The Last One

“It is done!” – Revelation 21:6

We are here! Today is our last day in our one-year Bible reading plan (a few days short of an actual year, due to some glitch in the adaptation). There is a particular sense of accomplishment in a task finished, isn’t there? When you pull a cake out of the oven, turn over the last page in a book, put the final touches on a drawing. There are probably far too many projects in life we don’t finish, the life-equivalent of TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read). Our good intentions too often run out, reflections perhaps of the fact that we didn’t really care enough, or that we simply lacked the perseverance or resources it would have taken to complete what we started.

 

God never leaves a project undone. “I am sure of this,” Paul writes in Philippians 1:6, “that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” This day comes so beautifully here in the last two chapters of Revelation. The proclamation of God that his work is finished occurs three times in the Bible: at creation (Genesis 2:3), on the cross (John 19:30), and here, at the re-creation of the world. Creation, redemption, and re-creation: God never intended to leave the story unfinished, and we carry the hope of knowing how it will end. 

 

How was this Bible reading experience for you? What is your reading plan for tomorrow? For the point, after all, was never to finish the year, but to develop a lifetime habit of daily Bible reading. My plan for continuing is pretty simple: stick a bookmark at the Old Testament, Psalm, Proverbs, and New Testament, and read through one chapter of each a day—I like how this plan chose from those sections, but this way I don’t have to look up exactly what verse to read to, which is fine given there’s no pressure to finish in a year anyway. But your plan might be different; the point is to find something that works. 

 

And if you can, try writing something every day: one thing that stood out to you from the reading. One verse you can scribble down to think on throughout the day. One point of application. One short prayer. Writing helps you consume what you read. It pushes you to read more actively. It takes the seed of the word and burrows it down deeper into the soil of your heart and mind so that it can grow.

 

To all those who are still seeing these posts a year out: thanks for reading! Your invisible presence has encouraged me immensely. May we continue reading and talking about what we’ve read together!

Cease

“… for whoever had entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.” – Hebrews 4:10

“And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.” – Genesis 2:2

One of the greatest mysteries is that the culmination of creation is—rest. In Hebrew, the word is shabath, which literally means “to cease.” Each new creation is a step towards the completion that occurs on the Sabbath, the act of stopping. To us, to our society, this makes no sense. Why do it all just to stop? Why is stopping so important? Rabbi Elijah of Vilna said: God stopped to show us that what we create becomes meaningful to us only once we stop creating it and start to think about why we did so. As Judith Shulevitz puts it in a New York Times article, “We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember.” Sabbath at heart is not about leisure or socialization: it is theater, designed to convey a certain story about who we are. Stopping helps us remember how and why we work. It helps us remember how and why we exist, as image-bearers of God, people who are more than our work. 

But stopping does not come easily. Shulevitz writes, “Most people mistakenly believe that all you have to do to stop working is not work. The inventors of the Sabbath understood that it was a much more complicated undertaking. You cannot downshift casually and easily, the way you might slip into bed at the end of a long day… This is why the Puritan and Jewish Sabbaths were so exactingly intentional, requiring extensive advance preparation—at the very least a scrubbed house, a full larder and a bath. The rules did not exist to torture the faithful. They were meant to communicate the insight that interrupting the ceaseless round of striving requires a surprisingly strenuous act of will.”

Surprisingly strenuous, indeed, especially now, when work and home life blur together. To cease work nowadays may mean not going into your home office, not checking emails or doing work on the computer. It is good to practice stopping as a family, but those of us with kids at home may also be struggling with the perennial question: how does one stop when your work is being a parent? I’ve come to no brilliant answers other than advance planning and resource investment. As a mom, my Sabbaths occur when Dave or a sitter watches the kids and I can stop mothering for a bit: days at a retreat center a few times a year, monthly afternoons out alone. Ironically, the first step to Sabbath requires some work. Stopping requires preparation. But it is important. Before we can learn what it means to enter God’s rest, we have to learn how to cease from ours.

Fruitfulness vs. Success

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

What is the difference between success and fruitfulness? They are not the same thing, at least in the way our world defines success. You get to success by striving, trying, making. You get to fruit by receiving, waiting, and growing. Success by definition usually involves visible and immediate results. Fruit is often hidden from you as it is happening and may not be fully recognized in your lifetime. Success deals in quantifiable currency like money, prestige, and influence. Fruitfulness deals in unmeasurable qualities. With success, the ends often justifies the means, whereas with fruit, the end exists as an indication of the means. Success leads to more and more success, in an ongoing cycle. Fruit exist to deliver the seed and die so that new fruit can grow. 

The Bible doesn’t talk much about success. But it speaks a great deal of fruitfulness: every healthy tree bears good fruit (Matthew 7); Jesus is the vine we abide in to bear fruit (John 15); the wisdom from above is full of good fruits (James 3); blessed is the man who yields his fruit in season (Psalm 1); walk in the fruit of the light (Ephesians 5); receive fruit that leads to sanctification (Romans 6). The story began with fruit taken when it should not have been (Genesis 3) and ends with the twelve kinds of fruit on the tree of life (Revelation 22).

It takes some learning, I think, to value fruitfulness over success in your life. To learn to point your life in the direction of fruitfulness rather than success, and to have the eyes to see the joy and reward that it brings. 

Nouwen puts it this way: “There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over its development, and to make it available in large quantities. Success brings many rewards and often fame. Fruits, however, come from weakness and vulnerability. And fruits are unique. A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching one another’s wounds. Let’s remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness.” 

Selfies And Psalms

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

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

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

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

When God Commands Destruction

“So Joshua struck the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings. He left none remaining, but devoted to destruction all that breathed, just as the Lord God of Israel commanded.” – Joshua 10:40

We can’t really read through Joshua and Judges without addressing the elephant in the room: how could God give his people the promised land by commanding the destruction of all who were already living in it? This is far too large a topic to be addressed in one post, but here are at least some points worth considering. 

The mission of Israel to occupy Canaan was unlike any military operation, before or since, in several important ways. It was not carried out on the basis of race and cannot be a warrant for ethnic cleansing: in fact, God later judges the Israelites themselves through military defeat and exile. It was not carried out on the basis of imperialistic expansion, to expand Israel’s power or wealth: unlike most military invasions at that time, the Israelites were commanded not to plunder or enslave anyone. It was not carried out because the Israelites were intrinsically superior to the Canaanites: in fact, the need to evict the Canaanites only testifies to the Israelites’ spiritual weakness in the face of temptation.

The war is carried out as God’s judgement upon the Canaanites, through direct verbal revelation (Joshua 1:1-9, 23:1-16; Judges 1:1), for the purpose of breaking down idols and evicting pagan worship. This was a specific category of warfare that, in Deuteronomy 20, God makes clear is different from war conducted outside the promised land, where total destruction is not commanded. This was a specific act of judgment that occurs after God had given the Canaanites four generations for their sin to reach “its full measure” (Genesis 15), upon an unrepentant people who persisted in practices like child sacrifice, temple prostitution, incest and adultery. Despite the commands, there are provisions for salvation as we see with Rahab and the Gibeonites, again making it clear that the point of judgment was not ethnicity but rebellious unbelief. The war protected Israel’s theocracy: a union of religion and government unique to that time.

One theologian, Meredith Kline, calls this an “intrusion ethic”: a time when future judgment “intrudes” on the present. God, who alone knows who will be condemned on Judgment Day when Jesus returns, is in these instances bringing down judgment upon those people early, the same way the blessings of the gospel are also intrusions of the future grace into the present.

And that brings me back to this question: why should God’s intrusions of judgment bother me more than his intrusions of grace? One interesting thing I’ve noticed about our children is that two of them tend to be justice-oriented: they need to hear, “you can’t do whatever you want to get whatever you want.” The other two tend to be grace-oriented: they need to hear, “sometimes being kind is more important than being right.” The point is, however our inherent personality, personal experiences, or cultural milieu may make us lean, God is a God of both justice and mercy. Jesus came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Both. Not one without the other. In fact, without judgment, grace would be meaningless. The disturbing parts of the Bible arrest our attention for good reason. They point to gaps between how we like to think of God, and who He really is. How we like to think of sin, and what sin really means. How we like to think of grace, and how costly that grace really was to Him. 

Gloom And Gladness

“Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.” – Proverbs 12:25

There’s this moment in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship Of The Ring when the fellowship, having been blocked at the pass of Caradhras, reluctantly enter the Mines of Moria, a place “vast and intricate beyond the imagination of Gimli, Gloin’s son, dwarf of the mountain-race though he was.” Gradually the passageways descend, the air grows hot and stifling, and the group is forced to wait as Gandalf tries to decide which way to go, evil forebodings and utter darkness all around them. 

Tolkien writes: “‘Do not be afraid!’ said Aragorn. There was a pause longer than usual, and Gandalf and Gimli were whispering together; the others were crowded behind, waiting anxiously. ‘Do not be afraid! I have been with him on many a journey, if never on one so dark; and there are tales in Rivendell of greater deeds of his than any that I have seen. He will not go astray – if there is any path to find. He has led us in here against our fears, but he will lead us out again, at whatever cost to himself.”

At the heart of this proverb are two words, each repeated twice for emphasis: shachah shachah, samach samach. A minor change and reordering of consonants provide an example of the antithetical parallelism we see so often in Proverbs. Shachah means “to bow down, to sink down.” When you have young children, you realize how different everything is when you’re operating at half the height of an adult: they can’t see where something is on some counters; they can’t reach up to turn on some faucets. When we’re sunk down, our point of view and capacity to function is altered. We see and respond to reality differently. But it goes deeper: our desires and motivations change. Our feelings change: it’s interesting that we use altitudinal language to describe feeling “down” or “low” or “depressed.”

In contrast, samach means “to be glad, to rejoice.” By contrast, this is a kind of lifting up: a difference in view and ability and feeling. I think of Aragorn’s words in the dark: their circumstances had not changed, but the way those circumstances were framed had. It can turn on a word. A good word today can gladden and cheer my husband, my children, a stranger or friend. This can be a family exercise or birthday tradition where we go around and share what we appreciate about someone. A thank-you card. A letter to encourage your child, taped where they can find it. A note slipped into your spouse’s work bag to let them know you appreciate their labors. A timely word of kindness.

We talk a lot about rejoicing at this time of year. Jesus is the good and kind Word, after all, born into a world of anxious cares. He came to show us the “immeasurable riches of his kindness towards us” (Ephesians 2). He, like Gandalf, leads us out of darkness at great cost to himself. There’s a limit to how much we can manufacture joy: ultimately, we must find our gladness in Jesus. Interestingly, shachah is most commonly used in the context of worship, as in Genesis 27:29: “Let the peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you.” We worship what we bow down to, and the more we worship Jesus, the more we posture ourselves under His good kindness, the more we will be lifted up to do the same for others.

Feasts Of The Lord: A Primer

“Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, These are the appointed feasts of the Lord that you shall proclaim as holy convocations; they are my appointed feasts.” – Leviticus 23:2

The feasts in Leviticus 23 are a fascinating map of the past and the future. There are 7 feasts (Sabbath, Passover/Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Weeks, Trumpets, Atonement, Booths); one of them occurs every 7 days (Sabbath); two of them last for 7 days, beginning on the 15th day or after the completion of 2 cycles of 7 days (Unleavened Bread, Booths). Seven, the number of perfection and wholeness; God’s whole, created plan over time. The word “appointed” is the same Hebrew word translated “seasons” in Genesis 1:14: “And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.”

Of the six annual feasts, the first three occur in the spring. The first two occur over a span of 8 days. On day 1, the Passover Feast is celebrated. This looks back to the tenth plague, and looks ahead to the crucifixion of Jesus, which occurred on this day (“Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed,” 1 Corinthians 5:7). On day 2, the Feast of Unleavened Bread occurs and lasts until day 8. This looks back to the hurried exodus from Egypt, and looks ahead to Christ in the tomb. The leaven points to the old self, the sin, that he cleanses us from: “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened” (1 Corinthians 5:7). 

On day 3, the Feast of Firstfruits takes place. At that time, the barley crop would be planted and harvested first, then the wheat crop. The Feast of Firstfruits occurred at the time of the barley harvest, marking the beginning of the harvesting season; the Israelites ate no grain until an offering was made of the barley harvest. This looks ahead to Jesus rising from the dead, which he did on the day of Firstfruits. “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20).

Fifty days after the Feast of Firstfruits, the Feast of Weeks occurred. The term “weeks” refers to the period of time between the barley harvest and the wheat harvest. It was also called the Pentecost (literally “fiftieth”) or the Feast of Harvests (Exodus 23:16). This celebrated the end of the harvest season, included a wheat sacrifice, and featured 2 loaves baked with yeast. There is some speculation that this was the day the law was given at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19:1). The Holy Spirit was given to believers on this day (Acts 2:1).

After a summer hiatus, the last three feasts were celebrated in the fall. The Feast of Trumpets is modern-day Rosh Hashanah, and many have speculated that it looks forward to some element of Christ’s return (Matthew 24, Joel 2, 1 Thessalonians 4). The Day of Atonement is modern-day Yom Kippur, which some speculate looks forward to future judgment. The Feast of Booths looked back to wanderings in the wilderness and some speculate that it points to the future reign of believers, the new Jerusalem, or some aspect of the joy that follows judgment.

I imagine how it would feel if all of life stopped, regularly, every week and on the same days every year, so that congregations and families could gather around altars and tables, telling through sacrifices and foods and forts stories of God from the past. In this chapter, God is saying, I want you to stop and tell those stories. I want you to understand how Jesus fulfills all of it, down to the very day. I want you to live in the hope of the feasts and harvests and fulfillments to come in the future, because they will come. They will.

The Veil And The Cherubim

“He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” – Genesis 3:24

“And you shall make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen. It shall be made with cherubim skillfully worked into it… and bring the ark of the testimony in there within the veil.” – Exodus 26:31, 33b

“And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” – Matthew 27:51

I’ve always had a visual memory. I can remember what Dave or I were wearing at most important moments in our lives. For example, the first time we met in person after months of writing letters, I recall Dave striding towards me clad in a yellow visor, white logo T-shirt, khaki shorts, ankle socks and worn sneakers. Back then, my East Coast sensibilities were somewhat appalled at his casual attire (after hours of deliberation, I had chosen for myself pressed khaki pants and a V-neck black top)—I now realize he was pretty much dressed like everyone in California dresses, but either way, the image is stuck in my head.

In this section of Exodus, God speaks through images crafted in wood, metal, and fabric. Almond blossoms, loops of blue, clasps of bronze—in every detail, he is showing us something about Himself, about how he relates with us. He is telling us a story.

Take the veil. One of its colors was purple. Apparently it took twelve thousand murex snails (carnivorous tropical sea snails) to yield only 1.4 grams of pure violet dye, which was why the color was associated with both divinity and royalty. Worked into the veil are cherubim, which remind us of the first time they are mentioned in Genesis, guarding the tree of life, separating sinful man from the holy presence of God in the garden. Here too, the cherubim separate us from the Most Holy Place, the presence of God at the mercy seat above the ark of testimony, a place only one person could enter only one day a year after elaborate preparations (more on that in Leviticus). When Solomon built the temple, he also worked cherubim into the veil (2 Chronicles 3:14).

Fast-forward to Jesus’ death: the very first thing that happens after he breathes his last is a completely startling event. Behold! Matthew says. The curtain is torn in two! Something happens to an inanimate object in a completely unrelated location! The word for curtain used here (katapetasma) can refer to three different hangings in the tabernacle and temple, but the syntax points to the inner veil. There is the image: the cherubim, torn apart, a way made through. This, spelled out in fabric and dye, is what the death of Jesus meant: a way made for us back into Eden, into the holy presence of God.

Even more fascinating is how the author of Hebrews describes it: “We have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh” (Hebrews 10:19-20)—the curtain is Jesus’ flesh. A way was made only through a breaking apart. The flesh that was perfect, divine, and royal—just as the curtain was made of the finest twined linen and the rarest of dyes—that flesh was torn just as the curtain was.

I imagine the image of those cherubim in the veil, both a masterpiece of art and a familiar fixture, and I imagine seeing them destroyed. I imagine the unbelievability of a placed shrouded in unattainable mystery for hundreds and hundreds of years, at the threat of death, now laid open. That is a story I would tell and an image I would remember. 

Ascribing Glory

“Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.” – Psalm 29:1

“Just as the eighth Psalm is to be read by moonlight, when the stars are bright, as the nineteenth needs the rays of the rising sun to bring out its beauty, so this can be best rehearsed beneath the black wing of tempest, by the flare of the lightening, or amid that dubious dusk which heralds the war of elements. The verses march to the tune of thunderbolts.” – Charles Spurgeon

We just got back from a four-day family vacation, which was unquestionably worthwhile but has given me a new appreciation for the effort my parents made to take us on family vacations each year. My favorite was the year we went to Yellowstone National Park. I remember one moment when a sudden storm descended upon the Teton mountains we were driving towards. We pulled over, got out of the car, and stood speechless before the most amazing lightening show we had ever seen, jagged streaks lighting up the sky behind the mountain peaks. 

I can’t help but think we in the Bay Area are a bit handicapped in reading Psalm 29, stuck as we are in our time capsule of meteorological perfection. You can read about storms, but it’s another thing to experience one, to hear thunder so loud and close you feel afraid, to huddle in a bathtub during a hurricane, powerless until it passes. There is a kind of fearful glory in that, isn’t there? A weightiness of power, a splendor of might and reach, an inescapable transcendence that reaches past your mind into the core of your being and feelings. It isn’t anything you can conjure, or argue against: it simply is, and we can only cry, “glory!”

David describes the voice of God flashing fire, stripping trees, shaking and breaking. But the most striking sign of power is that whatever God’s voice does, He does. That is the cadence, the echo, in verses five and six: “The voice of the Lord breaks… The Lord breaks… The voice of the Lord shakes… the Lord shakes...” And of course we see this throughout all scripture: what he speaks, is created (Genesis 1:3); what he speaks, happens (Matthew 5:18); what he speaks, became flesh (John 1:14), the temple in verse nine made alive. 

Don’t we all long for this kind of glory? Sometimes I think what I’m really searching for in entertainment, in movies and sports and novels, is just that kind of transcendent stirring to lift me out of my mundane daily life. We are all created for glory. How mysterious, then, that David says, “ascribe.” The two words translated “heavenly beings” literally mean “sons of God”—he may be addressing beings in heaven, or us on earth, or both. Why must we be commanded to ascribe? Because so often we are blind to the glory of God. It is literally around us, all the time: but when was the last time you consciously saw the glory of God? When was the last time you credited God what he is due, what he is worth? This is what it means to worship (verse 2): simply to acknowledge the reality of God’s glory, until it rises up in a cry within us (verse 9), until we find in it our rest (verse 11).

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?

Sacred Spaces

“So Israel took his journey with all that he had and came to Beersheba.” – Genesis 46:1

“You and I haven’t much time with our many responsibilities, but creating a small ‘sacred space’ somewhere in our home and giving ourselves ten minutes in the morning to be with the One who loves us so as to put the coming day into loving hands, changes the way we will live it. And returning to this sacred space for ten minutes at night to recall the day’s encounters, to give thanks, to ask pardon, and to put the night into the hands of Love, changes the way we sleep. This daily relationship with the loving Source of our true identity moves us towards peacefulness and joy in our lives.” – Henri Nouwen, A Spirituality of Caregiving

Did the last word in that phrase from Genesis surprise you? Israel had just heard that a beloved child he thought dead was alive, but he doesn’t go straight to Egypt. After getting over the shock, he began to feel afraid. Perhaps he remembered a foretold four hundred years of affliction (Genesis 15:3). This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, moving out of the promised land so near the end of his life. 

And so he stops along the way at Beersheba. This was the same place his grandfather Abraham swore an oath and planted a tree and called on God (Gen 21:33), the same place his father Isaac met with God in the night when he was afraid (Gen 26:25). Israel stops, makes sacrifices, and God speaks to him. God calls him by name, and God tells him His names: “I am El, the Elohim of your father” (verse 3). El is a general word for God that literally means “mighty one,” from a root word ayil that means mighty tree. Elohim is the plural version, the word that describes God as creator. I am the God of your father. A God mighty like these trees your grandfather planted that are all around you. Do not be afraid.

Makes me think about sacred spaces, places where we sense God’s presence, stretching generations past, or perhaps times past in our own lives. We are people of place, and in the wanderings and fillings-up of our lives, sometimes it helps to have a space set aside for God. This could be a place we go to for regular retreats, which I am increasingly convinced is a healthy habit of the spiritual life (I highly recommend Highway’s prayer retreats as a place to start). This could be a space in our homes: a closet, a corner of a room where we light a candle, in Susanna Wesley’s case, an apron thrown over her head. It could be a space in our offices, as simple as turning our chairs to face a wall. It could be a space in our minds, when we meditate on the Bible or center our thoughts. It can be writing, which opens up new spaces as we explore what lives inside us. 

A good definition I’ve heard of spiritual disciplines recently is one by Henri Nouwen: “In the spiritual life, the word ‘discipline’ means ‘the effort to create some space in which God can act.’ Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you’re not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn’t planned or counted on.” Israel could have journeyed on in fear. He could have been preoccupied with the needs of the group of seventy traveling with him. But he stops at Beersheba. Perhaps he sees the tree, the well, and remembers. What are your sacred spaces? What markers of them will you leave for yourself, and for those who come after you?

Sexual Sin

“How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” – Genesis 39:9b

It is a common fallacy to think as singles that our struggles with sexual sin—pornography, masturbation, erotic literature, mental fantasies—will evaporate once we get married and actually have sex. For one thing, those inescapably addictive and progressive things train us to desire and expect something completely different from what the realities of sex in marriage is like. Whether we realize it or not, we are internalizing a cultural view of sex that is about self-gratification, performance, objectification, and idealized as being the ultimate source of fulfillment and an end unto itself (Keller uses the term “apocalyptic sex” in his book Counterfeit Gods). Whereas sex as God created it to be in marriage is about giving of yourself, being vulnerable in an unconditional atmosphere of trust, and ultimately points back to God. Sex in our culture is about consumerism; sex in marriage is about relating, and takes work and time to grow in.

For another thing, I am increasingly convinced that our ultimate struggle in this area is a spiritual one. It is not a matter of biology, or willpower, or understanding how much it hurts your spouse, hurts every area of your life—though those things are a part of it, as we see in Joseph’s story. In the “day after day” struggle, Joseph “would not listen to her… He left… and fled” (verses 10, 13): there is an element of willpower, choice and preparation as we safeguard against the ways and times we are prone to listen, as we find others to help, as we flee. 

But if we go back before those verbs and look at what Joseph says during the only time he speaks in this entire episode, we find something unexpected. In verse 8, he responds to an invitation to sexual sin by talking about his master. One would expect him to conclude, “how then can I sin against my master?” That would be logical. Instead, he makes a total pivot. He says, “How then can I… sin against God?”—and this in a place where no one, least of all the person he was addressing, believed in God. It’s almost as if he was speaking to himself, revealing the inner workings of his own heart.

Ultimately, we must look at God, grow in seeing his face, until in the moment of temptation this too rises up in us: how can I do this, this sin against God? Too often, we confess to ourselves rather than God; we don’t see the degree and depth of wickedness as God sees it; we don’t truly repent or plead for the Holy Spirit to help us. We don’t flee but we linger. We listen just a little bit. But when we encounter the holiness of God, and our love for Him, we become truly willing to fight the battles, whatever it takes. 

It is a battle, and there is suffering. Despite it all, Joseph ends up in prison for years. Hebrews 2:18 speaks of Jesus this way: “For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” Have you thought of temptation as suffering? Those who give in the least suffer the most. C.S. Lewis writes: “A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.”

Jesus is able to help. He intercedes for us (Romans 8:34), as does the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:27). God can reveal himself to us in this area. We are not alone. We can identify with and become like Jesus even in the very midst of the struggle. 

Longing For Love

“And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, ‘This time I will praise the Lord.’ Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing.” – Genesis 29:35

Names seem important in Leah’s life. We are introduced to her by name in Genesis 29:16: “The name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.” While “Rachel” is from the Hebrew word for ewe, perhaps anticipating her job as a shepherdess, “Leah” is from the Hebrew la’ah, meaning “weary; to tire, be exhausted.” Doesn’t seem like the most favorable name for a child. The next verse literally says, “Rachel had a good figure, and on top of that was beautiful,” which suggests by contrast that Leah’s eye weakness was a cosmetic one. She grows up in this context, is aware she is not desired at her wedding, sees her husband trying to get another wife for seven years, and thereafter is the less-favored wife.

But God sees Leah, and we see this progression in the names she gives her sons:

Reuben, Hebrew Re’uwben, from ra’ah (see!) and ben (son), “because the Lord has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me”

Simeon, Hebrew Shim-own, from shama (hear), “because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also”

Levi, Hebrew Leviy, from lavah (to twine, attach), “now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons”

Judah, Hebrew Yehuwdah, from yadah (to praise, to confess), “this time I will praise the Lord”

We see here a kind of conversation between Leah and God. God initiates by opening Leah’s womb. Leah realizes God has seen her. She realizes God has heard her. She is able to name her suffering, how she feels afflicted and hated. But she still throughout longs for love from her husband. God does not stop speaking to her—he gives her son, after son, after son, after son, until we hear her response: I will praise the Lord. The word yadah is translated elsewhere both “give thanks” and “confess.” It literally means “to throw, cast,” and can have the connotation of extended hands. I picture Leah here, hands extended as she holds her fourth son, this word of confession and praise rising up in response to God’s fourth answer to her. Somehow, along the way, she changed.

Ruth Haley Barton writes in Sacred Rhythms that our longings are the truest thing about us. I see unmet longings for love all around me: longing for romantic love, for love from a father or mother or friend. Longing for union, longing to be taken care of, longing to not feel lonely. So much of the spiritual journey is in naming our longings and finding them met in God’s presence. Leah’s journey is all of ours. 

God, of course, continues the conversation, for it is through Judah’s line that Jesus comes. As Sally Lloyd-Jones writes in The Jesus Storybook Bible: “This Prince would love God’s people. They wouldn’t need to be beautiful for him to love them. He would love them with all of his heart. And they would be beautiful because he loved them. Like Leah.”

The Servant With Sacred Eyes

“The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether the Lord had prospered his journey or not.” – Genesis 24:21

The oldest servant of Abraham (whom some commentators think is Eliezar from Genesis 15:2, but we don’t know for sure) has been stewarded with a high-stakes task here, so difficult that he asks for a way to make it easier, which Abraham refuses. The servant takes a serious oath. He travels from Beer-lahai-roi to Haran, which had since been named Nahor, a journey of 450-500 miles that would have taken him about a month to complete. He asks God for something specific—not such a departure from daily routine that it would have been unimaginable, but exceeding social standards sufficiently as to call for something remarkable—and “before he had finished speaking, behold, Rebekah” (Genesis 24:15).

Apparently camels drink up to 20 gallons of water or more when thirsty. Considering Rebekah had only the one jar, was letting each camel not just sip but drink until they were “finished,” had to “go down” or perhaps descend in some fashion to access the well, and a gallon of water weighs 8.3 pounds—even with her running as she was, watering ten camels probably took her an hour or more. The entire time, the servant does not speak a word. He doesn't distract himself with small talk or attempt to help. He doesn’t ask her name or marital status. He doesn’t interview her or run down a checklist of ideal attributes for a wife. He doesn’t try to figure out how willing she might be to leave for a strange land. He is intentional: he prepares for the journey, he prays, and he does not travel alone (24:59). But in this moment, the crucial moment, he watches in silence.

Parenting is a bit like this journey: it’s high-stakes, the end is unseen, and we travel it as stewards entrusted with our children, servants representing God as the one in the story represented Abraham. But when we parent, it’s hard to do as the servant does. Instead of being intentional in preparing, we react in stress. Instead of praying, specifically and situationally, we analyze and worry. Instead of finding people to walk with, or ways to support ourselves along the way, we push alone until we are too depleted. And instead of watching in silence, we jump in to act.

Lately I’ve been thinking about this concept of having what Ruth Haley Barton calls “sacred eyes.” She describes it this way in her book Invitation to Solitude and Silence: “I turn inward to that place of quiet where I had grown accustomed to meeting God. I asked God to give me sacred eyes—set-apart eyes to see and feel and know spiritual reality in this moment.” Julian of Norwich writes of being present to God when in the company of others, “I look at God, I look at you, and I keep looking at God.” I think this is the kind of gaze the servant had: he was looking at Rebekah, but for the purpose of learning from God about Rebekah. He was holding both in his mind and view. 

As a parent, I want to see my children this way. I want to see this way before I act. Instead of reacting in frustration or correction to emotional outbursts or quarreling, I want to ask God first for eyes to see the true heart of the issue or need. Instead of experiencing the kids as interruptions, I want to have moments when I pause from tasks to focus on them fully. I want to sense God’s love for them filling my own heart.

I don’t think it’s an accident that the servant who gazes is the one who prays. The best way to practice having sacred eyes is to become accustomed to God’s presence in solitude and silence. Then we can turn inward to that place during times of clamor. We can, like Abraham’s servant, gaze in silence amidst the bustle at the well, discerning God’s answers to the most important questions in our heart. 

Chiasms In The Flood

I remember learning in high school Latin class about chiasms, a literary technique using an A-B-C-…-C’-B’-A’ structural pattern. Typically it serves to emphasize whatever is being framed in the center (which I’m told is particularly important in languages like Hebrew where there is no ability to emphasize with bold or italics). It can be used to clarify meaning, by comparing or contrasting B with its B’ counterpart, or for general emphasis given the repetitive nature of its structure.

Reading through Genesis 6-9, I was struck for the first time by the significance of the detailed accounts of time intervals, and then came across this chiastic structuring of the account (from Joe Carter of the Gospel Coalition):

A Noah (6:10a)

B  Shem, Ham, Japheth (10b)

C   Ark to be built (14-16)

D    Flood announced (17)

E     Covenant with Noah (18-20)

F      Food in ark (21)

G       Command to enter ark (7:1-3)

H        7 days waiting for flood (4-5)

I           7 days waiting for flood (7-10)

J            Entry to ark (11-15)

K            God shuts Noah in (16)

L             40 days flood (17a)

M             Waters increase (17b-18)

N               Mountains covered (18-20)

O                150 days water prevail (21-24)

P                  God remembers Noah (8:1)

O’               150 days water abate (3)

N’              Mountain tops visible (4-5)

M’             Waters abate (6)

L’            40 days waiting (6a)

K’           Noah opens window (6b)

J’           Raven and dove leave (7-9)

I’          7 days waiting (10-11)

H’        7 days waiting (12-13)

G’       Command to leave ark (15-17)

F’       Food outside ark (9:1-4)

E’      Covenant with all flesh (8-10)

D’     No flood in future (4-17)

C’    Ark (18a)

B’   Shem, Ham, Japeth (18b)

A’  Noah (19)

This is one person’s interpretation and some may argue with the partitioning, but the general structure brings out a few things. For one, it highlights as the center of the narrative “But God remembered” (Genesis 8:1). I had never really seen the focus of the story that way—we tend to think of ourselves, or maybe the parade of animals, at the center, but when we consider the ark a small speck on the entire watery planet, before a God with the power to undo creation, we see that the entire narrative turns on this point. God is a God who remembers us, and it is a remembrance that results in reversal.

Another takeaway is that Noah did a lot of waiting! For some reason, we tend to think of the flood as forty days long—while there are different interpretations of the exact number of days (not all agreeing with the above), most agree that Noah was in the ark for over a year, with active rain for only a fraction of that year. Can you imagine being inside a boat with the same few people and all the animals, endlessly caregiving and cleaning and stewarding, while waiting for the everlasting waters outside to recede? Sending out a bird, then waiting another seven days before sending out another? Or before that: loading up the ark, then waiting seven days before the first drop of rain falls?

Noah utters not one word of complaint. Interestingly, he utters not one word at all in this entire passage. He listens and does as God commands, nearly always when it made no sense, and waited, nearly always for something he could not see (be it water or land). So much of the spiritual life is in learning to wait well. “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:25). Nouwen notes that the word “patience” is from the Latin “patior,” meaning “to suffer.” “Waiting patiently,” he writes, “is suffering through the present moment, tasting it to the fullest in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us,” rather than being anxious about the future and wanting to move on from the present. As Simone Weil wrote, “waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” There’s much of that in this journey, isn’t there? So much of the “already, but not yet,” so much of faith that is being fully present in the now while hoping for what we do not yet see. 

Geography and Immigration

Since I can remember, I've always enjoyed looking at maps. Watching my father pore over a AAA map on the kitchen table is a strong memory I still have of him when he was still in his 30s. And I like to think it's a trait he has passed down to me.

I like geography, but I like journeys even more. When Esther and I were still getting to know each other, one way I described myself to her is that when I get started on a path or a road, I want to follow it all the way to end. There's no turning back before the road ends, because then I might miss some remarkable view or nature spotting.

Having accumulated a perpetually long list of to-dos, I am not quite as adamant about finishing everything I start nowadays. But as we start this Bible reading journey, I hope this character trait compels me to finish what I started.

Today, in the reading of scripture, I was struck by all the geographical references. And the amount of movement, sojourning - let's use more germane vocabulary - immigration - that Abraham and Jesus experienced.

Abraham was born in Ur, but then at some point in his life, his father, Terah decided to move the family (Abraham, Lot and Sarah) to Canaan. But somehow along the way, the traveling caravan stopped in Haran and "they settled there."

I was struck how this one verse describes the state of many aspects of my own life and the lives of those around us. We are all from somewhere, on our way somewhere, but some how or at some point "settled" en route. The settling could mean a job, a level of marriage flourishing, a certain amount of energy dedicated to the kids' spiritual enrichment, or a certain lukewarm spiritual state.

But interestingly, even though Terah settled there (and died there), God didn't. He spoke into Abraham's life and eventually, Abraham and his family (after a detour to Egypt) did move to Canaan. But they ended up living out the rest of their lives as immigrants in Canaan.

I see some parallels in Jesus's life. Born in Bethlehem, Jesus's family moved when he was still an infant to Egypt where he lived for probably a decade or more. For some reason, this struck me as really interesting. In his formative years of childhood, Jesus lived in Egypt. He likely was exposed to many aspects of Egyptian culture. So much of who I am now was a result of culture seeping into me during the first 10-12 years of life.

How was Jesus affected by being raised in Egypt? Did it affect the ways he viewed culture, about being an outsider or an immigrant? Is the US sort of the modern-day equivalent of Egypt? A place of prosperity, safe harbor, and cultural influence that people come to - both the wealthy and ambitious, as well as those fleeing persecution?

But then Jesus' family settles in Nazareth, Galilee after being away from the region for essentially his whole life, where he lives for presumably the duration of his teens and twenties. And then his ministry starts with a mention of him moving to and living in Capernaum.

Jesus was an immigrant many times over. First, to the world. And then everywhere else he moved during his ministry. Jesus seemed to be willing to move when God spoke and live his whole life as an immigrant - both respecting the culture he was in, but not succumbing to it.

One loose definition of culture is the unconscious (and conscious) norms, attitudes, and values we have. How does Jesus's willingness to live as an immigrant his whole life affect how we live as Jesus followers here? It does make me wonder if I get too acclimated and even loyal to, or trained to think like, the culture around me.

That's one of the values of the immigrant! Immigrants can see the culture for what it is - a set of norms established by a group of people - and compare it to other cultures they have experienced. Hopefully, as believers, we can view this world and compare it to the heavenly culture. One that has not yet been fully experienced, but can be learned, in part, through reading of scripture.

Nakedness And Clothing

“Something strange was happening. They had always been naked—but now they felt naked, and wrong, and didn’t want anyone to see them. So they hid.” – Jesus Storybook Bible

“And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin and clothed them.” – Genesis 3:21

I brought Eric’s soccer clothes for him to change into after school yesterday, and as I was wondering where I could find him a place to change, I actually thought for a second, maybe I’ll just change him outside under a tree; I saw some other mom doing that before realizing he would never be okay with that—and it hit me, wow, I’m at that stage now where all of the kids would want privacy while changing. Oddly, it seemed like a kind of milestone.

A consciousness of nakedness isn’t something we’re born with, but it’s something we all acquire, which is interesting if you think about it. I wonder if infants wonder why big people go around with pieces of fabric hanging off their bodies all the time. Reading Genesis this time, it struck me that the very last thing written before Satan appears is “and the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed” (Gen 2:25), and the very first thing that happens after they ate the fruit was “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths” (Gen 3:7). Quite a pointed contrast framing the fall.

What does this awareness of nakedness mean? We know from Genesis 2:25 that it had to be the opposite of “not ashamed”—shame. A feeling not only that we did something wrong, but that something is wrong with us. Perhaps there was a sense in which Adam and Eve felt ashamed not only of themselves, but unsafe before the other who had not protected them but contributed to their sin. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that being aware of nakedness by definition means needing to cover it? 

Thus the fig leaves—and most of us around here have seen fig trees enough to know that while it wasn’t a bad first attempt, those leaves weren’t going to last very long. But the first thing God does after the curse is to clothe them with skins, presumably through the first animal sacrifice. Can you imagine that? Adam and Eve, perhaps watching blood shed for the first time, seeing the death God had warned would happen the very day they ate the fruit, but seeing God do it so that he could then take the skin from the death to cover their nakedness. Banned from the garden, but walking out smelling and seeing and feeling God’s provision, and a promise, whether they knew it then or not: one day another will die to cover your shame, because your own efforts are never enough.

I happened to be memorizing verse 35 yesterday in my way through Romans 8: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” Nothing, not even our nakedness, can separate us from the love of God.

Spiritual Seasons

"He is like a tree

planted by streams of water

that yields its fruit in its season."

- Psalm 1:3

"And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed." - Genesis 1:8

When I first moved here from the East Coast, I was amazed at all the fruit trees. I'm certain people here take them for granted-- where I used to live, you don't see fruit grow on trees. Now we walk around our neighborhood and see pomegranates, pears, apricots, lemons, apples, guava, oranges, just hanging off tree branches. I think to myself, this is God everywhere, God the gardener revealing something of Himself to me through his creation. After all, the first thing he did after creating man was plant him a garden. Is it an accident that the first person who saw Jesus in his resurrected body mistook him for a gardener? What secrets of the spiritual life are here? Why does the Psalmist compare a blessed man to a tree bearing its fruit in season?

One thing I've been mulling over is how seasons speak to our conception of the spiritual journey over time. Most of us would probably like to think of spiritual growth as relatively linear, an outcome that functions in terms of input and output, controllable variables, measurable slopes. But seasons exist in a whole other language of time: certain, but not necessarily controllable, and much slower than we are comfortable with. There is input and output-- a plant cannot flourish in the dark, nor a tree start without a seed-- but ultimately, the nature of the outcome is not precisely in our control. Seasons operate in kairos-time, not chronos-time. Chronos-time is "clock time": minutes and hours, discrete units. Kairos-time is "God's time," what Nouwen describes as "moments ripe for intended purpose," time as part of the "shaping hands of God," time as not something to get through or manage, but "the arena of God's good work in us." It is how Jesus often spoke of time.

So, looking for the seasons in our lives does not mean so much glancing at our watches, as discerning God's movement and timing in our lives. It's an entirely different kind of skill, this kind of looking. It requires a certain kind of attention. Nouwen defines discernment as "a spiritual understanding and an experiential knowledge of how God is active in daily life that is acquired through disciplined spiritual practice."

This makes me think too how the spiritual journey is rhythmic, repetitive. Seasons recur. I tell myself, Esther, there is no shame in periods of darkness, difficulty, or doubt, in the winter-times of the spiritual life-- just as there is no end to the moments bursting with joy, periods of new life and victory. At the last prayer retreat, we were given a table describing the four seasons of the spiritual life: for each one, we asked, what is God's work in this season? What is the beauty to look for in this season? (in the spring, faithfulness and expansiveness; in the summer, dynamism of abundant life; in the fall, beauty of change and being present; in the winter, things laid bare, quiet and rest) How can I respond to God's work in this season?

There is a tendency in our modern life to berate ourselves for needing to relearn truths. To lapse into anxiety if we don't see immediate or outward results. To fall back into our own subconscious expectations for timing and control in our lives. But the answer is in the trees budding into fruit all around us. The trees roots go deep, invisibly drawing from the endless stream of water, producing growth that happens all year round. But the fruit is seasonal. It's a promise, but it arrives in its own time.