Naaman

“But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, ‘Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?’ So he turned and went away in a rage.” – 2 Kings 5:11-12

When the servant girl tells Naaman that a prophet in Samaria can cure him of his leprosy, he takes her advice, but on his own terms. He goes to Samaria, but he doesn’t go to the prophet. He goes to the king. He goes along VIP channels. As commander of the entire army of Syria, Naaman was a successful man, and thought he could use his success to obtain what he needed. So he tells his king, who writes a letter to the Israelite king, which lands him in that king’s presence.

From there, it was a series of surprises. Not only was Elisha not able to be summoned, Naaman himself had to go to knock on Elisha’s door. Not only did Elisha not give him an elaborate welcome, he didn’t even bother greeting him at the door. Not only did Elisha not examine or treat him personally, he sent a messenger with do-it-yourself instructions. 

The response Naaman makes in his rage is telling: my expectations were not met. This is not how I thought I would be served. I didn’t inconvenience myself for something no better than what I already have. We may roll our eyes at this, but don’t we sometimes approach God with the same kind of entitled consumerism? “I thought that he would surely…” I thought that God would surely give me what I wanted by now. I thought that God would surely have worked in this situation in this way. 

In the end, it is another servant who talks him into trying Elisha’s instructions. Instead of standing while another called on God, Naaman has to go himself, and dip in the river not once, but seven times. Then “his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.” If you’ve ever gotten close to a child, you’ve probably marveled at their skin: so smooth and unblemished, without sun spots or wrinkles or scars. Naaman’s skin was restored like that, because he was willing to listen to a servant and humble himself and walk the road to the Jordan. His story reminds me of the wise men in Matthew 2, who also had to course-correct when they stopped following the star and instead went to look for a king in a palace. But Jesus did not come in a royal room. He came in a manger, a little child sent to restore us to life, defying our entitled expectations from the moment he was born. 

Rebuke

“A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool.” – Proverbs 17:10

The natural response to reproof is to be defensive. My first impulse is always to justify myself, then to discredit the other person’s points. The impulse is always to reject and deflect. Maybe that’s why this proverb talks about depth. The word for “blows” can also mean “stripes, lashes”: there’s an image there of skin-breaking physical force. The definition of being a fool here is that something which ought to penetrate you doesn’t. It doesn’t make any impression on you, and even if it were to be repeated (which rebukes often are when it’s an issue God is working on in us; have you noticed that?), it would still have no effect.

But a rebuke goes deep into a man of understanding. The word for “understanding” means “to discern, to be able to separate.” Allowing reproof to sink deep into us requires understanding. It requires that we discern the other person and ourselves, that we understand the emotions, worldviews, history, intent, blind spots, and context that plays into it all. It requires true listening, the willingness to set ourselves and our own defenses aside. It requires that we are able to separate what should be taken seriously for change, and what should be listened to and let go of. 

Ultimately, it requires that we have a sure identity: a sense of purpose and value so secure that we are pliable, we are able to absorb, receive, and respond to rebuke without a trace of pride or resentment. We find this in the gospel, which reveals the depth of our own sinfulness while also telling us we are completely secure in God’s love and good purposes for us. Christ’s defenselessness on the cross was not his weakness but his strength; not a sign of ignorance but of deep understanding. He who alone did not deserve anyone’s rebuke received it for our sake, and because of this, we are able to receive the rebuke of others.

The Sound Of Silence

“And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper.” – 1 Kings 19:12

On Mount Carmel, God comes in fire. Can you imagine, a fire powerful enough to consume in a moment not only an entire full-grown cow, but all the wood, stones and water around it, even down to the dust? But on Mount Horeb, God is not in the fire. In fact, fire does come, as does the wind and the earthquake, but God is not in them, as if to make a point: He does not always come the same way twice. He does not always come in obvious, dramatic, or inescapable ways. 

After the fire, there is the sound of a “low whisper”: in Greek, this is daq, which means “beaten down until it is small, thin and fine,” and demamah, which means “calm, silence, stillness.” Literally, this says, “And after the fire, the sound of thin silence.”

Mysterious, isn’t it? How can silence have a sound? How can silence be thin and small? The key, I think, is in the contrast: the wind beat down the mountains, literally broke rocks to pieces, and the earthquake and fire have the same kind of destructive power: the silence is the opposite of that. It is itself beaten down, perhaps like how Elijah feels in his soul, wanting to die, to be broken down into dust. God whispers to Elijah exactly where he is.

And silence does have a sound, perhaps. When I’m silent, I do begin to hear certain sounds—the chirping of birds, rustling of leaves, tick of a clock—that were there all the time, but are now revealed. We are so used to living life at certain frequencies that we must learn to turn them off sometimes to listen, to hear like Elijah the voice that asks, “what are you doing here?” How curious, that God asks this twice, when of course he knows the answer: but he asks, and listens, as Elijah airs his grievances and discouragement. I hear God asking me the same thing: “What are you doing here, Esther?” And I hear in the silence an invitation to be honest with my answer in his presence.

Noticing Our Weariness

“And he asked that he might die… And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Arise and eat.’ And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again.” – 1 Kings 10:4-6

Most of my life, I saw physical weariness and limitations as things to push through, things that got in the way. It is perhaps ironic that those going into the medical field so easily neglect their own health: pulling thirty-hour shifts, driving into the hospital in the middle of the night, skipping meals, living off granola bars in between rounds and endless clinics and cases in the operating room (where lunch breaks are not scheduled). Those things were expected in training, which bled straight into motherhood for me, into even less-predictable patterns of sleep deprivation. Very often I would realize I had gone through the entire day without eating a proper meal, between feeding the kids and cleaning up after them.

When Elijah is depressed to the point of wanting to die, what does God do? God brings him food. The angel says, “arise and eat.” He doesn’t say anything else to him, nothing, not one word of therapy or counsel or encouragement or rebuke. And he tells him to eat a second time, but not until Elijah has had time to lay down and sleep.

Ruth Haley Barton talks about this in her book, Invitation to Solitude and Silence. Before anything else, she says, we must deal with our physical depletion. Sometimes, the most important spiritual thing we can do is get our rest. We must surrender and listen to our exhaustion. We must linger with our awareness of fatigue. Wonder about your tiredness, she says. Notice your weariness with compassion: times of solitude and silence are not times for judging, but for noticing. Acknowledge your tiredness as a child would with a caring parent; invite God into it with a prayer.

Often the best parts of solitude retreats for me are the ones that involve taking care of my body: allowing myself to take a nap, being conscious that I am doing so at God’s invitation. Eating my meals slowly, in silence, fully present to the experience. I am learning that my physical weariness is not an obstacle that must be overcome, but an invitation to acknowledge my limits so that I can experience God’s care for me. I am learning to hear God’s voice, which calls me from the depths of woe to say simply, arise and eat. Lie down and rest.

The Two Doors

“They came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him… he went to the house of Mary… where many were gathered together and were praying. And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer.” – Acts 12:10, 12-13

The interesting thing about Peter’s prison break is that the angel does not walk him all the way home. The angel pokes Peter in the side to wake him up, lights up the cell, unlocks the chains, tells him to get dressed and put on his jacket, walks him past several layers of guards, and opens the door to the city. Surely he could have walked him a few more blocks and made sure he arrived safely at his destination. But instead, immediately, he leaves him.

But Peter knows where to go. The first door was opened by the angel, but the second door was opened by his community. Even though it was late at night, many people were there together, praying for him. They were there to open the door for him. They were there to receive him and hear his story. They were there to experience first-hand this miracle of God together. They were there to spread the word to James and the others.

David spoke yesterday about how a community of Jesus-followers is marked by its source, posture, and depth, and we see those things here. Their source was Jesus: they were gathered not to strategize or vent worries with each other, but to pray. Their posture was one of active participation to the point of sacrifice: they were willing to lose sleep and come together. There was depth of vulnerability: Peter, bleary-eyed and probably not looking his best, did not hesitate to find them.

This is what a responsive community looks like: Peter, coming as he is, knocking at a time of day when no one would normally answer the door, not afraid to keep knocking. And his church, gathered together and praying for him. His church, opening the door to receive him. 

Becoming What We Worship

“The idols of the nations are silver and gold… Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.” – Psalm 135:15, 18

Buried in this Psalm is this startlingly incisive reminder that we become what we worship. When we worship something, we turn ourselves towards it. We invest our money, time, thought, and energy upon it. We fix ourselves within its presence. And the Psalmist is saying, it is impossible to do all of that and not be yourself changed in the process. And the direction of change will always be that you become more and more like what you worship.

What might have been behind the impulse to make a silver or gold idol? Perhaps a desire to adore something bigger than oneself. A desire to gaze upon something beautiful. A desire to possess something tangible and valuable. Something accessible on one’s own terms and easy to control. Something public and obvious to others. The root of some of these desires are God-given—the need to have something to admire that is outside of ourselves, the longing for something of real value—but when we decide to create it ourselves, we step into the place of God. When God created, he breathed into his creation life. But our creations are dead. “They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear; nor is there any breath in their mouths” (verses 16-17). Why does the Psalmist go to such lengths to state the obvious? Because we need to see that these idols we create have no life, and thus they cannot give us life. As we worship them, we become more and more void of life ourselves.

It is surprisingly hard to be intentional about what we worship. We are often asked to participate in acts of worship before it’s clear what we even are worshipping: we are invited to invest our resources in jobs, schools, diets, entertainment, relationships, before we’ve necessarily thought about what those things are worshipping and how that will change us. I decided which residency to attend based on what programs offered in terms of prestige and career options: I didn’t ask myself, “what does the culture of this program say about what they worship? Is that the kind of person I want to be like in ten years?” As David Brooks wrote, when you choose to work at a certain place, you are turning yourself into the sort of person who works in that place. Be careful of the idols you make, and the idols others you dwell with are making, this Psalmist says. Whether you mean to or not, that is what you will become.

Feast

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I drank at every vine.

   The last was like the first

I came upon no wine

   So wonderful as thirst.

I gnawed at every root.

   I ate of every plant.

I came upon no fruit

   So wonderful as want.

Feed the grape and the bean

   To the vintner and the monger;

I will lie down lean

   With my thirst and my hunger.

Elijah And The Widow

“And Elijah said to her, ‘Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son…’ … And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days.” – 1 Kings 17:13, 15

It’s a bit strange that the widow God commanded to feed Elijah is one who had no food left. If I were Elijah, my first thought would be that perhaps I had got the wrong widow. The one gathering sticks for her last meal would not be the likeliest option. This widow was at the end of her rope, in a place of suffering, facing death. And the words Elijah says to her are curious. 

He does not tell her to go and see that her flour and oil are overflowing, and then to start feeling better. He tells her first not to fear, before possessing anything other than the word of God. He doesn’t tell her to make sure there’s enough flour and oil, and then to start making cakes. He says, just go and start doing it. He doesn’t tell her to first make one for her son, then herself, then Elijah (the order I would prefer in her place). He says, first make one for me, then for yourselves: the first cake she makes is an offering, a gift. The one that she labors in greatest faith over, and makes while feeling most hungry, is one she gives away. He doesn’t tell her exactly how many cakes will miraculously be provided, or for how long. She simply has to set aside her fear and live every day reaching into the jars.

I really like to know my odds of success before starting a venture. Much of my anxiety is related to concerns about outcome or perception. But that is not how God works. No matter how ridiculous the widow looks, going into her house to host someone when she barely has anything left, she is to go. No matter how unlikely the odds, she is to make the cakes. And as she walks back, as she scoops out the flour and pours out the oil and kneads and bakes, she is to leave aside her fear. I don’t know what that was like for her, but we are told that she went and did as Elijah said. And the thing that was to be her last act before death, becomes the beginning of new life. Later, when her son truly does die, she sees him raised back to life and says, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” There is something we experience about the presence of God, about the truth and power of his word in our lives, that only happens when we live in that space, when we reach into the jars every day not knowing what will happen, but believing without fear that the word of God is with us. 

Two Offers To A Prophet

“And he said, ‘I may not return with you… for it was said to me by the word of the Lord…’ And he said to him, ‘I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘Bring him back with you into your house that he may eat bread and drink water.’ But he lied to him.” – 1 Kings 13:16-18

How was it that this prophet from Judah refused the invitation of a king, but gave in to one from an old man living in the city? Both offers are almost verbatim the same; one could even say King Jeroboam’s was more persuasively worded, for he offered both refreshment and a reward. Not to mention the fact that the king’s food would have likely been better than the simple fare the old man had to offer. 

But when the Judean prophet was before the king, he was still in the midst of the spiritually intense, climactic encounter for which he had journeyed to Bethel. He had intercepted the king at a favored altar, cried out terrible words of judgment, endured the threat of arrest, seen God’s judgment on the king’s hand and restored that hand through his words. His guard was up; God’s words were running high in his mind; he was in battle mode. It was easy to see King Jeroboam for the evil person he had become.

But when the Judean prophet was before the Bethel prophet, he was already on the road home. He had stopped to sit under a tree. He was probably physically hungrier by that time, likely spiritually and emotionally exhausted or lonely. And the man who made this offer was one of his own; his lie all too believable. It was a terrible lie, really; one can’t help feeling he ought to have been the one lying dead between a lion and a donkey. But that isn’t the point. God wants us to see that obedience is just as important in the daily grind of the journey as it is in public moments of crisis. That people are not infallible, that prophets and the word of man are not infallible. That the plausibility of holiness can be more dangerous than the explicitness of evil. That temptation from unexpected sources can be harder to handle. That pride or unguardedness can easily follow spiritual victories.

Jesus came not only as priest and king, but as prophet. He too was sent for a specific mission. He too spoke bold words that threatened existing power structures. He too resisted offers of reward from one who was evil. He too healed a shriveled hand. But he never veered from obedience. He spoke not one word that was untrue. He was himself the very word of God, God come to dwell with us, to invite us to his table, so we truly can stop and eat and drink. We can do so because he rode to his death in our place, the Lion of Judah, sitting on a donkey.

A Weaned Child

“But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.” – Psalm 131:2

What is the manner of a weaned child with its mother? It’s easier to picture what a nursing infant is like: when hungry, quite fussy, demanding the one thing it wants. Dave used to tell me how frustrating it felt not to be able to soothe the kids the way I could by nursing them, because sometimes nothing else he tried would help. There were always the lovely, milk-drunk moments afterwards, but inevitably they would get hungry again.

A weaned child has a history of nursing; there is a sense there of established dependency, closeness and trust, but there is no longer a demand to have that particular need filled. The New Bible Commentary says this is “like a child grown past the instinctive demands and fretfulness of infancy and now content, as a toddler, simply to be with mother.” 

How often we approach God like a nursing infant: with our own demands, heedless of his concerns, purposes or plans. How often we go to God solely because of what we want to get from him, on some level. It is because we function so often like this that David’s words here are strikingly beautiful. He comes to God in meekness. He calms and quiets his own soul. He is with God for the sake of his presence, but not just anyone’s presence: a presence like a mother’s. Safe, seen, secure, relaxed and at home, not afraid to express delight or need or desire or sadness. As Ruth Haley Barton writes, “simply being with God with what is.” Sitting with God about what is true at that moment, trusting him with ourselves, allowing him to be with us as a mother is with her child. And coming into a contentment that goes against natural tendencies or circumstances, finding we no longer need what we used to crave.

Building A House

“But it was Solomon who built a house for him. Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands.” – Acts 7:49-50

One truly unique thing about the Bay Area is that there is always construction going on. And we’re talking construction on every level: of corporate offices, housing complexes, private homes, accessory dwelling units. I suppose that’s what happens when a building is worth far less than the land it stands on: makes more sense to redo the building than buy another one somewhere else. 

We’ve seen houses as a theme in all of our readings lately, and it’s interesting to piece these together. In 1 Kings, we read about the construction of Solomon’s temple, in nearly-painful detail that harkens back to descriptions of the tabernacle in Exodus, except this time everything is built on a larger scale, with additions like a porch and side room, and with remarkable opulence. But perhaps most striking of all, whereas in Exodus God was at the center of the story—God initiates, instructs every detail, empowers the workmen with skill—the center of this narrative is Solomon, and two Canaanites from Tyre. Solomon does ask God to inhabit his temple, with an offering that matched it in lavishness: the sacrifice of 142,000 oxen and sheep, for which the bronze altar before God was too small (no kidding). And God does respond: “My eyes and my heart will be there for all time” (1 Kings 9:3).

But unbelievably, this remarkable temple would be destroyed in just a few hundred years. In Acts, we read Stephen’s sermon, which pivots on this story: despite the temple Solomon built, he says, God does not dwell in these things we build. The temple was not an end unto itself, but a sign pointing to Christ, and not only Christ but the Holy Spirit, the God who would dwell in the temple of our bodies for all time. 

We so often build the things in our lives as an end unto themselves. We spend lifetimes constructing impressive careers, children, bodies, possessions, without realizing that those things won’t last, missing the purpose for which they exist. Solomon himself wrote about this in one of the songs of ascents we read: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain… it is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127). One sign of vain labor, interestingly, is anxious toil that keeps us from rest. There is an interesting dynamic here—we labor, yet we realize that God is the one who builds; as David said last Sunday, we choose to abide in Christ, yet he is the one who promises to abide in us—but one sign that we’re in the right place is that we can let go of our labors at the end of the day, and sleep. My eyes and my heart will be with you for all time, God says, and it is a promise that rings like a lullaby. 

Arrows, Part Two: Children And Purpose

“Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!” – Psalm 127:4-5

How are children like arrows? An arrow is pulled back, but then moves swiftly: you get a small window of time, and then it’s gone (“the days are long, but the years are short,” as they say). But during that time, when the arrow is pulled back, it is aimed. A warrior has an intention when he picks up an arrow: we steward our children through purpose. 

What is your vision for your kids? What are you aiming for? I’ve been surprised by how hard it is to articulate an answer to that question. So often, the forest gets lost for the trees: any sense of purpose one carries into parenting degenerates into an endless succession of chores and tasks, and it becomes hard to see the big picture. It becomes easier to function on auto-pilot, going from stage to stage doing what it seems like everyone else is doing, from buying the most popular baby equipment to registering early for the hottest summer camps. From what I can tell, people here aim to produce well-behaved, socially-aware children who also never stray below an A, play several instruments and sports, and get into an elite college. And preferably move back and have grandchildren nearby.

Not that any of those things are necessarily bad, but they have nothing to do with this verse. Arrows are not made for comfort, or to look good; they are not accessories, but weapons. They are made to be launched, to be let go of, to be released into a place its launcher will never go themselves. They are meant for mission. When Jim Elliot was explaining to his parents why he would leave a promising career in the United States to serve as a missionary in South America, he said: “What is a quiver full of but arrows? And what are arrows for but to shoot? So, with the strong arms of prayer, draw the bowstring back and let the arrows fly—all of them, straight at the Enemy’s hosts.”

I’m not saying mission has to be literal missions, but would I be okay with that? Am I only praying for my children to get a good education, spouse and career, or am I praying that they would follow and love God with all their hearts, that they would be powerful and effective in God’s kingdom? This is a hard one for me. I like to think one can “have it all” in this regard: the child who is sold out for Jesus and also gets into Harvard. But that is dangerous, because those things don’t always go together. Jesus didn’t say, “seek a few things and you can have it all”; he said, “seek first the kingdom of God.” And what we seek for our children will be implicitly obvious to them. What is your vision for your kids?

Arrows, Part One: Seeing Our Children

“Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!” – Psalm 127:4-5

How are children like arrows? Last year at Mt. Hermon family camp, Bryan Loritts made a few points on this topic that are worth elaboration. An arrow is useless unless someone picks it up, he said: we steward our children through relationship. 

The first step is to see our children. Nothing happens if an arrow is not noticed, picked up, held by hand, known so thoroughly that its unique purpose becomes evident. Recently a New York Times article came out entitled, “Do You Really ‘See’ Your Child?” The authors, Seigel and Bryson, point out that parents today feel increasing pressure to practice “hyper-parenting,” which seems particularly common here, where affluent families spend huge amounts of time and money to give their children every conceivable advantage, from language immersion to tutoring to sports to music lessons. Yet, they say, research suggests that raising healthy, happy kids requires only one thing: showing up. 

“Showing up means bringing your whole being—your attention and awareness—into this moment with your child. When we show up, we are mentally and emotionally present for our child right now.” Really seeing your child for who they are means not looking through the filter of who we’d like them to be, or the filter of our own fears or desires. It means not using labels or comparisons to categorize our children and being willing to look beyond initial assumptions. “In the end… you just have to show up, allowing your kids to feel that you get them and that you’ll be there for them, no matter what. When you do that, you’ll be teaching them how to love, and how relationships work. They’ll be more likely to choose friends and partners who will see and show up for them, and they’ll learn how to do it for others.”

This all sounds pretty basic, but it’s harder to do than it sounds, whether you’ve fallen somewhere on the spectrum of intensive-parenting or simply find it easier to get chores and errands done instead of getting on the floor to play with your child. We obviously can’t “show up” for all our kids all the time, but it helps to build in the margin and space to do so, to have regular practices that remind us to check in with how our kids are really doing, and in the end simply to be mindful that seeing is more intentional than it may appear. When was the last time you really saw your children? Do your kids feel seen by you for who they truly are?

Waiting And Longing

by Walter Brueggemann, in Prayers for a Privileged People:

God of the seasons,

God of the years,

God of the eons,

Alpha and Omega,

before us and after us.

You promise and we wait:

we wait with eager longing,

we wait amid doubt and anxiety,

we wait with patience thin

and then doubt,

and then we take life into our own hands.

We wait because you are the one and the only one.

We wait for your peace and your mercy,

for your justice and your good rule.

Give us your spirit that we may wait

obediently and with discernment,

caringly and without passivity,

trustingly and without cynicism

honestly and without utopianism,

Grant that our wait may be appropriate to your coming

soon and very soon,

soon and not late,

late but not too late.

We wait while the world groans in eager longing.

Our View Of Children

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” – Psalm 127:3

I’ve been home all day with all the kids during this odd faux-holiday that is the Bay Area ski week, and it reminds me of the days when the kids were younger and at home all the time. Dave would come back from work and ask, “how was the day?” and I would picture this graph in my head, adapted from a TED talk on parenting. The x axis is time, the y axis is happiness, and in a normal adult day, there is a linear plot that slopes gradually up and down. In a day home with the kids, the graph looks like a line that follows the same average as the linear plot, but instead zig-zags wildly up and down as it goes along. The highs are incredibly high, but the lows are much lower. The entire experience is somewhat emotionally exhausting, and entirely impossible to summarize. Do I tell him about how they said something that made me laugh so hard, or handed me a misspelled love note? Or do I tell him about how they spilled all the food over the floor, or fought for the tenth time?

For some reason, I often find myself sharing about the lows. It’s easy to complain about our kids: to get a certain kind of easy sympathy, to feel like we’re a certain kind of martyr, to gain some kind of credit for what we endure. But the more we do that, the more we build a negative view of children to ourselves, to them, and to our childless friends. One that fits with our culture, which tends to view children as inconveniences. When I go out with the kids, I get remarks like, “you have your hands full”—and it’s not said in a positive tone of voice. The assumption is that kids primarily get in the way, of careers and hobbies and travel and your best life.

But such a view stands in direct contrast with the view of children laid out here. Rarely is there such an explicit statement about children made in the Bible: and their value is seen as undeniably, overwhelmingly positive. This word “heritage” literally means “inheritance, taking possession, occupation”: it is most often used of the territory of the Promised Land that was assigned to various tribes. We should feel about our children exactly how the Israelites felt coming into their promised land after years of slavery and wandering in the wilderness: excited, glad, joyous. The land was no obstacle or hassle: it was their reward. It was God’s gift to them, the arena in which they lived out their vocation, something of lasting value. We should value our children as highly as they valued that land and the covenant with God it represented. 

I once heard someone say, imagine that when your kids turn thirty, you have them close their eyes and ask them, what expression do you remember seeing most on mom and dad’s face? Do you think your kids would say it is one of joy, or excitement? What do our words, actions, and expressions say about how we view our children?

Released For A Purpose

“But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out, and said, ‘Go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this Life.’” – Acts 5:19-20

This is one of the most curious prison-breaks, for sure. The apostles had already been doing a lot of ministry, for which the jealous Sadducees ended up arresting them. They were released that night by an angel, but his words must have been surprising. They weren’t to go and have a well-deserved break. Maybe take a shower, get what sleep they still could, lie low until the opposition died down, avoid getting caught again.

When I think about what God wants me to do, very often I’ve already applied the filter of my own common sense or comfort. What I’m really asking is, what might God be asking me to do within the bounds of what makes logical sense and wouldn’t disrupt my comfort too much? What do I want to do, that I think God would approve of? Not that there isn’t a place for prudence and rest, but passages like these challenge me. The angel released the apostles not to comfort, but to ministry; not to return home, sit and rest, but to go to the most public place there was, stand, and continue to speak. What happened was a miraculous victory not because it involved the end of suffering or avoidance of persecution, but because it publicly demonstrated the sovereignty and power of God within that very suffering and persecution.

When others revile us, persecute us, and utter all kinds of false evil against us, Jesus said, we should “rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:12). As Martyn Lloyd-Jones puts it, “we know who we are, where we are going, and what awaits us when we get there.” And indeed, even after they were found again that same day, brought before the council and beaten, the apostles left “rejoicing” (Acts 5:41). Comfort and logic had nothing to do with it. What they had was purpose and what they experienced was power. And they continued in it every day.

Boldness

“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.” – Acts 4:13

When we asked our kids how they felt about being bold for their faith, we got a variety of answers. Elijah, in kinder, pretty much makes a point of asking everyone—adults whom we host, teachers at school—whether they believe in God (usually this leads to an awkward pause after which the adult replies, “why do you ask? do you?” whereupon Elijah continues to fix them with his stare and say, “yes. Do you?”). Eric, in second grade, says he feels embarrassed talking about God at school because no one else believes in Him. Ellie chose “boldness” to describe how she most wants to grow in fifth grade (Esme, in preschool, had no comment).

Most of us probably land where Ellie is. The Bay Area seems extremely bold in some ways, but not in others. We are bold in taking risks for innovation, in disrupting the status quo, in speaking out about various political, social and environmental issues. But it’s not as easy to be bold about Jesus. I find myself editing my speech more here, being less spiritually explicit. It feels easier to say I’m going on a “personal retreat” rather than a “prayer retreat,” to talk about the latest novel or article I’m reading instead of the Bible I’m studying.

Boldness is not only something I struggle with practicing; I’m not even sure it’s something I desire. I am much more likely to pray that God would change the culture around me than to ask for more boldness as I live within it. Yet boldness is an unavoidable theme in this chapter of Acts: it was the most striking quality of Peter and John’s speech (verse 13); it was the only thing they asked for themselves (verse 29), and it was how they continued to act (verse 31). In all three instances, the boldness is specifically boldness of speech. Not boldness of thought, or writing, or even actions, but boldness to speak the word of God. Boldness is twice the only thing Paul asks the Ephesian church to pray for him to have: “and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel… that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak” (Ephesians 6:19-20).

In one sense, this is encouraging. If they prayed for it, it must have meant they struggled with fear and reservation—and they were undoubtedly facing more acute, personal derision of and opposition to their faith than I do. But they asked for boldness. This is something we can pray for. Boldness also comes as we spend time being with Jesus (verse 13), and is an attribute of being filled with the Holy Spirit (verse 8): as one pastor put it, “courage comes from communion.” I find that when I ask, often God gives me unexpected opportunities to be bold in my speech, some small, some big. Peter could have been vague about how the lame man came to be healed, but he was alarmingly specific: and this from the man who once didn’t own up to even knowing Jesus. That is the power of the Holy Spirit, to give us boldness to speak the word of God at the right time.

Repentance

“But David’s heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done.’” – 2 Samuel 24:10

“Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” – Martin Luther, first of the Ninety-Five Theses

We hear about not just one, but two episodes of explicit sin in David’s life, and both times, his response is striking. After Nathan confronts him about the episode with Bathsheba, David’s first and only words are, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:13). He says the same first three words to God after doing the census. He does not make excuses. He does not blame others, or the demands of leadership. He does not point to norms within the surrounding culture. He doesn’t use passive language, or reframe his sin in nicer terms. He sees his sin nearly exclusively in the vertical dimension.

Repentance can be self-centered or God-centered. Self-centered repentance happens when we are sorry for the sin because of its consequences to us. Our main aim is to avoid punishment, to keep God happy so he will continue to give us what we want. The repentance itself becomes a form of self-atonement; the self-oriented misery or self-flagellation we experience becomes a reason we deserve to be forgiven. This kind of repentance becomes harder and harder as we come to rely more and more upon our own moral goodness for salvation and change.

God-centered repentance is sorry for the sin because it displeases and dishonors God. Its aim is to avoid anything contrary to God’s heart, anything that would keep us from tapping fully into the joy of our union with Christ. The repentance itself becomes a form of grief: and like the promise “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” there is close on its heels an experience of grace, a feeling that forgiveness is not earned through our own suffering, but received through Christ’s suffering. This kind of repentance happens more and more in our lives, in an ongoing and dynamic cycle: the more we see our sins, the more we experience grace, and the more aware of that precious grace we are, the more we’re able to drop our denials and self-defenses to admit the true dimensions of our sin.

When it says “David’s heart struck him,” the verb used is nakah, meaning “to slay or kill.” This is no mild word. This is not intellectual regret, or a calculating correction. David felt slain by his own heart. He was completely smitten by the realization of his sin, and he doesn’t go speak to Joab or the people: he speaks to God, against whom only he has sinned (Psalm 51:4). We see this word again in verse 17, when the angel strikes the people as a consequence of sin, and David offers himself instead. God doesn’t take him up on that, but years later there is one man who is “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4) for his people. We also read on the same day these words from Peter: “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus” (Acts 3:19-20). May we experience God-centered repentance that leads to true change and times of refreshing within God’s presence.

Gentleness

“Your gentleness made me great.” – 2 Samuel 22:37

“Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent it is than force!” – Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

Is it easy for you to conceive of God as gentle? Perhaps that has to do with how much gentleness we ourselves have received, and I look back now with thankfulness for that in my life. I don’t have many early childhood memories, but nearly all of them are of gentle physical gestures: my dad holding me while walking in the dark of our living room at night, tucking me into bed. Dave, who is stronger than me in many ways, is someone I would describe as gentle in word and deed. I spent an extended year of training at Hopkins with an attending who was known for his gentle manner towards difficult patients. 

Gentleness is often considered synonymous with kindness, but they aren’t the same: if kindness describes our actions, gentleness gets more at the manner in which we act. If kindness is goodness in action, gentleness is more goodness in disposition. How we do what we do. When we handle something with care, we are making a statement about how valuable that item is to us, about its relative fragility compared with our relative power. We are choosing to wield our strength in a way that honors and understands the nature of what we’re dealing with, in a way that expresses grace, care, and love. In the New Testament, the word for gentleness, praytes, is often associated with meekness, as in “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:1). As Gayle Erwin writes, “When I look at the clues that indicate the nature of Jesus—born in a barn, questionable parents, spotty ancestry, common name, misdirected announcement, unattractive looks, reared in a bad neighborhood, owning nothing, surrounding himself with unattractive co-workers, and dying a shameful death—I find his whole approach unable to fit into the methods that automatically come to mind when I think about ‘winning the world.’ His whole approach could easily be described as nonthreatening or nonmanipulative. He seemed to lead with weakness in each step of life.”

Strength in weakness. Greatness through gentleness. I have always loved that line of David’s, because it is an attribute of God we so rarely hear praised. God has been gentle with me: never forceful or harsh; every rebuke and encouragement bathed in the gentle love of his presence. When I acknowledge and receive that from Him, I am able to be gentle with myself. I am able to be gentle with others, to be more careful and less careless in how I treat this person for whom my gentle Savior died.

The Lord Will Keep You

“I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?” - Psalm 121

We’ve begun our foray into the Songs of Ascent, the fifteen Pilgrim Psalms (120-134) most commonly thought to be sung by Israelites on their way to Jerusalem for one of three annual agricultural festivals. Psalm 121 does sounds like the song of a sojourner, with hills in the horizon, the potential for feet to slip, language of sun and moon and coming and going. One has the sense of a traveler planting one foot in front of the other, and its structure mirrors this step-by-step progression. The idea towards the end of the previous line is often picked up and repeated in the next line, a literary technique known as “anadiplosis.”

The first step comes when he lifts up his eyes to the hills: when he stops looking at the ground, or the people around him, and looks up. Most think these are the distant hills of Jerusalem, the place for which he longs. But he needs help. The destination is far. Where does my help come from? He answers himself in the next line, the next step: from creator God. How does he help me? The rest of a song is a series of steps carrying along the word keep, Hebrew shamar, meaning “to watch, to guard.” The meaning of God-as-keeper builds in description as the word is used with increasing frequency of repetition. He does not sleep, which means he guards you day and night, which means he keeps your life, and he does so now and forever. Keeps, keeps, keeper, keep, keep, keep: the word is used six times. Each time, a step. Each time, a reminder. Each time, a further meditation.

I thought about this Psalm today as a prayer for my children, and suddenly it read completely differently. My help comes from the Lord, and just as surely, he will keep my children. I can pray this for them, whatever journey they take in life. The famous missionary David Livingstone read this Psalm before setting out for the African continent in 1840. His mother-in-law, Mrs. Moffat, wrote him in Linyardi that Psalm 121 was always in her mind as she thought about and prayed for him.

This Psalm was recited by the entire congregation, not while sitting in a building, but while walking side-by-side. And so it is a prayer meant to be spoken, not only over our children, but over every believer we travel with together. It is meant to be heard, to be received as spoken over us. The Lord will keep you. 

The Infinite

From a puritan book of prayers

Thou great I AM,

Fill my mind with elevation and grandeur at the thought of a Being

   with whom one day is as a thousand years,

   and a thousand years as one day,

A mighty God, who, admist the lapse of worlds,

   and the revolutions of empires,

   feels no variableness,

   but is glorious in immortality.

May I rejoice that, while men die, the Lord lives;

   that, while all creatures are broken reeds,

      empty cisterns,

      fading flowers,

      withering grass,

   he is the Rock of Ages, the Fountain of living waters.

Ahithophel

“When Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his donkey and went off home to his own city. He set his house in order and hanged himself.” – 2 Samuel 17:23

The extremes in Ahithophel’s life are a bit alarming. He goes from being esteemed by both David and Absalom as a god (“Now in those days the counsel that Ahithophel gave was as if one consulted the word of God,” 2 Samuel 16:23), to committing suicide once Absalom took Hushai’s advice over his. The truth was, Hushai’s advice was (intentionally) bad, and it would lead to Absalom’s death. Ahithophel had not lost his touch; he had it more than ever. Why go hang himself?

We don’t know for sure. Perhaps it was simply having idolized his high status and career success so much that it was unbearable to feel passed over. Ahithophel was David’s most valued counselor, and was specifically requested by Absalom at the start of his conspiracy (2 Samuel 15:12, 2 Chronicles 27:33): that is a kind of power that would have gone to anyone’s head. Sometimes the best way to identify idols in our lives is to see what affects us most when we don’t have it. How would I react if I were to lose my mind, my physical health, my ability to work, my status as a parent, my wealth? Would I be sad or completely destroyed, without any remaining sense of meaning or identity, unable to go on? 

But we also know that Ahithophel was the father of Eliam (2 Samuel 23:34), who in turn was the father of Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:3)—a fact David was full-aware of, as it was the very first thing he learned about her. Eliam was one of the mighty men of David, as was Ahithophel’s son-in-law, Uriah. David had betrayed his closest counselor by violating his granddaughter and killing his son-in-law, a man who fought together with his own son. Perhaps this was why Ahithophel betrays David in turn by joining Absalom, proposes killing David himself (2 Samuel 17:2), and takes his life when he finds the conspiracy will likely fail. God had forgiven David, but perhaps Ahithophel had not. Are there ways we hold on to bitterness and a vengeful desire for our own justice in our lives?

There are faint echoes here of Judas, another man who betrayed a King only to hang himself. And just as we see the sovereignty of God in that situation, we see it here. When Ahithophel advises Absalom to publicly violate his father’s concubines, God uses that counsel to fulfill his word (“he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun,” 2 Samuel 14:11). But God also foils Ahithophel’s counsel to achieve his purposes (“the Lord ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel,” 2 Samuel 17:14). If anything, we learn that human thinking, even from the sagest man in the kingdom, is not enough. God’s power, his ways and thoughts, are higher than ours. Wisdom does not guarantee a righteous end. Ahithophel’s great-grandson Solomon would also be known for his wisdom and have to figure this truth out for himself. 

Jesus The Gardener

“Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, who are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’” – John 20:15

The first person who sees Jesus in his resurrected body supposes him to be the gardener. I have always loved the flavor of ordinariness this brings: Mary was in a garden. It was early. She wasn’t expecting anything. Who else would it be that time of morning? There was nothing particularly glamorous about how Jesus looked, perhaps, either then or ever before. And I find myself loving him for all that: that he is the kind of person one would assume gets his fingers into the dirt. That he looks like someone who labors, who would be up when most people aren’t. That he meets us in the most ordinary ways in our day and even in our suffering.

And, of course, what Mary assumes is profound. A few days before his crucifixion, Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). He went on to die, and “in the place where he was crucified there was a garden… and they laid Jesus there” (John 20:41-42). He then came alive as the firstfruits of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15) to become the gardener, cultivating and making the way for new life.

In a way, the whole Bible is an epic garden story. As Sinclair Ferguson puts it, “Adam was to ‘garden’ the whole earth for the glory of His Father. But he failed. Created to make the dust fruitful, he himself became part of the dust. The Garden of Eden became the wilderness of this world.” The one who was called to keep the garden instead brought the curse of thorns. But as the second Adam, the second gardener, Jesus restores us to life both now and ultimately in the new creation: for when John sees the new earth coming down from heaven, it looks like a garden, with the tree of life in its center (Revelation 22).

And so, it turns out, Mary was not that far off. In the throes of her grief, reaching out through her tears, she uttered words that were truer than she realized. There, alive, walking through the garden that early morning, was the true Gardener, the fulfiller of every hoped-in promise, every longing for life. “Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle” (Isaiah 55). He is the tender to whom we turn, and then the one who sends us out in turn to garden the world.

Gracious Words

“The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord, but gracious words are pure.” – Proverbs 15:26

Dean suggested last Sunday that one way to show sacrificial love was to “sacrifice that juicy tidbit to point the conversation in a positive direction, and say about others what you would want them to say about you.” That resonated with me. I struggle sometimes, not so much with malicious gossip, but the urge to pass along some annoying interaction or impression. When I struggle with a mom at school, I feel tempted to tell another mom who has also had issues with her. When a personality, opinion, or style of doing things challenges me, I’m tempted to vent to someone more similar to me in those areas. What I am really seeking is validation and sympathy for my annoyance. Maybe mixed in is some genuine openness to advice or desire to be understood, but mostly I want to have an audience to air my grievances. I care more about that than what kind of impression I could be spreading about someone.

The word “pure” has two main meanings. It can mean clean, as in not filthy or dirty, including the idea of ceremonial or Levitical purity, being unsullied before a holy God: “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27). It can mean unmixed or unalloyed, single, without hypocrisy, without folds, open, nothing hidden. This gets at the idea of true sincerity, being single-minded, having single-eyed devotion: “unite my heart to fear thy name” (Psalm 86:11).

Gracious words are pure. They safeguard us from being dirtied by the sin of complaint or judgment, and they safeguard the reputation of others. Have you noticed that there is a kind of power or reality that is birthed when you speak your thoughts out loud? We may have abominable thoughts, but we can still guard our words; sometimes we are able to stop patterns of sinful thinking by changing what we say. Gracious words also do not give room for division or hypocrisy; they keep our selfishness from creeping in and spreading to others by example. 

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths,” Paul says in Ephesians 4:29, “but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” Gracious words are those that give grace. They come at a cost: after all, the grace Jesus gives us, though free, is costly. Do I desire purity of substance and heart before God? Am I willing to give up my own rights or comforts or sinful tendencies, so that I can give others the grace I myself have received, through my words? 

Let It Be

“Leave him alone, and let him curse.” – 2 Samuel 16:11

There are profound parallels between our Old and New Testament texts today. David does not fight Absalom, but leaves, weeping as he ascends the Mount of Olives, allowing Shimei to curse him (in a passage we’ve discussed before). Jesus also goes to the Mount of Olives in great distress, refuses to fight, and gives himself up to derision. In his book The Stature of Waiting, W. H. Vanstone notes how Jesus goes from “action,” a time marked by initiation and activity, to “passion,” a time marked by things being done to him and having no control. The turning point is when he allows himself to be handed over. “Jesus fulfills his vocation not in action only, but also in passion,” he writes. When he says “it is accomplished” (John 19:30), he is saying not only “I’ve done all I wanted to,” but also, “I have allowed to be done to me what needed to be done to me to fulfill my vocation.”

Our culture is preoccupied with staying in control. As people age, we talk about them “still being active,” as if that is the primary marker of worth or meaning. We assume that power is active, but we see that David and Jesus chose to not act, to instead be the recipient of others’ actions. They were not passive because they were lazy, or unaware of the situation, or even without power to retaliate. They were passive in the sense of intentionally yielding control, because they were actually more aware of the situation than usual: they saw more of its spiritual reality, and more of their own calling, than was apparent to others.

Sometimes we fulfill our vocation by allowing things to be done to us. We receive the erosion or limitations of our physical bodies. We receive the attitudes of our teenagers as they are separating from childhood. We receive the grief of seeing people leave a church or community when we have been called to stay. We may receive all manner of things during seasons of waiting or suffering. “The truth,” writes Nouwen, “is that my suffering for love is a much greater part of my life than my action.” The world says to be older is to gain more control, “but Jesus has a different version of maturity: it is the ability and willingness to be led where you would rather not go” (John 21:18). These experiences are not only a normative part of the Christian life, but they can be the very living out of our vocation, the very following in the path of Jesus.

The Holy Spirit

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever … it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” – John 14:16-17; 16:7

“From my perspective, the Holy Spirit is tragically neglected and, for all practical purposes, forgotten. While no evangelical would deny His existence, I’m willing to bet there are millions of churchgoers across America who cannot confidently say they have experienced His presence or action in their lives over the past year… The benchmark of success in church services has become more about attendance than the movement of the Holy Spirit.” – Francis Chan

For some reason, it’s easy to subconsciously think of the Holy Spirit as an “it”: some kind of electrical energy we charge up on or impersonal force we wield. But the most basic thing Jesus tells us here is that the Holy Spirit is a “him.” He is a person with feelings (Ephesians 4:30), thoughts (Romans 8:27), and a will (Hebrews 2:4). He is someone we have a relationship with. Having him fill us is less like calling down some force from the skies, than like inviting a person into our home, someone for whom we might clean and arrange our space.

He is also God. There are several Greek words for “another,” but the one Jesus uses here means “similar, same”: and indeed, they are spoken of interchangeably (1 John 2:1). The Holy Spirit is not some lesser being, some commodity we use for our own purposes. He is God himself. To fail to submit to and trust in him is to fail to submit to God.

There are many things about the Holy Spirit to think on from these chapters, but one is this interesting word Jesus uses to describe him, translated “Helper” (ESV), “Advocate” (NIV), “Friend” (MSG), “Comforter” (KJV), “Counselor” (MEV). The Greek is parakletos, from para, which means “to stand alongside,” and kletos, which means “to declare or call.” Together, they mean “a legal advocate”: someone who is called to one’s side to plead one’s cause before a judge or counsel for defense. The Holy Spirit defends us against enemies on earth and in our own hearts. He testifies that we are children of God (Romans 8:16), under the new covenant (Hebrews 10:15), saved (Hebrews 2:4) and have eternal life in Jesus (1 John 5:6). He intercedes for us in prayer (Romans 8:26).

Have you had anyone in your life who is truly for you? Who is loyal to you, to the end? It is mind-blowing, life-changing, really, that I have someone like that, with me all the time. Jesus actually says it is better for him to go away so that I can have the Holy Spirit. Do I really believe that? Most of us would probably say we would rather have Jesus in the flesh. When was the last time you undeniably saw the Holy Spirit at work in or around you? What is your relationship with him? Do you live any differently because you have his power and presence within you?

Covetousness

“I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight?” – 2 Samuel 12:8-9

When God sends Nathan to confront David, Nathan talks about covetousness, something so often at the root of other sins. It’s no accident that it’s the one commandment Paul mentions in Romans 7:7 when he explains how the law reveals our sin. It is the last of the ten commandments, and in a way underlies those before it. And while the preceding commandments are perfunctory (“You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.”), God is strikingly specific when it comes to coveting: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Ex 20:17).

This is worth ruminating on, because I find that covetousness is essentially normalized by our consumeristic culture. Consumerism breeds covetousness. Consumerism is more than simply the consumption of goods; it is a worldview that tells us we must acquire ever more or ever better goods as a means to deserved self-gratification or self-actualization. It works best when we set our sights on something specific: it starts with generalized discontentment and moves towards specific envy.

It tells us marriage is about making ourselves happy, not sacrificially loving someone else. That sex is about self-gratification, not relational giving. That jobs are about self-glorification or earning esteem to feel good, not a sense of vocation or calling. That parenting is about having kids who fulfill your own ambitions or make you look good, not stewardship for God’s kingdom. That material possessions are about comfort or status, not experiencing God’s faithful provision. And so it is easy to feel discontent if we don’t have the spouse, sexual partner, parenting outcomes, or possessions that we want or feel we should have. It’s easy to covet what we see around us.

At heart, coveting is despising God’s word. We despise what he has given us, but we are also despising his invitation to ask him instead for what we want. Isn’t it interesting that God says, “And if this were too little, I would add to you much more”? Do we really believe that? Do we believe Jesus when he says, “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Matthew 5)? Asking takes vulnerability and trust. It forces us to examine our worldviews and confront the nature of our longings. It opens us to experiencing the love of our father God. It is far easier to simmer into discontentment or fall into envy. May God expose any covetousness or self-focused consumerism in our hearts, and lead us instead to see His goodness and long for His glory in our lives.

God Be In My Head

Frontispiece to the Book of Hours, Sarum Primer, 1514

God be in my head

And in my understanding

God be in my eye

And in my looking

God be in my mouth

And in my speaking

God be in my heart

And in my thinking

God be at my end

And my departing

Let Me Hear Joy And Gladness

“So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her.” – 2 Samuel 11:4

“Let me hear joy and gladness… Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.” – Psalm 51:8, 12

In this section of 2 Samuel, we see the horrific results of sexual sin in David’s life. And yet, in his prayer of repentance in Psalm 51, he does not mention sex at all. As one person wrote, “Why isn’t he crying out for sexual restraint? Why isn’t he praying for men to hold him accountable? Why isn’t he praying for protected eyes and sex-free thoughts? The reason is that he knows that sexual sin is a symptom, not the disease. People give way to sexual sin because they don’t have the fullness of joy and gladness in Christ. Their spirits are not steadfast and firm and established. They waver. They are enticed, and they give way because God does not have the place in our feelings and thoughts that he should.”

I don’t know how intentional this lack of mention of sex in Psalm 51 is, but it is interesting to read it as a response to sexual sin. Circumstantial accountability and other practical measures may be important, but that is not what David asks for—he asks for a renewed spirit. He asks for restored joy in his salvation. And something about that rings true to me. Pathological guilt is of limited help in combating sexual sin. Sometimes it isn’t even about sex at all, but rather anger, boredom, weariness, insecurity, or some other underlying issue. The battle at heart is a spiritual one, and the solution ultimately must be as well. We learn to fight sexual sin by learning to love God more. We cry out, let me hear your joy and gladness. We learn to hear by marinating ourselves in the Word, by seeing Jesus as so holy and precious to us that we hate anything that keeps us from seeing and following him better. In moments of struggle we cry out for the Holy Spirit to uphold us with a willing spirit.

I was reading Thomas Merton’s writings on solitude when I came across this unexpected passage: “One vitally important aspect of solitude is its intimate dependence on chastity… Nowhere is self-denial more important than in the area of sex, because this is the most difficult of all natural appetites to control and one whose undisciplined gratification completely blinds the human spirit to all interior light… self-control is not only desirable but altogether possible and it is essential for the contemplative life. It demands considerable effort, watchfulness, patience, humility and trust in Divine grace. But the very struggle for chastity teaches us to rely on a spiritual power higher than our own nature, and this is an indispensable preparation for interior prayer. Furthermore, chastity is not possible without ascetic self-sacrifice in many other areas. It demands a certain amount of fasting, it requires a very temperate and well-ordered life, modesty, restraint of curiosity, moderation of one’s aggressivity, and many other virtues. Perfect chastity establishes one in a state of spiritual solitude, peace, tranquility, clarity, gentleness and joy in which one is fully disposed for meditation and contemplative prayer.”

Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5)—and while this refers to much more than sexual purity, that is certainly included. It’s interesting to consider this in light of Merton’s thoughts. It’s interesting to see how our conduct in this area of our lives bleeds so heavily, for good or ill, into other areas of our lives. If David’s story tells us anything, it is that we all can have these struggles. We all need to pray his prayer.