Patience

“Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts.” – James 4:7-8

It is difficult to bear the waiting of this time. There’s so much we don’t know. There’s so much we can’t have. We have to wait longer for smaller things like package deliveries and library books, and bigger things like schooling details and career plans. We are constantly having to defer longings or readjust expectations. And that is hard. The word for “patient” here is literally “to bear suffering long.” Suffering is implied.

French author Simone Weil wrote in her notebooks: “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” James here is talking about the coming of Jesus, but sometimes I think all of life is that waiting. In my waiting for everything else is my waiting for Jesus: for the consummation of the hopes, expectations and desires that I can’t help but have. Learning how to live in the already-but-not-yet.

We’ve passed a lot of farms in our travels lately: unending fields of wheat, onions, potatoes, corn. There is rarely anything happening that we can see. But the promise is there, I suppose. And there are small signs of activity: sprinklers going, tractors driving. Patience is not passive, but active. It means, as Nouwen writes, “to enter actively into the thick of life and to fully bear the suffering within and around us. Patience is the capacity to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell as fully as possible the inner and outer events of our lives.”

This is hard. I mostly want to flee or to fight. To escape the wait by distracting myself from my hopes or abandoning them altogether, or to rail against it and batter out my own way. But that is not Jesus’ way. His life, one long wait for the cross, was full of activity. He entered fully into the suffering around him, in such a way that it all became a part of what he eventually did at the cross and in his resurrection. Our waiting too will one day become part of the joy. But until then, we must be patient.

Fire Danger

“How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life.” – James 3:5-6

Throughout various national parks, we’ve seen signs labeled “TODAY’S FIRE DANGER.” Below that title is a colorful semi-circle with an arrow pointing to one of five levels of danger: low, moderate, high, very-high, and extreme. “Fire danger,” writes the national park service, “is a description of the combination of both constant and variable factors that affect the initiation, spread, and ease of controlling a wildfire on an area.” It is calculated by analyzing fuel, topography, and weather: things like relative humidity, fuel moisture, and lightning activity levels. A moderate rating, for example, means routine caution should be taken; a high rating means that outdoor burning should be restricted to early morning and late evening hours. An extreme rating means no outdoor burning is allowed.

The fact that an entire field of science has been dedicated to studying the risk of fire spread and ease of its containment, and then been translated into rules which must govern everyone’s behavior, points to one truth: it only takes a spark to destroy an entire forest. This, James says, is how our words work. They are never spoken in a vacuum. There are constant and variable factors that affect the reception of our words, the spread of their effects, and the ease of controlling their outcomes. These factors may include the emotional milieu of individuals or the group, state of hunger, level of fatigue, pretexts and contexts, connotations and verbiage, triggers and past patterns, tones of voice, non-verbal cues and postures, and more.

James’ point is simple: we must learn to control our tongues and be aware of the effect of our words. Before you speak, think: what is the fire danger? What are the conditions right now? How is someone likely to respond? How is it likely to affect the group? If something blazes, do I have the ability to devote what it takes to contain it? When in doubt, exercise caution. The tongue can set the whole course of someone’s life ablaze.

Deception and Desire

“Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” – James 1:16-17

For the first time, I noticed this short sentence that could be applied to either of the two well-known verses which sandwich it: do not be deceived, beloved. Don’t think that you can nurture some hidden sinful thought without it getting the better of you eventually. There is an element of deception at work here: by definition you will think you can manage it, you will think it harmless, when all the time it is leading you on a path straight to death. And we know how this works, right? Roots of bitterness that lead to hatred, annoyances that lead to anger or contempt, sexual fantasies which lead to infidelity. Sin is never static. It gestates.

But the deception applies to the following verse as well: the root of the problem is not really believing that we have a Father who gives us every good and perfect gift. There is a tendency for us to feel that God is holding out on us, that he is in some way parsimonious or fickle, but that is a lie. God is completely unchanging in his intent for our good. Rather than allowing our desires to lure us to sin, it is possible to let them lead us to a deeper experience of God. 

How does this happen? Sometimes living with the pain of a desire deferred allows us to more sharply or deeply express and live into faith in God. Sometimes the desire itself is a testimony to a longing which only God can meet, if only we learn how to receive it. We read earlier in Psalm 107, “For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.” Do you believe this? Have you experienced it? C.S. Lewis writes, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Infinite joy is offered us, and it is found, not in an event or circumstance or possession or other person, but in God. Our desires ultimately all point to this, as long as we don’t become deceived otherwise.

Future Ambiguity

“Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.” – Proverbs 27:1

This verse has acquired a whole new meaning these days, as we face navigating nearly every event in our future—schools, career, exercise, trips, ministry—with uncertainty. Will this open? If it does, what will it look like? What are my and others’ level of risk tolerance? Will it all change again in a few weeks? 

In a way, this time has brought into clearer focus the spiritual reality that we always have controlled far less of our future than we perhaps think we do. We tend to function with a degree of self-reliance that manifests as either over-confidence about the future, or anxiety over the future, and the Bible warns against both. James 4 says, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go… and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring… you boast in your arrogance.” Matthew 6 says, “Do not be anxious about your life… Look at the birds… your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Both tendencies stem from the same problem: making more of ourselves than we ought.

Proverbs says, wisdom is to accept a certain degree of ambiguity about your future. It is to realize how much we tend to be a victim of our circumstances, a victim of our perception of our future circumstances. It is to recognize how much the future controls how we feel in the present, and to be able to let go of some of that. Wisdom is to be honest about what our heart trusts and hopes in.

Escalators and Fires

“For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases.” – Proverbs 26:20

Part of the art of fighting well is refraining from escalating arguments. Fighting is part of a healthy relationship and can be helpful in bringing to light issues that need more work or communication. A relationship without any disagreements probably means it hasn’t gone deep enough yet, or, even worse, has gone to the other extreme and both parties have become disengaged. 

But, of course, fighting can become incredibly destructive. The tongue is like a fire, James writes, difficult to control. It takes an incredible amount of intention and practice to learn how to let fights illuminate important issues and spark important conversations, while not allowing them to become hurtful or destructive. Early on in our relationship, Dave and I agreed on a list of rules for fights, which included general things like “never use the word divorce” and “never bring up things about the person that they can’t change,” as well as items specific to our fighting styles, like “it’s okay to leave to cool down, but give a general window of return.”

What we’ve learned over time, though, is that it’s much easier and more strategic to control fights before they escalate to the point where you need lists like those. Fights are like fires: they’re harder to start than to keep going. They’re easier to quench early on. Fights don’t bloom on their own: they require kindling. Whether you are conscious of it or not, you have to feed fights for them to come to life. And it always takes two. Even one of us choosing not to escalate can change the course of the entire argument.

One of the challenges during the first few weeks of sheltering in place were the fights that would pop up between the kids like little fires throughout the day. Some would get worse than others, and one day we sat down and had a talk about it means to escalate and de-escalate fights. Fights, I told them, are like a tall building you walk into. There are different stories in this building. It’s easier to go up a story than to come down a story, and the higher you go up, the harder it becomes to go down. The higher you go up, the more damage you do to the relationship, and some arguments go so high that there’s permanent hurt that takes a lot of work to heal from. You can choose whether or not to take the escalator to the next floor. Escalators are any thoughts or actions that rile you up. We brainstormed what these could be: thinking “he always does this” or “I deserve this.” Physical aggression, rolling of the eyes, using words like “always” or “never.” Raising the volume of our voices. All these things take us up to the next story of the building. There are also escalators going down, like leaving the room to calm down, going to find mommy for help. Using statements that start with “I” instead of “you.” Getting something to eat if hunger is playing a role. Simply not saying anything for the moment. 

What are your escalators and de-escalators? What are the whispers, the small thoughts and actions, that feed the fires of your arguments? There’s probably no better time than now to work on how to fight well.

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.” 

Take Heart

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

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

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

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

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

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

ABC's Of The Word

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

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

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

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

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

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

Complaint Versus Lament

“And the people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes, and when the Lord heard it, his anger was kindled.” – Numbers 11:1

At last—after the tabernacle and law and census and camp arrangements—the Israelites set off from the mountain on their journey. The first recorded incident, only three days in, is this one. The first implied casualty is not to disease or battle, but to God’s anger. Does His reaction seem like (the use a word popular amongst 10 year-old girls these days) overkill?

Perhaps that points to the fact that we don’t take complaining seriously enough. Complaining strikes me as a sly sin. The Hebrew word is anan, literally “murmur,” and that is how it starts, a murmur in our minds. Like a fire, it is kindled, with under-the-breath grumbles, then louder, around others who join in, until it becomes a normative part of our language without us realizing it. What we are ultimately doing is declaring, directly or indirectly, that God is not sufficiently good, competent, loving or faithful. We are accusing him of doing wrong. We are saying that we know better and what we want is better. It is a subtle but unmistakable assertion of pride.

Warnings against complaining or grumbling litter the New Testament: Jesus said, “do not grumble among yourselves” (John 6:43); Paul wrote, “do all things without grumbling” (Philippians 2:14); James exhorts, “do not grumble against one another” (James 5:9). How do we stop complaining? We try to be aware of the consumeristic, comfort-oriented, self-centric tendencies of our culture. We take inventory of our words and thoughts. We may avoid people who tend to complain. We examine ourselves for attitudes of entitlement or ingratitude. 

We also, I think, learn how to lament. There is a kind of honest groaning, an expression of the frustration and sadness we feel living in a broken world, that is okay, that is encouraged and modeled in the Bible. About one-third of the Psalms are songs of lament. Some of Jesus’ last words on the cross were a lament. God wants us to pour out our troubles to him, as we’ve read (Psalm 42:4); to sing them, to pray them, privately and corporately. Complaining is speaking against God; it is a distorted view of reality (“we remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing”). Lament is speaking to God; it is an honest view of reality. Complaining is easy, and all too natural at times. Lament takes insight, courage, vulnerability and faith in a compassionate and listening God.

God Is A Shield

“He is a shield to those who walk in integrity.” – Proverbs 2:7b

Tim Keller writes, “Proverbs is not a set of simple steps to a happy life for quick consumption,” but “a poetic art form that instills wisdom in you as you wrestle with it.” It’s like hard candy: bite down, and you get little out of it and a broken tooth; meditate, and the sweetness of insight comes. The word “proverb” is from the Hebrew masal: a poetic, terse, vivid, thought-provoking saying that conveys a truth in a few words. I like how this reading plan gives us a little bit of Proverbs each day.

The first thing this proverb does is promise me that if I walk in integrity, I will face dangers. One doesn’t need to be shielded otherwise. There are the dangers of spiritual warfare, in which we battle the schemes of the devil. “Put on the whole armor of God,” Paul writes in Ephesians, not “you there in the front lines, put on some armor; the rest of you can chill out.” There are the dangers of trials, which make it easy to grumble, give up or in too early, or lose hope or faith. “Count it joy, my brothers, when you meet trials,” writes James, not “if you meet trials.” 

But here, God is a shield. The Hebrew word is magen, from the root word ganan, which means “to protect.” It is translated in some versions as “buckler,” and refers to a smaller-sized shield, strapped to the left arm to block or parry blows at close range (unlike the Greek thureos Paul uses in Ephesians 6, which refers to a larger shield that covered the whole body). This tells me at least three things about God: first, he has the knowledge and foresight to anticipate the timing and direction of the blows that I face. A shield is only as good as when and where you position it; it needs to be at a certain place by a certain time to be effective. God is omniscient. Second, he has the power to stop the blow on impact; God is omnipotent. Third, God is close to me. He is right there with me during my closest and most intimate struggles. I am never alone; God is omnipresent.

But I have a part here too: I walk. This is something active and purposeful: I am not observing, or sitting, or shuffling around. Nor am I running, or leaping, trying to jump ahead as far as I can: I am moving forward one step at a time.

To what purpose? Moving forward in integrity. The Hebrew word tom here has a sense of wholeness and simplicity, of being undivided. I like how Dave defines this: as when our outward life matches our inward life. Would someone looking at my schedule feel it reflects what I claim to be important? Is what I tell the kids to do consistent with how I act in my own life or think in my own mind? Is there anything I do in the dark that I would not do in the light? Do I desire for outward acts of worship to reflect the true state of my heart and mind? 

We can choose to walk in integrity, even if we walk into battles and trials. But God knows, and sees, and protects with his power. The next part of this proverb says that he guards our paths and watches over our ways. One step at a time.