The Armor of Light

For you have made the city a heap,
the fortified city a ruin;
the palace of aliens is a city no more,
it will never be rebuilt.
Therefore strong peoples will glorify you;
cities of ruthless nations will fear you.
For you have been a refuge to the poor,
a refuge to the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the rainstorm and a
shade from the heat.
--Isaiah 25:1-4a

Last year was my first year of EfM, which centered on the Old Testament. This meant I had to come to terms, over and over again, with images of God that made me uncomfortable-- wrathful, vengeful, laying-to-waste. At the time, just acknowledging that God was "maybe" at the head of an advancing Israelite army felt like an enormous and earth-shattering leap forward in faith. Now that I'm more comfortable with the notion that God is/was/shall be many things-- most of all, whatever He wants-- and that not all of it makes sense to me or looks pretty on a postcard, well. Upon re-reading, previous thoughts on the subject come off like a shuffle-tap-tap.

It was the beginning, though, of what I can truthfully say today: sometimes I need God to be angry, even if I can only perceive it in Scripture. Sometimes, I need Him to rain down fire and crack mountains in half and lay waste to His very Creation, because not everything we've done to it is good.

We've all had awful, horrible things happen to us in our lives. There are about as many ways to deal with those things as there are self-help books in Barnes and Noble, but I'll wager it's a pretty universal truth that we'd rather not spend much time there again.

For some of us, though, that happens, and it's for those moments of flashback and memory and unbidden recall that I write this post.

If you've lived through any sort of abuse, then you know how the mind creates coping mechanisms to get you through, and that it can take time and therapy to ease the grip of mechanisms no longer necessary post-victimization. The role of faith in this landscape is complex. Sometimes, it is erased. Sometimes, it is strengthened. I think most often it lies somewhere in the seemingly contradictory but unflinchingly honest melding of those two extremes, summed up by the father in Mark 9:24: "I believe; help my unbelief."

As Christians we may not be comfortable with the unknowable or seemingly contradictory, but comfort isn't always the point. I know I often need to lean upon the Jesus who hung out with children and wept with Mary and Martha and blessed the meek and lowly, but in those moments when I'm tired and overwhelmed and I threaten to lose all my knowledge about how good He made me, how blessed, and how loved, it can be so much more head-clearingly effective to remember how He kicked the shit out of the moneylender's tables. Basically, I needn't Beattitude myself into a corner with my neck exposed when my past tries to rewrite my present.

Those things that happened to me, to you, to all of us were awful, and God shares in and validates our anger as much as He aides in and validates our grief. As the bit above from Isaiah highlights so beautifully, the same God who "makes the city a heap" is "a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat."

Images of God's righteous fury are generally as contentious for avid believers as they are for those using them to equate God to some jealous, self-serving deity on Mt. Olympus. All I can say from a place of honesty is that when reminded of those times in my life through which the Lord carried me, even though I didn't know it, I like to think He was dressed for battle. I like to think that I can put on that same battle-dress and shine the Light into all my darkest corners whenever they threaten to take over.

Here's the thing, though. Life isn't meant to be lived in the armor we put on for protection in the moment. That kind of armor may keep out the enemy, but it keeps out everything else as well. In our Baptism we are joined not only into Christ's death and resurrection, but also his birth-- into paper-thin skin reaching out for the world with blind trust, yet alight with the Holy Spirit. Hatred and fear are too heavy a burden for our fragile frames to bear.

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

This promise from Matthew 11 holds such a beautiful alternative. We can lay down the armor we can no longer carry and take up that which is not only light, but Light: that luminous, shining help and protection afforded us all through the Holy Spirit. Just as the Savior was made vulnerable to the world by his birth into it, so we are made vulnerable to the Savior by our birth into His saving grace and love.

May we all have the courage to accept that vulnerability: a vulnerability that brings us the kind of strength our old armor could never hope to match.



The night is far spent; the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off
the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.
--Romans 13:12