I Have a Right to What? Ranting again

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the number of advertisements that declare that “It is your right to. . .fill in the blank with the appropriate product here.” ? I ask because I am having this visceral reaction to them, they just make me want to throw something through the television. For those of you who have never experienced an “Emily Rant” you might want to skip this post altogether, it’s not going to be pretty, but at the very least, brace yourself.

WHAT IN THE WORLD EVER MADE US THINK THAT WE HAVE A RIGHT TO ANYTHING?
I do not have a right to affordable phone service, white teeth, affordable healthcare, or luxurious pet grooming. I don’t. I just simply do not have those rights, because they are not rights. They are, and I hate to be the one to break it to you, privileges. Privileges that are earned or bestowed, but not rights.

Are these good things that can be made available in a prosperous society? Absolutely. Are these things I desire to have or would hope that each and every individual should experience? Unquestionably. Are these things that I am willing to work for and pray for both for myself and others? Yes, yes, yes, but I cannot find anywhere in any shape where these things are my right, or anyone else’s.

A right is something to which we are entitled. And way too many of us believe that we entitled to way too many things, including driving too fast, the best of everything, and sublime happiness. Like God himself spoke and said that simply because we are we shall have. Funny, I don’t find that in my Bible.

What I do find are some pretty amazing promises, gifts of grace and love offered by a Father who desires to give good gifts to his children, even the undeserving ones. And if I read my Bible correctly, we are all undeserving. There is nothing I can do to merit his consideration of me, and nothing I can do to earn his the beauty he has poured out among us. And I am privileged to experience the expressions of love he offers.

We have got to get past this idea that we have a right to anything. Any of us drawing a breath could have just as easily been born in Rwanda where clean drinking water is a precious commodity. We could be living a life that is punctuated by gunfire, and marked in blood. We could have died as children in place where infants succumb to dehydration and diseases that have long been eradicated within our borders. We did nothing to merit the safety and riches, yes, I did say riches of our lives. We were very blessed to be born in place were such things as spray on tans and cable TV are considered ordinary expenses – necessities even to some.

Why do I say we have to get past this idea? Simple, it will destroy you. The moment you cross the line from believing that something is a gift to it being something you deserve, you have prepared a fertile place for resentment and bitterness to flourish. You will get so caught up in lamenting all the things that you can’t have or possess that you will never look to the needs that lie outside of your hurting pride. And eventually, this attitude will contaminate everything you touch including your relationship with God.

And lest anyone think I am going on about things I don’t understand, allow me to clarify. I can say this with impunity for I have lived there, and I know the crippling effects this mindset can have on us. How we will come to blame God for failing us when he has surrounded us with blessing after blessing.

We are special because we have been loved. I am amazing because the King has sent out an invitation to one such I and seated me at his table. I am brilliant and beautiful because he has chosen to array me in finery when I came to him in rags. I love because he taught me how. I can be loved because he who inspires love lives within me. I care for myself because I have become his home, and he deserves the best I can offer. I can enjoy the bounty of this life because it flows from his hands.

I accept his gifts not as rights that he must provide for me, but as reminders of his extravagance to one who deserves nothing from him. I am humbled that one so great would notice me, and lifted up because he raises me to my feet so that I may speak to him as a friend and daughter. It is not a right but a privilege lavish and heart stopping in grandeur. Reminding me at once of who I was apart from him, and who I am in him.

Remembering How it Felt

A long time ago, in a land far far away, someone important to me made an insightful observation. He said that I never really thought about something until I wrote it down and I never really felt anything until I painted it out. I took it as a compliment, and I think that he meant it as such, but over the past few days I have been thinking about this part of me that needs to create. The part of me that finds its voice in the written word and painted image.

In truth it is a part of me that has only been expressed in random bits and pieces. Yes, I write this blog and I journal like it is my last life line to sanity, but it has been years since I have given myself the freedom to paint. There was a time in my life when I could pick up a brush and lose days in front of a canvas. I would stand before the clean white surface and answer its challenge with alternating fury and compassion. I would command the colors to bend and blend to my will. I would fight back the elements of chaos that tried to steal the clarity of the image and I would bring a whole new reality in existence with my finger tips.

I would later awaken, soiled brush in hand, to stare at the marvel I had birthed and wonder how I could have ever created such a thing. Sometimes in blissful amazement, at others in grim acceptance, and still at other times with horror.

But there came a season in my life when my painting became the object of scorn. The time I spent lost in this fabulous and terrifying place was resented by another person very important to me, so I stopped. I packed away all my brushes and tried to ignore the paintings that begged to painted. I visited occasionally, but that is all I allowed myself. A visit, a few hours, a carefully doled out period of time when I thought it was safe, when I knew I was in no danger of losing myself to the process. Eventually, I stopped even this. It was far too painful and never satisfying, merely a bleak reminder of what I had left behind.

As life continued, I had to worry about providing for my children. Survival depended on constant vigilance and every drop of energy had to be poured into making a living, going to school, or some pretense of housekeeping. Painting just demanded too much. So my brushes sat in the cabinet, safely out of sight, but never out of mind.

Today, I am wrestling with if it is time to open that door, like the wardrobe that leads to Narnia will I find a way home? Will I want to find a way home? How many years will pass here and there? Will you know me when I return?

Another friend of mine once asked me how I could write about art and its place in Christian theology if I wasn’t doing art. It’s a valid question. At the time, I had resigned myself to the idea that maybe I just had enough of the artistic bent to give me insight into the situation but was really meant to pursue it beyond that. I still have no desire to be an artistic success. The politics of the art world leave me apathetic, not even caring if I am commercial success, but I am learning to admit that I love the process of creating. I love the feel of the brushes in my hand and how they drag across the canvas. I am finding that my love this act is far less intellectual than I had allowed myself to believe.

It is visceral and elemental. A feeling that springs from somewhere so deep in my gut that I can not determine its source. More than a compulsion, and greater than an appetite, it is truly something that defines me as a person. It defines how I perceive this world and my place in it. It is the medium through which I define my reality and experience this life more fully.

And yet, it is the part of me that I fear the most. It is the part of me that I have yet to fully tame, and paces back and forth in my heart and mind like the lion behind steel bars. I worry when I think of releasing it, and I fear what it shall mean for me and my family. Not because I think there is anything “bad” in it, but rather it is probably the most powerful piece of who I am, lending it strength and infusing every other part of me it touches.

But it is the part of me that knows my Creator the best. It is that little bit of who I am knows the majesty and beauty of a God who decided to create a world of wonders with his voice. It when I am lost in this world of being so completely that it leaks out onto a page or canvas that I understand why he needed to speak the words that gave us life. And I am realizing that hiding from this part of me is just another way of hiding from him.

There is a piece of all of us that reflects our creator beautifully and perfectly. Where we know something about him so intimately that no one else may ever share in that revelation. It is the strongest and purest part of who we are, and it is powerful. Often intimidating the bravest of us, but what greater honor can we give him than offering it up to him?

Speaking Their Language

Okay so Christmas has past, but there is this thing that keeps running through my head. It is one of the absolute coolest parts of the Christmas story, apart from God being born as a baby. Nothing trumps that, but this is pretty amazing, too.

I think I like it because I love the Bible stories about the outsiders, the people who didn’t quite belong or fit, but were included anyway. The Bible is full of them. I guess I really don’t see it as that big of a deal when someone who knows the rules does the right thing, but when someone who has never been taught is just so overcome by the splendor and holiness of our God that they instinctively do the right thing, it just blows me away. It reminds me of how far God is willing to go to reach all who have a heart to respond.

Maybe this is why my favorite people on the scene, (although technically, they arrived way past fashionably late, make that two to three years late), were the Magi. The Bible doesn’t have a whole lot to tell us about who they were, what their background and history was, and so we have built up a lot of myths and legends about their journey. We have given them names, that may or may not have been theirs, we have given them different and distinct ethnicities so they can serve as representatives for the rest of the world. (Read that Gentiles).

But as usual, the truth is so much stranger than fiction. Magi was the official title of the priests of a Babylonian god named Mithras. In their official capacity they observed the stars, foretelling the future, searching for omens, and looking for signs. Stars were the writings of the gods, revealing to man all that the gods desired for him to know, and it was a language they knew well.

Here’s the first thing that amazes me, God got their attention and he did it using their language, their area of expertise. He did not require that they learn some new culture or code of conduct before he would deign to speak to them. It’s as if he said, “Okay, you can read the stars. Allow me to write it in the medium you know.”

It makes me wonder how many times we Christians like to complicate the message for those foreign to our ways. Why does it seem so hard for us to follow God’s example and speak the language of the people we are trying to communicate with? It’s time that we recognize that God desires to reach all humanity, not just the ones who talk, look, and act like us. We need to take the time to learn how to speak their language and quit expecting them to learn ours.

The second thing that amazes me is that God accepted their gifts, even honoring them by mentioning them by name in his Word. Now, there has been a lot written about the nature of these gifts, how they were used by kings and in anointing royal bodies, but the Bible never clarifies why these particular gifts were given and most of our Christian writings are just speculation. Maybe it is our attempt to Christianize these heathen priests.

I think it honors them far more to understand the gifts in light of the Magi’s culture. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh were gifts reserved for their god. It was the way they understood how to honor a deity, and just as God spoke their language to communicate with them, they now speak their language to communicate with him.

And it’s okay. It’s what they have to give to him, the highest honor they can bestow, and God says it’s enough.

Perhaps as Christians we need to value the language of foreign people a little more. Perhaps we need to be more sensitive when someone from outside our culture responds to God, and be less judgmental when it fails to meet what we deem to be correct. Maybe we need to stop placing our interpretations on their actions and let them speak for themselves. God was okay with the sincere gift of foreign men, and I can’t help but feel he has the same response to all who seek him with sincerity.

Perhaps it is time we took the value off the form and placed it on the intent of the heart, and let God decide whether it is a good and acceptable gift.