Bible.

So, yes, I stopped reading my Bible. But then I discovered something surprising: If I listened to someone else read the Bible, it didn’t feel as if I were just trying to play by the rules and gain some extra Brownie points.

It may seem convoluted, but hearing the Bible every day is better for me. It reverberates in my ears and makes me think deeply. I can’t say whether or not it will be better for you, too, but it’s worth looking into.

My favorite audio Bible app is Dwell. It will cost you some pennies, but it will be worth every single one. You can listen along to a plan or to whatever you choose. You can change the voice reading it, kind of like when you switch to a different voice announcing directions on your car’s GPS. You can change the speed (I’m a double-time girl) and choose whether or not you want background music and what exactly that will sound like.

Click the photo above or click here to see Dwell for yourself. No, this isn’t an affiliate plug. Pretty sure they don’t even know I’m here.

3.

When it’s time, you might find that approaching the Bible with a community of others is exactly how you need to approach the Bible.

It’s good to hear other people read the Bible around us. It’s encouraging to hang out with fellow skeptics, fellow wanderers, fellow believers, fellow struggling people. Sometimes we have the same questions and sometimes we just need to admit to each other that we don’t have this figured out. We are, after all, seeing all of scripture through a glass dimly.

1 Corinthians 13:12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Sometimes it’s just good to be reminded that we don’t know it all. Out of that humanity, we can embrace discovery on God’s timetable.

To that end, I want to recommend something else that has helped me get back to regular reading. A friend told me about a podcast she’d just begun in January and I jumped in, right as they were starting Genesis. You can jump in right now or any time you want; they’ll start back over again in Genesis in January.

What’s the podcast? The Bible Recap. It has changed my year, if only by the daily reminder that, “He’s where the joy is”.

Tara Leigh Cobble is the woman who does the recap each episode, and she gets the gospel. I mean, she really gets the whole “It’s all about Jesus” thing. So for someone who may be struggling to unshackle from the bondage of really bad religion, Tara’s insights will help you remove the chains, link by link by link.

This is a safe space, my friend. You are free to admit that you just can’t read your Bible anymore. When it’s time to pick up the nourishment and encouragement and find God there once again, he will make it known to you and by whatever creative means he chooses. As my trusty Bible Recap reminds me, “He’s where the joy is.” Truly.

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God's Not Disappointed With You, Either

I write for a ministry whose byline is, “God’s not mad at you.” I think about this a lot, but as a new grandparent, I have also been thinking about the truth that he’s not disappointed with us, either.

Disappointment seems to be the universal lament of the child and the grandchild. “I can never seem to please my parents.” “I’ve stopped visiting my grandparents because all they do is harp on me.” From educational choices to jobs to where we choose to live, with whom we spend our time, how we dress, where we worship, what we do with our free time . . . many of us feel that in the midst of it all, we’ve inevitably let someone else down.

Do you follow the Humans of NY Instagram feed? I love that guy. My eyes have been opened to fascinating and compelling stories of women and men all over the world because he’s taken the time to listen to people’s stories and tell them to the rest of us.

But there’s a prosaic thread that runs through many of their narratives: we all seem to think we’re letting someone down.

Just last month one beautiful “human of New York”, created in the image of God, told Instagram that she feels like she can never measure up. “My grades suffered, and my parents were so disappointed. They wanted me to go to university and get a real job. They were Haitian. They knew poverty. And they didn’t want the same thing to happen to their kids. Now I’m working in a hotel as a cleaning lady. I feel like I’m invisible. “

Sometimes, no matter what we do, how hard we try, what obstacles we face internally or externally, we end up disappointing someone. That’s my sorry story, too. I can’t be everything and sometimes anything everyone wants me to be. Mostly, I feel like a big fat disappointment.

It’s not the truth.

In times of self-doubt and redundant internal yarn-spinning, I have to remind myself of the truth. Here it is:

He made us.

[Genesis 1:27]

He knows our frame. He understands our humanity.

[Psalm 102:14]

He doesn’t expect us to be more than Jesus.

[From Genesis to Revelation and everywhere in between]

He gave us Jesus so that we could never disappoint him again.

[1 John 2:1-2]

He kisses us on the forehead in tenderness at the end of a long string of disappointments.

[1 John 3:1-2 does not tell us that he “kisses us on the forehead”, but I think that metaphor is a beautiful way to picture how kind and tender his love is for us, even when he knows from our birth that we will not live up to his expectations.]

God’s not mad at you. He’s not disappointed with you, either. And if I were Steve Brown I’d say, “You think about that.”

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