Life Events Render Us into Someone Different

A Someone We Hadn’t Been Before

While I was praying a few weeks ago, a phrase came to me:

“Rendered by life events. Transformed by Christ. Empowered by the Holy Spirit.”

I began thinking about that word “render” -- a very particular definition of “render” -- to “render fat”. Do you know how to render fat? I don’t know how. Our forefathers and foremothers had to know, if they wanted fat to cook with or tallow to make candles with. Rendering fat was necessary to their way of life. It’s probably a lost art for 21^st century Americans.

I asked Google how to render fat, and this is what I learned: To render fat, you melt it and heat it at a low temperature until all proteins solidify and any water evaporates. You then filter the solids from the liquid fat. Once cooled, you are left with clean pure fat for lard in cooking and tallow for candle making.

In this week’s blog, I’m using the phrase “rendering fat” as a metaphor for life. Our life presents milestones to us, doesn’t it. Our milestones, especially the heartbreaking or challenging ones, have rendered us into something that we weren’t before. I know my life events have rendered me into something that I was not, before the rendering.

Spiritual abuse is a life event that certainly renders us into something different. The initial rendering conjures up a whole range of emotions. We have to hang on for dear life while those emotions continue to render us into something we weren’t before. With the passage of time (maybe a whole lot of time) the emotions die down, even though the wound is still there. Where will the ultimate rendering take us? What will we have been rendered into, in the final analysis?

A person who only ever wants revenge? A person who has soured on “church?” A person who is ready to work on healing, perhaps with a therapist? A person who has been rendered more whole by someone’s prayers? A person ready to forgive?

My new phrase presents itself in my mind again:

“Rendered by life events. Transformed by Christ. Empowered by the Holy Spirit.” I’m sitting here profoundly thankful that there is someone who is Lord over my life events, if I let Him be Lord. Turns out, “life events” don’t have the last word. We are rendered (transformed) by Christ and rendered (empowered) by the Holy Spirit. Therein lies our healing and our calling.

What happens when I, who have been rendered by life events, transformed by Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, meet you, who have been rendered by your life events, transformed by Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit? What happens when we meet?

I can tell you what happens: The love described in I Corinthians 13 happens. We will be patient and kind with each other. It will be our joy to bear all things, hope all things, believe all things, endure all things.

We will see what that love looks like in the intersection between the broken pieces of my life, my healing and times of joy, intermingled with the broken pieces of your life, your healing and times of joy.

I’m reminded of a Scripture from the first chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, which contains the phrase, “Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened...”

Here’s the context that phrase comes from:

I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ… Ephesians 1:16-20a

As followers of Christ, we DO have the eyes of our hearts enlightened. Christ transforms us. The Holy Spirit empowers us. Because we know this truth that is larger than any crisis, we can know the joy of the Lord, even while in the middle of a crisis.

After several times of having been rendered by life events, lifted up by faith in Christ Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, AND the loving intersection between and among us, we do receive a certain wisdom – the wisdom St. Paul wrote about, don’t we. That wisdom is a milestone of our rendering. What we know now is different from what we knew before.

And so we lift up our eyes, enlightened with His love and your love and our love together, and we go out strengthened, not only by all of that wonder. In that strength, we continue what we must do – yes, even while sometimes still in the crisis. We continue in the joy of the Lord.

The wisdom from past milestones buoys us up, even while currently being rendered again by different life events. Transformed by Christ. Empowered by the Holy Spirit.