“Daaad, Daaad, Dad!” I whisper-shouted from behind a tree as my dad pulled up in his truck. My VW Rabbit had died in yet another public place as I drove home from high school. I had my reputation to protect, so my plan was to hide, summon Dad, and let him push it off the busy street alone. The car had died after I rolled into the crosswalk in front of the grade school and junior high, so all the backpacked kids walked around my encroaching front end.
I needed help in a big way, but I also wanted to hide. I wanted to be rescued, but I didn’t want to be vulnerable. I was afraid of what my peers might say the next day, as though, by hiding, I could pretend that the neon green car belonged to someone else. Then I realized that I had the keys in my hand. I thought about maintaining my anonymity and tossing them to my dad, but the look on his face said I probably shouldn’t. He motioned me to help push the car.
According to social researcher and author Brene Brown, vulnerability is showing up and being seen when we can’t control the outcome. As it turns out, I had to be vulnerable to be rescued. I had to make myself known and visible, like the castaways on Gilligan’s Island or the victims of Hurricane Dorian, waving arms from the highest hill of houses or huts or hopes.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego knew something about showing up and being seen when we can’t control the outcome (Dan. 3). The trio showed up with their faith, were seen refusing to bow to a false god, and risked the result. The king ordered them thrown into a blazing furnace. They, too, needed a rescue.
The thing with vulnerability is, the rescue never looks like we think it will. Those three Jewish boys would surely have hoped to win the king over or miraculously disappear before being hurled into the agonizing intensity, but God’s rescue involved them going into the fire and even walking around in it for a while.
Sometimes exercising vulnerability will hurt—temporarily. The world might laugh, we might face some extreme heat. Vulnerability risks shame and uncertainty, but it is also the birthplace for love and joy. Above all, vulnerability binds us to the Father, so we never have to walk alone.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were seen walking through the fire with a fourth figure appearing to be the Son of God (Dan. 3:25). At our most vulnerable times, He walks with us on the path we didn’t choose.
As we all will, those three men eventually did die. The physical furnace rescue wasn’t for good, but it established a good relationship. The whole point of the rescue was the relationship, just like with my VW Rabbit. What mattered was the bond I was building in my father.
Recently, Dad accidentally Facetimed me. I think he meant to call normally, but when I answered, I got a close-up of his ear hairs, like an episode of Magic School Bus Through the Ear Canal. In the last few years, he got a smartphone, an iPad, and joined Facebook (he may have beat me to that one). He has never been afraid of new technology or new ideas. This brilliant scientist, businessman, and teacher risks looking silly to stay connected to me and my siblings. He has always assumed the risk of vulnerability for the rescue and for the relationship.
Likewise, this God asking for our vulnerability is no stranger to the concept. He’s demonstrated it from Eden to Calvary to my stubborn life. As Christopher De La Cruz says, “God loves this world with an abandon that leaves God vulnerable to pain.” In doing so, He has demonstrated how faith is forged. Faith is the highest manifestation of a relationship built on vulnerability.
We all want a shortcut for faith, but the full-length version is all that will work. It takes repeatedly showing up and being seen, and repeated rescue. My car died again and again in surrounding towns, and my dad showed up every single time.
In the spirit of vulnerability, faith means that we don’t get to control how or when the rescue happens. But in the Spirit of God, we know that it will.
From my journal:
I can’t really see how all of this is going to play out. The story arc looks a little bent. After my disappointing heart failure check-up, I wanted to skip church today, so I didn’t have to face questions, disappointed prayers, or sympathetic hugs. People don’t need to see a confusing plot up close. But I decided to go to live the story that’s actually happening, to lean into God’s narrative as much as I wish it was a different story. Humanly, I just don’t see the end of this anymore. I can’t see how He’s going to step in and save the day, but after all we’ve been through together, somehow I believe that He will, in His own way and time.
Faith is realizing that even when (like with my VW Rabbit) I’m not feeling enough guts or grace to show up, He always does.
My dad has been there through many rescues. By doing so, he’s taught me a lot about vulnerable faith without ever saying much about it: faith requires that we keep showing up and being seen, even when─especially when─we can’t control the outcome. It requires that we come out from behind the tree, put our arms in the air, and step into the furnace. When we do, God’s saving Spirit will show up, too, and we’ll never walk through the fire (or push our car through the school crosswalk) alone.
