And Then You

by Walter Brueggemann

We arrange our lives as best we can

to keep your holiness at bay,

with our pieties,

our doctrines,

our liturgies,

our moralities,

our secret ideologies,

Safe, virtuous, settled.

And then you –

you and your dream,

you and your visions,

you and your purposes,

you and your commands,

you and our neighbors.

We find your holiness not at bay,

but probing, pervading,

insisting, demanding.

And we yield, sometimes gladly,

sometimes resentfully,

sometimes late . . . or soon.

We yield because you, beyond us, are our God.

We are your creatures met by your holiness,

by your holiness made our true selves.

And we yield. Amen.

Fruit Is Singular

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” – Galatians 5:22

This verse seems grammatically incorrect: Paul says there is one thing, then lists nine things that it is. He calls these the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruits of the Spirit, what could be called a “singular plurality” or a “collective singular.” Why?

Jonathan Edwards wrote a piece called “All The Graces of Christianity Connected” in which he argues that the graces of Christianity (like faith, hope, love) always go together, depend upon one another, and are to some degree implied in one another, because they are all from the same source, achieved by the same means, and meant for the same end. For example, he says that “There is not one conversion of the soul to faith, and another conversion to love of God, and another to humility, and another to repentance, and still another to love of man; but all are produced by one and the same work of the Spirit.” It is the one Holy Spirit that produces this one fruit in us—yes, there are different qualities of the fruit, but it is one fruit.

That’s how you know if you are bearing real fruit, rather than just being kind by your own efforts, or just being patient because that tends to be your disposition. The fruit that is from the Spirit always grow up together; you don’t get one part of it growing without all the parts growing. For example, Edwards says, we should examine our love by its faith. If we feel affectionate love for God, is it also a love that comes with a real conviction of faith in divine things? If it doesn’t, if it’s just a feeling we have, then that love won’t carry us far in duty or suffering. It’s not really love that is a fruit of the Spirit (I like his side-note, that this love is “very much like the affection which we may have towards a person we are reading of in a romance, and whom we at the same time suppose to be no other than a feigned person”).

Is our self-control marked by love, not by legalism? Does it lead us to deep joy, not resentment? Are we able to be patient with peace, not anxiety? Are we growing consistently in all of the fruit, together? Do we see how they all exist together, and work together, because they all come from and rely on the same source, the singular Holy Spirit? That is the difference between the true work of the Holy Spirit in us, and a mere list of values that we try to achieve on our own.

Fruit Attracts

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” – Galatians 5:22

Apparently fruit-picking is considered an essential business: Dave took the kids cherry-picking a few weekends back. Masked and laddered, they brought back a whole tub of cherries. I remember going apple-picking every fall in Virginia: it was practically a seasonal rite, replete with the attendant apple donuts and pies. Fruit basically exist to spread the seeds of the species, but they do so by being irresistibly attractive: colorful, sweet, unique. 

Nouwen writes, “How does the Spirit of God manifest itself through us? Often we think that to witness means to speak up in defense of God. This idea can make us very self-conscious. We wonder where and how we can make God the topic of our conversations and how to convince our families, friends, neighbors, and colleagues of God’s presence in their lives. But this explicit missionary endeavor often comes from an insecure heart and, therefore, easily creates divisions. The way God’s Spirit manifests itself most convincingly is through its fruits: ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control.’ These fruits speak for themselves. It is therefore always better to raise the question ‘How can I grow in the Spirit?’  than the question ‘How can I make others believe in the Spirit?’” 

Fruit don’t convince; they attract. They don’t try; they just are. This is not to say we shouldn’t be intentional and strategic in sharing the gospel, but we sometimes too easily mechanize or automate in our minds what is actually mysterious and organic. We think it is up to us. But it is really up to the Spirit, and the most attractive thing he produces in us is something we can hardly machinate or even really be aware of in ourselves. Yet this fruit is what draws others, the way birds, insects, critters and people are drawn from all over. How can we grow in the Spirit?

Fruit Reveals

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” – Galatians 5:22

Some leaves are distinctive enough to identify the type of tree they come from: the maple, or gingko, perhaps. Flowers or cones are even more indicative. But the most symptomatic thing a tree can display is fruit: an apple cannot be borne by anything other than an apple tree, and an apple tree cannot bear anything except apples. The inner workings of the tree, its true identity, was there all along, nothing has changed: but the moment the apples appear, the tree declares its nature.

A. W. Tozer writes, “Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles. The fruit of a tree is determined by the tree, and the fruit of life by the kind of life it is. What a man is interested in to the point of absorption both decides and reveals what kind of man he is; and the kind of man he is by a secret law of the soul decides the kind of fruit he will bear. The catch is that we are often unable to discover the true quality of our fruit until it is too late! Of what do we think when we are free to think of what we will? What object gives us inward pleasure as we brood over it? Over what do we muse in our free moments? To what does our imagination return again and again? When we have answered these questions honestly we will know what kind of persons we are, and when we have discovered what kind of persons we are we may deduce the kind of fruit we will bear. If we would do holy deeds we must be holy men and women!”

As a Chinese philosopher once said, “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character.” Our thoughts, the things that most absorb our attention and mental energy, both determine and reveal who we are and thus what kind of fruit we will bear. Paul lays it out clearly: walk by the Spirit, and you will bear the fruit of the Spirit. Walk by the flesh, and you will bear the fruit of the flesh. The fruits he lists on either side are both actions and character traits. If you want to know why your character or your actions are the way they are, trace it back to how you “walk,” how you functionally direct your life, what you think on. And this is worth tracing, because we’re not always aware of it. Of what do we think when we are free to think of what we will? What object gives us inward pleasure as we brood over it? Over what do we muse in our free moments? To what does our imagination return again and again?

Fruit is Hidden

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” – Galatians 5:22

You don’t see many fruit trees where we come from on the East Coast, so when we moved here, we eagerly planted pomelo, apricot, guava, apple, lemon trees—only to realize that it sometimes takes years for trees to bear a significant crop (not to mention the thieving squirrels). So we planted them and did our best to not count on eating fruit anytime soon. 

There’s something similar about our lives now. Results used to be more immediate: the time from a swim heat, visual acuities measured after surgery, end-of-year shows at school. Now, we deal in relatively slow, invisible things, like how our kids relate with each other constantly at home, how we occupy our minds during spare hours with nowhere to go. I asked Dave the other day, “do you think this time will be an overall pro or con for us as a family?” and he said, “I don’t know. The losses are pretty obvious, but I think there may be even greater gains, just not in ways that we can see right now or maybe until much later.”

There there is something very spiritual about the pace of this time. It’s a pace that encourages us to let go of what we can immediately see and measure, and this is how the Holy Spirit works, hidden and slow like fruit coming to the tree. Inexorable, but not predictably quantifiable. We must let go of immediate results and accept the hiddenness of the fruit if we are to live as Jesus did, for that is often how God works.

Nouwen writes: “We belong to a generation that wants to see the results of our work. We want to be productive and see with our own eyes what we have made. But that is not the way of God’s Kingdom. Often our witness for God does not lead to tangible results. Jesus himself died as a failure on a cross. There was no success there to be proud of. Still, the fruitfulness of Jesus’ life is beyond any human measure. As faithful witnesses of Jesus, we have to trust that our lives too will be fruitful, even though we cannot see their fruit. The fruit of our lives may be visible only to those who live after us. What is important is how well we love. God will make our love fruitful, whether we see that fruitfulness or not.”

Be Our Arm

“Be our arm every morning.” – Isaiah 33:2

“Your right hand upholds me.” – Psalm 63:8

“The general rule in nature is that live things are soft within and rigid without. We vertebrates are living dangerously, and we vertebrates are positively piteous, like so many peeled trees… I am sitting under a sycamore tree: I am soft-shell and peeled to the least puff of wind or smack of grit.” – Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Some days I wake up with the realization that I’m going to need some strength to get through the day. It used to be I felt like this in the face of predictably challenging events, but nowadays the feeling could happen anytime. It’s like I wake up feeling “soft-shell and peeled,” realizing how fragile indeed I am, how susceptible to my own moods and lack of reserves. How limited I am at being able to actually live into the eternal hope and joy I know myself to possess. Sometimes the chasm between knowing and feeling seems untraversable.

I’ve never had to be led about by the arm, though I’ve seen many patients come into my clinic that way. They have a different kind of gait: usually slower, as if taking it one step at a time in their minds. When you lean on someone’s arm, it starts off like that, going into the day one step at a time. The person who lends you their arm bears your weight and the weight of whatever you carry. They give you a sense of direction, not miles ahead, but far enough so you know where to put your foot down next. And unlike a cane or walking stick, there’s a kind of companionship knowing someone is beside you. It’s like that line near the end of Jane Eyre: “Then he stretched his hand out to be led. I took that dear hand, held it a moment to my lips, and then let it pass round my shoulder: being so much lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop and guide. We entered the wood, and wended homeward.” 

How do you get God’s strength when you don’t feel it, or feel like it? You ask. Like Isaiah, you ask. And you make some kind of decision to trust, to reach out, and not think too hard, and go forward one step at a time.

Quality Time in Quantity Time

“For God alone my soul waits in silence… For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence.” – Psalm 62:1, 5

Some say that when it comes to parenting, quality time only happens with quantity of time. There’s some truth to that: and that is undoubtedly one of the gifts of this time. When have we ever had so much quantity of time with our children? Even as someone who pretty much stayed at home most of the time before the pandemic, I am flabbergasted by the difference. 

Sometimes, though, quantity of time can get in the way of having intentional quality time. It is possible to be around someone so much that you don’t actually end up connecting with them intentionally. For example, even though I’m around my kids constantly, I often don’t end up playing with them very much. They often play around me while I do chores or get my own stuff done, but it takes some intentionality to set aside what I’m doing and actually join in with their play. Even though Dave and I see each other more than we ever have, it takes intentionality to think about the other person for their own sake and not in relation to the functional living of life. The other morning, Dave spoke some words into what he’s seen in my life the past few months, and the time he spent thinking about me to do that was meaningful.

It's this way with God too. He is, after all, omnipresent. But because we always have quantity of time with him, we can become careless about having quality time with Him. We start to see him for what he gets us, or always in relation to how we’re feeling or doing, rather than for his own sake, for who he is entirely apart from how we are. We start to take his availability for granted, giving him the leftover parts of our day.

David says, “For God alone my soul waits… For God alone, O my soul, wait.” This is not someone speaking out of convenience or functionality. Think about who in your life you wait for: you wait for your boss, you wait for your doctor, you wait to pick up your kids. The waiting itself is a statement of how important someone is to you. David’s focus is upon God. He gives him the attention of his soul, his inner being, all of who he is. He does this in silence, without the distraction of the world or even his own words. This is quality time. And he writes it as both a description and an injunction: both a truth and an exhortation. Even as we experience and know how important quality time with God is, we have to remind ourselves to do it. There is a kind of experience of God that comes throughout every day events, but there is another kind of experience that comes only when we wait for Him alone, and that’s good to remember.

Thoughts In Solitude

by Thomas Merton:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in everything I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire and I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” 

Parents As Prophets

“Then the Lord said, ‘As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Cush…” – Isaiah 20:3

It was hard being a prophet. Apparently the job description included giving up clothing and shoes for three years as an object lesson. The prophets brought the intangible, easy-to-brush-off realities of God to the people around them in an extremely palpable, concrete way, even if it caused them extreme discomfort and embarrassment.

Paul Tripp likes to say that the one word that describes parents the most is “ambassador.” Children don’t belong to us. They are God’s possession (Psalm 127:3) for his purpose; we are God’s agents in their lives. “The word that the Bible uses for this intermediary position,” Tripp writes, “is ‘ambassador’… The only thing an ambassador does, if he’s interested in keeping his job, is to faithfully represent the message, methods and character of the leader who has sent him.”

As an ambassador, you find your sense of identity as a parent from Jesus, not from your children. Your work as a parent is not to turn your kids into something, but to represent God and realize you have no power to change them. Your work is motivated not by what you want them to be, but by the potential of what grace could cause them to be. As an ambassador, success is not about working towards a specific catalog of horizontal outcomes, but about being faithful; it’s not about what you’ve produced but what you have done. As an ambassador, you care about your children breaking God’s law, not about the hassle or embarrassment they’ve brought you.

It’s not unlike being an Isaiah, personifying intangible spiritual truths so that they can be seen, heard, touched by the people God has put in your care. It involves an abandonment of your own agendas and preferences at some level. It involves having your own encounters with God. At heart, it involves hearing “whom shall I send?” and responding as Isaiah did: “Here I am! Send me” (6:8).

The Small and Hidden Life

“O my Strength, I will watch for you.” – Psalm 59:9

I was rereading some parts of Discernment by Henri Nouwen the other day. He writes, “Discernment reveals new priorities, directions and gifts from God. We come to realize that what previously seemed so important for our lives, loses its power over us. To our surprise, we even may experience a strange inner freedom to follow a new call or direction as previous concerns move into the background of our consciousness. We begin to see the beauty of the small and hidden life that Jesus lived in Nazareth. Most rewarding of all is the discovery that as we pray more each day, God’s will—that is, God’s concrete ways of loving us and our world—gradually is made known to us.”

In the first chapter of John, everyone is watching for Jesus: John the Baptist, who keeps insisting there is a greater one coming. Andrew, who left John to follow Jesus instead. Simon, who was brought by his brother. Philip, who answered a simple call to follow. Then there is Nathaniel, who said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Yes, apparently. Yes, and more: Jesus tells him, “you will see greater things than these.”

Life feels small and hidden these days. Life is a dish washed, an assignment uploaded, a floor vacuumed, a book read, a dispute arbitrated, another snack or meal prepared. Life is a series of unquantifiable moments—hard ones, like when the kids have successive emotional issues. Good ones, like when we sat around watching our pet snails or when Emmy kept asking us serious questions like, “which do you like better: oil or tea? A cup or a tissue? Ice or water?” God’s will involves when to speak and when to hold my tongue; when to go do something I don’t feel like doing; how to approach one of the kids when they’re having a tough moment.

We who follow Jesus will see greater things that these, but sometimes it starts in being open to the unremarkable, watching for God in the small and hidden life.

False Gospels

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel…” – Galatians 1:5

Paul begins his letter to the Galatians in rather stark manner. It seems that teachers in the church, motivated by a desire to win the favor of Jewish leaders (6:12-13), were telling people that they were not truly Christians until they joined the Jews in following Old Testament law, such as observing Jewish feast days (4:10) and being circumcised (5:2). This may seem irrelevant to us, but if one considers that what they were doing was combining the gospel with old ways of earning worth, for the purpose of pleasing others, in a way that fit in with the cultural majority—then it’s not all that unlike what we do today. 

Our culture touts not feast days and circumcision, but a kind of “expressive individualism” or “hyper-individualism,” based on a moral ecology which, as Brooks writes about in his book The Second Mountain, is built on a series of assumptions including the buffered self, the dream of total freedom, the centrality of accomplishment, the God within, and the privatization of meaning. Mash this together with the gospel, and you get a sort of hybrid gospel that says we can believe in Jesus but still do whatever we want to, that makes our faith a private affair, that judges our faith based on how much we can measurably accomplish with it. Many of us also have cultures from our families of origin, or individual personality types or histories, that tend to mingle in with the gospel whether we are aware of it or not.

The fact is, the gospel does not say that we are saved by Jesus and ____. Jesus and “successful” children; Jesus and our accomplishments; Jesus and a husband; Jesus and money; Jesus and career success; Jesus and our feelings. Any hybrid gospel is a false gospel. Any gospel that does not stand entirely on grace is a false gospel. And this truth is one we have to keep learning, because it requires un-learning so many other things, so many other ways of seeing and living.

The Unnamed Burden

“You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” – Psalm 56:8

David Brooks writes, “We have entered the endurance phase of this pandemic.” When people ask now how we’re doing, I find myself rather at a loss. Nothing has changed, logistically. Yet there are constant ups and downs. In his book A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis writes, “One never meets just Cancer, or War, or Unhappiness (or Happiness). One only meets each hour or moment that comes. All manner of ups and downs. Many bad spots in our best times, many good ones in our worst. One never gets the total impact of what we call ‘the thing itself.’ But we call it wrongly. The thing itself is simply all these ups and downs: the rest is a name or an idea.”

We are not meeting a Pandemic. We are meeting each hour or moment that comes as we press on in a world of monotony and future uncertainty, and I’ve found many of those hours and moments unpredictable. Some days are good, some days are bad, and I’m at a loss to explain exactly why, since all days are circumstantially identical. I sometimes feel more depleted by the end of the day than I used to feel. Is it that my work is harder? Perhaps. But it’s also the weight of simply doing what we’re doing, enduring.

Lewis writes in the same book: “I once read the sentence ‘I lay awake all night with toothache, thinking about toothache and about lying awake.’ That’s true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”

That’s the unnamed burden of this time: not just the unknown, but thinking about the unknown. Not just the monotony, but our awareness of the monotony. Not just the ups and downs, but wondering about the ups and downs. This burden runs like an invisible undercurrent through our day; it eats into our emotions, messes with our attention spans, can cause subconscious anxiety or dread. But this is a burden we don’t have to suppress, or deaden ourselves to, or drug ourselves from—this too is a burden we can cast upon God. We have a God who counts our tossings at night, who sees and keeps and remembers not only every sorrow, but every thought about the sorrow. 

Casting Our Burdens

“Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.” – Psalm 55:22

Thomas Merton writes, “A life that has nothing but a straight line towards the grave and a lot of little circular lines to forget the grave as you travel towards the grave is a life of care, and it is a life of ever-increasing care and it is a life of frustration and it is a life of futility.” David implies that this is our default way of living. We tend to carry our worries with us, to be sustained by our own efforts rather than by God. We tend to be moved about, rocked up and down by circumstances, leaning upon what is unstable.

It is quite marvelous, if you think about it, that God makes this promise. That he offers not to merely help us along, but to take our burdens entirely upon Himself. But we have to do something. We have to look up from all those little circular lines, see beyond them to God and the promise we have, take hold of our burdens, and cast them upon Him. Casting is a decisive movement. This word is used of throwing away something you don’t intend to retrieve later: Joseph’s brothers casting him into the pit, Pharaoh ordering infants to be cast into the Nile, the Israelites casting gold into the fire to make the golden calf. 

Casting is an act of trust (verse 23), a recognition that it is God who sustains us, who has the power to permit something or not, who keep us from being moved. Casting brings a new kind of vision: a peering into both eternity and the spiritual realities of our day-to-day. The latter half of this verse is literally, “He will not give moving forever to the righteous.” There is an eternal and permanent stability available to us, one that frees us from inner restlessness, anguish, or fear (verses 2-5). When we see life as so far beyond that line to the grave, when we stop fixating on day-to-day anxieties, we begin to see these kinds of truths. Merton writes that the opacities begin to fall away so that the transparency of God can shine through. “Humble yourselves,” Peter writes, “under the mighty hand of God… casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” 

Fear Rightly

“Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.” – Isaiah 8:12-13

Dave and I watched Contagion over the weekend, which was a bit nostalgic as we last saw it in a theater nearly ten years ago. I remember we went to see it because Dave was considering whether to work as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, the role played by Kate Winslett in the movie (the movie was not the reason he didn’t take the job). Little did we know then that the shots of empty airport lobbies, corporate offices, and gyms would be a reality today. Unsurprisingly, it has been the most-streamed content from HBO every day for the past two weeks. I particularly liked one teenager’s reaction to the quarantine: “am I supposed to lose my spring and my summer too? Can someone invent a shot that stops time?”

The movie does tend to leave one more paranoid about catching a virus, and it reminded me how little we still really know about who is infected, who is not, and how safe it is to resume various activities. Everyone has different risk thresholds: some people sit apart chatting in backyards; others still rarely leave the house and wipe down all their groceries. This remains a time when fear can run like an undercurrent through our lives: if not fear of the virus, then fear of the unknown, fear of our inability to control or plan more, fear of the continued monotony of our days.

When God warns Isaiah to live differently from the people around him, he doesn’t say Isaiah should be different in morality, in his career or in his loves. God says Isaiah should be different in what he fears. What we fear matters. What we fear drives what we think about, what we do, how we feel—fear is, in a way, a kind of worship. It indicates where we direct our energies and resources; it reflects what we turn ourselves towards.

God deserves our fear. He is not only our loving Father but our just Judge. Peter says in the passage preached last Sunday: “And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile” (1 Peter 1:17). Peter alludes in this section to the Passover in Egypt, and I think about how the Israelites must have felt, walking under those doorframes smeared with blood, holding their firstborn sons just a bit tighter. Their hearts were probably pounding. The fact that God saves us through Jesus’ blood makes the fact that he judges unto death no less terrifying. If we’re going to dread anything, dread God; forget not his holiness. We should fear rightly so we may live rightly. We should fear rightly so we may align our expectations and hopes rightly. As Isaiah replies, “I will wait for the Lord… and I will hope in him” (8:17).

I Need to Breathe Deeply

by Ted Loder

Eternal Friend,

grant me an ease

to breathe deeply of this moment,

   this light,

      this miracle of now.

Beneath the din and fury

   of great movements

      and harsh news

         and urgent crises,

make me attentive still

   to good news,

      to small occasions,

         and the grace of what is possible

            for me to be,

               to do,

                  to give,

                     to receive,

that I may miss neither my neighbor’s gift

   nor my enemy’s need.

Married to Christ

“My beloved is mine, and I am his.” – Song of Solomon 2:16

“Late it was that I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late I loved you!” – St. Augustine

Before we got married, Dave was a self-declared “bachelor till the rapture.” He (and I) were happily single: I because I was too absorbed in my studies, he because he recognized the greater freedom he had as a single to follow Jesus, which at the time meant traveling on missions trips, exploring different careers, caring for his parents, and helping plant a church. But all that changed when we met, and because of the constraints of medical training, we had to consider each other in making major life decisions far earlier than perhaps we naturally would have. Dave transferred medical schools so we could live in the same city; I gave up a fellowship so we could spend more time together.

The fact is, people who are married have to give consideration to their spouse all the time: they simply don’t have the control over their time, money, and decisions that single people do. The Bible says that marriage is an analogy of our relationship with Christ, our bridegroom (John 3:29)—yet, spiritually speaking, many of us live as if we were single rather than married. Pastor Iain Duguid puts it this way: “If you are married to Christ, is that relationship the center of your thinking? Do you find yourself dreaming about him, lost in amazement at how wonderful Christ is, how incredible it is that he should love you, and longing for more of his presence? Do you constantly wear out your friends and relations with your endless chatter about how wonderful your Beloved is? If you are anything like me, the answer most of the time is ‘No.’ I have to admit to living most of the time as a functional single, spiritually speaking. Every now and then I bump into Christ, as it were, and am reminded that we are married… Much of the time I am so absorbed with my own earthly desires and projects that I admit to my shame that he never even crosses my mind.”

Do we remember we are married to Christ, or do we function like spiritual singles? Do we make all of our decisions with him in mind? More than that, do we dream about and long for him the way the bride does in Song of Solomon? St. Augustine writes: “You called, you cried out, you shattered my deafness: you flashed, you shone, you scattered my blindness: you breathed perfume, and I drew in my breath and I pant for you: I tasted and I am hungry and thirsty: you touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

Contagious Emotions

“Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.” – Proverbs 22:24-25

I remember being struck in medical school by how easy it is to absorb the emotions of my patients. In my desire to be empathetic, I found myself unconsciously acquiring their emotions: feeling more perturbed after seeing an anxious patient, more upset after seeing a hostile patient, more glum after seeing someone who was depressed. 

Apparently this is a phenomenon known as “emotional contagion.” We tend to imitate the facial expressions, postures, and vocal tones of those around us, and because expressions can affect emotions, our feelings are changed as well. Fascinatingly, this process of mimicry happens so quickly and unconsciously that few of us are aware of it. A Wharton professor once separated students into small groups; in each group he planted a student expressing a particular emotion. Those with someone in the group expressing enthusiasm or happiness perceived themselves as more competent and cooperative compared with those in groups with someone expressing hostility or depression—but when asked what influenced how they performed, they attributed it entirely to their own skills. 

This proverb warns us to be cautious when it comes to being influenced by others’ emotions, lest we become entangled unawares. Maybe this means avoiding certain situations, setting emotional boundaries, or simply learning to read emotional subtexts. Many days I find that the hardest part of homeschooling is managing not the teaching content or zoom schedules, but the emotional vicissitudes of my children. It takes intentionality to empathize without internalizing too deeply, to respond instead of react, to reflect feelings while remaining stable. Frequently I find that absorbing their emotions to some degree is unavoidable, and in order to have the emotional reserves to do that, I have to set boundaries for time for myself. I find myself having to deal with this all to an unprecedented degree these days, but as this proverb reminds us, these are important skills that are worth our attention and practice.

The Love of Loves in the Song of Songs

“Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly delightful.” – Song of Solomon 1:16

One rabbi wrote that the Song of Solomon is “a lock for which the key had been lost.” Reading this book does evoke a singular longing. The romantic love depicted here has a balance and depth that our world so rarely attains. The language is sexually provocative, but never spiritually impure, something most of us don’t know much about in a culture which, as Phil Ryken writes, “impatiently pushes past the erotic to experience the pornographic.” Admiration is made of not only the physical but the non-physical: the bride extols his “name,” which at that time referred to reputation and character. We see a love that is strikingly exclusive, yet evolves within the context of a faith community (“we will exult and rejoice,” 1:4). We hear from a woman who is unafraid to be the first to speak and to state her desires, yet asks the man to initiate (“Let him kiss me… Draw me after you,” 1:2, 4). 

And while these songs can be read literally, it is impossible to miss the allusions to God’s love for us. The book is set in a garden (4:16) and in Jerusalem (1:5, 3:5), following the geographical story arc of the Bible, which begins in Eden and ends in the New Jerusalem. The bridegroom emerges “from the wilderness like columns of smoke” (3:6), as God did. Isaiah tells us that “your Maker is your husband” (Isaiah 54:5); Paul that the mystery of marriage “refers to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32). As Ryken puts it (in the book from which this post gets its title), “The Bible repeatedly uses marital imagery to describe God’s love relationship with his people. The story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden is the trailer for an epic romance that ends with the Son of God marrying his beautiful bride, the church. The Song of Songs is the soundtrack for that story. Its love is not merely human but also divine.”

I confess I don’t know exactly how this works. I just know the key has not been lost. It is found in Jesus. One day our union with him will be something that rewrites all the broken love songs and tawdry romance novels of our world, that unlocks the best fairy tale ever told. This book is here for a reason. It is okay to look our desires in the eye, to look through them to Jesus, the one who says to us, “Behold, you are beautiful, my love.”

The Way of the Wind

“As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.” – Ecclesiastes 11:5

I have finally found one thing that is done better by zoom: fifth-grade puberty talks. Parents have the option of joining their children, and students ask questions more honestly. Today they covered conception and gestation, and I was reminded of how downright strange it can seem. I got flashbacks of embryology unit in medical school—not my favorite because we had to memorize all the germ layer derivatives—but fascinating nonetheless. We can boil it all down to line drawings and stages, but who really knows how it is that life comes about? 

The author of Ecclesiastes embraces this mystery. There is a play on words here, for the word for “spirit” is the same as that for “wind.” The latter is itself a theme throughout the book as an embodiment of meaninglessness: “all is vanity and a striving after the wind” (1:14; 2:11, 17, 26). But in this verse, the idea of what we cannot predict or capture is turned over like a coin, and used to describe the way God creates physical life. The other side of realizing the vanity of our own striving is encountering the fearful and mysterious wonder of God’s workings.

Jesus says of entering the kingdom of God, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). These days when we are so preoccupied with illusions of control, when we dwell so oft indoors, it’s good to feel the wind, be reminded of how little we really know. 

Godly Grief

“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you…” – 2 Corinthians 7:10-11

I never thought deeply about what it means to apologize until I had kids. As every parent knows, it’s only too easy for the words “I’m sorry” to actually mean “I want to get out of a consequence” or “I only regret getting caught” or “fine, whatever.” I remember breaking it down at one point into three parts: I’m sorry for what I did, this is how it hurt you, this is what I will do different (acknowledgement, remorse, restitution). Though it was probably good to talk through, I don’t recall it working very well. 

What do I want from my kids when they apologize? I don’t want them to regret what they did only because it caused them inconvenience or embarrassment. I want them to see their action from the perspective of the person they offended and within the context of their relationship with that person. I want them to care about that other person and their relationship with them so much that they feel saddened by what they did.

I wonder what God thinks of our apologies. I wonder how many of mine revolve around myself: words I say to make myself feel better, to achieve self-liberation from guilt, or simply out of thoughtless habit. I wonder how much of it is primarily motivated by regret over circumstantial consequence or embarrassment to my pride. But true remorse is “godly grief”: sorrow for my sin as it relates to God and in view of my relationship with Him. It is not ultimately about me but about Him, the one I have offended. It produces true repentance, produces earnestness, indignation, fear, longing, zeal, the avenging of wrong. “Repentance,” writes Tim Keller of this passage, “is a deep experience which profoundly affects the mind, will, and emotions.”

And true repentance leads somewhere. Self-centric sorrow traps us in the same place: it causes a kind of self-obsessed regret, a wallowing in our mistakes, a replaying of what might have been or how people think of us, that ultimately paralyzes us. Paul says it produces death. But godly grief is mobilizing. It leads to life and growth because it brings us right to the heart of the gospel. As the old hymn goes, “Could my zeal no respite know / Could my tears for ever flow / All for sin could not atone / Thou must save, and Thou alone.” There is something so sweet, so powerful in the salvation we experience through Jesus that our regret is actually gone. I don’t know about you, but sometimes my regret is so overpowering that it is an act of grace itself to find that I can be freed from it. We find, rather, that we are able to rejoice (6:9) and find comfort (6:13). “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus says, “for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).

Perennial Streams

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved… Be still, and know that I am God.” – Psalm 46:1-5, 10

One word for river in Hebrew is nachal, a dry valley which runs with torrents of water during the rainy season. It figuratively describes things that emerge with a rush of power, then disappear suddenly, like the pride of nations (Isaiah 66:12), the power of the foe (Psalm 18:4), or torrents of oil that do not please God if the offerer’s heart is not right (Micah 6:7). 

That is not the word used here in Psalm 46:4. The word here is nahar, a perennial stream, a permanent natural watercourse. It appears for the first time in Genesis 2:10, where it describes the river that “went out of Eden to water the garden.” 

What does this nahar-river represent? It could be God the Father, who is our “very present” help in trouble: back then, rivers in the middle of cities helped fortify it against attacks, or helped irrigate its crops. It could be Jesus, the living water (John 4:10, 7:37). It could be the Holy Spirit, the Helper who is always in our midst (John 16:7). Perhaps it is all of the above: God’s triune presence and the life he gives us. The picture I always get is from Revelation 22:1, where John sees a heavenly city with “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city”—a dazzling new remaking of that first river in Eden.

If there is any time in our generation when the world feels tumultuously displaced, it is now. My feelings chart up and down, like a river-bed sometimes dry, sometimes torrential. It seems like nothing is quite for sure in our immediate earthly future. But the Psalm holds all that roar and foam in contrast with the quieter, ever-present stream of God’s presence, which provides refuge like a moat protecting a besieged city, which provides strength like waters irrigating the ground. Which reminds us of the heavenly city in which our ultimate citizenship and hopes reside. Don’t be afraid, this song tells us. Be still, and know that God is God. He is here, always present, like that quiet river whose streams make glad its city.

Lead Me Out of My Doubts and Fears

by Ted Loder

Eternal God,

lead me now

   out of the familiar setting

      of my doubts and fears,

   beyond my pride

      and my need to be secure

into a strange and graceful ease

   with my true proportions

      and with yours;

that in boundless silence

   I may grow

      strong enough to endure

         and flexible enough to share

            your grace.

Closed Circuits

“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?’” – Job 38:2

Life these days can feel more like a closed circuit. Less input, less output. With fewer points of reference, it’s easier to be swayed by whatever does come in. With fewer external outlets, it’s easier to displace frustrations onto other members of the family. It’s easier to become your own echo chamber.

It’s amazing how long Job and his friends go on for: thirty-five-some chapters of talk, back and forth. This line, right here, feels like the best line in the book. I don’t have Job’s friends, but it strikes me how often I get lost in my own head, in my own perspectives and analyses, until the counsel I give myself is like that word without knowledge. Sometimes, what I need is not more analysis, but an encounter with God. What I need is not more internal rumination, but to look at something outside of myself. Would anyone have expected that God’s answer to Job is to take him on a tour of the world? But look, he says, at the high stars and the deep sea. Look at the rain and snow, the lion and mountain goats, the ox and the ostrich. Look at the horse leaping and the hawk soaring. Behold the Behemoth and Leviathan. Look beyond yourself for a moment. Look at me.

Maybe for me that means opening up my Bible to listen for God may have to say, rather than what I’d like to hear. Maybe it means getting out of the house, or standing outside at night to look at the stars. Maybe it means sitting silently in God’s presence without distraction. Maybe it means praying more and thinking less.

Job doesn’t have much to say after God speaks. But what he does say, says it all: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” Help us to see you like that, God.

Psalms Through The Testaments

“Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way… yet for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself!... Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!” – Psalm 44: 18, 22-23, 26

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” – Romans 8:35-39

It’s always interesting to bump into familiar lines while going through the Psalms. I had always viewed Psalm 44:22 through the lens of Romans 8, where it sticks out in a somewhat confusing way. Paul summarizes the truths of one of the greatest chapters of all time with an emotional peroratio (“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”), and then, like a downer, of all verses, he quotes Psalm 44:22. Why? To offer proof that sufferings are to be expected? To prophecy the suffering of the church?

But reading Romans 8 through the lens of Psalm 44 feels different. This Psalm is so honest, isn’t it? How many times have we, or our friends, said, God, where are you? I’m following you with my whole heart; why am I suffering? Why have you not given me good things I’m hoping for? I feel like I’m just being killed all day long, doomed like a sheep marked for the slaughterhouse. The Psalm ends with a plea, lobbed out into the empty void.

And then, hundreds of years later, these words of Paul echo back as if in answer: the sufferings are real. They are happening. But we are more than conquerors through it all, because God has sent Jesus, like a lamb to the slaughterhouse. He rose and will bring us to a glory that is not even worth comparing with the sufferings of this present time (Romans 8:18).

Every single word of the plea was answered. Rise up: Jesus rose from the dead. Come to our help! Jesus came as God incarnate in order that the world might be saved. Redeem us: Jesus’ blood bought us out of slavery to sin and one day he will bring us out of all suffering to glory. For the sake of your steadfast love! Love was the reason God did it (John 3:16). It turns out that this is the point of it all: that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Magnifiers

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” – 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

One lexicon describes the Greek word used for “manifest” here in this way: “to be manifested, in the Scriptural sense of the word, is more than to ‘appear.’ A person may ‘appear’ in a false guise or without a disclosure of what he truly is; to be manifested is to be revealed in one’s true character.” 

In our world, we’re more concerned with appearances. We put care towards our physical appearance, and of course there’s the world of image in social media. I discovered the other day that I can make zoom touch-up my appearance! With a click of a button, all my skin blemishes disappear! (the kids were very weirded out by this; they wanted me to put my freckles back)

But Paul is concerned less with appearance than with the revelation of what we truly are. Appearance can be fabricated, invented, created. Revelation is simply the pulling back of a curtain to show what was already there, like the removal of a veil. Revelation is how we discover God: he did not come into existence simply when we became aware of him, of course. He has always existed; what changed was our ability to see him.

There are certain things in life that pull back the curtain. Afflictions, doubts, persecutions, and blows reveal where it is we have not yet died to our old selves, and where it is we truly have new life in Jesus. They are magnifiers, laying bare all the planes and cracks of our clay jars. And this is not just for us, Paul says: it is for others, so that life may work in them.

None of this sounds particularly pleasant or comfortable. But if anything, what Paul drives home here is that that is not the point. The point is that we may literally magnify God; we may bring the reality of the life that he brings and promises into closer view for those around us.

Remembering

“Oh, that I were as in the months of old…” – Job 29:1

Sometimes I think back on the last time I had coffee with someone. The last time I went to the gym and the library. The last time I scrubbed into a case. The last time I sat in a sanctuary and heard the voices of people singing around me. The last time I went shopping at the mall. The last time I tried on a shirt before buying it. I can remember almost every detail about each of those times: how it felt, what I wore, who I saw. Back then, I had no idea I wouldn’t be doing those things again for a long time. Sometimes remembering makes me mad. Mostly it makes me a little sad. 

The complicated thing is that I find I’m remembering not only for myself, but for my kids as well. I feel an inexplicable level of frustration, for example, that Eric can no longer swim, that something so much a part of his physical and mental and social life is suddenly gone. It’s just sad to see it and it makes me hurt. I feel the same way when I see Ellie waving at her best friends in class zooms. I know the kind of pre-teen camaraderie and inside jokes and conversations she had with her friends in class is just not possible now. 

And just as I’m processing my own sadness, I’m watching them process their own grief too, in different ways and at different times. This morning, an angry outburst from one of the kids about homeschooling turned into them admitting for the first time that they miss school and wished they go back. Even eight weeks in, we’re still adjusting. We’re still remembering.

Job spends an entire chapter remembering his old life. Back when he was in his prime, when his “steps were washed with butter.” How he felt, how people responded to him, what he did, what he dreamed of. Part of loss is remembering. I told the kids this morning what I’m telling myself, that it’s okay to remember, to talk about it, to feel sad and sometimes mad. Job does. He talks to his friends and to God, and we find out later in chapter 38 that God was listening the entire time.

Why We Labor

“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” – 1 Corinthians 15:58

Paul has just gone to considerable detail discussing the resurrection of Jesus—and this is his concluding statement. Not, “sit back and relax because God’s got a great future in store for you,” but “labor on, knowing that now your labor has even more meaning than it did before.”

In his book Surprised by Hope, N. T. Wright expounds on this connection. He writes, “You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that's shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that's about to be dug up for a building site. You are… accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God's new world… what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted. It will last all the way into God’s news world. In fact, it will be enhanced there… The work we do in the present, then, gains its full significance from the eventual design in which it is meant to belong.”

How will this translation happen? Will the trees we plant, the injustices we right, the art we create be present in the new world in a way they would not have if we hadn’t begun it all here? I don’t know. But I do think most of us tend to think of heaven as far less embodied than it actually will be: the point of resurrection is not that we will shed ourselves and this world, but that we and our world will rise, remade. Sown in dishonor; raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power (15:43). That is why Jesus’ resurrection is everything. It goes both ways: on one hand, we work looking forward, knowing that what we do is not lost and will in fact be brought into greater fullness in eternity. On the other hand, we work as new-creation people called to bring our vision of eternity into the present, to bring the restoration, redemption, and beauty of God’s kingdom into our world now as much as we can.

This time has changed the nature of our labors: we’re wrangling with more digital platforms; we’re doing more cooking and cleaning around the house. It has changed the value of our work, separating out what is deemed “essential” or not. But the resurrection changes how we see and do all our labors. It tells us why “inessential” things like beauty and creativity are necessary. It changes how and why we wipe a counter or try to get our kids to understand a math problem. None of it is pointless; none of it is lost. Abound in your work, Paul says. Persevere. Don’t give up. Your labor is not in vain.

Swimming In The Gospel

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you.” – 1 Corinthians 15:1-2

J. D. Greear points out that most of us think of the gospel as merely the entry rite into Christianity, the diving board from which we jump into the pool of Christian living, where we then swim off to enjoy the changes in life that go along with being a believer. “But the gospel is not only the diving board,” he writes. “It is the pool itself. Even after the big splash dies down and you’re floating freely there in this new experience, the next lunge you take that carries you farther away from the diving area doesn’t move you beyond the gospel but deeper into the gospel. You’re swimming in it. It’s all around you. The purest waters that flow from the spring of life are found by plunging deeper into the gospel well… the gospel is not only the way we begin; the gospel is the way we grow. It’s not just where we start; it’s where we are going. All the Christian values and virtues we hope to develop don’t happen on the other side of the gospel but rather right there in the middle of it.”

Paul has gotten nearly to the end of his letter, but he goes back to the gospel. Look at the tenses in this verse: Paul would remind us (present tense) of the gospel he preached (past tense), which we received (past tense), in which we stand (present tense) and by which we are being saved (ongoing present tense), if we hold fast to it (present tense) as it was preached (past tense). The past tenses frame, highlight and emphasize the present tenses.

What does it mean to swim in the gospel, to hold fast to it every day? The first thing Paul goes on to do is spell out the gospel. He preaches it again: that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried and raised on the third day. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “the problem with most believers is that we should be not listening to ourselves but preaching to ourselves.” We need to preach the gospel to ourselves because our memories are short. We forget that we need rescue, that we have received it, that we have forgiveness and freedom and power not through ourselves but only through Jesus. Paul also goes on to lay out a list of eyewitnesses who saw Jesus after he rose: the gospel really happened. People saw it. We need to do whatever it takes to hold that reality, and our knowledge and experience of that reality, before our eyes every day. To record gospel sightings. To share about it with others. To say like Paul, “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (15:10). May we move every day deeper into the truth of the gospel in our lives. 

Vain Service

O my Lord,

Forgive me for serving thee in sinful ways—

   by glorying in my own strength,

   by forcing myself to minister through necessity,

   by accepting the applause of others,

   by trusting in assumed grace 

      and spiritual affection

   by a faith that rests upon my hold on Christ, 

      not on him alone,

   by having another foundation to stand upon beside thee;

      for thus I make flesh my arm.

Help me to see

   that it is faith stirred by grace that does the deed,

   that faith brings a man nearer to thee,

      raising him above mere man,

   that thou dost act upon the soul

      when thus elevated and lifted out of itself,

   that faith centres in thee as God all-sufficient,

      Father, Son, Holy Spirit,

      as God efficient,

      mediately, as in thy commands and promises,

      immediately, in all the hidden power

         that faith sees and knows to be in thee,

      abundantly, with omnipotent effect,

         in the revelation of thy will.

If I have not such faith I am nothing.

Whispers of Christ

“Man who is born of woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers… Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one… so a man lies down and rises not again… All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come… For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.” – Job 14:1-2, 4, 12, 14; 19:25

I love the honesty of Job’s words. They’re not polished or edited; they’re not logical or organized. They are words from the heart. Today we read, “I was at ease, and he broke me apart.” His grief has become a part of him: “I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin.” He feels poured out and torn apart: “He slashes open my kidneys… pours out my gall upon the ground.”

Part of it seems to be too that he is grieving the grief. There should not be this kind of suffering without answer or hope. He sees plainly now that man has no answers. We are all fragile and unclean, we have no answer for death. It’s almost as if he is longing for something, whispering of someone. He is waiting, all his days he would wait, for renewal. This word “renew” literally means “to change clothes.” It’s as if Job is waiting for the day when he can rise up off the ground, and have his dust and sackcloth and ashes gone, not just from his skin but from deep within where his grief has gone, to have healed and restored all the things in him that have been slashed open and broken apart.

But we have this. Peter tells us we have a living hope, an inheritance that is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” (1 Peter 1:4)—that is free from death, free from impurity, free from the ravages of time. Our hope is a person: it is Jesus, who is man born of woman, bearing a life full of trouble, yet living forever, so that we can. It is Jesus who lives a clean life so that our uncleanliness can be covered over. Who lies down in death yet rises again. Who we call Redeemer, and who will one day return to stand upon the earth he will make new.

Keeping Silent

“And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.” – Job 2:13

“Tis hence Orestes, agonized with griefs / and sore disease, lies on his restless bed / delirious. / Now six morns have winged their flight…” – Euripides, Orestes

I listened to a talk once by Nancy Guthrie about dealing with grief. She said one of the things that hurts most is when other people don’t acknowledge your grief. When they avoid you, avoid bringing up the name of the person who died. You don’t have to worry about saying the right thing, she said. Just say or do something to acknowledge it in some way. In her book What Grieving People Wish You Knew, she says the best way to start is by letting the grieving person take the lead: “Determine in advance and discipline yourself in the moment to listen more than you talk. Some of us have a lot of words. We feel awkward with silence, so we tend to instinctually fill it up with words. But there is great power and comfort in simply showing up and being willing to sit in the silence and listen… Instead of driving the conversation, hold back.”

That was what Job’s friends did here. They got down with him on the ground. They sat with him the entire time of mourning, they saw his grief, and no one spoke a word. One can’t help but feel this was probably the best thing they did the entire book, and indeed Job says later, “Oh that you would keep silent, and it would be your wisdom!” (13:5) 

The way we love sometimes is to listen, without having to fix or analyze. The gift we give sometimes is our presence, our attention to the person before us without distraction or agenda. The way to wisdom sometimes is silence.