Lightdancers Twirling In Heavenly Beams

It has certainly been an interesting two weeks since last we spoke. The big highlight happened this past weekend when Lisanne McMurray of Lightdancers.org, a ministry based out of Kansas dedicated to ministering to the exotic dancer and those connected with the adult entertainment industry, stopped in for the weekend on a sabbatical she is taking to visit half a dozen or so ministries dotting the countryside. I first became acquainted with Lightdancers in 2001 while surfing the Net between classes at the community college I was then attending, around the same period of time that Mr. Renaissance was launched. (In fact, Lightdancers was one of the first sites listed in my Links and Resources page.) At the time, because of my own history of chemical addiction and its obvious ties with the whole subculture of the streets, I expected that Mr. Renaissance would specialize in those dealing with various addictions. I was commenting to Lisanne that I had no idea I would end up in the role of shepherd to the flock instead of offering dedicated resources for the addict or answering the skeptic. She in turn was sharing with me how God has redirected her own ministry over the course of time and the ministries of those with whom we partner on the Internet, many of whom she will visit in person before her journey comes to an end. I was the very first stop along the way and she left Sunday afternoon for Ohio to visit the folks behind VictimsOfPornography.org.

Lisanne survived my cooking (you can read of my nonexistent culinary skills in Finding God in Everyday Life) and was delighted to see in full living color the river and railroad tracks where many of the events recounted in my personal testimony transpired. I learned an interesting bit of trivia in regard to historic Route 66, the first major interstate highway to cross the United States, affectionately dubbed the “Mother Road” and seen in biker circles as a longstanding symbol of freedom and autonomy. Lisanne was hoping to stay in a hotel or motel close to the route and to be honest, I did not even realize that it had ever passed through Springfield, Missouri. What I learned in my research was that it not only passed through Springfield, but was born here and named here. Not only that, but I am so close to the route that I could take a slingshot, and, while sitting here at this very moment next to the back balcony window typing up today’s newsletter, I could easily bounce stones off its surface if I wished for a diversion. I walk down it by merely going around the block where I live on my typical excursions to get out and stretch my legs. Additionally, I almost always walk by a Steak N’ Shake restaurant on my way around the block, and I learned it was one of the few original buildings along the route still standing (see cruisin66.com for photo). So Lisanne was able to get a motel within walking distance, situating her both along her beloved Route 66 as well as making it extremely convenient to hang out and enjoy a weekend of exchanging stories of the ways in which God has worked in our lives. When she left, she gave me a paperback copy of Dancing to a Different Tune, her personal testimony, as well as a signed paperback copy of Dancing In His Light, a daily devotional designed with the exotic dancer in mind. (I understand that at least one of these books will soon be made available through Amazon.com, though for the time being, both can be retrieved and printed from Lightdancers.org as PDF files.) In turn, I sent her on her way with several printed articles, a booklet, two CDs, several other odds and ends, and a few more pieces in the puzzle to some questions she had.

Our visit has put things in a slightly different perspective, reminding me anew just how far I have come. My life now revolves around an academic world, and the world of bikers and dancers and drug dealers has all but faded from my consciousness, though it too is part of the fabric from which I am woven. Beyond this, Lisanne’s adventurous spirit was refreshing; anyone who packs up and takes off across the countryside to meet in person all the wonderful people they have encountered on the Net is an adventurer, whether they see themselves as such or not. As I told her when she left, God will surely bless her, for my perspective is but one of the many she will encounter before her journey is finished and I look forward to reading the sorts of things that will begin to emerge from her pen as a direct result. Her journey speaks to our lives and the realization that if we are to live the Christian life to its fullest, we too need to be adventurous and not settle for a dull complacency in which we so soon stagnate and die.

While overlooking the river where much of my testimony took place, we discussed the simple realization that what we do when we head up a ministry on the Internet is make our writing and thoughts available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three-hundred sixty-five days a year for God to use as He sees fit. One unique thing about this factor is that while we may be sleeping, someone may feel the stirring of the Holy Spirit thanks to our words; while we are pushing the shopping cart down the aisle, someone may be experiencing a breakthrough because of something we’ve written; while we may be shaking our fist in the face of God, arguing with our brothers and sisters in Christ, or otherwise falling into old carnal habits, God can, at that very moment, be using something that we have written to draw another one of His children closer to Him even as we find ourselves pulling away. We cannot control who will come to our sites; we have no clue what they have said to whom. But they are nonetheless made available and God very likely uses them in ways we will never know, at least during our lifetimes here on earth. So too, all of us as brothers and sisters in Christ are to make our lives available as living sacrifices for the Master. We cannot always control how others will perceive us and we don’t always know who is looking. But if our lives have been made available to the Master, He will use us in ways we have never imagined. He does not require that we first be perfect human beings; He merely requires that we be willing.

A second point that emerged during our conversation was one brought out in Love: A Cup of Cold Water, another chapter in my personal testimony. There, I tell the story of Russ, a longhaired guitar player who had become a Christian after a life of drugs. While I never doubted his sincerity, he still had a few rough edges and his light was perhaps not the brightest that has ever shone for Christ. Yet God used him when a brighter flame would have sent me scampering for cover, a hedonistic skeptic who wouldn’t be caught dead in church. Russ seemed enough like me (though with an obvious difference) that I could relate to him and he became my unknowing mentor long after our paths had parted. After my conversion, the question “What would Russ do?” formed a rough guide for my unsteady gait. Frankly, I had little idea how a Christian was supposed to act. Yet what little light we do have always stands out from the darkness; Lisanne spoke of a man whose life was very dark, and yet in spite of all the darkness, it was the remaining light in his life that stuck with her all this time later. And is this not true? Someone may dislike one of our friends and while we can understand why she feels as she does, we also realize that she does not see our friend as we do. We see our friend’s good qualities and these qualities make up for his bad ones. Never believe the lie that God cannot use you because you still have many flaws or because you have so little to offer. Your flame may genuinely be dimmer than that of others you know, but its very dimness can allow you to reach others a brighter light could not approach. God will weave all the details of your life together for His glory; who better, for example, to minister to the alcoholic than the man or woman of God who has so recently been delivered from its clutches? In a phrase, God is not limited in the ways in which He can work; He can and He will use you if you but make yourself available to Him. And should you sometimes fall into sin and fall badly, those looking on can tell the difference between a man who stumbles and is penitent and a man who cares nothing for the truth.

A conversation earlier in the week with another Christian friend revealed a parallel truth. When we succumb to temptation, and sometimes very badly, the fact that we feel so awful, the fact that we feel so torn even as we are in the midst of sin, suggests that our nature has already been changed and is still being changed. Once upon a day, we would not have experienced the awful anxiety we now feel: an anxiety we feel because our sinful actions go against the true nature that is increasingly being birthed within us. We may well have many losing battles with the flesh before we desire only the greater riches that can be found in Christ. But if we did not care at all, we would not feel that awful feeling a true child of God experiences when he is being naughty. Further, we often feel so ashamed after the fact (or even during) that we keep our distance from God when Abba Father is eager to rush out and embrace His prodigal child, kill the fatted calf, and place a ring upon our finger—while our uptight older brothers may unfortunately become jealous and seek to discourage us because they have forgotten how far they’ve come.

Perhaps, in our Christian lives, we still have strong sinful desires. Perhaps we find that we still want to sin. But why then do we feel a struggle? Why the shame when we succumb and why the battle when temptation is turning our knuckles white? Why don’t we just give in immediately? And during those times that we do cave in immediately, why the self-loathing during and afterward? Such things are evidence that a work has begun within us. No, we have not yet arrived. But we are a work in progress and while this truth does not give us license to sin, it does help us remember that we have a Heavenly Father who is familiar with our weakness and who is ready and willing to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Perhaps we have heard it so many times that it has become trite and trivialized, but we really are nothing without Him. It is His Spirit that empowers us, quickens us, draws us unto Himself; it is His nature that gives us the standard to which we aspire. How could we know holiness without being in the company of one who is holy? How could we learn to love without knowing the essence of utter magnanimity? How could we experience true peace without His presence living within our heart and guiding us into the paths of righteousness? How could we be cleansed if it were not for the purifying fire of the Holy Spirit blazing forth from the spotless purity of His nature? Our journey begins and ends with God, and He is with us every step of the way, the very road upon which we travel.

Another thing Lisanne reminded me of was the importance of laughter and fun. She is fond of saying that God has an incredible sense of humor and I am sure there is a great truth in those words I would do well to remember more often. I am the kind of person who can be disarmingly open while simultaneously being tremendously closed; that is to say, I can be brutally honest about my life even as my words flow from behind an invisible wall. There are many times I don’t really know quite how to open up to another person and truly let him inside. Yet my friends have always said that they like me best in those rare moments when I am truly uninhibited in every sense. And laughter can promote this very thing, drawing us together and freeing us to be ourselves. Our natural tendency, however, is not to draw together but rather to draw apart. At the heart of all our failed communications and the gulf that often exists between us and our fellow creatures is the fragmenting of the imago Dei we have spoken of recently:

Now there are different kinds of laughter. There is the laughter where someone else is the brunt of our cruel jokes and this kind of laughter draws no one together toward any good end. Such laughter is hollow, flowing out of that same insecurity that prompts us to put others down. The laughter of which I speak, however, is the pure laughter that comes unexpectedly. In the act of sharing a good laugh, barriers can be broken and unity can be achieved in ways few other unique elements of human nature can procure. I recently wrote a friend that “I should not doubt there will come a day in which we shall see our Lord laughing, not the hollow laughter of the cynic, but the full-bodied laugh of one who knows the fullness of life and in whom joy radiates with a lightness of heart found in the cherished child.” I do not think that it is any accident that medical studies have shown the therapeutic effects of laughter. According to the Humor Therapy section from Holistic-online.com (where further information and links on the subject are to be found):

We should not be surprised if laughter is as common as breathing in heaven; in fact, we should be very surprised if it weren’t. Yet it can be easy to get buried in the seriousness of life to such a degree that we fail to appreciate its lightness. Laughter can serve as a corrective when the seriousness of life begins to distort our thinking, negativity coloring our perspectives and often leaving us feeling overwhelmed and ridden with anxiety. As understandable as such modes of thought can be, we should recognize that negative thoughts are an anathema to the life of faith. It is far too easy to fall into a way of thinking in which we feel like the martyr and take a certain pride in our so-called perseverance. And it should be noted that it is sometimes true that we do go through very difficult times in which the only appropriate response is patient endurance. But sometimes the way we feel about life is a certain indication that we are not living the balanced life of faith and that negativity and a tendency to take ourselves too seriously has crept into our thinking.

There is good reason our Lord instructs us to bless and not curse, for when we speak blessing into the lives of others, including the lives of our enemies, we become transforming agents while freeing ourselves as well. The Christian, of all persons, should be the positive thinker, for it is he who best knows that all things work out together for the good of them that love the Lord and that he has nothing to fear. The more he practices blessing others and not cursing, the less hard he will be on himself and the more he will bring out the very best in others. So often, we manufacture the very thing in the other person we expect to find there. If I suspect that you will try to cheat me, my suspicion may easily become self-confirming, for you sense that I am ill at ease with you and you in turn tense up, confirming my suspicions. But if my demeanor radiates benevolence, blessing, and good will, I might not only find such to be true of you, but my perspective might help to heal us both. What is it we all long for, if not an environment in which we feel accepted and appreciated? And what better way to give that gift to another (and at the same time find it for ourselves) than by making it a point to bless and not curse, to seek to see the good in others, and to approach life with the proverbial “attitude of gratitude.” It is this very subject that prompts Victor M. Parachin to recount the following true story in 24 Ways to Reclaim Peace of Mind:

I have read this account before—perhaps in Letting God: Christian Meditations for Recovering Persons?—and it was brought to my attention just a few days ago as I was walking out the door to class. Three days out of five, I have a bioethics class first thing in the morning, then French 201, and then back to another philosophy class before lunch. The problem is that the philosophy department and the foreign language department are on polar ends of the campus and I am generally just a little late for each class even when I walk at top speed and don’t take any detours to the bathroom. This particular morning as I was walking to class, it looked like it might rain and the unhappy thought presented itself of trying to carry an umbrella while navigating with my books in hand, scurrying along the sidewalk fighting the mob of fellow students, many of whom, it is hoped, would be motivated to move a bit faster with rain pouring down on their heads. I thought to myself that I would surely manage, but I wasn’t looking forward to it in the least. As I considered these thoughts, the story of Whyte came to mind and I thought to myself, “You know, I have been very fortunate. It has not yet rained once this semester and by the time the snow and ice come, the academic year will be nearing an end.”

I was bemused to remember that my initial reaction of Whyte’s account was not particularly positive: he seemed like a hopeless and unrealistic optimist. But upon the morning’s reflection, I thought to myself, “You know, he is right. Thank God it is not always like this; it could easily have rained every day this summer.” Indeed, we have no guarantees that life will always turn out as we’d like, though things could almost always be worse. I am reminded of the April 21, 2001, entry from Our Daily Bread (a free devotional from Radio Bible Class), which reads in part:

Why do you suppose that is? Do you think it might have something to do with the fact such people have a much more realistic appraisal of life? If you stop and consider, for all of our technology, have we truly tamed nature? For all of our inventions and breakthroughs in medicine, have we been able to stay the hand of death indefinitely? Naked we came from our mothers’s wombs and naked we shall return again to the womb of the earth: it is simply a question of time. When we begin to realize our place in the universe, we have two choices: we can either choose to accept life on its own terms or wage a battle of futility. Ultimately, life will do one of two things to us: it will either embitter us or empower us; we will either become hardened or softened. The interesting thing is that we have full control of the decision. No, we cannot control life. But we can either live life on its own terms or we can scream and protest and shake feeble fists at the stars and their Maker beyond.

But let us also consider that there is a legitimate time and place in which we may well shake our fists at the stars. We need to be able to release the natural human emotions that build up in us at times, for none of us are immune to bitter disappointment, none of us are immune to anger, none of us always act like saints. I believe one key difference in approach is to gradually learn to trust God and not scorn Him. But even if we scorn Him, we show that we still believe, we show we still care. The man who shakes His fist at God is still a believer, even if in no salvific sense. He would not be shaking his fist if he did not care and if he did not believe. But eventually, if he is wise, his anger will cool and he will see that God is not his enemy, but rather his ally. That is how men become softened with age. They likely have shaken their fist at God a time or two. But they have seen their folly and repented; they have not denied that they’ve been hurt and hurt deeply. They have, over the course of years, learned to trust God throughout it all, and the deeper their understanding becomes the greater their love grows. We often do not love God because we do not understand God.

We have sometimes been told that we should not question, that we should simply believe. There is a modicum of truth in that statement, but we cannot deeply love what we do not deeply know. It is admittedly true that sometimes we desire to know things we have no business knowing, like the gossip or busybody who delights in slander and libel. But each one us has been instilled with a hunger to know more; we each have been given a sense of curiosity and we naturally seek answers of one sort or another. Has it ever occurred to you that the reason we are creatures of curiosity is because curiosity is a Divine attribute provided us by God? Like the best earthly fathers, I believe God delights in answering our questions and showing us new things, though sometimes the answer is no for our own good or wait because we are not yet ready. Each time a question presents itself to our minds, we seek to uncover the answer, and with each answer we seek, we grow in grace and understanding. Much of our relationship with God involves learning to know our new Lover better, learning to trust Him more, learning His ways and the things in which He delights. Happily He reveals His heart to us; happily He delights when we seek to know Him further.

Many times, I think that the answer is wait simply because we have not yet had enough background to fully understand the answer or perhaps even the question. Think about the things you have learned just in this past year. Could you have known some of these things the year before without going through some of the experiences that you’ve been through? Weren’t some of the things you learned required before you could in turn learn other things? A certain level of understanding is always required in order to uncover a deeper understanding, and what is understanding if not integrated knowledge, what is knowledge if not that which is known? We should not fear asking questions. If God were to answer each of our questions as they presented themselves to our minds, an eternity later He would not have even begun to divulge all there is to know about Himself and the universe He has created. So then, perhaps we should not question as belligerent children who have been told no but continue to pester their parents, but we must not assume that this means we are not to question at all. There is no real virtue in blind faith unless we know enough of the God we are trusting to know He is good. (Where is the virtue in trusting a plainly bad God, which would essentially effect an alliance with evil?) And when blind faith becomes virtuous, it always effects the end of deepening our trust and our understanding. But trust and understanding are not deepened without a corresponding increase in knowledge. Further, we should not characterize knowledge as merely that which is accomplished by logic and analysis. There are many ways to know and there is nothing wrong with knowing unless our knowledge puffs us up and causes us to sin. No, there is a reason we are creatures of curiosity and it has much to do with the imago Dei we bear within.

Archive note: See also the discussion forum thread regarding this newsletter.

Still, with these considerations in mind, we must also admit that we will never fully know, nor do I think we ever will in the course of eternity, because to know God in the fullest, most complete sense would be to encompass infinity in our minds, something I do not believe finite creatures could ever fully accomplish. Something like pouring water into a glass, it can only hold so much before the liquid begins to run down its sides. Yet even in the course of eternity if our minds were to miraculously stretch and stretch and stretch yet more to be able to accommodate all the new learning, I still do not think we would ever get to the bottom of God. Whatever the case, I do know that in this life we will often doubt, we will often question, and we will often struggle. Yet rather than castigating ourselves over such things, we should rather see them for what they are: the birth pangs of the new life being birthed within us. If we are to be recreated in the likeness of Christ, there will of necessity be much poking, prodding, bending, and stretching; the clay will be beat to death on the potter’s wheel before the vessel fit for honor emerges in all its resplendent glory, a testimony to the craftsmanship of its maker. Let us not think more highly of ourselves than we ought, but let us also not think lower of ourselves either. We are more than conquerors through Him that loves us; we can do all things through Him who strengthens us. Indeed, we can all become lightdancers, rows of sinuous suncatchers now silhouetting, now reflecting the delicate interplay of line, color, and contour as we gracefully twirl in beams of heavenly light. Let it so be!

“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

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