Gratitude Is For Adoration

“For who is God, but the Lord?” – Psalm 18:31

“Gratitude exclaims, very properly: 'How good of God to give me this.' Adoration says, 'What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!' One's mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.” – C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly On Prayer

One could view Psalm 18 as David’s gratitude log: God delivered him his enemy, Saul. Pretty good thing to log for the day. But he goes well beyond thanksgiving, well beyond a kind of self-interested gratitude, doesn’t he? This is a song of adoration, not only about what he is thankful for, but what it reveals to him about God. Reminds me of a story C.S. Lewis tells in one of his letters:

“I was standing in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are two very different experiences.”

Psalm 18 is David standing in the sunbeam, looking 90 million miles away, seeing a God before whom the earth reels, who breathes smoke, who rides on the wind, who speaks like thunder, who also lifts him up with gentleness, who makes his feet like the deer. What seems like hyperbole to us dust-viewers is merely the difference between looking at the beam and looking into it. 

Moving from entitlement or habitual inattentiveness to gratitude is only the first step: the next is moving from gratitude to adoration. From “what am I thankful for?” to “what does this show me about God that I admire?” It is to take a step into the sunbeam and gaze up into it. To recognize the divine source of all pleasure. To see that they speak of some far country we long for: that they are not only the hope of that place, but an exposition of it. “This heavenly fruit is instantly redolent of the orchard where it grew,” Lewis writes. “This sweet air whispers of the country from whence it blows. It is a message. We know we are being touched by a finger of that right hand at which there are pleasures for evermore. There need be no question of thanks or praise as a separate event, something done afterwards. To experience the tiny theophany is itself to adore.”

Eventually, yes, we learn to experience the pleasure and the adoration it evokes as a single event, just as we cannot hear a bird’s song without thinking of the bird, or see the marks of letters on a page without thinking of the word they make. It is good to begin with small, ordinary pleasures: to adore not from high, cerebral theology, but from the everyday things we feel and see. A child’s soft cheek, the refreshing chill in the air as fall arrives, the smell of a new journal. For who is God, but you, O Lord?

Invitation To Hiddenness

“‘The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’ He told them another parable, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.’” – Matthew 13:31-33

“Even when I don't see it, You're working

Even when I can't feel it, You're working

You never stop, You never stop working

You never stop, You never stop working”

- ‘Waymaker,’ Sinach

The kingdom of God is told here by story, a kingdom radically unlike how Jesus’ followers conceived of kingdom. Rather than an external, manifest, militaristic, materialistic reign, Jesus’ kingdom arrives small, and hidden.

A single mustard seed is 1-2 millimeters in diameter; a yeast cell even less. Entirely unremarkable. The seed is sown, the yeast is mixed, and essentially, at that point, they both disappear. But given time, enough time, change happens. One day there is an enormous tree that provides shelter; risen dough that provides nourishment. 

The invitation to allow God to govern more of our hearts and minds is not a clarion call to raise the standard and storm the castle. There are spiritual battles, of course, but at heart the invitation to God’s kingdom is an invitation to hiddenness. It is not so much an outward striving as an inward posturing, placing ourselves in the hands of the gardener and bread-maker, allowing ourselves to receive. It is not about controlling the process in ourselves or others as much as an exercise in faith, in trust that transformation will occur in due time. That growth is happening even when we cannot see or measure it. It takes time for seeds to break open as life emerges, for trees to grow up, slow and strong, for the yeast to spread cell by cell through the dough. 

Henri Nouwen writes in his book The Inner Voice of Love: “As you come to realize that God is beckoning you to a greater hiddenness, do not be afraid of that invitation. Over the years you have allowed the voices that call you to action and great visibility to dominate your life. You still think, even against your own best intuitions, that you need to do things and be seen in order to follow your vocation. But you are now discovering that God’s voice is saying, ‘Stay home, and trust that your life will be fruitful even when hidden.’”

Lessons In The Dark

“In the night also my heart instructs me.” – Psalm 16:7

“Your religion is what you do with your solitude.” – Archbishop William Temple

David doesn’t actually write “my heart” here. He writes, “my kidneys,” Hebrew kilyah. According to an article in the American Journal of Nephrology, “While the Syrians and the Arabs viewed the liver as the center of life, the kidneys, in contrast, held a primary place of importance in Israel. In Hebrew tradition, they were considered to be the most important internal organs along with the heart. In the Old Testament most frequently the kidneys are associated with the most inner stirrings of emotional life. But they are also viewed as the seat of the secret thoughts of the human... the kidneys thus are primarily used as a metaphor for the core of the person, for the area of greatest vulnerability.”

Sounds a bit strange, but perhaps not unlike the way we use the word “heart”; after all, the translators merely substituted one organ for another. Internal organs that function in involuntary darkness. Have you marveled at the recesses of your body, the things it does where no light ever shines? Your atrial valves opening, the ventricles contracting, millions of nephrons filtering a hundred milliliters a minute? In college, while every else partied on a Friday night, I would slip into a dark lab, anesthetize rats, and filet them open to find their kidneys. I saw my first live human kidney during a laparoscopic case my third year of medical school. I remember the first time I slipped my gloved hand into the recesses of a patient’s open abdomen, slippery organs parting before my fingers. 

Makes me think about mental laparotomies in the dark. In the moments stripped of distractions and prompts, lying there at night, where do our minds wander? What do we habitually think about when we don’t have to think about anything? What do we most like daydreaming about? What fantasies give us most comfort? What unprompted feelings surface in the dark? What involuntary longings rise?

Perhaps we think about a romantic figure or storyline, a dream house, a fantasy vacation, a job promotion, an object to acquire. Perhaps we feel anxiety, anger, boredom, despair, anticipation. These things, David says, teach us something valuable. Those feelings may be our truest ones; those longings a window into the deepest parts of ourselves. The things we think about, as Temple suggests, may be what we truly adore, what we worship. They are our gods. To consume them without regard, Keller suggests, is like popping pieces of candy between meals: these habitual comforts can blunt our hunger for God.

At times my thoughts in the night have illuminated lifelong addictions or idols that I have needed to work through. At times they relate to aspects of myself I have been unable to exercise in this stage of life, and for which I am thankful. At times they are sheer escapism, and I need to face what I fear. What do your thoughts and feelings tend towards in the dark, and what do they teach you?

Sexual Sin

“How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” – Genesis 39:9b

It is a common fallacy to think as singles that our struggles with sexual sin—pornography, masturbation, erotic literature, mental fantasies—will evaporate once we get married and actually have sex. For one thing, those inescapably addictive and progressive things train us to desire and expect something completely different from what the realities of sex in marriage is like. Whether we realize it or not, we are internalizing a cultural view of sex that is about self-gratification, performance, objectification, and idealized as being the ultimate source of fulfillment and an end unto itself (Keller uses the term “apocalyptic sex” in his book Counterfeit Gods). Whereas sex as God created it to be in marriage is about giving of yourself, being vulnerable in an unconditional atmosphere of trust, and ultimately points back to God. Sex in our culture is about consumerism; sex in marriage is about relating, and takes work and time to grow in.

For another thing, I am increasingly convinced that our ultimate struggle in this area is a spiritual one. It is not a matter of biology, or willpower, or understanding how much it hurts your spouse, hurts every area of your life—though those things are a part of it, as we see in Joseph’s story. In the “day after day” struggle, Joseph “would not listen to her… He left… and fled” (verses 10, 13): there is an element of willpower, choice and preparation as we safeguard against the ways and times we are prone to listen, as we find others to help, as we flee. 

But if we go back before those verbs and look at what Joseph says during the only time he speaks in this entire episode, we find something unexpected. In verse 8, he responds to an invitation to sexual sin by talking about his master. One would expect him to conclude, “how then can I sin against my master?” That would be logical. Instead, he makes a total pivot. He says, “How then can I… sin against God?”—and this in a place where no one, least of all the person he was addressing, believed in God. It’s almost as if he was speaking to himself, revealing the inner workings of his own heart.

Ultimately, we must look at God, grow in seeing his face, until in the moment of temptation this too rises up in us: how can I do this, this sin against God? Too often, we confess to ourselves rather than God; we don’t see the degree and depth of wickedness as God sees it; we don’t truly repent or plead for the Holy Spirit to help us. We don’t flee but we linger. We listen just a little bit. But when we encounter the holiness of God, and our love for Him, we become truly willing to fight the battles, whatever it takes. 

It is a battle, and there is suffering. Despite it all, Joseph ends up in prison for years. Hebrews 2:18 speaks of Jesus this way: “For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” Have you thought of temptation as suffering? Those who give in the least suffer the most. C.S. Lewis writes: “A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.”

Jesus is able to help. He intercedes for us (Romans 8:34), as does the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:27). God can reveal himself to us in this area. We are not alone. We can identify with and become like Jesus even in the very midst of the struggle. 

Take My Yoke

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” – Matthew 11:28-30

“Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, 

Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, 

   where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; 

   hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.” 

– Puritan prayer

If you’re tired, most people would say, stop working. Go to Tahoe, or a spa; get some self-care. Not that there’s anything wrong with those things. But no one would say, go get under a yoke and plow a field.

Jesus says the way to find rest is not to stop working, but to take his yoke. What does this mean? It involves recognizing there can be what Keller calls “the work under the work,” the need to prove and save ourselves, to achieve worth and identity, through our work. This kind of striving never ceases, in play or labor. There is a letting go of this that comes when we come to Jesus. To take a yoke, we change our posture: head bent, not looking too high. We become meek and lowly as Jesus is. There is a yielding there that is learned and received, a yielding that is rest. 

There is then a walking in step. Nearly all yokes are made for two animals, typically oxen, for the purpose of alignment, to guide them in the same direction. I wonder if Jesus is the other one bearing the yoke with us, as he refers to it as his yoke? We walk in step with him, there is a rhythm: pause when he does, bear the load forward when he does. He bears the load with us, which makes it easier, easier to know he knows exactly what we feel. He loves us, and we see every day as a chance to live out in our labor, and in our Sabbath rests, our love for him. This is the easy yoke, the light burden, the received rest.

Meekness

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” – Matthew 5:5

Does anyone else find the list of traits Jesus chooses for the beatitudes mystifying? If we, here in the Bay Area, were to choose ten or fewer traits that we felt would most describe people who are happy, would we choose any of the ones Jesus does?

Meekness is not something most of us talk or think much about. David Brooks points out that one of the assumptions in our culture is “the centrality of accomplishment”: we are not measured by conforming to a code, or the “thickness” of our relationships, but by what we have individually achieved. It’s okay to be self-oriented, to promote the self. “The meritocracy,” he writes, “is the most self-confidant moral system in the world today… it subliminally sends the message that those who are smarter and more accomplished are actually worth more than those who are not.” Coupled with this is a sense of entitlement, and all of it is insidious. On some level, it’s very hard not to believe that I am worth more, that I deserve more, because I achieved more. 

But that is not the moral economy of the kingdom of Christ. Those who will inherit the earth, who will gain it all, are the meek. Lloyd-Jones writes, “Meekness is essentially a true view of oneself, expressing itself in attitude and conduct with respect to others… when I have that true view of myself in terms of poverty of spirit, and mourning because of my sinfulness, I am led on to see that there must be an absence of pride. The meek man is not proud of himself, he does not in any sense glory in himself… he does not assert himself… does not demand anything for himself… The man who is truly meek is the one who is amazed that God and man can think of him as well as they do and treat him as well as they do.” In demeanor and behavior, a meek man is mild, lowly, of a quiet spirit, patient and long-suffering, without a spirit of retaliation, ready to listen and learn with a teachable spirit.

Meekness is Abraham letting Lot have the first pick of the land, Moses not defending himself before Aaron and Miriam, David not retaliating against Saul’s unjust treatment, Jeremiah allowing unkind things to be said behind his back, Stephen being stoned, Paul’s willingness to suffer and bear disparaging remarks, and Jesus himself, the “meek and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11), who did not regard his equality with God a thing to be grasped (Philippians 2).

This isn’t something we can generate on our own. I think Lloyd-Jones is right in saying it is listed third for a reason: we first have to learn what it means to be poor in spirit, that we have nothing before a holy God, and to mourn, to truly grieve sin—and that can only be a work of the Holy Spirit in us, I think, to open our eyes in those ways. To be meek is then to turn that outwards, before others, to be willing to let them turn the spotlight on us, without the need to defend or assert ourselves.

Meekness is not self-abasement because these things are done in the presence of God, and in his presence we see our high worth. Look at the promises here: while they are promises for the future, they are instantaneous as well. To be spiritually impoverished is to be open to the gospel and the kingdom. To mourn is to repent and be comforted at once with the joy of forgiveness and deliverance. To be meek is to be as Paul, “having nothing, yet possessing everything” (2 Corinthians 6). Meekness is not weakness, but is compatible with great strength, authority, and power. It is so radically counter-cultural that it is worth our attention. What does it mean for me to be meek? Who do I know in my life who is meek? How do I grow in meekness in my life?

Foundations

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” – Matthew 7:24

David Brooks describes in his book The Second Mountain one of the things that happens when, “from the most structured and supervised childhood in human history, you get spit out after graduation into the least structured young adulthood in human history”—you get “insecure overachievers.” These are people who treat adulthood like a continuation of school, who look for direction through prestigious companies or programs telling them what to do. The term was first coined by Matias Dalsgaard, who wrote: “Such a person must have no stable or solid foundation to build upon, and yet nonetheless tries to build his way out of his problem. It’s an impossible situation. You can’t compensate for having a foundation made of quicksand by building a new story on top. But this person takes no notice and hopes that the problem down in the foundation won’t be found out if only the construction work on top keeps going.”

I see this around me, and I lived it myself to some degree in my early adulthood. You keep thinking you’re going to make it when you “arrive,” but there’s always something else—a house, a house in a better location, a husband, kids, “successful” kids, finishing the degree, getting hired, getting promoted, and on and on. “How do I succeed?” eclipses “Why am I doing this?” Jobs become careers, not vocations. Growth becomes about outward benchmarks, not inward transformation. Life becomes about doing, not being. We think we are free, doing what we want and deciding for ourselves, but really we are following external cues, turning ourselves into the kind of people who work where we work or live where we live, without intentionally considering what that is, or whether it is something that satisfies our souls. 

Several things are implied in this passage: first, we all build our lives on something, whether we are aware of it or not. There is rock or sand; nothing in-between. Second, external stressors are to be expected. They will happen. Third, the most important thing is unseen, subterranean, and in fact, the houses we build may look identical in every other aspect. But a house is only as good as its foundation. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes, “Though the difference between the two houses is not obvious, it is nevertheless vital, for ultimately the most important thing about a house is the foundation. This is a truth which is frequently emphasized in the Bible. The foundation, which seems so insignificant and unimportant because it is out of sight, is nevertheless the most vital and important thing of all. If the foundation is wrong, everywhere else must be wrong.”

How do we have the right foundation? Mere belief is not enough. Jesus is speaking here to people who would call themselves believers; his warning is not against non-Christianity but pseudo-Christianity, Pharisaical religiosity. Our foundations are not a matter of intellectual assent, external appearance, or stated ideals: they are what we hear and do, what we are attending to and living out. Our foundation is our faith, true faith, which without works is dead.

This is a challenge to all of us. If workaholism has distracted us from our spiritual lives, it is a challenge to examine what we are building our lives on. If we call ourselves Christian, it is a challenge to examine how well we listen to and live out the sermon on the mount. How well do we know Jesus’ teaching? Does it make a difference in how we live? This is the point on which everything, the entire construction of our lives, is based.

When Trouble Comes

“But I have trusted in your steadfast love;

my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord,

because he has dealt bountifully with me.”

- Psalm 13:5-6

Two January’s ago, I went through a period of what I ended up calling “situational dysthymia.” The opening of this Psalm reminded me of that time: wondering how long it would last and having a sense of helplessness about how I felt (v1), not always able to sense God’s presence (v1), having to counsel myself to live a normal life every day (v2), taking longer to fall asleep (v3), not feeling up to being with people (v4).

At the time I took notes from Phil Ryken’s When Trouble Comes that were helpful—he looked at the lives of Spurgeon, Elijah, David, Job, Isaiah, and Jesus and wrote, “all of this leads me to accept seasons of doubt, discouragement and depression as a normal part of life in a fallen world.” It’s okay to be unhappy and say that you are unhappy. Keep on keeping on, he says: tell faithful friends and get support from them, stay in the Word, eat something healthy every day even if your appetite is low, exercise, try to be present with your children, take walks in nature, keep going to church.

While the first four verses are David’s present reality—we learn that it’s normal to feel this way and okay to talk with God openly about it—in the last two verses, David speaks only in terms of the past and the future. It’s another chiasm, the past flanking the future. In the Hebrew, there are only eight words:

batach (but I have trusted)- lit, “to set one’s hope and confidence in”

checed (in your steadfast love)- lit, “to show oneself to be good or kind”

leb (my heart)- lit, “the inner part of me, including mind, will, feelings”

giyl (shall rejoice)- lit, “to spin around under the influence of a violent emotion”

yeshuw’ah (in your salvation)- lit, passive participle of “save or deliver”

shiyr (I will sing)- lit… to sing

Yehovah (unto the Lord)- the unpronounced name of God, from root “to exist”

Gamal (because he has dealt bountifully with me)- lit, “to treat well”

Interestingly, the last word of the Psalm, gamal, is translated elsewhere “wean” (as in baby) or “ripen” (as in fruit); it has the connotation of cherishing and warming. David looks back, to God’s kindness and gamal, and ahead, to joy and singing. Not only perhaps in the sense of musical worship, but as he was a composer and musician, also in the sense of not losing who he is, his vocation and sense of self. All of it frames this alliterative yeshuw-ah – yehovah: the God who simply exists, beyond and above all situations. The one by whom we are delivered. 

How do I equip myself to be able to pray as David when times of trouble come? Can I recount the gamal of God in my life? Have I allowed myself to experience and express sorrow and giyl? How well do I know this Yehovah? David is honest about his present, but he also sees that God is the sovereign God of all time. He sees he is not able to save himself. He is able to experience his feelings, yet realize that there has been, and will be, a savior and a reality beyond them.  

Words Like Silver

“The words of the Lord are pure words,

like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,

purified seven times.”

- Psalm 12:8

When I say, “hold on a minute,” the younger kids have gotten in a habit of counting out loud. They figure I should be there by the time they count to sixty. And I can’t really blame them. When we first had kids, I made up my mind never to break a promise, and now I find myself having to explain that not meaning what you say is just sometimes how it goes. I think about how often we say things we don’t entirely mean, like “oh, I’m sorry,” “I’ll pray for you,” “we should get together sometime.” How easy it is to exaggerate or minimize the truth in various contexts; how mixed the motives behind our words can be. How easy it is to speak without accountability.

In this Psalm, David feels endangered, not from physical weapons or war, but from the tongues of people around him—tongues that lie, that speak from a double heart, that are flattering, that make great boasts. This is a prayer about language, about feeling attacked, hurt, lonely, used by the words of others. Framed in contrast is verse eight, David’s single description of the words of the Lord.

Apparently native silver is a rare element; silver is usually found combined with lead. In ancient times, silver was extracted by heating the lead ore to a high enough temperature to melt it. Because lead melts at anywhere from 327-888 degrees Celsius, but silver at 960 degrees, typically furnaces would have to reach 960-1000 degrees. Pure silver does not react chemically, but lead does; once melted, the lead reacts with organic matter in these ground furnaces to oxidize into lead monoxide, a compound knows as “litharge,” leaving pure silver behind. 

David says God’s words are like silver that has been refined like that, not once, but seven times, the number of perfection and completion. This tells me several things: God’s words are indeed perfect and complete. “Not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished,” Jesus says (Matthew 5:18). There is nothing missing; I can ask in faith for God to speak what he needs to me each day through my daily reading. God’s word is pure, without hidden motives or impurities, undiluted, completely trustworthy. He says what he means, every time, and means what he says. God’s word is precious, of great value. By Roman times, shekels of silver were used as currency, probably due to silver being harder and more durable than gold. Silver refined seven times would have been very valuable.

These are your words, David says, and I have them. I have your promise to save, to guard me in safety, and I know you will keep your word. They are to me like silver that has gone through the furnace seven times. This is good encouragement to us, to keep reading every day. When we are wearied or hurt by the maliciousness or meaninglessness of the words around us, to remember God’s words and promises to us. To ponder their value and how they have saved us in dangerous times.

Longing For Love

“And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, ‘This time I will praise the Lord.’ Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing.” – Genesis 29:35

Names seem important in Leah’s life. We are introduced to her by name in Genesis 29:16: “The name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.” While “Rachel” is from the Hebrew word for ewe, perhaps anticipating her job as a shepherdess, “Leah” is from the Hebrew la’ah, meaning “weary; to tire, be exhausted.” Doesn’t seem like the most favorable name for a child. The next verse literally says, “Rachel had a good figure, and on top of that was beautiful,” which suggests by contrast that Leah’s eye weakness was a cosmetic one. She grows up in this context, is aware she is not desired at her wedding, sees her husband trying to get another wife for seven years, and thereafter is the less-favored wife.

But God sees Leah, and we see this progression in the names she gives her sons:

Reuben, Hebrew Re’uwben, from ra’ah (see!) and ben (son), “because the Lord has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me”

Simeon, Hebrew Shim-own, from shama (hear), “because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also”

Levi, Hebrew Leviy, from lavah (to twine, attach), “now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons”

Judah, Hebrew Yehuwdah, from yadah (to praise, to confess), “this time I will praise the Lord”

We see here a kind of conversation between Leah and God. God initiates by opening Leah’s womb. Leah realizes God has seen her. She realizes God has heard her. She is able to name her suffering, how she feels afflicted and hated. But she still throughout longs for love from her husband. God does not stop speaking to her—he gives her son, after son, after son, after son, until we hear her response: I will praise the Lord. The word yadah is translated elsewhere both “give thanks” and “confess.” It literally means “to throw, cast,” and can have the connotation of extended hands. I picture Leah here, hands extended as she holds her fourth son, this word of confession and praise rising up in response to God’s fourth answer to her. Somehow, along the way, she changed.

Ruth Haley Barton writes in Sacred Rhythms that our longings are the truest thing about us. I see unmet longings for love all around me: longing for romantic love, for love from a father or mother or friend. Longing for union, longing to be taken care of, longing to not feel lonely. So much of the spiritual journey is in naming our longings and finding them met in God’s presence. Leah’s journey is all of ours. 

God, of course, continues the conversation, for it is through Judah’s line that Jesus comes. As Sally Lloyd-Jones writes in The Jesus Storybook Bible: “This Prince would love God’s people. They wouldn’t need to be beautiful for him to love them. He would love them with all of his heart. And they would be beautiful because he loved them. Like Leah.”

Fasting For The Bridegroom

“And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.’” – Matthew 9:15

Jesus says in Matthew 6:16, “And when you fast,” not “if you fast.” While fasting is not explicitly commanded in the Bible, it is assumed to be a normal part of the spiritual life. People in the Bible fasted to express mourning or repentance, to seek answers in prayer or at times of great need, to worship God. Richard Foster describes secondary purposes such as revealing things that control us, reminding us that we are sustained by God, or helping keep balance in our lives.

It’s interesting that the only other place Jesus talks about fasting, here in Matthew 9, he describes a different kind of purpose. While there is some dispute in interpreting the latter part of the verse, I tend to feel that Jesus is referring to the time between his ascension and second coming. While we have the Holy Spirit—who is so valuable it was worth Jesus going away to have him!— there is also a sense in which we are not with Jesus as we will be. There is tension between having the kingdom of God now, yet wanting more. Fasting is a way of expressing our sadness at Jesus’ absence and our longing for his return.

Have you thought much about this, the fasting of the lover who is waiting for the return of the bridegroom? The first time I did, I realized my fasting had been so self-centered—not that one can’t fast for petitionary reasons, of course—but at the heart of it, I wanted things, not Jesus. My eyes were turned towards myself, not him.

But fasting this way, it feels like I’m saying, Jesus, the reality of my soul and being is that I want you more than I want food or anything else on this earth. I feel your absence; I’m sad about that, sad about the ways this world is broken. I’m sad about how my sense of your presence so often comes and goes with my mood and circumstances. I hunger for you to come back, to be with me forever and make everything new. My hope is in that more than it is in my next meal.

This kind of fasting reminds us what we are really waiting for. N.T. Wright writes in his book Surprised By Hope: “The presence we know at the moment—the presence of Jesus with his people in word and sacrament, by the Spirit, through prayer, in the faces of the poor—is of course related to that future presence, but the distinction between them is important and striking. Jesus’ appearance will be, for those of us who have known and loved him here, like meeting face-to-face someone we have only known by letter, telephone, or email.” We are waiting for that, longing for that moment and all it will mean for us and the world and the feast that is to come. As John writes at the end of Revelation: "He who testifies to these things says, 'Surely I am coming soon.' Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!"

The Spiritual Discipline Of Secrecy

“And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” – Matthew 6:4, 6, 18

“Thou are not the holier though thou be praised nor the more vile though thou be blamed or dispraised. What thou art, that thou art; that God knoweth thee to be and thou canst be said to be no greater… For a man not to wish to be comforted by any creature is a token of great purity and inward trust. He that seeketh no outward witness for himself, it appeareth openly that he hath committed himself all wholly to God.” – Thomas a Kempis

“We are saved by grace, of course, and by it alone… But grace does not mean that sufficient strength and insight will be automatically ‘infused’ into our being in the moment of need. Abundant evidence for this claim is available precisely in the experience of any Christian. We only have to look at the facts. A baseball player who expects to excel in the game without adequate exercise of his body is no more ridiculous than the Christian who hopes to be able to act in the manner of Christ when put to the test without the appropriate exercise in godly living.” – Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines

As an enneagram type three, I tend to be motivated by acknowledgement from others and making a good impression. I tend to like others knowing about my accomplishments. Even if I know I shouldn’t, it creeps up on me almost subconsciously. “Being a Three and living in America is like being an alcoholic living above a saloon,” writes Cron and Stabile in The Road Back To You—and I would say that is particularly true of living in the Bay Area. But all of us have this tendency, to act better when we’re being observed by others. How many of us are kinder to strangers than we are at times to our own spouse?

Jesus says in Matthew 6:1, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” He isn’t saying, “don’t let anyone ever see you living rightly”—a city set on a hill cannot be hidden, after all—but he is saying, be careful if being seen by other people becomes too much of a reason you live rightly. It’s not that we oughtn’t care about rewards, but precisely because we ought to care about the right rewards, the rewards that matter. 

Sometimes when God brings a particular sinful tendency to our attention, it’s helpful to practice a spiritual discipline that counters it, and one that can be helpful in this area is the discipline of secrecy. Quite simply, it’s when we abstain from causing our good deeds or qualities to be known. We do so with the intention of helping ourselves “lose or tame the hunger for fame, justification, or just the mere attention of others… we learn to love to be unknown and even to accept misunderstanding without the loss of our peace, joy, or purpose” (The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 172). There are many ways to practice this: ask God to reveal areas where we tend to need acknowledgement or accolade; find places to serve that don’t require others knowing we’ve done it; be mindful to honor confidentiality; take a break from social media; discuss accomplishments of others rather than our own. I like how Willard puts it: “We allow him [God] to decide when our deeds will be known and when our light will be noticed.” As Kempis writes, it can bring a new kind of wholeness, intimacy, and purity in our relationship with God. It can reveal aspects of how we see our own worth. It can increase our trust in God to do the work in others or reveal things in his own time. It can bring us to experiences when we are actually more excited by the accomplishments of others than our own.

“And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” In the end, the longing of the performing heart is to be seen, truly seen, and this is part of the promise. Not only the reward, but the seeing of the Father. Sometimes, when Elijah gets upset, I hold him and say, “I see you, Elijah. I see you, I see you.” Your Father sees you. What is secret from others is in plain view before Him. That’s the secret of the whole thing.

The Servant With Sacred Eyes

“The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether the Lord had prospered his journey or not.” – Genesis 24:21

The oldest servant of Abraham (whom some commentators think is Eliezar from Genesis 15:2, but we don’t know for sure) has been stewarded with a high-stakes task here, so difficult that he asks for a way to make it easier, which Abraham refuses. The servant takes a serious oath. He travels from Beer-lahai-roi to Haran, which had since been named Nahor, a journey of 450-500 miles that would have taken him about a month to complete. He asks God for something specific—not such a departure from daily routine that it would have been unimaginable, but exceeding social standards sufficiently as to call for something remarkable—and “before he had finished speaking, behold, Rebekah” (Genesis 24:15).

Apparently camels drink up to 20 gallons of water or more when thirsty. Considering Rebekah had only the one jar, was letting each camel not just sip but drink until they were “finished,” had to “go down” or perhaps descend in some fashion to access the well, and a gallon of water weighs 8.3 pounds—even with her running as she was, watering ten camels probably took her an hour or more. The entire time, the servant does not speak a word. He doesn't distract himself with small talk or attempt to help. He doesn’t ask her name or marital status. He doesn’t interview her or run down a checklist of ideal attributes for a wife. He doesn’t try to figure out how willing she might be to leave for a strange land. He is intentional: he prepares for the journey, he prays, and he does not travel alone (24:59). But in this moment, the crucial moment, he watches in silence.

Parenting is a bit like this journey: it’s high-stakes, the end is unseen, and we travel it as stewards entrusted with our children, servants representing God as the one in the story represented Abraham. But when we parent, it’s hard to do as the servant does. Instead of being intentional in preparing, we react in stress. Instead of praying, specifically and situationally, we analyze and worry. Instead of finding people to walk with, or ways to support ourselves along the way, we push alone until we are too depleted. And instead of watching in silence, we jump in to act.

Lately I’ve been thinking about this concept of having what Ruth Haley Barton calls “sacred eyes.” She describes it this way in her book Invitation to Solitude and Silence: “I turn inward to that place of quiet where I had grown accustomed to meeting God. I asked God to give me sacred eyes—set-apart eyes to see and feel and know spiritual reality in this moment.” Julian of Norwich writes of being present to God when in the company of others, “I look at God, I look at you, and I keep looking at God.” I think this is the kind of gaze the servant had: he was looking at Rebekah, but for the purpose of learning from God about Rebekah. He was holding both in his mind and view. 

As a parent, I want to see my children this way. I want to see this way before I act. Instead of reacting in frustration or correction to emotional outbursts or quarreling, I want to ask God first for eyes to see the true heart of the issue or need. Instead of experiencing the kids as interruptions, I want to have moments when I pause from tasks to focus on them fully. I want to sense God’s love for them filling my own heart.

I don’t think it’s an accident that the servant who gazes is the one who prays. The best way to practice having sacred eyes is to become accustomed to God’s presence in solitude and silence. Then we can turn inward to that place during times of clamor. We can, like Abraham’s servant, gaze in silence amidst the bustle at the well, discerning God’s answers to the most important questions in our heart. 

Forgiveness

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” – Matthew 6:14-15

“But does it teach that I am forgiven only because I have forgiven? No, the teaching is, and we have to take this teaching seriously, that if I do not forgive, I am not forgiven. I explain it like this: a man who has seen himself as a guilty, vile sinner before God knows his only hope of heaven is that God has forgiven him freely. The man who truly sees and knows and believes that, is one who cannot refuse to forgive another. So the man who does not forgive another does not know forgiveness himself.” – Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, p12

This verse has always bothered me, because it makes God’s forgiveness sound conditional. But, like Lloyd-Jones likes to say, “If you find yourself arguing with the Sermon on the Mount at any point, it means either that there is something wrong with you or else that your interpretation of the Sermon is wrong. I find that very valuable.” There’s something to that. The parts that grate on me the most are probably the parts worth pressing in to.

This verse bothered me because it seems like Jesus is saying, “if you do it for others, then I’ll do it for you,” like a bargain. But I think he’s actually saying, “if you do it for others, then you’ll know that you understand what I did for you,” like a fact, a statement of truth. 

I think too often, I don’t really receive God’s forgiveness as much as I bestow forgiveness on myself. It’s a kind of self-absolution, to avoid feeling guilty, so I can make myself feel better rather than truly change. I don’t see the depth or true nature of my sin, and I don’t see the cost of the forgiveness I receive. 

Reminds me of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in The Cost of Discipleship about costly grace: “Instead of following Christ, let the Christian enjoy the consolations of his grace! That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves… Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has… It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him… Such grace... is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life… Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His Son… and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.”

Somehow, I think forgiving others should come easily to me, but in fact it should not. It cost Jesus his life. It should cost me something. It should cost me my life; it is the way of life as I follow Jesus. Just like receiving forgiveness from God can be a process—as I see and understand more about my own sin, as I learn and practice confession, as I open myself to receiving grace and forgiveness—forgiving others is a process. This is a good place to start, a kind of litmus test: if I cannot forgive someone else, how have I failed to receive God’s forgiveness for myself?

N.T. Wright writes that forgiveness is not a moral rule with attached sanctions: it is a way of life, God’s way of life, God’s way to life—“and if you close your heart to forgiveness, why, then you close your heart to forgiveness.. If you lock up the piano because you don’t want to play to somebody else, how can God play to you?... Not to forgive is to shut down a faculty in the innermost person, which happens to be the same faculty that can receive God’s forgiveness.”

God Is A Shield

“He is a shield to those who walk in integrity.” – Proverbs 2:7b

Tim Keller writes, “Proverbs is not a set of simple steps to a happy life for quick consumption,” but “a poetic art form that instills wisdom in you as you wrestle with it.” It’s like hard candy: bite down, and you get little out of it and a broken tooth; meditate, and the sweetness of insight comes. The word “proverb” is from the Hebrew masal: a poetic, terse, vivid, thought-provoking saying that conveys a truth in a few words. I like how this reading plan gives us a little bit of Proverbs each day.

The first thing this proverb does is promise me that if I walk in integrity, I will face dangers. One doesn’t need to be shielded otherwise. There are the dangers of spiritual warfare, in which we battle the schemes of the devil. “Put on the whole armor of God,” Paul writes in Ephesians, not “you there in the front lines, put on some armor; the rest of you can chill out.” There are the dangers of trials, which make it easy to grumble, give up or in too early, or lose hope or faith. “Count it joy, my brothers, when you meet trials,” writes James, not “if you meet trials.” 

But here, God is a shield. The Hebrew word is magen, from the root word ganan, which means “to protect.” It is translated in some versions as “buckler,” and refers to a smaller-sized shield, strapped to the left arm to block or parry blows at close range (unlike the Greek thureos Paul uses in Ephesians 6, which refers to a larger shield that covered the whole body). This tells me at least three things about God: first, he has the knowledge and foresight to anticipate the timing and direction of the blows that I face. A shield is only as good as when and where you position it; it needs to be at a certain place by a certain time to be effective. God is omniscient. Second, he has the power to stop the blow on impact; God is omnipotent. Third, God is close to me. He is right there with me during my closest and most intimate struggles. I am never alone; God is omnipresent.

But I have a part here too: I walk. This is something active and purposeful: I am not observing, or sitting, or shuffling around. Nor am I running, or leaping, trying to jump ahead as far as I can: I am moving forward one step at a time.

To what purpose? Moving forward in integrity. The Hebrew word tom here has a sense of wholeness and simplicity, of being undivided. I like how Dave defines this: as when our outward life matches our inward life. Would someone looking at my schedule feel it reflects what I claim to be important? Is what I tell the kids to do consistent with how I act in my own life or think in my own mind? Is there anything I do in the dark that I would not do in the light? Do I desire for outward acts of worship to reflect the true state of my heart and mind? 

We can choose to walk in integrity, even if we walk into battles and trials. But God knows, and sees, and protects with his power. The next part of this proverb says that he guards our paths and watches over our ways. One step at a time.

Hunger And Thirst

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” – Matthew 5:6

“To be hungry is not enough; I must be really starving to know what is in His heart towards me. … When the prodigal son was hungry he went to feed upon husks, but when he was starving, he turned to his father.” – J.N. Darby

What is righteousness? Unfortunately, in modern English that word often has the negative connotation of a condescending, rigid morality, a meaning almost synonymous with self-righteousness. But Biblically, the Greek word daikos has a relational side that the English word lacks: it means “to be right with”—as Keller puts it, “to be presentable,” “to pass inspection in the eyes of a significant other,” “to be found pleasing in the eyes of someone I want to please.” Righteousness here means wanting to be right with God: it encompasses both justification and sanctification. We receive righteousness by faith, but I think here too there’s a sense of the desire to be free from sin and its power, a longing to be positively holy.

What does it mean to “hunger and thirst”? Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes: “It means a consciousness of our need; it means a deep consciousness of our great need even to the point of pain. It means something that keeps on until it is satisfied. It does not mean just a passing feeling, a passing desire… Hunger is something deep and profound that goes on until it is satisfied. It hurts, it is painful; it is like actual, physical hunger and thirst. It is something that goes on increasing and makes one feel desperate.”

That’s true, isn’t it? Ellie came back from farm one day when I picked her up from school (yeah, their school has a farm), cheeks red and hair plastered with sweat, and she pretty much couldn’t think or talk about anything except drinking a glass of water, which she did as soon as she got home. When you’re truly hungry or thirsty, it’s the top thing on your mind. It’s something we’re active about. And it doesn’t stop. Isn’t it odd that we are designed such that, no matter how much we eat or drink, we will inevitably become hungry or thirsty again? 

In fact, the more we are filled, the more we hunger and thirst for what filled us. Our appetites are malleable. My friend who weaned herself off sugar, for example, found that after a few weeks, foods she found normal before now seemed distastefully sweet. I think of my appetite as something valuable to me—it is coinage I can spend on some kind of intake; once satiated, the appetite is gone, and what I have chosen to intake has changed me, and changed what I will long for, in some way or other. If I really hunger and thirst for righteousness, I will not only avoid anything patently harmful or sinful, but I will avoid anything that dulls my spiritual appetites. If I knew we were going to an all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ for dinner, would I go eat a bunch of snacks that afternoon? Of course not!

As Lloyd-Jones writes, “There are so many things… that are quite harmless in themselves and which are perfectly legitimate. Yet if you find that you are spending much of your time with them, and that you desire the things of God less, you must avoid them.”

What do my thoughts, feelings and actions say about what I am hungering and thirsting for? Jesus does not say, “hunger for happiness and you will find it,” but “hunger for righteousness and you will be happy.” Not only happy, but “satisfied”—Greek chortazo, which literally means “to gorge.” To feed in abundance, the same word used to describe the feeding of the four thousand, when there were seven full baskets of food left over (Mark 8), and the feeding of the five thousand, when there were twelve baskets left over (Luke 9). So much of what we hunger and thirst for leaves us unsatisfied: but deep longing for holiness, to be right before God, will leave us chortazo—fully satisfied, with more left over.

Chiasms In The Flood

I remember learning in high school Latin class about chiasms, a literary technique using an A-B-C-…-C’-B’-A’ structural pattern. Typically it serves to emphasize whatever is being framed in the center (which I’m told is particularly important in languages like Hebrew where there is no ability to emphasize with bold or italics). It can be used to clarify meaning, by comparing or contrasting B with its B’ counterpart, or for general emphasis given the repetitive nature of its structure.

Reading through Genesis 6-9, I was struck for the first time by the significance of the detailed accounts of time intervals, and then came across this chiastic structuring of the account (from Joe Carter of the Gospel Coalition):

A Noah (6:10a)

B  Shem, Ham, Japheth (10b)

C   Ark to be built (14-16)

D    Flood announced (17)

E     Covenant with Noah (18-20)

F      Food in ark (21)

G       Command to enter ark (7:1-3)

H        7 days waiting for flood (4-5)

I           7 days waiting for flood (7-10)

J            Entry to ark (11-15)

K            God shuts Noah in (16)

L             40 days flood (17a)

M             Waters increase (17b-18)

N               Mountains covered (18-20)

O                150 days water prevail (21-24)

P                  God remembers Noah (8:1)

O’               150 days water abate (3)

N’              Mountain tops visible (4-5)

M’             Waters abate (6)

L’            40 days waiting (6a)

K’           Noah opens window (6b)

J’           Raven and dove leave (7-9)

I’          7 days waiting (10-11)

H’        7 days waiting (12-13)

G’       Command to leave ark (15-17)

F’       Food outside ark (9:1-4)

E’      Covenant with all flesh (8-10)

D’     No flood in future (4-17)

C’    Ark (18a)

B’   Shem, Ham, Japeth (18b)

A’  Noah (19)

This is one person’s interpretation and some may argue with the partitioning, but the general structure brings out a few things. For one, it highlights as the center of the narrative “But God remembered” (Genesis 8:1). I had never really seen the focus of the story that way—we tend to think of ourselves, or maybe the parade of animals, at the center, but when we consider the ark a small speck on the entire watery planet, before a God with the power to undo creation, we see that the entire narrative turns on this point. God is a God who remembers us, and it is a remembrance that results in reversal.

Another takeaway is that Noah did a lot of waiting! For some reason, we tend to think of the flood as forty days long—while there are different interpretations of the exact number of days (not all agreeing with the above), most agree that Noah was in the ark for over a year, with active rain for only a fraction of that year. Can you imagine being inside a boat with the same few people and all the animals, endlessly caregiving and cleaning and stewarding, while waiting for the everlasting waters outside to recede? Sending out a bird, then waiting another seven days before sending out another? Or before that: loading up the ark, then waiting seven days before the first drop of rain falls?

Noah utters not one word of complaint. Interestingly, he utters not one word at all in this entire passage. He listens and does as God commands, nearly always when it made no sense, and waited, nearly always for something he could not see (be it water or land). So much of the spiritual life is in learning to wait well. “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:25). Nouwen notes that the word “patience” is from the Latin “patior,” meaning “to suffer.” “Waiting patiently,” he writes, “is suffering through the present moment, tasting it to the fullest in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us,” rather than being anxious about the future and wanting to move on from the present. As Simone Weil wrote, “waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” There’s much of that in this journey, isn’t there? So much of the “already, but not yet,” so much of faith that is being fully present in the now while hoping for what we do not yet see. 

Geography and Immigration

Since I can remember, I've always enjoyed looking at maps. Watching my father pore over a AAA map on the kitchen table is a strong memory I still have of him when he was still in his 30s. And I like to think it's a trait he has passed down to me.

I like geography, but I like journeys even more. When Esther and I were still getting to know each other, one way I described myself to her is that when I get started on a path or a road, I want to follow it all the way to end. There's no turning back before the road ends, because then I might miss some remarkable view or nature spotting.

Having accumulated a perpetually long list of to-dos, I am not quite as adamant about finishing everything I start nowadays. But as we start this Bible reading journey, I hope this character trait compels me to finish what I started.

Today, in the reading of scripture, I was struck by all the geographical references. And the amount of movement, sojourning - let's use more germane vocabulary - immigration - that Abraham and Jesus experienced.

Abraham was born in Ur, but then at some point in his life, his father, Terah decided to move the family (Abraham, Lot and Sarah) to Canaan. But somehow along the way, the traveling caravan stopped in Haran and "they settled there."

I was struck how this one verse describes the state of many aspects of my own life and the lives of those around us. We are all from somewhere, on our way somewhere, but some how or at some point "settled" en route. The settling could mean a job, a level of marriage flourishing, a certain amount of energy dedicated to the kids' spiritual enrichment, or a certain lukewarm spiritual state.

But interestingly, even though Terah settled there (and died there), God didn't. He spoke into Abraham's life and eventually, Abraham and his family (after a detour to Egypt) did move to Canaan. But they ended up living out the rest of their lives as immigrants in Canaan.

I see some parallels in Jesus's life. Born in Bethlehem, Jesus's family moved when he was still an infant to Egypt where he lived for probably a decade or more. For some reason, this struck me as really interesting. In his formative years of childhood, Jesus lived in Egypt. He likely was exposed to many aspects of Egyptian culture. So much of who I am now was a result of culture seeping into me during the first 10-12 years of life.

How was Jesus affected by being raised in Egypt? Did it affect the ways he viewed culture, about being an outsider or an immigrant? Is the US sort of the modern-day equivalent of Egypt? A place of prosperity, safe harbor, and cultural influence that people come to - both the wealthy and ambitious, as well as those fleeing persecution?

But then Jesus' family settles in Nazareth, Galilee after being away from the region for essentially his whole life, where he lives for presumably the duration of his teens and twenties. And then his ministry starts with a mention of him moving to and living in Capernaum.

Jesus was an immigrant many times over. First, to the world. And then everywhere else he moved during his ministry. Jesus seemed to be willing to move when God spoke and live his whole life as an immigrant - both respecting the culture he was in, but not succumbing to it.

One loose definition of culture is the unconscious (and conscious) norms, attitudes, and values we have. How does Jesus's willingness to live as an immigrant his whole life affect how we live as Jesus followers here? It does make me wonder if I get too acclimated and even loyal to, or trained to think like, the culture around me.

That's one of the values of the immigrant! Immigrants can see the culture for what it is - a set of norms established by a group of people - and compare it to other cultures they have experienced. Hopefully, as believers, we can view this world and compare it to the heavenly culture. One that has not yet been fully experienced, but can be learned, in part, through reading of scripture.

Nakedness And Clothing

“Something strange was happening. They had always been naked—but now they felt naked, and wrong, and didn’t want anyone to see them. So they hid.” – Jesus Storybook Bible

“And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin and clothed them.” – Genesis 3:21

I brought Eric’s soccer clothes for him to change into after school yesterday, and as I was wondering where I could find him a place to change, I actually thought for a second, maybe I’ll just change him outside under a tree; I saw some other mom doing that before realizing he would never be okay with that—and it hit me, wow, I’m at that stage now where all of the kids would want privacy while changing. Oddly, it seemed like a kind of milestone.

A consciousness of nakedness isn’t something we’re born with, but it’s something we all acquire, which is interesting if you think about it. I wonder if infants wonder why big people go around with pieces of fabric hanging off their bodies all the time. Reading Genesis this time, it struck me that the very last thing written before Satan appears is “and the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed” (Gen 2:25), and the very first thing that happens after they ate the fruit was “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths” (Gen 3:7). Quite a pointed contrast framing the fall.

What does this awareness of nakedness mean? We know from Genesis 2:25 that it had to be the opposite of “not ashamed”—shame. A feeling not only that we did something wrong, but that something is wrong with us. Perhaps there was a sense in which Adam and Eve felt ashamed not only of themselves, but unsafe before the other who had not protected them but contributed to their sin. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that being aware of nakedness by definition means needing to cover it? 

Thus the fig leaves—and most of us around here have seen fig trees enough to know that while it wasn’t a bad first attempt, those leaves weren’t going to last very long. But the first thing God does after the curse is to clothe them with skins, presumably through the first animal sacrifice. Can you imagine that? Adam and Eve, perhaps watching blood shed for the first time, seeing the death God had warned would happen the very day they ate the fruit, but seeing God do it so that he could then take the skin from the death to cover their nakedness. Banned from the garden, but walking out smelling and seeing and feeling God’s provision, and a promise, whether they knew it then or not: one day another will die to cover your shame, because your own efforts are never enough.

I happened to be memorizing verse 35 yesterday in my way through Romans 8: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” Nothing, not even our nakedness, can separate us from the love of God.