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).

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.

A Whole Heart

“But the high places were not taken out of Israel. Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was wholly true all his days.” – 2 Chronicles 15:17

“For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.” – 2 Chronicles 16:9

One Mystery Science video I watched recently with the kids talked about how we get metals from the earth: it’s not as simple as digging them up. Most metals exist in such close combination with other elements that these mineral “ores” must undergo a process called “smelting” to be extracted. Smelting involves heat. It takes temperatures thousands of degrees hotter than an oven to separate the metal from its ore. 

With each successive king in Judah’s history, it’s easy to ask the same question our kids used to ask about everyone: “is he good or bad?” But we often find it’s not that straightforward. Kings may tear down some altars but not others. They may govern wisely but marry foolishly. They may start off well but make a poor decision, as we see with King Asa, who renewed a covenant to follow God wholeheartedly, but then turned to seek the help of the Syrians rather than God when difficulty came. The same word is used for “wholly” and “blameless” in these two verses: shalem, related to the familiar shalom. God desires that our hearts are shalem towards him, are blameless and true in the sense of having no other ultimate love, no other ultimate object of worship and desire and help. 

There is a shift between the end of chapter fifteen and the beginning of chapter sixteen, and it is caused by one thing: war. It is external trial that brings out the condition of King Asa’s heart. “I have refined you,” says God, “but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction” (Isaiah 48:10). I picture my heart strewn with ores: mixed motives, desires, and loves running like veins through the geography of my mind and soul. This pandemic is like one big smelting furnace, an act of extractive metallurgy upon the core of my being. Every challenge and trial makes me ask, what am I really looking to for help? What do I really believe is the point of my day? What is my calling really about in this time? God is searching endlessly for one precious thing, more precious than the purest gold: a heart that is whole towards him. To that heart, he says, I will give strong support. That is a promise worth holding on to. “In this you rejoice,” writes Peter, “though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6-7).

Consolation

“When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.” – Psalm 94:18-19

When I went back to work after Eric was born, he refused to take the bottle. He would go on hunger strikes for days. At one point, my dad drove him into work so I could rush out between patients to nurse him. Eventually we got him to take the bottle (by filling it with orange juice), but I still remember him wailing inconsolably in the back seat of the car each time I ran out. 

There are two Hebrew words in this verse that are rarely used in the Old Testament, but that both occur again in succession in a passage in Isaiah 66. Tanchuwm, or “consolation,” is used as well in Isaiah 66:11: “Rejoice with Jerusalem… that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious abundance.” Sha’a’, or “cheer,” literally means “to stroke” or caress in comfort, and is used again in Isaiah 66:12, where it is translated “bounce”: “and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip, and bounced upon her knees.”

When you are that crying infant, what you long for is something specific that only one person can provide. That’s how I feel when I’m sad sometimes: what I want is not just distraction or sympathy or even mere comfort. I want consolation. I want something that holds both grief and comfort in full view, together. I want a comfort that speaks to my grief, that tells me my grief is not meaningless and shows me my grief is understood. And that’s the beautiful picture these words create: there is an answer, that goes beyond comfort, in fact, to deep delight. That nourishes, gives life and satisfaction. That speaks without words, in exactly the way we cry for. The nature of my sadness is meant to point me to the Consolation of Israel (Luke 2:25), upon whom I can cast the cares of my heart (1 Peter 5:7), who will one day wipe away every tear from my eyes (Revelation 21:4).

Consolation that glorious seems too good to be true, and some days, too hard to reach for. It’s easier to be drowned in or drained by feeling down. But that’s why it’s good to hear the testimony of this Psalmist. He wrote these words in the midst of terribly crushing events (verses 5-7). His truth can be the same for us.

ABC's Of The Word

“And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.” – Luke 8:14

One of my most memorable rotations in medical school was working on the surgical trauma team in the emergency room of Massachusetts General Hospital (or “Man’s Greatest Hospital,” as we liked to call it). As a third-year medical student and the lowest on the totem pole, my job was to carry around a right-handed glove and a packet of lubricant and basically stay out of the way until the team did a log-roll, at which time I would check for rectal tone. I loved it, though: the pace, the variety and intensity of the cases we handled. No matter what came in the door, the first thing we checked was always the same: the ABC’s, or airway, breathing, and circulation, in that order. Is the airway blocked? Are there spontaneous respirations? A regular rate and rhythm? The most basic thing to life is oxygen getting to tissue cells: hypoxia can lead to irreversible damage in neurological cells within minutes.

The word of God, Jesus says, is not information we download of a Sunday morning. It isn’t an injection we take during a few devotional moments. It is life that grows, and to grow, it needs continual air and circulation. It is capable of being choked, its purpose in us aborted. The Greek word for “mature” is the same used of pregnant women. What suffocates the life of the word within us? Jesus identifies three things: cares, riches, and pleasures.

The word for “care” here, merimna, comes from a root meaning “to separate into parts” or “to cut into pieces”: this is an anxious kind of care, that comes from feeling drawn in different directions. Seems like this describes the baseline temperature of life here, where we’re expected to be simultaneously excellent in all areas of life. I love bullet journaling, but the fact that I need one to keep track of all the threads in my life says something, surely. The word for “riches,” ploutos, comes from a root meaning “filled,” referring to not merely possessions, but an abundance of them. The word for “pleasures,” hedone, means not merely pleasure but the insatiable desire for it; not merely concupiscence, but any lust that drives us to quarrels and distorts our prayers (James 4:1, 3).

These are thorns. Weeds are not plants that are bad in and of themselves: they are simply growing in the wrong place or to the wrong degree. They have become, as Augustine put it, disordered loves. But weeds do tend to be plants that proliferate easily and propagate effortlessly when unchecked. I love the mint in our plant beds, but I keep it in a pot within the earth because otherwise it would take over the entire space. And so, cares, riches and pleasures are not bad things, but they tend to take over easily. They can strangle all the life out of the word planted in us.

How do we weed out the garden of our souls? There is a lot to be said for learning to curb our appetites, our possessions, our anxious cares, and many times, I’ve regretted not doing that earlier or more habitually in my life. But ultimately, I think we have to love the plant that is growing. We have to care about its life and desire its fruit so much that we are always checking its ABC’s. Reordering loves is a matter of being pierced with love for Jesus, who wore a crown of thorns so that we could cast all our merimna on him (1 Peter 5:7). As Augustine wrote: “The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”

Keeping Our Hearts

“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” - Proverbs 4:23

“Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom. Taking responsibility for my life opens up many different options. Boundaries help us keep the good in and the bad out. Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices. You are the one who makes them. You are the one who must live with their consequences.” – Cloud and Townsend

“For from it flow the springs” is one word in Hebrew: towtsa’ah. Which is mysterious, because the vast majority of the other 23 times it’s used in the old testament, it appears in verses like this:

“And your border shall turn south of the ascent of Akrabbim, and cross to Zin, and its limit shall be south of Kadesh-barnea. Then it shall go on to Hazar-addar, and pass along to Azmon” (Numbers 34:4).

Spot it? Yeah, hardly. There it’s translated “and its limit.” With only three exceptions, towtsa’ah is used exclusively in describing boundary lines, throughout Numbers, Joshua, and 1 Chronicles. It can mean “the place from which anything goes forth”—the other two exceptions are translated “deliverance” (Psalm 68:20) and “exits” (Ezekiel 48:30)—but that’s not how it usually appears.

Which lends a strange kind of sense to two other words in this verse. “Vigilance” is the Hebrew mishmar, which actually means “prison.” “Keep” is the Hebrew natsar, which means “watchman.” This verse is not saying “keep” as in how you “keep” food in your pantry or a pet in your house, but “keep” as in how you “keep” a watchman on the city walls or a guard at the prison door. What’s the difference? You realize the centrality, the high value, of what you guard: your inner self is the place from which everything issues, your speech (Matthew 15:18), behavior (Jeremiah 17:10), outward appearance (1 Peter 3:4), physical health (Proverbs 17:22). If you picture your life as many streams, the imagery here is that they all come from a single source: if your inner life is not healthy, it may affect even a seemingly-unrelated area of your downstream life.

You also realize the fragility or volatility of what you guard: its tendency to be easily influenced, or stray off-center. And so we have to know where the boundary lines fall. Freedom, this verse suggests, the freedom of true life, comes not from lack of boundaries, but drawing the right ones. We must examine our inner lives and know what to let in, what to keep out. This may mean being intentional in the choices we make about media we consume, or relationships we have. It may mean following a rule of life in how we arrange the rhythm of our days, weeks, or months. It may mean pursuing life-giving leisure instead of mindless entertainment. It may mean getting more sleep. Any number of things. Where are your boundaries, and how do you live them out?