But recently I heard an interview with filmmaker Nathan Clarke, who just made the film Wrestling for Jesus.
He talked about the kind of addiction in the Christian community to positive or ''redemptive'' stories, that a film or book or song that does not end on the upbeat is seen as theologically coming up short, or even destructive. He talked about the need to also tell Old Testament stories, literal ones from scripture and also the ones we create today.
I am reading Kings and I keep thinking about what Clarke said about also telling the Old Testament truth. Which is not glamorous and not redemptive but maybe points to why we need to be rescued in the first place, and not neatly. I blanch at the story of settling a dispute between two prostitutes by slicing a baby into two (when of these two destitute women, one of them enters the argument having lost her baby in the first place--that lie comes from a real place and real reason!). But I wanted to write these words of Solomon's dreamed request:
''I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out your duties... Give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and distinguish between right and wrong.''
and Yahweh's response:
''I will give you a wise and discerning heart.''And I know it deep that this is the 24th year where, E. spoke it over me, I also am invited to ask for wisdom. Where I also will enter an ability to make decisions based not on emotion or even on past experience, but from a heart of wisdom. And that is not braggy or I'm-a-big-deal, because I see how my own foolishness or at least naivety have helped contribute to situations malos en mi vida, not causing them but at times allowing circumstances I could have avoided altogether.
And so what if somebody likes you? One thousand men, hungry and honorable and all shades in between, could like you in your lifetime, but that doesn't mean they get you (they are worthy of you or deserve you). You're not just some orphan trying to make it; you're the King's daughter.
And I am learning it now, in my bones and in my veins: I am expensive. You probably can't afford me. And it's not a pronouncement determining the remainder of the river of your life, but it is the truth in this season.
I do want to tell better stories, and I also want to become wise. Mostly though, I want to know who I am: not a bastard, but adopted. Not fatherless. Not having to boast and advance my own reputation and story. But learning my name as he calls me and walking in my true identity in Christ.
