An Upside-Down, Life-Giving Faith

When I was growing up, my family went on a handful of car trips every year, usually visiting grandparents or cousins. With no more technology than a cassette tape player available to entertain myself, I filled the long rides to Florida or North Carolina with Mad Libs, mixed tapes, cross stitch projects, books, and family sing-alongs.

When we were tired of singing along to Dad’s Simon & Garfunkel or Beach Boys tapes, he’d lead us with his baritone melodies through “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad, “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain,” and “I’m In Right Out Right Upside Down Right Happy All the Time.”

I’m in right out right upside down right happy all the time. Since Jesus Christ came in and cleaned my heart of sin, I’m in right out right upside down right happy all the time.

 With each successive refrain, we would sing the song faster and faster and faster—until eventually, my sister and I would be giggling so hard that we could barely breathe. As a kid, I didn’t think much about the deeper theological implications of that song. But as an adult, I see in Scripture that life in the kingdom is not about making us happy. Happiness is a by-product God has designed for us to experience, but the point of the kingdom is sacrificial love, from top to bottom. Inside out.

The whole of the gospel is, in fact, upside down. The last will be first. Those who mourn will feel comfort. Lose your life to find it. When I first started reading the Bible as a young adult, earnestly trying to understand these paradoxes, I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of them. I was newly enrolled in college, where the oft-heard mantra included “you can be anything,” “those who go first and do more win,” and “this is your life; make it anything you want it to be.”

While perhaps we can be anything we want to be, everything we do has a cost. While doing more might feel productive, how much more significant is it to discern when to slow down, who to focus on, and how to be fully present where we are? While I can curate a life that looks like the epitome of success, only a few investments have real, lasting significance.

Though life can be brimming with true, deep joy, most of us have white-knuckled our way through soul-piercing, heart-altering circumstances that mark us. In my own desert times, paradoxical gospel thinking has been my manna.  The counter-intuitive nature of Jesus’ kingdom is, in fact, the only hope for making sense of the detours, wrong turns, and dead ends that are familiar to us all.

In a world where little boys like my son are born with life-altering genetic disorders, my hope is renewed in the mystery of “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9, NIV). For my friend who has planned and attended more funerals than most people twice her age, I look to Jesus’ enigmatic words that “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matt. 5:4, NIV).  To the college student enrolled in my writing class, who has the whole of her life planned and mapped out, I wonder if she has pondered the paradox that “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for [Jesus] will find it” (Matt. 16:25, NIV).

I don’t view these truths like candy thrown at a parade, meant to merely placate grieving or naïve souls. Instead, these counter-intuitive Jesus truths birth real, life-giving faith for us. Though some mysteries belong to God alone, he still invites us to pursue him in all his wisdom, love, and intricacy so that we might know life abundant.

While some may see these inside out, upside-down ideas as troubling in their contradictory nature, I am drawn to God over and again because of them. In my own weakness and frailty, I am buoyed knowing that from weakness comes strength, out of surrender comes victory, and in death we find life.

Like catching glimpses of beautiful shells before the sea pulls them back into her depths, so each new life circumstance reveals to me a different way to live the in-right-out-right-upside-down nature of Jesus’ kingdom. With each pull of the tide, I am drawn deeper into the mystery and infinite wisdom of God, who is my soul’s rest.

Allison Byxbe is a writer, blogger, and occasional college professor. She lives with her husband, three kiddos, and dogs Nate and Jemma in South Carolina. When she’s not writing or teaching others to write, she enjoys hiking, making beeswax wraps, learning about natural health, taking road trips, and drinking the perfect latte. Allison loves to connect with others about family, special needs parenting, mental health, grief, and faith. Her writing has been featured on The Mighty and Her View from Home, and you can find more of it on her blog Writing Is Cheaper Than Therapy.

Photograph © Raychan, used with permission