Me Time

“The Lord was my support. He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me.” – Psalm 18:19

In her book Bossypants, Tina Fey gives suggestions for “me time” activities moms can do to carve out time for themselves: “Go to the bathroom a lot. Offer to empty the dishwasher. Take ninety-minute showers. (If you only shower every three or four days, it will be easier to get away with this.) Say you’re going to look for the diaper creme, then go into your child’s room and just stand there until your spouse comes in and curtly says, ‘What are you doing?’ Stand over the sink and eat the rest of your child’s dinner while he or she pulls at your pant leg and asks for it back. Try to establish that you’re the only one in your family allowed to go to the post office.”

Our first newborn was a relatively fussy baby who didn’t settle easily into sleep routines, and I remember at one point being so desperate to take a shower that I just moved a bouncy chair into the bathroom and set her down squalling in it. In a way, these days feel like a movement back to those times, when the idea of “me time” was a relative joke. We aim for “teacher breaks” and “don’t find me unless you’re bleeding” quiet times, but when it’s all said and done, I don’t really gain freedom from the demands of the kids until they’re asleep. There’s always the possibility one of them will need a butt wiped, a hurt addressed, a problem solved, an achievement recognized, or an item fetched.

Being more present now for all of that is undoubtedly one of the gifts of this time, and probably what I will look back on as one of the most meaningful things about it. But to do so without breaks is to get to a point where I lose patience and perspective. And without babysitters, school days, activities, or work outside the home, part of adjusting is rethinking what “me time” means, and how to find it.

This verse sums up what I need, I think: a departure. A leaving of my work, and an entering into a place that is broad, where I can stretch out and recover all the parts of myself that get cramped in my work world, where I can look around and look up without distraction. Where instead of constantly giving, I can receive. Most of all, where I can receive a sense that there is someone who sees me, understands me, and delights in me. 

What does a real Sabbath mean for a parent? What does rest look like for a homeschooler who picks up parenting once the school day ends? What does “me time” look like when you’re rarely ever alone? A big part of finding my rhythm in this new life is feeling out the answers to these questions, sometimes, it seems, by trial-and-error. But if David could write these words during one of the hardest times of his life, I hold out hope that God can support us during these times as well, that as we ask him, he can bring us to the moments of rest that we need.

Finding A Sacred Space

“And listen to the pleas of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place.” – 2 Chronicles 6:21

One of the losses we bear during this time are spaces. We’ve lost classrooms and operating rooms, sanctuaries and stores. Some of those spaces can be recreated: we converted a bedroom into an office space where Dave can do video visits with patients privately. We divided our dining table into four sections with tape so the kids have desks for their schoolwork. It’s temporary, but it works.

Solomon’s temple was temporary, too. Jewish historian Josephus notes, “the temple was burnt four hundred and seventy years, six months, and ten days after it was built.” But there is still something profound and moving in reading about its construction and dedication, about the attention to detail that was given, about the moment when God’s glory filled it like a cloud in the midst of which no one could stand. It’s a reminder that God choosing to dwell with us is not something to be taken for granted, and that there is beauty and holiness to be found in the places he inhabits.

God dwells within us, now. We don’t have to go to a particular place to find him. But I think there’s still something significant about having a sacred space. It’s a declaration of intention. It’s an illustration of holiness. It’s a reminder of God’s constancy. Having a space we have either created or found, that we can set aside for God, that we can return to, that we can fill with the marks or memories of His presence, is even more important now that we’ve lost the ability to gather in churches and retreat centers. On a neighborhood walk the other day, I found a corner by a wall behind some bushes, where probably no one ever went. I sat down in the overgrown grass, and suddenly all I could see was sky and foliage, and it was like I could breathe again for a moment, like I could see in that little space the bigness of God, so much outside of my daily struggles. When I’m indoors, I go to a corner by a window with a rug and some pillows and a few of my favorite things. I keep a candle there I can light when I’m alone to say, “God, here I am. Here you are.” 

Where are your spaces? This is a good time to create or find one, to let the boundaries we now live in bring renewed creativity and intentionality when it comes to finding a sacred space. 

Overland to the Islands

by Denise Levertov

Let’s go — much as that dog goes,

intently haphazard.  The

Mexican light on a day that

“smells like autumn in Connecticut”

makes iris ripples on his

black gleaming fur — and that too

is as one would desire — a radiance

consorting with the dance.

Under his feet

rock and mud, his imagination, sniffing,

engaged in its perceptions — dancing

edgeways, there’s nothing

the dog disdains on his way,

nevertheless he

keeps moving, changing

pace and approach but
not direction — “every step an arrival.”

Meritocracy

“For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” – Romans 5:7-8

We live in a moral ecology, writes David Brooks, built on assumptions that include “the centrality of accomplishment”: we are not measured by how well we conform to code, or the “thickness” of our relationships, “but by what we have individually achieved… promoting the self is the prime mission.” One New Yorker article describes how this works when it comes to education: up to high school, you just need to show up. But college is different. It’s a bottleneck, a sorting mechanism. “You are either selected or rejected. And it matters where… The narrower the entryway, the broader the range of opportunities on the other side. College, in turn, sorts by qualifying some students for graduate and professional education… And graduate and professional education then sorts for the labor market. It’s little gold stars all the way up.”

Little gold stars all the way up. Even as someone who has outwardly stepped off the escalator of career ambition, I’m finding that it’s incredibly difficult not to apply some system of meritocracy to everything else: my parenting, my housekeeping, my marriage, my ministry, my hobbies. My spiritual life. Soaked deep into me is the assumption that my accomplishments determine my value. I like to think, oh, I’m beyond wanting to get into Harvard, but really, it isn’t that simplistic, and it never was. There’s a good thing in me, that wants to be excellent, that thrives best with challenging goals, but I live in a world based on meritocracy, so immersed in it that we can’t even tell we are. I have to constantly distinguish between good thing for God’s glory and good thing that makes me good. Between effort and fruit, between self-justifying works and holy discipline. And the line between those things can be thin.

The most spiritually formative experiences in my life have been those that cause me to hit the limits of my merit. Marriage. Parenting. And now I can add to the list: quarantine. Even starting off with all the advantages I could have—a spacious house, no need to work, a healthy family foundation—I am struggling to accomplish it all, to homeschool, parent, housekeep, cook, write, self-care, support a necessarily absent spouse. I’ve let creep in, as I so easily do with any new venture, this silent but deadly belief that I ought to be able to, even that I am measured by how well I do it. Part of what this time is doing is confronting me with the functional meritocracy in my life. This is what Paul was trying to do in Romans. He is saying, the way that God loves you has nothing to do with what you have accomplished. More than that, it has nothing to do with how you have messed up. Jesus says you alone are worth his life, completely apart from anything you have or haven’t done. How would my life look different if I truly believed this? 

God Has A Purpose

“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” – Proverbs 19:21

You feel overwhelmed sometimes. Overwhelmed at the interminability of the days, stretching on, bare in the worst ways and full in the hardest ones. You are surrounded by bodies, yet alone. Every day feels like an enormous effort, calling for vast reserves within yourself that you wake up some mornings not sure that you possess. 

Is this time a surprise to you? Was it not what you were expecting this year? It is not a surprise to God. It is fully within the intention of his purpose for you. God knew this time was coming. It is not a surprise to him. He has prepared you for it whether you know it or not.

The temptation to speculate as to the nature of those purposes is strong. And maybe even now you see that something unique is happening, things being unearthed, gifts being exercised, in the crucible of it all. But that is not mostly the point. The point, for today, is just to know that many are the plans in your mind, but what will stand in your life is the purpose of God for you. And he surely has one. 

“You are living through an unusual time… You see that, for the time being, you have to be limited in your movements… It is a new experience for you to feel both the desire and its unreality. You sense that nothing but God’s love can fulfil your deepest need while the pull to other people and things remains strong. It seems that peace and anguish exist side by side in you, that you desire both distraction and prayerful concentration… You know that something totally new, truly unique, is happening within you. It is clear that something in you is dying and something is being born… You feel a strange sadness. An enormous loneliness emerges, but you are not frightened. You feel vulnerable but safe at the same time. Jesus is where you are, and you can trust that he will show you the next step” (pp 15-16, The Inner Voice of Love, Henri Nouwen).

Rejoice

“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” – Romans 5:2-5

Did you know that there are four main Greek words translated “rejoice” in the New Testament? Chairo is the one used most frequently (75 times); it means “to be glad,” and we’re familiar with it from the book of Philippians. Agalliaomeans “to jump for joy”; euphraino means “to cheer up.” The word Paul uses here is kauchaomai, and it has two meanings: “to glory in a thing or on account of a thing,” and “to boast.” It adds a kind of subtle redundancy here, to “glory in the hope of the glory of God.” 

The definition of “rejoice” from the dictionary is: “to feel or show great joy or delight.” If I had to explain the meaning of kauchaomai to one of the kids, I would say it’s to be happy about the nature of something so much that you need to show your happiness. It has to come out in some way. It’s a boasting in something, not to selfishly brag about it, but because you really want to show it off. Paul says that we should feel this way about the hope that we have.

Someone once said, “Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.” I remember a friend once asked, “what is something you are looking forward to?” and I thought it was such a good question. What we look forward to keeps us going, doesn’t it? But the hope we have as believers isn’t just looking forward to the next exciting experience or anticipated pleasure. It’s not counting on when something bad will end. It’s not self-generated optimism or wishful thinking. Paul is quite specific here: it is hope of the glory of God. The glory of God is everything about him; the excellence and magnificence of every one of his qualities. There is a sense in which we experience God’s glory now: we stand in this grace; his love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. But there is a sense in which we anticipate much more to come, both here on earth but especially one day in the eternity to come.

And here, the awful mystery: this kind of hope comes in suffering. The more we continue in suffering, the more we endure, the more it shapes the nature and quality of our inner selves, the more, somehow, it leads to this exact kind of hope. This is why we rejoice in our sufferings the same way we rejoice in our hope: so happy about the very nature of its work in us that we can boast about it, that we must express it somehow. 

When I think about someone who rejoices this way, Joni Eareckson Tada comes to mind. She wrote a short booklet entitled Hope… The Best Of Things, in which she wrote: “I sure hope I can bring this wheelchair to heaven. Now, I know that’s not theologically correct. But I hope to bring it and put it in a little corner of heaven, and then in my new, perfect, glorified body, standing on grateful glorified legs, I’ll stand next to my Savior, holding his nail-pierced hands. I’ll say, ‘Thank you, Jesus,’ and he will know that I mean it, because he knows me. He’ll recognize me from the fellowship we’re now sharing in his sufferings. And I will say, ‘Jesus, do you see that wheelchair? You were right when you said that in this world we would have trouble, because that thing was a lot of trouble. But the weaker I was in that thing, the harder I leaned on you. And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be. It never would have happened had you not given me the bruising of the blessing of that wheelchair.’ Then the real ticker-tape parade of praise will begin. And all of earth will join in the party. And at that point Christ will open up our eyes to the great fountain of joy in his heart for us beyond all that we ever experienced on earth. And when we’re able to stop laughing and crying, the Lord Jesus really will wipe away our tears. I find it so poignant that finally at the point when I do have the use of my arms to wipe away my own tears, I won’t have to, because God will.”

Sorrow

“How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?” – Psalm 13:2

Last week we were starting our homeschool day when Elijah became inordinately upset over something relatively minor. It turned out I hadn’t done something exactly the way his kinder teacher had. Do you miss her? I asked. He nodded, and suddenly his anger melted into tears. Somehow the reality of what we’ve all lost hit me as I sat there. I couldn’t really tell him he would get to see her again soon. I just held him as he cried. 

Grief is so often a postscript for me. I busy myself with making the best of things, creating and carrying out action plans, thinking about how much better we have it than so many others. But as my kids teach me, it is okay to be sad. The sadness is there, and sometimes it must be held gently and given space. Elijah ended up drawing a picture of his classroom we sent to his teacher, a little memorial that included all his favorite parts of the room: the rocking chair where she sat, the rainbow rug, the smartboard with penguins on it, blue window drapes and the peace table. If I were to draw a picture of all the things I miss about our old life, in it would be coffee shops. Friends around a dinner table. Our fifth-grader graduating from elementary school. Our son striding off to swim practice in his parka, loaded with all his gear. Our church sanctuary, filled with people and music. 

I wrote about this psalm near the start of our one-year reading adventure, but this time around, I find myself not wanting to think past verse two. I am consistently amazed by David’s ability not only to acknowledge his sorrow, but to sit with it in God’s presence. The thing about grief is that it’s so lonely. No one really understands how it feels. Sometimes I picture it like an ocean that I sink into, an underwater place from which I can gesticulate, but not speak distinctly. When I’m there, it’s hard to describe how I feel. And what I want there aren’t words anyway. I want presence, a hand to hold in the dark, and it seems to me that is what David has with his God.

There are new, surprisingly good things growing up out of this time. If I were to draw a picture of our lives now, it would be full of unique memories that will likely never happen again. But I’m finding it’s good to be as intentional about our grief as we are about our gratitude. If the one opens our eyes to the gifts of this new time, the other allows us to acknowledge the losses we bear. And when we pray our grief to God, we experience his presence and allow him to work in us in that place.

Overlooking Offense

“Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” – Proverbs 19:11

Being around the same people at home for extended periods of time has its own challenges. Introverts have lost routines for solitude, extroverts have lost social gatherings. We’ve all lost physical outlets like gym classes and team sports. And there are a million small ways we annoy each other. We’ve gotten to the point where, if the kids can last two hours without someone crying, screaming, or fighting, they get to put a marble in the jar (“is this teaching emotional suppression?” I asked my friend. “Nah,” she replied. “I call it emotional regulation.”). A full jar earns them a movie night, and even though this has resulted in some interesting behaviors (“just wait ten minutes before you cry—we’re almost at the two-hour mark!”), rare are the days we make it all the way through without some kind of emotional outburst.

Sometimes increased proximity unearths issues worth talking about. But part of living together is learning how to overlook an offense. That verb literally means “to let pass by,” as if you are standing on a bridge, watching water flow by under you. Overlooking is not passive: it is not refusing to respond, or burying your feelings inside. Overlooking is actively acknowledging an offense exists, and then consciously deciding to let it go, let it flow down that stream out of view. Not holding it against someone. 

This verse says to do so is our glory: this word means ornament, and is often used to describe outward adornment, like jeweled stones (Exodus 28:2, Ezekiel 23:26), anklets and headbands (Isaiah 3:18), or crowns (Proverbs 4:9, Isaiah 62:3, Ezekiel 23:42). To overlook an offense is not weakness. It is our splendor, something which adds visibly to our beauty. It shapes our characters and gives us an inner beauty that shines out. But in another sense, when we do this we walk in Christlikeness, putting on the very glory of a God who himself is our adornment: “In that day the Lord of hosts will be a crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty, to the remnant of his people” (Isaiah 28:5).

Overlooking an offense does not come without cost. It can take emotional reserve, mental energy, time and effort. But this is how we learn to be slow to anger, to respond with sense rather than react without thought. And in the end, it can become something of great beauty.

Time In The New World

“The Lord is king forever and ever; the nations perish from his land.” – Psalm 10:16

“In every critical event, there is an opportunity for God to act creatively and reveal a deeper truth than what we see on the surface of things.” – Henri Nouwen, Discernment

Many people have commented on how this pandemic has forced the clearing of calendars in an area where people are typically busy and overscheduled. Miraculously, nearly overnight, my own days have been wiped clean, all the daily and weekly markers simply vanished. I used to make five, six school and swim runs in a day: I haven’t started up the car in a week (Dave has driven during the times we’ve gone out to now-overcrowded parks). There will be more and more zoom events scheduled as schools and activities boot back up virtually, but in the meanwhile, we’re all forced to sit in this space where our sense of time has been warped. I am starting to understand how my six-year-old feels. Even pre-pandemic, he would ask us regularly, what day is it?

The Greeks had two words for time. Chronos is clock-time, time in compartments, in series of events. The other word for time is kairos, and I like how David Brooks writes about experiencing it in nature: “The wilderness lives at the pace of what the Greeks called kairos time, which can be slower but is always richer. Synchronous time is moment after moment, but kairos time is qualitative, opportune or not yet ripe, rich or spare, inspired or flat—the crowded hour or the empty moment… The soul communing with itself in the wilderness is at kairos time, too—slow and serene, but thick and strong, like the growing of the redwood.”

A deeper truth I’m seeing in this unscheduled space is how much our busyness forces us to live in chronos time: life as measured from segment to segment, activity to activity. Our view of time becomes so myopic that we’re less able to discern the movement of God, which so often occurs outside of our calibrations. Henri Nouwen writes in his book Discernment that kairos time is when “time becomes not just something to get through or manipulate or manage, but the arena of God’s good work in us… Time points beyond itself and begins to speak to us of God… To start seeing that the many events of our day, week, or year are not in the way of our search for a full life but rather the way to it is a real experience of conversion.”

I see that conversion in this Psalm. The point of conversion is verse 10, when the writer emerges from despair and lament to suddenly say: “The Lord is king forever and ever.” It’s as if he’s emerged from his myopia, put on his spectacles, and glimpsed God in kairos time: the God who outlasts nations. Can you imagine forever? Yet God is there, so far outside of our calendars. And it is from this truth about God that the writer then says: “you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strength their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice” (verses 17-18).

It’s disorienting when our routines are taken away. But these changes bring an invitation, to sink for a moment into a different view of time. To allow time, and the happenings of our lives in that very time, to speak to us of God, and to practice discerning Him in it.

The Grace And The Impatience To Wait

by Walter Brueggemann

In our secret yearnings

we wait for your coming,

and in our grinding despair

we doubt that you will.

And in this privileged place

we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we

and by those who despair more deeply than do we.

Look upon your church and its pastors

in this season of hope

which runs so quickly to fatigue

and this season of yearning

which becomes so easily quarrelsome.

Give us the grace and the impatience

to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,

to the edge of our finger tips.

We do not want our several worlds to end.

Come in your power

and come in your weakness

in any case and make all things new.

Amen.

Leisure

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” – Romans 1:20

I’m finding that this new world has changed my relationship with entertainment and leisure. Perhaps because my days are more intense and non-stop, because there is a greater sense of restlessness with being cut off from outside activities, or simply because I’m generally online more following news and connecting virtually with others, the lure towards media-oriented, escapist entertainment is greater. It’s tempting to be lazy about what I read or watch, but part of navigating the new rhythms of this life is recognizing that I must also navigate what I do with my spare time. Are there inner emotions, stresses or struggles underlying the impulse for escapism? How does what I read or watch affect me? How does it reveal what I crave or long for, or what I believe will save me? How can I readjust my leisure life in a healthy way?

The question I’ve typically used to help me sort through whether something is a healthy form of leisure is: how life-giving is this activity for me? After I do it, do I feel more refreshed, energized, or renewed, or do I feel more deadened or tired? But as I was reading our passage in Romans, it occurred to me that there could be a deeper question to ask. Paul says that when we look at things in our world, one of two things can happen: we can perceive the nature of God, or we can perceive idols that replace God. All of God is writ in his creation, but how we perceive it can be vastly different. 

The truth is, I come to my leisure time with a need. How can I use the free time I have to perceive God in the way I need to receive Him, to receive life in Him? Sometimes I need to perceive God’s vastness after a cloistered day at home: that may mean going outside, or reading something that expands my awareness of the world. Sometimes I need to perceive God’s presence in suffering or emotion: that may mean reading a book or watching a movie that gives me an excuse to cry. Sometimes I need to perceive God’s image reflected in the parts of me that aren’t related to being a mom: that may mean exercising an old hobby. Sometimes I need to remind myself of aspects of God I can’t see myself: that may mean connecting with some friends. 

Conversely, does my leisure sink me more deeply into idolatry in any way, or to an unhealthy degree? Is it leading me, however insidiously, to exchange some truth about God for a lie, to serve some aspect of creation rather than the Creator (verse 25)? The line between something showing me an image of God, and becoming an idol unto itself, is a tricky one, and I generally have to be both brutally honest and uncomfortably vigilant with myself. Sometimes these are the hardest, unseen battles that I fight. But I don’t do it to be legalistic. I do it because I know that how I spend my leisure time is one of the most important things I do. I do it because I love Jesus, and I know that ultimately in Him is life (John 1:4). May God reveal Himself to us in the ways we need life and rest as we walk into each day. 

Heavens

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” – Psalm 8:3-4

While raiding the library last week, I ventured into the non-fiction section and checked out some reference books. One of them is a Picturepedia, the first spread of which is entitled “The Universe.” In it, there are a series of seven pictures, each one a zoomed-in view of the one to its left. First is the universe (“full of dark energy, dark matter, and other matter such as superclusters of galaxies”). Then take a tiny speck there and zoom in, and it’s a supercluster (“made up of a cluster of galaxies”). Then zoom in on one tiny speck, and it’s a local group (“a cluster of about 50 galaxies inside the Virgo Supercluster”). Then zoom in on one of the smaller bright spots there, and it’s the Milky Way Galaxy (“200 billion stars”). Then zoom in on one of the smaller specks there, and it’s the stellar neighborhood (a gathering of stars in one arm of the Milky Way). Then zoom in on one of those stars, and it’s our sun in its solar system, then finally zoom in on the third planet from the sun, and it’s Earth.

This is difficult to comprehend. Personally, I work in a microcosmos. I specialize in a part of the body that measures 24 millimeters in its entire diameter (26 for the highly myopic). The posture of my profession is hunched, looking down and in: I don’t so often look up. And these days, we are all indoors; it’s easy to forget we can still go out. The most profound words in this Psalm seem to me today to be “When I look.” When have I looked? When have I taken my eyes off myself, my troubles, my concerns, my microcosmic world, and looked, really looked, at God’s heavens?

When we look, David says, what we see is the visible definition of God’s glory, the outworking of his power. What we get is a glimpse into the reality of God’s being compared with our being. As R. C. Sproul wrote, “Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God.” The same line frames the start and end of this Psalm: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”—and that word “majestic” means large, very great, might, powerful, glorious. It is also translated “magnificent,” “excellent.” You get the sense David means something utterly beyond us in scope, beyond even his ability to really describe. 

That, David says, is God’s name. In that context, it’s interesting that David writes into these lines two names for God. He says, “O Yahweh,” (God’s given, unutterable, unique name) “our adown” (personal lord, possessor, master, husband). The only possible reaction to a comprehension of the universe is to say, what is man? Who the heck do we think we are? Yet this God, with the name too holy to be uttered, displayed in a universe too vast to be comprehended, is also our God, as close and intimate as a spouse. That is the real mystery, the real secret of the heavens, written large for us all to see if we look.

Every Step An Arrival

“Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.” – Proverbs 19:2

“Oh, it’s not that easy, Lumiere. These things take time.” – Mrs. Potts, ‘Beauty and the Beast’

I read this in a New York Times article today: “Looking back, it’s hard to remember the exact moment we left the old world behind, and entered this new one. How did Ernest Hemingway describe going bankrupt — ‘gradually, and then suddenly’? Like that.” And I realized, that’s how most of us stumbled into this surreal new world: suddenly. And that’s about how fast we expect ourselves to be able to figure it out. There’s something to be said for grasping the bull by the horns: formulating the perfect homeschool schedule, stocking up on groceries and library books, getting the home office or digital platforms up-and-running.

But the fact is, this new reality we’re entering is so comprehensively different, and so potentially chronic, that it will take some time getting used to. It introduces entirely new work and financial pressures, new relational dynamics at home, new chore and errand and educational routines. I’m sure people who were working from home or homeschooling in the old world would tell us that it’s not as simple as plopping down in front of your computer in the living room, or coming up with some ideal class schedule. All of it takes time and figuring out. It takes talking out, rearranging spaces, calibrating expectations, on top of dealing with the emotional adjustment or grief of the change.

This is a matter of pacing, of, to borrow a phrase from Eugene Peterson, a “long obedience in the same direction.” When I race towards an outcome, when I don’t allow for time between steps, I miss everything that is important. Look at this verse in Proverbs: why are these two statements paired together? When we sprint, we think we are only heading faster towards our destination, but in fact we miss it altogether. Our desire for outcome has kept us from real knowledge, from the things we need to learn, the signs we need to look for, the change that needs to happen, for us to actually find our way.

Denise Levertov wrote a poem that ends this way: “nevertheless he / keeps moving, changing / pace and approach but / not direction – ‘every step an arrival.’” Peterson talks about this in his memoir The Pastor: “I recognized in her phrase a metaphor for my own formation as a pastor: every step along the way—becoming the pastor I didn’t know I was becoming and the person I now am, an essential component that was silently and slowly being integrated into a coherent life and vocation—an arrival.”

The integration of a coherent life in this new world happens slowly. Part of pacing ourselves is expecting that these adjustments will take time. Being gracious with failures and frustrations. Being humble and willing to revise our ideas. Finding the right questions to ask to help us learn. Realizing that every step, however feeble, however surprising, however unseen or unacknowledged, is an arrival. That the point is not necessarily to arrive at perfection but to live out a joyous obedience, a growing faith, a tangible gospel. One day at a time.

Answering Before Hearing

“If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.” – Proverbs 18:13

I grew up in a family of speed-talking girls. Both my sisters talk as fast as, if not faster than, me, which meant we could get a lot of conversational ground covered at any given time, but which somehow evolved over the years into a tendency to interrupt each other. It wasn’t until I married Dave, and he called me out on it, that I realized how much I habitually interrupt others, think ahead as they talk, predict what they’re going to say, and finish their sentences for them. I got pretty good in medical school at anticipating what attendings would say and answering questions before they were asked, and in some ways that made me a good student, and was a natural manifestation of the enthusiasm and efficiency I valued, but I’ve since realized how annoying it can be.

There is nothing that shuts off the desire to share more than someone asking, “how are you?” and then interrupting you after you’ve barely started with assertions and assumptions about how you must be feeling or how similar this is to something they’ve gone through. Put simply, it makes you feel that you are not being heard, and thus not being valued. It is an act of vulnerability to share. It requires an expenditure of energy and thought to share. And neither of those are honored when the other person answers before he even listens.

When it comes to answering well, the first thing we must do is listen well. Very often we realize our assumptions are not entirely correct. We learn to listen for underlying subtexts, surrounding contexts, accompanying attitudes, and all the other layers that are at the heart of what someone is asking or sharing. Perhaps we ought not even respond with an answer, but as Jesus so often did, with another question. To listen well before answering is still something I’m very much learning to do. But it is the way to wisdom and honor. To answer before we hear is folly and shame. 

Take Heart

“When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned… Paul stood up among them and said… “I urge you to take heart… For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before Caesar. And behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.’ So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told.” – Acts 27:21-25

“Take heart, my friend, we'll go together / this uncertain road that lies ahead / our faithful God has always gone before us / and He will lead the way once again” – Fernando Ortega

The situation was pretty bad, and somehow Luke’s use of the first person makes it that much more real: they were in a violent storm, with darkness for days. Quarantined in the midst of a force beyond their control, having jettisoned all non-essential cargo and tackle. Hope was gone. Yet when Paul speaks, he uses twice a word that only occurs a total of three times in the entire New Testament: euthymio, to “take heart, be of good cheer, be joyful and merry.” It’s also used in James 5:13: “Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.” Paul was not only willing to speak about God to nonbelievers, to let go of any grudge that his warnings about the journey were ignored, to admit feeling afraid himself—he was willing to stare hopeless people in the face and say, twice, cheer up.

There’s a tendency to think, well, if an angel appeared to me, it would be easier to cheer up. Yet this angelic visit did not preclude further suffering. And despite hearing about it, several were driven by fear and self-protection in the face of their conditions (Acts 27:30). Belief is difficult. Faith may feel like a choice. We need to be told, take heart. Be people who sing praise. 

The transition to homeschooling has been an adjustment. We’ve come up with a schedule that adopts much of what the kids have in their typical pre-K, kinder, second- and fifth-grade schedules, like marble jars, choice time, morning calendars, weekly jobs, and (my favorite) “charging time” for the teacher. We do math, reading and writing, watch science and exercise videos. But my favorite time is actually the first fifteen minutes of the day, when we read a short devotional (from Thoughts To Make Your Heart Sing as that happened to be nearby) and have ten minutes of silent drawing or journaling. Because Elijah’s kinder teacher played a morning song as the day starts, we open that time by singing something simple, like “Rise and shine and give God the glory…” or a short song we learned in BSF, “Good morning, God. This is your day. I am your child. Show me your way.”

It’s hard to know how to be cheerful when the world seems to be crumbling around us. But the songs help. I come to the table most mornings with a bit of dread, not sure how the day will go, whether my emotional reserves will last, but then we sing those little melodies, and I look around at these four faces around the table, and I think, even this moment is a gift. We would not be having it were it not for the pandemic going on around us. It’s like I can hear Paul’s voice, saying, take heart. Take heart, for I have faith in God.

The Chronicler's Story

“Adam, Seth, Enosh.” – 1 Chronicles 1:1

“No story lives unless someone wants to listen. The stories we love best do live in us forever.” – J.K. Rowling

Let’s face it: the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles are tough reading. For us modern-day readers, not the most gripping of hooks. We have short attention spans. We aren’t related to these people. We’ve just finished reading through the Samuel’s and the Kings’ and aren’t anticipating much fresh material here. But in fact, it’s exactly by reading Chronicles (1 and 2 Chronicles were originally one book) synoptically with Samuel and Kings that we see what is so amazing about it. 

Chronicles is the retelling of a story. Why would anyone retell a story? Because stories tell us who we are, why we are here, and what our hope is for the future. And right then, the Israelites needed a new story. The monarchy and the temple of their people had been destroyed. They had been taken into exile. Now, they had returned and rebuilt their temple, but everything had been upset. They were reduced in strength and numbers, occupying only a fraction of the land they had before, subject to foreign overlords, living in the midst of a mixed and sometimes antagonistic population. They had lost their context, their purpose, and their hope.

And so, the Chronicler spins a tale. The story doesn’t start in chapter 10. It starts right here from the first word, Adam, with which he says: I am going to tell you a story of names, a story about who you are, and it starts from the very beginning, not with Abraham, but with Adam. God is telling through you his story for all mankind, for all creation. The Chronicler then traces names forward through history, and we can see what he emphasizes by noticing which people have all their children named; which people are mentioned last (usually indicating they are more important); which family lines are traced not just linearly but horizontally. He highlights Noah, then Abraham, then Jacob. Despite the fact that most of the later narrative will focus on Judah’s tribe, the Chronicler highlights all twelve tribes here in the genealogy, again emphasizing their collective identity as the people of God.

But he does spend more time on David’s line, and also on Aaron: and in these two threads we see the themes of this new story, the kingship and the temple. This story paints, in a more positive light than Samuel and Kings, a picture of David as messianic king, and Aaron and his descendants as priests, and the people in worship and song, all of it the expression of God’s covenant with David. We will see that he leaves out some of the negative stories, and adds new ones related to these themes, all of it to say: you are not lost. Things seem different. This is not how you pictured it. But God has made a covenant with you. It has been lived out in this king and this temple, and one day it will be lived out in the ultimate King and Temple and become a story that lives forever. As the ESV Study Bible puts it, “The Chronicler wrote to commend a positive prescription for the spiritual and social renewal of his community.” This is a story we all need to hear.

Hope

From the Heidelberg Catechism:

What is your only hope in life and death?

That I am not my own,

but belong with body and soul,

both in life and in death,

to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins

with his precious blood,

and has set me free

from all the power of the devil.

He also preserves me in such a way

that without the will of my heavenly Father

not a hair can fall from my head;

indeed, all things must work together

for my salvation.

Therefore, by his Holy Spirit

he also assures me

of eternal life

and makes me heartily willing and ready

from now on to live for him.

The Church's Response

“But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house.” – Psalm 5:7

“We need to redirect social energy from anxiety and panic to love and preparation. This crisis presents an extraordinary opportunity to fortify small communities of love and care for our neighbors. That will only happen if we lead in a way that reduces fear, increases faith, and reorients all of us from self-protection to serving others.” – Andy Crouch, Love In The Time Of Coronavirus

What is the response of the church during this time?

As Dave and I were dialoguing about this, we discussed three main reactions we see in people around us: first, the urge to acquire information. We’re all sitting around trying to read everything we can, and with this comes the confusion of sorting through various levels of accuracy and being affected, consciously or not, by the tone of what we are reading in the news or social media. Secondly, there is a polarization of opinions, the tendency to judge what others are doing or not. It’s easy to judge the policies being made, testing being done, personal choices being taken, organizational changes happening, without understanding the broader social factors, deeper personal histories, or contextual stories behind them. It’s easy to judge someone else, or feel myself judged, for having a different threshold of risk. Lastly, people have reacted in self-protection, as the rush to buy out paper products from Costco these days attests to. 

The church’s response, Dave argued, should be the opposite of these reactions. Rather than relying primarily on the latest information, we should be people led by the Holy Spirit. We need to be soaked in prayer and contemplation, to start and end each day as beloved children of our Father, even more at this time than any other. It’s good to stay informed, but our wisdom comes ultimately from walking in step each day with the Spirit who is alive and in us. Rather than becoming polarized in our opinions, we ought to be people marked by humility. We should feel okay admitting we don’t know everything. We should be more willing to listen and understand than to complain or air our views. 

Lastly, the church should be people who respond not from self-protection or fear, but from love and sacrificial courage. Andy Crouch talks in his article about how times of scarcity and threat can bring about exploitative, ethical, or redemptive modes of action. Exploitative action occurs when someone takes advantage of situations to protect themselves at any cost. Ethical action is doing what is right and trusting others to do the same. But Christians, he says, are called beyond that to redemptive action, “which is characterized by creative restoration through sacrifice… [making] courageous, creative, sacrificial choices that restore what has been broken.” We as the church ought to ask, how is this an extraordinary opportunity to be the hands and feet of Christ? One of our younger neighbors sent out an email offering to make grocery runs for any elderly folks on the street. Dave worked extra shifts doing video visits with people who may require testing for coronavirus. I see in all of that courage, and creativity, and sacrifice. The reality is, we are people who enter every day into an abundance of steadfast love from our God. He loves us more than is necessary, and his love does not change, no matter what else does. We should be the faces of that love to the people around us.

Ministry Of Presence

“Then he gave orders to the centurion that he should be kept in custody but have some liberty, and that none of his friends should be prevented from attending to his needs.” – Acts 24:23

Some of us are probably feeling closer now to being able to empathize with Paul in his period of interminable imprisonment. One person wrote in a New York Times article: “Quarantine is one of the many waiting rooms of life, and its own special circle of hell for people raised with the illusion that we control our destinies. We prefer to believe that anything can be overcome if we just try hard enough. But there is no trying in quarantine. There is only the sitting, and, if you wish to retain your hold on your sanity, the letting go. What comes next? No one knows.”

Paul certainly didn’t know. He was shipped from one Roman politician to the next, from motives and for periods of time entirely out of his control. One of the hardest things about the recent changes is the not-knowing: not knowing what will be canceled next when, how things will now look, how long it will all last. I find myself refreshing news feeds, wanting to know and predict and control, but we can’t know. We are in a situation where we don’t know. And we have less to distract ourselves from anything other than just being. 

I’m finding that, ironically, all this social distancing is making me ask, what does it mean to be present? What does it mean to be present with and for each other? We’re used to presence occurring within the framework of various external structures, like school drop-offs, work routines, church services—but now we’re having to reexamine what it actually means to connect meaningfully with another person. To “be” with them, not “do” with them, or fit the being in-between the doing. This is a time that can expose the underlying loneliness and isolation we feel. That makes us rethink our habits of connecting with others. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be a chance to reflect and even to experiment. Instead of seeing faces pass by during a Sunday morning service, perhaps we stop to think about those people and send one of them a text. Instead of getting ready for one activity after another, perhaps we sit on the couch with our kids and read a new book to them all afternoon. 

Last night, our small group decided to still meet. We typically meet in the church building, which has never felt anything more than functional, but last night was different. We washed our hands, served the food, ate outside, lingered and talked and laughed and prayed: and there was something symbolic somehow, about us sitting in this space that was now otherwise empty. The conversation wasn’t always profound. We didn’t follow an agenda or study. But I felt the ministry of everyone’s presence. There is something powerful, and powerfully Christ-like, in the simple determination to be present. There is something valuable offered in that presence alone. All the activities and services in the world can’t necessarily bring it: but it can be found in the simple intention of a few people connecting with each other. It gave me hope, that we’ll continue to find ways to do this, even if it can’t keep being in person.

A Time For Selah

“Selah.” – Psalm 3:2, 4, 8

This feels like a time of disorientation and isolation, with event cancellations happening to unprecedented degrees and in unprecedented ways. It feels destabilizing having things that I thought for sure would happen just disappear, not knowing what to expect next week or three months down the line.

We’re cycling back through the Psalms, and it struck me on this reading that Psalm 3 has the highest density of selah’s of any chapter in the book (the next three runner-ups are Psalms 32 and 46, which have 3 in 11 verses, and Psalm 67, which has 2 in 7 verses). No one knows for sure what selah means, though scholars guess “pause, silence.” It is a word that occurs not in the text itself, but as a notation in the margin. In a way, this entire time is like one big selah in our lives: a pause, a stop, an interruption from some force outside of the script of our lives.

Why are there more selah’s in this psalm than any other? David wrote it during an unexpectedly disruptive time in his life, when he was forced to abandon all routine in the face of a rebellion led by his son. Perhaps in this time of uncertainty, David felt an even greater need to stop and meditate on words like these: “But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head… I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid” (verses 3, 5-6). The word “sustain” here means “to lean upon, for rest and support.” David also says, “Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God!” (verse 7). Times of instability can bring into greater relief both what we lean upon in our lives, and what the cry and longing of our souls are before God. 

But selah is also a reminder of the importance of community. Eugene Peterson writes in his book Answering God, “Like detectives sifting through the clues we find Selah; from it we deduce not a crime but a community… Some of [these psalms] most certainly originated in solitude, and all of them have been continued in solitude. But in the form in which they come to us, the only form in which they come to us, and therefore in the way they serve as our school of prayer, they are the prayers of a community before God in worship… Selah directed people who were together in prayer to do something or other together. Our prayer book, by the time we get our hands on it, has all these liturgical scribbles in the margins. Biblically, we are not provided with a single prayer for private devotions. The community in prayer, not the individuals in prayer, is basic and primary.”

David was not in a time of life when he could gather as he was accustomed to with his community. But nevertheless, they walk alongside him together (2 Samuel 15), and this little word in the margin is a reminder that, especially in times of disorientation and instability, our existence as a community has not changed. When we cannot meet as we usually do, how can we still pray in chorus together? How is this all an opportunity to rediscover what community truly means, what our faith truly means together? The time when David walked the unexpected path was the time he remembered more than any other that he was not really alone.

Turning And Seeing

“And as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs there on the mount. And he sent and took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar.” – 2 Kings 23:16

I love the verbs in this verse: Josiah turned, and he saw. And as he turns, we see. We learn more about the details of the Israelites’ disobedience during Josiah’s repentance than we did during the reigns of the two evil kings that came before him, which is interesting, isn’t it? We learn that in God’s temple, there were kept vessels and altars for idols, houses for male cult prostitutes, and women who wove hangings for idols. We learn they worshipped not just false gods but the sun, moon, and stars. We learn of places made specifically for parents to burn their children as offerings. We learn of the geographical prominence of idolatrous altars and statues. We learn about the timeline of it all: in fact, this section reads like a reverse history lesson, with Josiah undoing the work of predecessors like Solomon and Jeroboam. It must not have been easy to uproot traditions, habits and job descriptions that ran back for generations.

But that is what Josiah does. Before restoring the practices of God’s law, he removes anything that stands against or could distract from God’s truth, and there is something to be relished in how ruthlessly thorough he is. Just when we think he’s done, he turns and unearths more bones in these tombs on the mount. 

Sometimes I too find that the more I turn to God, the more I see what I’m turning from. There is something about sin that blinds us. It numbs and habituates, rendering it difficult by nature to see how much we are in the grip of anger, greed, gossip, lust, anxiety, grumbling, selfishness, or any number of things. The more the light that is God’s law (Psalm 119:105) shines into those places, the more we see all the layers of the lure, grip and power of sin in our lives. We don’t see these things by staring straight at the sin itself. We see them by staring at God in his Word, and then turning back from that to see. 

The Bible says of Josiah, “Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him” (2 Kings 23:25). Wow. Yet even Josiah’s repentance was not enough to undo the sin of his forefathers, as we read in the very next verse: “Still the Lord did not turn from the burning of his great wrath.” It would take one from Josiah’s line, Jesus, to turn away God’s wrath from his people, to restore us who were dead, as dead as those bones in the tomb, to life in Christ. 

Selfies And Psalms

“Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens!” – Psalm 150:1

The selfie camera on my old phone was broken for the better part of a year, which I considered theologically profound, so I didn’t bother to fix it. Eventually I upgraded my phone, though, and rediscovered how positively odd and revolutionary it is to not only be completely aware of how I look to others, but be able to manipulate that image. No wonder people get so obsessed over their best selfie angle. No wonder an entire generation has been ushered into the “selfie age,” where we broadcast ourselves, desire personal fame, and have what David Brooks has termed “an unusual level of self-interest” and an “enlarged sense of self.” 

The Bible tells a completely different story. As Sally Lloyd-Jones writes in The Jesus Storybook Bible, “The Bible isn’t mainly about me and what I should be doing. It’s about God and what he has done.” And Psalm 150, this last of the psalms, speaks to that story. Take just one word: “heavens.” This is Greek raqiya, which means “to be clear, to be brilliant, to shine,” and it stretches both back to the beginning and forward into all eternity. In Genesis 1, this is the word for the expanse that God made: “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters… And God made the expanse… and God called the expanse Heaven.” In Ezekiel 1, this is the word for the expanse that is God’s eternal dwelling and the seat of his throne: “Over the heads of the living creatures there was the likeness of an expanse, shining like awe-inspiring crystal, spread out above their heads… And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire.” In Daniel 12, this is the word for the brilliance of the wise: “And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above.”

This is a story that begins and ends with a God who creates and dwells in expanses that are the very embodiment and shining forth of his glory and power. And the first thing we must do is take our eyes off our screens and ourselves, and look up, at that expanse which calls to us. Because, amazingly, we are in the story. Psalm 150 is really describing our own future, we who will one day shine like the expanse above. As Tim Keller writes, “If we could praise God perfectly, we would love him completely and then our joy would be full. The new heavens and the new earth are perfect because everyone and everything is glorifying God fully and therefore enjoying him forever. Psalm 150 gives us a glimpse of that unimaginable future. So praise him everywhere (verse 1) for everything (verse 2) in every way (verses 3–5). ‘Let everything that has breath praise the Lord’ (verse 6).”

Words That Strike Fear

“Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord.” – 2 Kings 19:14

What’s going on with coronavirus can be a bit confusing. At the start, it was easy enough to follow developments at the public health department where Dave works. He remained both realistic and calm, giving me the sense that the people who knew what was going on seemed far less worried medically than the people who didn’t. But as the situation evolved, it became clear that there’s a level of generalized anxiety and fear, and all kinds of social, economic, and legal factors playing into various policy decisions, that make it all complex and sometimes confusing, quite aside from a purely medical standpoint. 

I made the mistake of reading one too many news articles the other day, and could suddenly understand the fear and panic I hear from moms at school or people buying out face masks. It’s difficult to face something uncontrollable, potentially (however unlikely) deadly, and essentially invisible. What does one do? How far does one go? Suddenly it’s difficult to sort out precautions coming from real knowledge and care for others, and those driven by fear and anxiety.

When the field commander for the Assyrian army, called the Rabshakeh, attacks Judah, he doesn’t do so with physical weapons. He uses words. The Judean envoy, realizing how dangerous he is, ask him to not speak in the “language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall” (2 Kings 18:26), but he does, and what he sends over that wall are words to strike fear. You should be afraid of me, he says. You should doubt your king; don’t listen to your king; you are being deceived; I can offer you more; God cannot deliver you; look at the evidence around you! And the Assyrians keep speaking even from a distance, the second time sending a letter to King Hezekiah along the same lines: don’t trust God; He is deceiving you; look at the evidence.

There is one common thing in how Hezekiah reacts both times: he seeks God’s word. And, save for an expression of grief and lament, it is the first thing he does. He does not gather the latest statistics, read the news, consult neighboring nations, or even sit and fret on the words themselves. The first time, he sends for the prophet Isaiah. The second time, he went and spread his troubles before God himself. He talks to God, and before he shares his struggles, which he does, he acknowledges God’s sovereignty and power. And when God ultimately answers, there is no mistaking that power: He sends an angel to strike down 185,000 in the Assyrian camp. The Assyrians woke the next morning surrounded by corpses.

I don’t know why it is so much easier for me to read article after article, than to simply stop and pray to my sovereign God. The recognition of elements beyond my control is but an invitation to go to the God who can both deliver us from fear and give us wisdom. Hezekiah, the king, the person who is supposed to have all the answers, who is surrounded by advisors, does one simple thing. He takes the fearful letter, and he spreads it before the Lord. We too can take our troubles, however frightening or uncontrollable, and spread them before God in prayer. We have a God who answers. As Isaiah reminds us, “Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard” (2 Kings 19:6).

Revise Our Taking

by Walter Brueggemann

You, you giver!

You have given light and life to the world;

You have given freedom from Pharaoh to your people Israel;

You have given your only Son for the sake of the world;

You have given yourself to us;

You have given and forgiven,

And you remember our sin no more.

And we, in response, are takers:

We take eagerly what you give us;

We take from our neighbors near at hand as is acceptable;

We take from our unseen neighbors greedily and acquisitively;

We take from our weak neighbors thoughtlessly;

We take all that we can lay our hands on.

It dawns on us that our taking does not match your giving.

In this Lenten season revise our taking,

That it may be grateful and disciplined,

Even as you give in ways generous and overwhelming.

Amen.

Hands

“You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” – Acts 20:34-35

I have always been struck by the poignance of Paul’s farewell to the Ephesian elders. It’s not hard to imagine him with extended hands here, a laborer’s hands. It’s likely he continued tent-making in Ephesus as he had in Corinth (Acts 18:2), working with leather or cloth made of goat’s hair, using ropes and loops to fashion them into a product that could be sold. His were hands that bore the marks of his profession, work he did not for personal profit, (“I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel”) but to serve. One can’t help hearing the words he later penned in a letter to these same people: “…let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28).

There is something about this I appreciate as a mostly-stay-at-home mom. This is what we do, isn’t it? We use our hands to take care of necessities and minister to the weak: we wash dishes, load and fold the laundry, wipe butts and noses, dress and feed and tidy. It is an unending stream of manual labor, but it is inseparable from our ministry. The labor is our ministry. The word for “ministry” is Greek hypereteo, from huperetes, which means “rower”: the people hidden unseen in the bottom of the ship, endlessly moving the oars to power the ship forward. It was a job no one wanted, that condemned slaves were consigned to, but Paul says that is the way he has willingly loved and served others.

Not that long before this, another man appeared to friends he would leave soon, and said, “see my hands” (John 20:27). Jesus’ hands too bore the scars of his labors, first as a carpenter who came laboring into this earth in human form, then as one crucified. His hands said it all, bearing the mortal marks of the nails, yet come back to life, able to touch Thomas and the others. Able to stoke a charcoal fire and clean out fish as he continued his labors (John 21:9). He himself lived out the words he spoke, that it is a blessing to be able to labor in our giving, however unseen, whatever the marks they leave on our hands.

King Ahaz

“When King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, he saw the altar that was at Damascus. And King Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest a model of the altar, and its pattern, exact in all its details.” - 2 Kings 16:10

King Ahaz had a lot going for him. In fact, he’s not unlike someone we would picture meeting in the Bay Area: he was young (reigning in his twenties and thirties), loved innovation and technology (introduced the Babylonian sundial to Jerusalem, 2 Kings 20:11), had access to the latest information (prophets Isaiah and Micah spoke during his reign), and was interested in spirituality (involved himself in sacred spaces and practices). But he had no real relationship with God, and this despite benefiting from God’s deliverance in battle (2 Kings 16:5), having the influence of a godly father (2 Kings 15:34), and being of the line of David.

Instead, he emulates those around him. When the tide turns against him in battle, he looks not to God for help, but makes an alliance with the Assyrian king, just as he sees the Syrians and Israelites doing. But far from it being an equal alliance, Ahaz declares himself their servant, literally slave (2 Kings 16:17), giving the Assyrians treasures from the temple and palace. And when he sees the Assyrian altar in Damascus, he decides to make one exactly like it for himself.

Assyrian altars were quite different from Jewish ones: they were smaller, and had peculiar and unmistakable ornamentation. As one article put it, “Careful instructions would be needed for workmen who had never seen the sort of object which they were required to produce.” In a distorted echo of Exodus 38, Ahaz now puts himself in the place of God, directing the priest in constructing an idolatrous altar which he puts in the place of God’s bronze altar in the temple, and upon which he makes burnt, grain, drink, and peace offerings. It’s a strange and somewhat hideous amalgam of religions: he is in Solomon’s temple, making offerings from Levitical law, but on an Assyrian altar, to Damascene gods. 2 Chronicles 28:23 tells us something of his motivations: “For he… said, ‘Because the gods of the kings of Syria helped them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me.’” 

The next sentence in 2 Chronicles is compelling: “But they were the ruin of him and of all Israel.” God is not one in a line of many. We cannot keep the convenient or traditional parts of our faith and mix them in with what seems to be working for everyone else. This is not to say we can’t make our faith culturally relevant, but we must always be going back to God’s word as we bring forward His truths to our current day.

Ahaz had auspicious beginnings: but he ended up being one of the worst kings, going on to make idolatrous altars “in every city of Judah” (2 Chronicles 28:25). Perhaps, more than anything else, his story is a warning to us: of how incredibly easy it can be to be so caught up by what others are doing, to trust so much in worldly patterns of success, to care so much about what someone in power thinks of us, that we lose a right view of God in our lives.