Trust

“O Israel, trust in the Lord!” – Psalm 115:9

One lovely thing about our kids is that they’re still young enough not to be overly concerned about our itinerary during road trips. They don’t complain about where we’re staying or wonder why we decided to take one route over another. They don’t come with their own agendas. They’re mostly happy to be in the moment, riding along, and from what I can tell, the longer the adventure, the better. 

In his book The Pastor, Eugene Peterson discusses the question Jesus was often asked by his followers: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” When is this going to happen? How long do we have to wait? Jesus’ response was, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” “In other words,” writes Peterson, “it’s none of your business. Your question is irrelevant. That kind of information is of no use to you. It would probably confuse you, might discourage you, and would certainly distract you.”

That reminded me of one time in the car when Elijah asked, “how many more minutes?” When Dave replied, “500,” I’m not sure he knew what to do with that information (he ended up moving on to the more relevant question of whether we could listen to the Frozen II soundtrack again). That’s how I am on the crazy trip that has been this year: God, how long do I have to wait? When will things go back to normal? When are you going to meet my expectations for how things should work?

And what I am slowly starting to wonder is whether I am asking an irrelevant question, one that discourages and distracts me from the very present now God wants me to be in. It’s hard, because this means I have to let go of my own agenda, the way the disciples had to let go of their dreams for the militaristic and political restoration of their people. I feel my agenda is normal and not too much to ask, but then so probably did the disciples. The point is, do I trust God or not? Am I sitting in the car constantly worrying and asking, are we there yet? Or am I willing to trust him each mile of the way? 

Words Fitly Spoken

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Like a gold ring or an ornament of gold is a wise reprover to a listening ear.” – Proverbs 25:12

One thing about sheltering in place is that it’s given us a closer view of our oldest daughter edging into adolescence. She’s become in some ways more opaque and private; in others more vulnerable and close. It’s a push-and-pull feeling that reminds me of the swimming pool analogy Lisa Damour uses in her book “Untangled”: it’s like the world is a swimming pool, and you are the wall. She’ll be unexpectedly warm and intimate one moment, clinging to the wall, then want to push off again the next moment, even if that comes off in a rude way. Enjoy the closeness, but don’t take the push-off’s personally, Damour writes. “Your daughter needs a wall to swim to, and she needs you to be a wall that can withstand her comings and goings.”

Talking with her, I’m realizing, means reading where she is in the pool: heading towards the wall? At the wall, waiting for me? Pushing off or already out in the water? There isn’t necessarily a consistent rhythm to it. Even practical skills seem to develop at an uneven pace: she might insist on doing something complicated entirely on her own, yet want me to help with a simpler task. I need to relearn when to give her space and when to reinforce boundaries, when to just listen and when to speak—and all of that requires studying her carefully, and sifting and re-sifting through my own motives.

Eugene Peterson translates this verse, “The right word at the right time is like a custom-made piece of jewelry.” Making custom jewelry requires that you study the subject, that you understand their personal style and preferences, yet also know what would look good on them. It means you have a vision for how they could look. It means you take time in crafting and giving thought to what you will make. But there’s something wonderful about the idea that our words, even (or especially) our reproof, can make someone more beautiful than they already are. That is how I want my words to my adolescent to be: this word fitly spoken. Surely the work that would go into that is worth it.

Temptation

“Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” – 1 Corinthians 10:12-13

These two verses have an interesting interplay. On the one hand, we have an amazing promise, but on the other, an inescapable warning. Look at the past, Paul writes. The Israelites, who had the very cloud of God’s presence, who walked through the sea, who ate food and drank water from God’s very hand—they yet were idolatrous, sexually immoral, put God to the test, and grumbled. You must never think that you can’t fall.

Take heed, he says. What does this mean? In the Greek, the word used is blepo, which means literally “to see.” There are over a dozen words for “seeing” in Greek—a common one is horao, and Vine’s dictionary compares and contrasts the two in this way: “Horao and blepo both denote the physical act: horao, in general, blepo, the single look; horao gives prominence to the discerning mind, blepo to the particular mood or point. When the physical side recedes, horao denotes perception in general... Blepo, on the other hand, when its physical side recedes, gets a purely outward sense, look (open, incline) towards [as of a situation] (Schmidt, Grimm-Thayer).”

Blepo is not seeing in a generalized way marked by deep inward understanding. It is seeing in a singularly intent, pointed, outwardly-oriented manner. It is not the vision of meandering meditation, but of a relentless and practical vigilance. I imagine Paul saying here, “look sharp about you!” As Eugene Peterson rewrites these verses, “These are all warning markers—danger!—in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel—they at the beginning, we at the end—and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else.”

We do carry the responsibility of jettisoning hubris and over-confidence, of being watchful and not careless in what we do. But temptation will surely come, and ultimately our vigilance is walked out in step with the promise that we can endure it when it does. There’s a part of me, or maybe it’s our culture, that says that I can’t hold out. That I will end up giving in. But that is simply not true. God promises that there will always be a way of escape, not to free myself from temptation necessarily but to find from Him the ability to endure it. Enduring temptation without giving in is painful; the author of Hebrews calls it suffering. But in this way we identify with and find encouragement from Christ, “for because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:18).

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.

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.

Prudent In Speech

“Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence, and the Lord is with him.” – 1 Samuel 16:18

David will go on to become the most frequently mentioned man in the Bible aside from Jesus, but it’s interesting that here, the first time we really hear about him from someone, we learn that he is “prudent” in speech—Hebrew biyn, meaning discerning, eloquent. Perhaps the speaker was providing assurance that David was sufficiently politically correct for a royal court, but regardless, the statement is made. It stands in striking contrast to a story just two chapters earlier, in which Saul makes a rash vow that results not only in the fatigue and sin of his people, but in the near-death of his own son: “Cursed by the man who eats food until it is evening and I am avenged on my enemies” (14:24). Saul speaks in the heat of the hard-pressed day. His words are a curse. He is motivated by self-concern. We do not hear a word from David at all yet: but apparently he speaks with such prudence that he has acquired a reputation for it.

Our language matters: it is highlighted in both the downward trajectory of Saul, and David’s first rise to notice. What does it mean to be prudent in our speech? Prudence implies a kind of sagacity and judgment. To speak with prudence is to speak out of a right view of things. Jesus says in Matthew 5, “Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.” We understand how to speak when we understand God’s place in this universe, and when we understand ours. We understand how to speak when we understand that our words carry weight: they refer to real things with real spiritual realities. They reflect the ordering of our hearts and minds. They shape the realities of the people and world around us.

Eugene Peterson writes, “Every time we open our mouths, whether in conversation with one another or in prayer to our Lord, Christian truth and community are on the line. And so, high on the agenda of the Christian community in every generation is that we diligently develop a voice that speaks in consonance with the God who speaks, that we speak in such a way that truth is told and community is formed.” Our language matters. May we cultivate through our speech a consonance with the God who is always speaking. May we be known for our prudence.

Power And Word

“And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.’” – Luke 1:35

Luke, who wrote both the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, begins both with an account of the power of the Holy Spirit: in Acts, with Pentecost, and in Luke, with conceptions. The Holy Spirit comes upon Elizabeth and Mary, two people who, as Eugene Peterson puts it, “stand at the extremes of impossibility regarding conception: Elizabeth a barren post-menopausal old woman and Mary a young virgin.” The Holy Spirit is mentioned seven times in the first two chapters of Luke (1:15, 35, 41, 67; 2:25-27), and each of those times are related to pregnancy and birth: an unconventional way to describe power. Pregnancy is slow, initially invisible. Birth is messy, wondrous. All of it is markedly intimate and utterly ordinary. This is a power that is the opposite of impersonal, flamboyant, or forceful. A power that works within the ordinary, everyday framework of our lives.

Laced with mentions of the Holy Spirit are five prayers within these first two chapters of Luke: the “Fiat Mihi” (1:38), the “Magnificat” (1:46-55), the “Benedictus” (1:68-79), the “Gloria in excelsis” (2:14), the “Nunc dimittis” (2:29-32). The first is Mary’s response to Gabriel: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” The last is Simeon’s response to holding the forty day-old infant Jesus: “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word.” The Holy Spirit is mentioned within the context of both prayers. Mary and Simeon both call themselves servants of the Lord. They both say kata sou rhema: “according to your word.” We see that the power of the Holy Spirit acts through the prayers of a young girl who begins in submission to God’s word, and an old man ending in submission to God’s word. 

The power of the Holy Spirit is a power that is received, that is deeply personal, that works sometimes slowly and invisibly—with the kind of growth that one can only see in the rearview mirror—and sometimes immediately and powerfully, like the moment an infant comes into the world. It is a power we experience in submission to God’s word, which the Holy Spirit himself reveals to us. May we think on what it means to receive and experience Him, as much as we think on receiving the Christ-child this Christmas week.

The Manure Story

“‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” – Luke 13:6-9

“The greatest temptation of our time is impatience, in its full original meaning: refusal to wait, undergo, suffer. We seem unwilling to pay the price of living with our fellows in creative and profound relationships.” - Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

Dave and I wrote letters for months before we first met in person: he from California, I from Boston. After we finally met in person (and I told him I felt “neutral” when he expressed interest), we began talking on the phone. One day years into our marriage, I found an old notebook of his from med school, and scribbled into the margins, next to “basic immunology functions and disorders of the immune system,” were notes for our phone conversations: “be silly. Have fun. Flirt.” At the bottom of the page, below “septicemia, Hep B, TB, meningitis,” a paragraph: “Don’t expect too much, or demand any promises, affirmation, time, attention—it’s a free gift from her to me, God’s gift of companionship, fellowship, and friendship. Don’t think too far ahead.”

Nowadays, he and I are more liable to text than write letters or call, sometimes even from one room of the house to another. Back then, neither of us had text, much less whatever dating app is trending, and I can’t help but think there was something valuable in the slower pace that forced us to take. We live in an instant society, and I appreciate certain conveniences as much as the next person, but it can cause changes we hardly realize. Rather than allowing more time for rest, our efficiency increases what we’re expected to produce. Boundaries between home and work blur. I find myself getting upset if someone drives below the speed limit, when I see the rainbow pinwheel on my computer, or when I can’t get anything in the world shipped to my front door within two days.

Dropped cold into this chapter, without any kind of context or prelude, is this curious parable, which Eugene Peterson calls “the manure story.” He writes, “Manure is a slow solution. When it comes to doing something about what is wrong in the world, Jesus is best known for his fondness for the minute, the invisible, the quiet, the slow—yeast, salt, seeds, light. And manure.” Manure is dead or unwanted organic matter, which works into the soil to fertilize it, adding nutrients, increasing microbial growth, making it richer so it can bring life. It doesn’t require anything but strategic placement and time. It is unhurried. It is silent: as Saul Bellow writes, “The more you keep your mouth shut, the more fertile you become.” It is a submission to the workings that bring death to life.

It is completely contrary to our impulses, this kind of working. We are more like the man who says, cut it down! And less like the vinedresser who says, let it alone. This word for “let alone,” Greek aphes, means “to let go, let it be,” but interestingly, is also translated “forgive,” as in the Lord’s prayer in Luke 11:4: “and forgive us our sins.” Not long after Jesus shares this parable, we see it playing out in the events of the cross. We hear another violent indictive: “Crucify him!” And we hear a similar bid for life in Jesus’ words: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

God is a God who acts, but he is also the God who waits. His purposes, the workings of the gospel and of resurrection life, the delight and gifts he gives us, can sometimes only be realized and received when we are willing to let it all work slowly into the soil of our lives. We tend to want to control, to direct, to act, when what we really need to do is listen to the vinedresser. And sometimes the answer is to let it alone. To let the manure work. To give it more time.

Holy Hope

“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers. Then this people will rise and whore after the foreign gods among them in the land that they are entering.” – Deuteronomy 31:16

Some have called Deuteronomy the first sermon series, and Moses has just finished. He’s preached the longest sermon in the Bible, the last sermon of his life, there on the plains of Moab. He’s led them all these long and wandering years, and just before he is about to climb a mountain and die, God tells him this: the people he’s given his life in ministry to are about to turn their backs on everything he’s just said. How would Moses have not felt utterly crushed? We tend to gloss over this, because well, it’s no surprise to us, and we know how the story ultimately ends, but consider how it would have felt to hear that, at that time. Eugene Peterson puts it this way: “He dies, by all human accounting, a failure, and knowing that he is a failure, knowing that everything that he has worked for in leading, training, and praying for this community will unravel as soon as the people enter Canaan.”

We have hopes for the people we care for. The closer they are to us, the more we invest in them, the higher and dearer our hopes are—and the more potential there is for us to be hurt or disappointed if our hopes aren’t met. I’ve had this conversation several times with various women: how do I have hopes for my husband without expecting too much? How do I see what I think is good for him, pray for and encourage those things, without being frustrated if I see no change? And the same could be asked elsewhere. How do we continue to strive and serve in ministry when people don’t respond or show up? Parent children who make life decisions that pain us? Honor parents who disappoint us yet again? Be open to new friendships or communities when we feel hurt or abandoned by past ones?

We know now Moses is no failure, yet the world would say he was one that day. His story teaches me that, in so many ways, my hopes come with an expectation of timing or outcome that are influenced by personal or worldly perspectives, and that is not how God works. It simply isn’t. He works with the eternal view in mind. He may disappoint my hopes for my own sake, to show me that they are rooted in some amount of selfishness, pride, insecurity, or idolatry. He may disappoint my hopes because it is ultimately better for the whole body of believers, or for the sake of spreading or illustrating the gospel, or for the sake of the very people I hope it for.

The very next thing God tells Moses is to sing. It’s hard to sing without it changing the way you feel; singing is talking pitched to the soul and sentiment. He turns to these people he knows now will disappoint him, and sings them a song. Maybe he sings it to himself as well. What does he sing about? God’s perfection. His greatness, his past grace and faithfulness, his just vengeance, his power. Moses’ song goes back to God. While we hope for those we love, our faith is not in them. Our faith is in God, whom we know has our and their eternal good in mind. This makes our hope not feebler, but stronger and higher. This is a holy kind of hope: a hope that is purified in motive and content. A hope that is held together with faith in a mighty and good God. A hope that is therefore able to have a loose grip on outcomes and timing. A hope that strengthens my labors rather than cripples them. 

Would Moses have still preached those sermons with all the force of will and heart he did, if God had not waited until the end to tell him what would happen? And yet I’m glad Moses did. Despite the immediate outcome, think how meaningful his sermons still are, how precious the time he took to preach them and have them written down, because they bless us today. Our labors are not lost, and that too is part of the lesson he leaves us, part of the promise we have in Christ.

Chiasms In Mark

“And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last.” – Mark 15:37

Eugene Peterson describes the chiastic structure of the latter half of the book of Mark, which he pictures as a pyramid leading up to the apex of four events:

A   Burial: Woman anoints Jesus’ body for burial (14:3-11)

B   Eucharist: Passover meal (14:12-25)

C   Cup/Prayer: Garden of Gethsemane (14:26-42)

D   Cross: Betrayal and arrest (14:43-52)

E   Trial: Jewish council trial before high priest (4:53-65)

F   Denial: Peter denies Jesus (14:66-72)

F’  Trial: Roman trial before Pilate (15:1-15)

E’  Mockery: Mock worship from Roman soldiers (15:16-20)

D’  Cross: Simon carries cross and the crucifixion (15:21-32)

C’  Cup/Prayer: Jesus dies (15:21-32)

B’  Eucharist: Women who stay (15:40-41)

A’  Burial: Joseph buries Jesus in tomb (15:42-47)

The first and last scenes are burial scenes, the preparation for burial and the burial itself. The next are gatherings for eucharist: the last supper, and the women gathered for the six-hour breaking of flesh and pouring out of blood on the cross. The next are scenes of Jesus’ prayers: that the cup might pass from him, then his prayer as he drinks the cup. The scenes of the cross contrast Judas, who brings Jesus to crucifixion by betraying him, and Simon of Cyrene, who brings Jesus to crucifixion by carrying his cross.

The central four scenes interrelate to form a capstone to the pyramid. E and F are sequential, occurring in the Jewish court and outside courtyard. E and F’ are both trials, Jewish and Roman. F and E’ are both mockeries or denials. F and F’ are both rejections, from the leader of the apostles (Peter) and the leader of the Romans (Pilate). “A double rejection,” Peterson writes, “the person closest to Jesus and the person most remote from Jesus rejecting him; the foreign outsider who hasn’t the slightest idea of who Jesus is or might be now paired with the apostolic insider who was the first to recognize and confess Jesus’ messianic identity, both teaming up to say ‘no’ to Jesus.” F’ and E’ are again sequential, but here in the Roman court and away inside the palace.

Peterson sums it up this way: “St. Mark’s death narrative is an intricately interwoven web of echoes, parallels, contrasts, allusions, and repetitions. The death of Jesus gathers everything into it and fashions the finished work of salvation. Everything that goes into the work of salvation is found in this death. And everything that goes into our involvement in salvation is found in this death.”

The Ten Plagues

“Thus says the Lord, ‘By this you shall know that I am the Lord.’” – Exodus 7:17

To understand the ten plagues, we have to understand some things about ancient Egypt around 1250 B.C. Religion was then so much a part of life that the Egyptian language did not have a word for “religion”: it was simply their reality. The divine and natural worlds were inextricably linked; natural phenomena were considered divine forces. Life revolved around sustaining and placating gods that were involved in all aspects of nature and society. But of the over 2,000 deities in the Egyptian pantheon, one of the greatest gods was Pharaoh himself, who alone upheld ma’at, the order of the cosmos. And uphold it he did: Egypt was a world power at that time, enthroned in splendor, home to the pyramids.

The Israelites had been living for over four centuries in this totalitarian culture, an empire built on cruelty, superstition and abuse. True salvation for them was not merely being physically removed from the state of slavery: it was to incontrovertibly expose all the beauty, success, and power of Egypt for the evil and emptiness that it was. Eugene Peterson points out that otherwise, it would have been all too easy for the Israelites to repeat “the Egyptian way of success” for themselves in the promised land: “as far as they knew, this is what worked, and had worked for at least a thousand years.” They needed a freeing, a cleansing, of their imagination, of their conception of reality, so they would be able to hear and follow God. 

And so God doesn’t just kill Pharaoh outright and get the Israelites out. Over a period of eight months, he systemically destroys the natural order Pharaoh claims to keep. He rips open a curtain to reveal true reality, the reality that Yahweh alone is sovereign. As commentators have pointed out, each plague subverts various Egyptian gods: water to blood the gods of the Nile (Hapi, Apsi, Isis, Khnum), frogs the goddess of fertility who had the head of a frog (Heqet), gnats the gods of desert and dust (Set, Geb), flies the god of flies (Uatchit) and the god of creation who had the head of a fly (Khepri), death of livestock the bull gods (Hathor, Apsi, Mnevis) and the ram god (Khnum), boils the gods of health and disease (Isis, Sekhmet, Sunu), hail the goddess of the sky (Nut) and gods of grain (Min, Nepri, Anubis, Senehem), locusts the god of storms and disorder (Seth) and gods of grain. Darkness defeated Ra, the god of the sun, and finally, death of the firstborn defeated Ra’s son, Pharaoh. 

God is revealing himself as the one who alone is sovereign. In Genesis 1, God speaks (“and God said…”) ten times in creation; here again he speaks ten times through the workings of creation, so that we shall “know,” a word that appears like a thread running through the story (6:7; 7:5, 17; 8:10, 22; 9:14, 29; 10:2; 11:7; 14:4, 18). We come to know a God who does not work through prestige or power, but through, as Peterson writes, “an eighty-year-old desert shepherd and his brother, their only weapon a stick.” He uses the oppressed and despised to ultimately bring salvation, true spiritual salvation, to the world.

In Revelation chapters 8, 9, and 16, events like the plague recur in a much more cosmic and escalatory scale: hail and fire, sea becoming blood, darkness, locusts, sores, “unclean spirits like frogs.” There, we see the spiritual battle exposed for what it is. But sandwiched right in the middle of these events is a song, the song of Moses, which is also the song of Jesus, the Lamb. They sing of a God who is the true Sovereign, and this is how it ends: “All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed” (Revelation 15:4). In what ways are we still captives to our culture? What spiritual strongholds do we need to ask God to be sovereign over in our lives? How can we pray for God’s sovereignty among the nations? How is God revealing himself to us?

The Absence Of God

“During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.” – Exodus 2:23

“The story in which God does his saving work arises among a people whose primary experience of God is his absence.”- Eugene Peterson

When I go through piano pieces with the kids, I often say, “you have to play the rests.” The spaces of silence are as important as the notes. The musical score of the book of Exodus begins with one startling, long rest. Do you hear it? God’s people have been in slavery for 430 years. That’s a long time. What happened to the covenant He made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Did His providence through Joseph count for anything?  

The experience of God as absent is a normal part of the salvation story, of our spiritual lives. We see this from the lips of the Psalmist and Jesus alike: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22, Matthew 27). We need to recognize this, and see the necessity of it. In our consumeristic society, it teaches us that God is not a God who answers to our beck and call. He does not need to account for himself to us. It keeps us alert and attentive to a mysterious Other. It allows us to identify with Christ. It draws us to reach for salvation and spiritual transformation beyond our comfort zones.

It’s good to look for these biblical blanks, to not rush to fill them in, to realize they are a normal part of the story that God tells. Good companions in these spaces are songs like Andrew Peterson’s “The Silence Of God,” or poems like this one from R. S. Thomas:

            Why no! I never thought other than

            That God is that great absence

            In our lives, the empty silence

            Within, the place where we go

            Seeking, not in hope to

            Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices

            In our knowledge, the darkness

            Between stars. His are the echoes

            We follow, the footprints he has just

            Left. We put our hands in

            His side hoping to find

            It warm. We look at people

            And places as though he had looked

            At them, too: but miss the reflection.