jesus

Committing murder in my heart on the highway

Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. (Matthew 5:21-22, NIV).” 

I was running late for jiu-jitsu this morning, not too late, but late enough to be in a hurry, and I was getting annoyed by slow drivers and traffic lights. At one point, I even honked at the driver in front me for not turning when the light was green. It became clear to me later, after being stuck behind him for a while, that he was most likely lost and trying to figure out where he was going, and my attempts to hurry him along were not helping. 

As I got on the highway, I moved over to the left lane so that I could get where I was going more quickly. That is to say, I was speeding. Unfortunately for me, there was a big white pickup truck with shiny chrome wheels ahead of me in the left lane who was content to go just fast enough that no one could pass him and just slow enough to get on my nerves. 

The further I drove, the more frustrated I became. It was’t just the pickup truck in front of me. Everyone around me was annoying me. Either they weren’t going fast enough or they weren’t using their turn signal or I didn’t like the color of their car or they had a bumper sticker that offended me. It became increasingly clear to me that either something was wrong with everyone else or something was wrong with me. 

Just then, the thought came to me, “How many people have you murdered in your heart today while driving to jiu-jitsu?” I knew this was a reference to Matthew 5:21-22. I also knew that it was a lot of people. In fact, it was too many people to count. 

Then, as my mind tends to do, I extrapolated this out to all of the people I had ever been angry at or annoyed by any time I have ever driven anywhere for the thirty or so years that I’ve been driving. For many years, as a coffee equipment technician, I essentially drove for a living, meaning I was on the road for many hours a day encountering many hundreds of drivers each day, a lot of whom were not driving how I wanted. 

With this in mind, it occurred to me that, if I were to take Jesus seriously, and I do, I am guilty of murdering many hundreds, really thousands of people in my heart. Being subject to judgement by God for my anger, as if it were in fact murder, I realized that I have a very severe punishment coming my way. God being the just God that he is, I will eventually have to pay for these crimes of the heart against my brothers and sisters. 

But God is not merely a just God. He is also a loving and merciful God. He knows that we cannot possibly live up to his perfect standards nor perfectly obey his commandments. The entire Old Testament proves this over and over again. And so after many attempts to reconcile with us and forgive us for our transgressions, God finally made the greatest sacrifice a father can make, and he sent his own son to die for every wrong we have ever done or will ever do so that, through Jesus Christ, we may be forgiven once and for all. 

This knowledge, once accepted as the truth it is, should make us nicer. It should make us so grateful and so humbled that we could not possibly sin against the Lord ever again. And yet, we are selfish, broken, and extremely short-sighted creatures for whom nothing is ever really good enough. 

No matter what God does for us, including sacrificing his own son so that we may live, we still have lapses in love, compassion, and goodness. I, for one, had many this morning on my short drive to jiu-jitsu. Somehow, because I was late for class and in a hurry, I completely forgot that I have been saved through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross and I opted instead to get angry at every driver who crossed my path. 

Sometimes I think God allows us to have these moments of weakness just so that we can see how broken we are and how much we need him to make us whole. While this incident and this realization resulted in my praying for both forgiveness and for love and patience for my fellows, I know that this will not be the last time I get angry at another driver and commit murder in my heart. I hope and pray, however, that these incidents become fewer and farther between as God heals my heart and forms me into the type of person he would have me be. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Walking the path of righteousness or at least not trespassing

For several years now, the county within which I live has been building a paved bike trail that will span the entire length of my town, from the beach to a pre-existing bike trail in the next town over. Once the trail is complete, my family and many others will have a safe way to travel and exercise by bike or by foot across over twenty miles of paved trails spanning multiple towns. I am quite excited for the project to finish so that we can take advantage of this amenity. 

Some parts of the trail have been completed for quite a while now, some parts are mostly finished, and some have yet to be started. Where the project is mostly finished, there are large spans of paved trail that are safe to walk on, at least as far as I can tell, but which are still closed off to the public. When I was out for a walk the other day, in spite of the sign that said, “Do Not Enter,” I walked one of these sections of the trail instead of walking on the side of the busy road. 

Admittedly, it was quite nice to have a safe place to walk and the trail allowed me to go farther than I would have if it were not there. I knew I wasn’t supposed to walk on it. I read the sign after all, but I really didn’t think much of it because it seemed safe and there was no one around to stop me. 

As I stepped over the mesh plastic barricade which has clearly been stepped or ridden over many times before, the thought occurred to me, “It’s not a big deal if I do this, but obviously it would be a problem if everyone did it. I’m not everyone though, so it’s okay.” The whole while walking on the trail, however, I had the feeling that someone was watching me and I started to hurry my way along so that I could get off before I was noticed by passersby. 

I made my way to the next cross street which has no trail or sidewalk and I walked hurriedly to the next intersection where there was a sidewalk. From there, I walked my normal route home, went inside, and went about my day. But the whole day, I had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind about whether I had done the right thing or whether or not I would do it again.

The next morning, my wife and I had the opportunity to walk together. There are several ways we can go when we walk, but I wanted to show her the new, albeit unfinished, trail that I had “discovered” the day before. As we approached the trail, I told my wife where we were going to go and she immediately bristled at the proposition. 

She said, “I’m not walking on there. It’s not finished yet. It’s not safe.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” I said, “I walked on it yesterday.” “Why would you do that?” she asked, “There’s clearly a sign that says, “Do Not Enter.” “Yeah, but it’s fine,” I insisted, “I’ve seen plenty of people walking and biking on it, and it’s safer than walking next to the road.” 

“Don’t be that kind of person,” she replied, “Be a good citizen. Set a good example for others. Just walk the way you normally walk and stay on the sidewalk. We can go that way when the trail is done.” 

For whatever reason, those words, “Be a good citizen. Set a good example for others,” really hit me hard. I never really thought about it from that perspective. I do my best to be a good person. I don’t intentionally lie, cheat, or steal. I try to be honest, I’m faithful to my wife, I go to church on Sundays, I repay my debts, I pay my taxes, and I own multiple businesses that serve the community. “Of course I’m a good citizen,” I thought to myself. 

But as I sat with her words for a while, I started to see her point. As a Christian, I am called to live by a higher standard. This means that I must not only follow the laws of the land within which I live, which includes not trespassing, but I must also live a righteous life for God and not for my selfish desires. Christ’s example is one of self denial for the sake of God and humanity, not of selfishly taking advantage of opportunities and breaking laws simply because no one appears to be watching. 

Jesus tells us, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48, NIV).” He doesn’t mean that we should be good only when other people are watching. Rather, we are to be good always because God is always watching. “The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good (Proverbs 15:3).” No wonder I felt like someone was watching me while I was walking on the trail. God was watching me and my conscience was letting me know it. 

There is nothing we do that is outside of God’s sight. Whether it’s sneaking an extra cookie at night when we think no one else is awake, embellishing our timecard when our supervisor isn’t paying attention, or peaking at an attractive woman when we think no one will notice, God sees us. And he holds us Christians to a higher standard because he loves us and, through the Holy Spirit, he is teaching us to be perfect. 

Of course, we should be good citizens. My wife is not wrong about that. We must go beyond that and be good Christians. That means not trying to get away with petty infractions of law or morality simply because we can. It means being impeccable in word and deed, and when we fail, which we will, admitting our mistake and, to the best of our ability, making things right. 

God requires more from us because we are the standard bearers of his name. What we do is a reflection of his love, his mercy, and his grace, but also of his son, Jesus Christ. We are called to live as Jesus did (1 John 2:6), to sacrifice anything and everything that stands in the way of our relationship with him (Matt 19:21), and to give up our worldly desires for the sake of heavenly standards (Titus 2:11-13). And, we are called to walk the narrow path of righteousness, even if it is inconvenient or less attractive (Matt 7:13-14). 

So no matter how much I want to, no matter how tempting it is, I will no longer be walking on the unfinished trail until it’s open to the public. It may seem silly or like a little thing, I know it did to me, but the little things add up in the eyes of God and in our consciences. There are plenty of places by my house for me to walk without trespassing, and it is better to be inconvenienced by what is best than to have an easy life full of good enough. Good enough is not good enough for God. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Isolation is not solitude and God is good

One of the reasons the c-vid lockdowns were so hard on me personally is that it is very easy for me to stay home for extended periods of time without leaving the house or interacting with anyone else. Isolation is my default state. And it’s simply not healthy. 

It takes a lot of effort, and has taken a lot of spiritual work, for me to want to be around other people. Left to my own devices, I would much rather hide. With food, water, and electricity, I would gladly stay in the house for long periods of time with no interactions with the outside world. In fact, the longer I stay in, the less I want to or am capable of going out. 

I’m not talking about solitude. Solitude is a healthy spiritual state wherein a person seeks God in the quiet, alone times. I’m talking about isolation. I’m talking about turning my back on God and my fellows. 

Isolation is not about pursuing one’s spiritual depths in a quiet place. Isolation is the unhealthy practice of disconnecting with the world in order to be alone with oneself. In solitude, I practice transcending self. In isolation, I obsess over self. 

The c-vid lockdowns, for me, were about forced isolation. They exacerbated my anxiety, i.e. “self-centered fear,” and amplified my fears and insecurities around socializing. Perhaps most importantly, however, the lockdowns gave me an excuse to revert back to the agoraphobia and paranoia I had spent so many years trying to overcome. 

Outside of the spiritual work I had done, which by time c-vid hit I had largely fallen away from, martial arts, specifically Brazilian jiu-jitsu had become a major social outlet for me. In addition to being great exercise for the body and mind, jiu-jitsu was the place I went to be around other people and to connect in a healthy, positive way. But just like that, I was no longer allowed to do jiu-jitsu and I began withdrawing back into isolation. 

Before I had to stop doing it, I don’t think I fully comprehended how important jiu-jitsu had become to my life. It was where I pushed myself physically, stretched myself mentally, and where I saw and interacted with my friends in the second most intimate way I believe one person can interact with another. 

As soon as I realized that our academy was going to be shut down, I began to feel my old self creeping back in. My life started to feel like it was collapsing in on me, my connection to the outside world was being broken, and I started having anxiety attacks. 

I can honestly say that emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually, the lockdowns were one of the most challenging times of my life. So much of the spiritual and psycho-emotional progress I had made over the previous years all seemed to disappear in the blink of an eye. But it was not all bad. 

The lockdowns forced me to take a look at myself and where the foundation I had built for myself in previous years was not as sturdy as it needed to be if I were going to thrive into the future. If I’m being honest, it broke me, but in this brokenness, I began to pray. I began asking God to take away the things that I was holding onto that were blocking me from being the person he wanted and needed me to be. And God answered my prayers. 

Over the course of several years, what was at first brokenness turned out to be exactly the spiritual death I needed in order to be reborn as God would have me. I began seeing a therapist who helped me reconnect with my spiritual path. I reconnected with the religion of my childhood, Christianity, in a new, deeper, and more personal way. I refocused my efforts on being healthier, both physically and mentally, being a better husband and father, and being a better teacher and mentor, both in jiu-jitsu and in other aspects of my life. 

As the result of this transformation, now when I am alone, it is not isolation, but solitude because I know that I am not actually alone. God is with me and much of my alone time is in pursuit of a better relationship with him. But I also appreciate even more the time I get to spend with others, whether it be at jiu-jitsu or with my wife and daughter. 

In the end, as much as I resisted the lockdowns, everything that caused them, and all of the consequences of them, some of which we are still feeling, they helped me to see that God is ultimately in charge. He uses even the worst circumstances to draw us closer to him if we are willing, and his love does not stop pouring out into our lives simply because the world shuts down. As St. Teresa of Avila said, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Marriage is a constant reminder of how imperfect my love is

Marriage is a constant reminder of how imperfect my love is. It is anything but unconditional. I give love and take it away for so many reasons. It’s frustrating and painful, both for me and the people I claim to love. 

I was not always like this and I’ve gotten much better in recent years, but I have a long way to go. I don’t know at what point I started using my love as a psychological-emotional weapon, but I assume it was somewhere in my teenage years. Now, some thirty years later, it’s actually a great point of shame for me. 

For a long time, I honestly didn’t know how petty, spiteful, and cruel I could be. It took having someone who vowed to never leave me and who was unwilling to settle for any less than my best to point it out to me. There’s something really powerful about the commitment of marriage that has forced me to look at myself. 

When two people take a solemn oath that, for better worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, they will remain faithful and steadfast to one another, and they really mean it, it brings not only the best out in them, but also the worst. In a truly committed relationship, there is no hiding. Marriage forces you to look at yourself. 

I am fortunate enough to have married someone who feels as strongly about commitment as I do. When we took our vows, we meant it. That means we have to make it work. I think this is some small part of what God had in mind when he gave Adam and Eve to one another, and when he said that a married couple becomes “one flesh (Genesis 2:24.” The intimacy of oneness forces us to look at and get rid of the things that do not serve the relationship. 

So much of who I am and who I was before I met my wife is based on the survival mechanisms I developed over the years from being hurt, disappointed, betrayed, abandoned, and whatever else you can think of that would make a person cold, withdrawn, and selfish. Somehow, my wife saw through all of this baggage and was able to glean the deeper truth of who I am enough to want to spend the rest of her life with me. Some days it still baffles me. 

But like I said, I was not always like this. I remember being a kid and being cheerful, optimistic, and kind. While I didn’t really fit in anywhere (in middle school, I finally found a group of friends who also didn’t fit in and we were inseparable) and that confused me a great deal, I remained relatively enthusiastic and curious about life. Somewhere along the line, however, I suppose I was hurt one too many times by people that were supposed to or said they loved me, and I became cynical, guarded, and bitter. 

My entire adult life has largely been defined by the outgrowing of this negativity, or rather the returning to innocence, albeit in a more mature way, of my childhood. The lessons, however, have not come easily. I have ruined many relationships along the way and I have nearly ruined my marriage on several occasions. 

One of the main problems is that I tend to use my affection as a weapon. It’s not malicious way. It’s often not even intentional. But when I’m hurt, I withdraw and shut down, and when I do, I take my love with me. 

It doesn’t help that I’m extremely sensitive and, therefore, easily hurt, and that my wife is not the type of person to hold back her feelings or pull punches with her opinions. Well, maybe it does help because she has the unique ability to bring out the worst in me so that I change for the better. But the combination of her directness and my sensitivity creates a tension that leaves me nowhere to hide. Even if I tried hiding, she wouldn’t let me anyway. 

All of this makes it very difficult to deny my shortcomings. I have seen, over the years of trying to make our relationship work, how what were once my survival skills, the things that kept me safe in my past life, are actually tools of destruction in my marriage. When I withdraw and withhold my love from my wife, it hurts both of us because it hurts the relationship and we are not two, but one. 

This all struck me the other day when I was meditating on Jesus’s love for us. It occurred to me that, no matter what was done to Jesus, he never withdrew his love. He never shut down. He never stopped caring. He never tried to manipulate others by threatening them with emotional absence. 

Jesus was betrayed, beaten, crucified, mocked, and left to die alone on the cross, and yet he never stopped loving us. In fact, throughout all of this torture and torment, he prayed for us. And here I am, loved beyond measure and beyond understanding by a merciful, gracious God who sent his own son to die for my sinful thoughts, words, and deeds, a God who has never once withdrawn his love from me, not even for a second, and I have the arrogance to keep my love to myself when my feelings get hurt. 

It is humbling and baffling just how selfish and broken I really am. I am, however, willing to change. I pray for it daily. I want to have the kind of love for my wife, my family, and my fellows that Jesus has for me. I want to be as generous and forgiving as God has been and continues to be for me. 

It’s an impossible task, but trying, with God’s help, is better than the alternative. In fact, Jesus himself said that I must. I must “love as he has loved me (John 13:34)” and to “be perfect (Matthew 5:48)” What greater purpose is there than this anyway, to love and serve God and my fellows? 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

No one is above God and no one is beneath us

I’ve been reminded a lot lately of why we cannot rely on human power where only God’s power will do. Making false idols out of people doesn’t work. We are imperfect, broken creatures in need of salvation. Not one of us is beyond error or shortcomings. No matter how hard we try, we are destined to let one another down, to disappoint each other and to break one another’s hearts. If we don’t, it is purely by the grace of God. 

It is no wonder, when asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matthew 22:37-40, NIV).” 

The first commandment, to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” tells us to place all of our trust in God, to have no other Gods before him, and to always put God first, even above and ahead of our loved ones. It tells us not to make false idols out of other people. If we do, not only are we betraying God’s commandment, but we are also putting unreasonable expectations on others and setting ourselves up for disappointment. 

The second of Jesus’s greatest commandments, to “Love your neighbor as yourself” teaches us not to look down on others, to not hold ourselves up as false idols above them, and to treat them as God has treated us, with love, fairness, and mercy. This commandment to love our neighbors as we are demands that we treat our fellows as peers, as brothers and sisters, and that we never treat anyone like they are unredeemable or unforgivable because, through Christ Jesus, everyone has been forgiven and everyone is eligible for redemption if they so desire. 

These two commandments, given to us from our Lord and Savior, are in part about humility. They help us to remain right-sized in relation to God and our fellows. The first tells us not to look up to anyone in the way that we look up to God, and the second tells us not to look down on anyone as if we are God. No one is above God and no one is beneath us. We are all equal in the eyes of the Lord (Romans 2:11).

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Acknowledge the hurt is real so that you can heal

The first step in healing is acknowledging that, in fact, we have been wronged. That the hurt is real. That a debt is owed. That we are in pain. That an injustice has been done. But this is only the first step. 

If we are to heal, we must then be willing, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, to free the person who wronged us from their debt for the sake of our own soul. For the sake of our own peace. For the sake of our own joy. For the sake of those we love and serve. 

We cannot do this alone. Only God can transform this pain, this very real and justified pain, into healing, but we must be willing to sacrifice our suffering, our pride, and our resentment, at the altar of His love. We must be willing to let go of this debt we are owed, to release it, to release our debtor into God’s hands. 

Justice will be done, but it is not ours to do. We will all pay the price for our part in things when we someday face Him. But for now, we are called to let our debtors go, to heal, and to move on with the help of God and community, and with the love that can transform all pain and all suffering into purpose. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Making time to love God and my fellows

Having a disciplined prayer life is essential if we want to establish and maintain a relationship with God. Prayer is the act of momentarily forgetting the world in order to put our mind on God. It is a decision to leave everything else behind so that, even if for a moment, we may seek union with our creator, to spend time with him, and to get to know him. 

While God is constantly reaching out for us whether we know it or not, it is up to us to reach back to make the connection. We cannot manufacture grace or salvation through effort, but we can develop a relationship with the source of grace and the giver of salvation. We have to do some of the work.

By setting aside time for God, we are telling him that he is important to us, that our relationship with him matters. This will mean that other things are going to have to wait. If our relationship with God is our priority, we must act like it. 

This is not easy to do. There are an infinite number of distractions in this life vying for us to choose them over God. When the world is not trying to get our attention, our own minds come up with things to worry about, to desire, or obsess over. It is as if we are wired for an inattention on God. 

This morning in prayer, for example, my daughter, my wife, and my phone were all trying to draw me away from God. None of it was malicious, except maybe the phone. I’m becoming ever more convinced that my phone and everything it represents it a tool of the devil, but I digress. 

My daughter and my wife were not even trying to get my attention. I do my best to take care of them and, in turn, they try to respect my prayer time. It’s just that I could hear them getting ready for school and work, respectively, and my mind started to wander away from God and toward what I could do to help them or to get involved with their interactions. 

They didn’t even need my help. I had already made breakfast for my daughter and her lunch was made the night before. She was fully dressed and everything was packed for school. My wife was simply doing her own thing and getting herself ready for work. Everything was fine, but my mind insisted upon engaging with them which meant not being open to receive God’s quiet presence. 

My own brain was trying to keep me away from God and my silent prayer. It wanted to do anything but sit still in God’s presence. It told me that, by sitting quietly in prayer I was being a bad father, a negligent husband, and that I was being selfish. Again, neither my daughter nor my wife actually needed me. 

I had already done my part for my family before sitting down to pray and they were perfectly fine in that moment without me, but my mind rebelled at the silence and rejected the idea that I could simply be still for a while and allow God to be God. But this was my prayer time. That means, before I even sat down, it was decided that all I was going to do for the next hour was to pray, read, and pray some more. 

This decision, made long before I even sat down, meant that, no matter what excuses and distractions my mind wanted to come up with, this was prayer time. This was as true today as it was the day before and as it was the day before that. Also, God willing and barring any emergencies or catastrophes, it will be equally true tomorrow. 

I am not a naturally disciplined person. That is why I have to have a dedicated time for prayer. If not, I will simply never get around to it, at least not with the attention and intention it deserves. For me, my prayer time has to be pre-established so that I have no excuses. In fact, I don’t even have to think about it. 

I don’t pray when and if I feel like it, although sometimes I do that also, but because it is time to pray. Because I made the decision once, I don’t have to make it again. I pray at prayer time. By being disciplined in this way, not only is my prayer life improved, but I have also found that the world can actually get along just fine without me for a while. 

Life doesn’t stop going simply because I am praying. The world keeps spinning and the clock continues to tick. What does happen, however, by having an established, disciplined prayer schedule, is that I slow down. 

By being disciplined about my time with God, by regularly practicing stillness in his presence, I am telling him that my relationship with him is important, that even if only for this one hour every day, I am able to love God with all of my heart, soul, and mind. This, in turn, makes me more loving toward my fellows. In the end, isn’t this the most important thing any of us can do, to love God and each other? Isn’t this worth our time? 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

A wave of gratitude washed over me

Some days I am struck speechless by how fortunate I am, not because of any one particular thing or any specific aspect of my life, but because of all of it. I am awe struck by how generous and gracious God has been and continues to be to me, in spite of the fact that I absolutely do not deserve it. 

The little bit of faith and faithfulness that I bring to my relationship with God has been repaid a hundred times over, especially when compared to all of my sin and selfishness. God is truly great. He is merciful, loving, and patient, and he keeps his promises. 

Tonight was just one of those nights when it hit me all at once just how amazing the life God has given me truly is and how grateful I am for it. My day was not particularly easy or even special. In fact, it was a pretty normal Wednesday for me. 

I woke up, made my daughter breakfast, and sat down for my prayer hour. I read some scripture, read a few chapters from some spiritual books that I’m in the middle of, sat in silent prayer for twenty minutes, and wrote my daily spiritual poem. After that, I had my weekly call with a friend for whom I’ve been a spiritual director for many years, and then I went to speak at a local club for people trying to recover from alcoholism. 

When I got home from my speaking commitment, I had lunch, sat down to check on my graduate school application, and listened to a talk on the Carmelite spirituality of St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. Then I took a brief nap before getting my daughter from the bus stop, having lunch with her and her mother, and getting us both ready for jiu-jitsu class. 

A couple of days a week, before teaching my adult class, I teach a small semi-private jiu-jitsu lesson to my daughter and several of her teammates. They are great kids who listen well, love to learn, and don’t mind working hard. Teaching them and watching them grow in both jiu-jitsu and life has become one of the most unexpected bright spots of my life. 

Everything tends to move pretty quickly from there. I teach the kids, then I teach the adults, and then I rush my daughter and I back home to shower, have dinner, and get ready for bed. Every week, on this particular night, as her mother puts her to sleep, I host a Zoom meeting for people who have had or are seeking a spiritual experience in order to overcome alcoholism. It was in this meeting that a wave of gratitude came washing over me. 

None of the things that happened in my life today, absolutely none of them, were things that I ever dreamed of or wished for in my previous life. If you would have told my younger self that this was what my Wednesday would be like as a forty-six year old, not only would I have not believed you, but I would have turned and run the other way. And yet here I am, completely awestruck by this amazing, full life I have today. 

I literally got to spend all day going deeper into my relationship with God and helping other people. What could better? What more could I possibly ask for? It’s as if God has given me a little glimpse of heaven right here in this life. I’m not sharing any of this to brag or boast. This is neither a point of pride nor vanity for me. 

I’m sharing this because I absolutely do not deserve it. I’m sharing it to give glory to God because, without him, none of this would be possible. Left to my own devices, not only would I not have this life and these amazing opportunities for service, but if I did have them, I wouldn’t appreciate them and I would most likely ruin them. 

This is me giving praise to the one who makes the broken whole, who gives sight to the blind, and who allows the lame to walk. God has given me so much and I have given him so little. All I have to offer him is my faith, my trust, and my service, but without him, I’d even mess that up. What an amazing God he is!

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

The gifts of the spirit are meant to be given away

The more I mediate, the more I crave silence. The more I pray, the more I yearn for solitude. The more time I spend in silence and solitude, the more I want to share this experience with others. 

God moves in us in mysterious ways. He changes our hearts and shapes our wills. He draws us ever closer to him, whispering in the quiet spaces, “I love you. come to me.” 

Our job is to listen, to submit to the stillness wherein God resides, for it is there that he is found. This is why “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed (Mark 1:35, NIV).” But Jesus did not stop there and neither should we. 

Jesus went off in solitude and prayed in silence so that he could hear the Father, but then he returned to his community. As important as it was for him to commune directly with God, it was equally important for him to share God’s word and God’s love with the world. The gifts he received from the Father had to be given away in order for them to mean anything. 

This is the work of faith. We trust God enough to give him our time and our attention. We give him our lives. In turn, he gives us salvation, joy, peace, comfort, and so much more, but he gives us these at a price. 

The price we must pay is that we do not get to keep these gifts to ourselves. We cannot hoard God’s love and his blessings. We must give freely of what we have been given, for to try to keep God’s blessings to ourselves is to lose them. 

In order to maintain and grow in our relationship with God, we must sacrifice our selfish desires, aspirations, and fears at the altar of love. We have to die to our old ways and old attitudes so that we can be reborn in God’s image. God, who is eternally giving himself to us through the very fact of our existence, requires that we, too, give ourselves to others in the same way. 

This was a difficult lesson for me to learn, and I still forget it often. I am not living for me. I gave up my life the day I turned it over to God in prayer many years ago, and I reaffirmed this commitment when I died and was reborn with Jesus in baptism last year. My life belongs to God and to those I would serve by his grace, love, and mercy. 

So when I meditate, I am not meditating for myself. The silence is not my own. I am neither its cause nor am I the final recipient of its blessings. It connects me to my creator so that I may be more conscious, present, and attentive to the needs of others. I am merely a vessel. 

Likewise, when I pray, I am not praying for myself. My prayers are not for me alone. They are to make me more useful to God and to my fellows. The solitude within which I seek God gives me the courage, wisdom, and compassion with which I may go into the world to do God’s work. I am merely a servant. 

Jesus gave his life for me so that I may give my life for him. Whatever peace, inspiration, and comfort I receive through grace in prayer and meditation is a gift not for me to keep, but to pass on to others. I am merely a container to be filled by the spirit that overflows from within me for others to experience God’s loving mercy. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

God allows us time to feel sorry for ourselves

When we are feeling hurt, betrayed, or disappointed, God allows us time to feel sorry for ourselves. Understanding that we are human and need time to process our feelings, he will give us space and let us live in our pain for a while if we so desire. Especially when we have been wronged by someone we care about, he lets us work through our emotions, even if it means wallowing in self pity and grief. Eventually, however, God expects us to get over ourselves and move on. 

We can’t live in our anger and depression forever, at least not if we intend to live for and with God. God does not like rivals and self pity is a major rival to the Lord. If we allow it to stay longer than its welcome, self pity becomes a sort of false idol for us. In fact, it’s really just a way of worshipping our own shortsighted desires and feelings. 

When things don’t work out the way we want or expect them to, it’s okay to be hurt, disappointed, and even angry, but ultimately, what we are saying to God is that we think we know what is best for us better than he does. Feeling sorry for ourselves means that we want something other than what God has given us. Self pity, at its core, is really just a lack of faith. 

But as much as God is a jealous God who does not tolerate rivals for his attention, he is also an understanding God who is loving and patient enough to allow us the time we need to come back around to him. If we choose not to, if we choose to live outside of his grace, we are headed for a life of suffering. But if we turn away from our self pity and turn toward the Father of Light, he will always be there to embrace us into his loving arms and guide us through our pain. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox.