Blog
Monday, June 15, 2020
“But your dead will live, Lord;
their bodies will rise—
let those who dwell in the dust
wake up and shout for joy—
your dew is like the dew of the morning;
the earth will give birth to her dead.”
—Isaiah 26:19
For whatever reasons, I’m prone to all-or-nothing thinking. I don’t know what mix of nature and nurture has created this. I know that it’s tied to a sense of idealism (which is mostly good, I think), but I also know that it has the tendency to distort my view of the world, because the world is rarely all-or-nothing. And so through counseling and contemplation and conversation, I’ve learned some tools that help me to catch this thinking before it really takes root and sends me off course.
But this is still something that requires vigilance. I’m still always in danger of being demoralized when things aren’t perfect, when I’m not perfect, when things are messy. Sometimes I want life to be more like a video game, where if you mess up, you can just go back to the start of the level and try again, as if the previous failed attempt never happened.
But life isn’t like a video game. We can never truly restart from the very beginning. Our communities have histories. Even at a person’s moment of birth, he or she exists in a family system, in a specific social location, within cultural constructs that have taken many centuries to build. The question before us is never really what we would do if we could start over; the question is always where we go from here.
The Israelite prophet Isaiah preached to his people in specific moments. Throughout his long ministry, he spoke words of judgment and doom and words of hope and restoration. He spoke to a nation that, like our own, had long-lived, deeply embedded sins that threatened its very identity from within. He spoke to a nation that was under threat from forces outside its borders. He spoke to a nation on the brink of destruction. He was unsparing in his truth-telling.
And Isaiah was just as adamant in proclaiming God’s words of hope to a frightened and wayward people. Isaiah could see that on the other side of decay and defeat lay restoration. Isaiah could see that God’s faithfulness was the one thing that no internal strife and no invading army could ever destroy.
The words of Isaiah pointed ultimately to Jesus of Nazareth, who suffered on behalf of Israel, who suffered and was judged on behalf of the whole world. The words of Isaiah remind us today that God remains with his people in the midst of suffering, that God remains faithful to his people even when we actively work against his vision for the world. The words of Isaiah remind us that, on the other side of death (both literal and figurative) lie renewal and new life.
As we wrestle with our long history of death-dealing, as we wrestle with new challenges and anxieties and threats, may we be participants in new life. May we be redeemed and restored through the work of the God who is always faithful.
Friday, June 12, 2020
Yet you know me, Lord;
you see me and test my thoughts about you. – Jeremiah 12:3
Physics and Economics. Those were the two classes in high school that I have no clue how I passed. The day-to-day memories are fuzzy now, but what I recall about each of these classes is how embarrassingly in-the-dark I felt most of the time. I always felt steps behind, like I’d missed an essential memo or something, but had to forge ahead anyway. I somehow got by, but always with fingers crossed.
If I could give my 17-year-old self one piece of academic advice, it would be this: ask the teacher to help you understand. Come in before or after school and ask questions! It seems so obvious now, but at the time, that option never even occurred to me. Something within me felt embarrassed that I didn’t understand. And I simply didn’t see the student-teacher relationship in those terms. But asking for help would have made all the difference for me.
When it comes to talking with God, do you ever forget you can ask questions? Like…real questions? Do you ever feel like you shouldn’t have questions in the first place?
The prophet Jeremiah faced massive confusion. The world around him was falling apart. He was uncertain of his purpose. He felt betrayed by the people closest to him. Tough times were ahead. In Chapter 12, Jeremiah brings his confusion, his questions, even his complaints, directly to God. Take a look at the first three verses of this chapter. Jeremiah says…
You are always righteous, Lord,
when I bring a case before you.
Yet I would speak with you about your justice:
Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
Why do all the faithless live at ease?
You have planted them, and they have taken root;
they grow and bear fruit.
You are always on their lips
but far from their hearts.
Yet you know me, Lord;
you see me and test my thoughts about you.
I appreciate the earnesty with which Jeremiah addresses God. He’s saying, “Lord, I know you’re good, and that’s why I’m so bewildered at what’s going on. What I know about you and what I see around me don’t add up. Why do things work this way? Make sense of it for me. You know my thoughts. Make me understand.”
Sometimes I forget that my interaction with God is a dialogue. But Jeremiah shows us what it means to really, truly talk with God. He lays it all out there. He asks why. He says, I understand some things about you, but other things go right over my head.
A life of obeying God is not free of confusion. But Jeremiah reminds us that we can bring our confusion—even our confusion about God—directly to God. When we feel confused, we ask the Teacher to help us understand.
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied. – Mark 6:41-42
This story shows up in each of the gospels and it’s definitely in my list of the top 5 greatest moments of Jesus’ ministry (also on that list is Jesus calling Nathaniel by saying he saw him under a fig tree and Jesus rising from the dead).
This huge crowd had gathered and Jesus was teaching them late into the day. Seeing the time passing by, the disciples realize these people are going to be hungry and they don’t have enough food to feed them. So the disciples come to Jesus with their plan: Jesus needs to dismiss the crowd so they can head off to nearby villages and buy something to eat.
But instead of doing what the disciples suggest, Jesus enlists them to be part of the solution. He tells them to collect what food they have and bring it to him. Then he blesses what they put before him and turns it into more than enough. Each person is able to eat until they are satisfied.
What I appreciate about this passage is that it really is a window into what a life in relationship with God looks like. We take our meager resources, or what may seem like our small and seemingly insignificant abilities, and trust that God will do something with them. God is deeply interested in using what we bring.
This quote from theologian NT Wright sums it up well…
“This is how it works whenever someone is close enough to Jesus to catch a glimpse of what he’s doing and how they could help. We blunder in with our ideas. We offer, uncomprehending, what little we have. Jesus takes ideas, loaves and fishes, money, a sense of humor, time, energy, talents, love, artistic gifts, skill with words, quickness of eye or fingers, whatever we have to offer. He holds them before his father with prayer and blessing. Then, breaking them so they are ready for use, he gives them back to us to give to those who need them.”
God values each one of us so much that God wants to use us to help set things right, so much that God will take whatever we have to offer and use it for his good. As we go into this day, may we be attentive to and respond to the people around us in need of the satisfaction that only comes from knowing God.
