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!

The Sleeping Tiger

“Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder—no end to the prey!” – Nahum 3:1

“If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps.” – Tommy Orange, There There

The prophets were people who woke the sleeping tiger. If you want the white-hot truth, look no further. Nahum was someone who looked at Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, with its resplendent palace and impressive city walls, and saw blood. Heaps of corpses, dead bodies of the innocent. What he saw was shame and filth (3:3-5). 

It is not always easy to see. In some sense, if we have the option to see or not, then we by definition are those who need to see the most. Nahum sees the truth behind Nineveh’s gleaming corridors, and the result is a book that is a startling sequel to, and contrast with, the book of Jonah. The repentance of the Ninevites did not last. Half a century after Jonah, the new king of Assyria led a military campaign of bloodshed and cruelty on a scale the world had never seen before. This time, the message of the prophet is not one of repentance, but destruction. And indeed, Nineveh is destroyed in 612 B.C., leading to the end of the Assyrian empire.

But part of what we must see is that Nahum’s vision is God’s vision. Nahum sees as he does because God sees as He does. The first chapter of the book doesn’t even mention Nineveh: he speaks only of God, the God who avenges, who keeps his wrath, who commands the world. “Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire” (1:6). This is a God who “will by no means clear the guilty” (1:3). 

We see not from a guilty conscience, not from obligation, not even from well-intentioned peer pressure. We see because we cannot read Jonah without reading Nahum. We see because we love, and are drawn to, and want to become like a God who sees. We grieve because He does. We hold mercy together with justice because Jesus did. He came not only in grace, but in truth. His coming was an act of judgment. “And this is the judgment,” John writes. “The light has come into the world.” To be in Christ is to see as he does, with eyes of flame (Revelation 1:14), through the light that exposes what might be easier left in darkness.

Trees

“The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green.” – Psalm 92:12-13

Psalm 92 is titled, “A Song for the Sabbath,” and I can think of nothing better to reflect on during a sabbath than trees. Annie Dillard wrote this:

“Concerning trees and leaves… there's a real power here. It is amazing that trees can turn gravel and bitter salts into these soft-lipped lobes, as if I were to bite down on a granite slab and start to swell, bud and flower. Every year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch ninety-nine percent of its living parts. Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does, heave a ton of water every day. A big elm in a single season might make as many as six million leaves, wholly intricate, without budging an inch; I couldn't make one. A tree stands there, accumulating deadwood, mute and rigid as an obelisk, but secretly it seethes, it splits, sucks and stretches; it heaves up tons and hurls them out in a green, fringed fling. No person taps this free power; the dynamo in the tulip tree pumps out even more tulip tree, and it runs on rain and air.”

Amazing. And we walk by these things all the time. In the ancient near east, palms and cedars meant something special: in a dry and arid climate, they were images of strength, longevity, and beauty. Their leaves were green all year round. The palm here is likely the date palm, which bore fruit that was a dietary staple, and represented the presence of life-giving oases of water (Exodus 15:27, Numbers 33:9). The cedars of Lebanon grew to be immensely large and lived for thousands of years, symbolizing royal power and wealth. They were both literally in the house of the Lord: wood from the cedars of Lebanon were imported by Solomon to build the temple (1 Kings 5). Palms were used in the décor of the temple (1 Kings 6:29), were in Ezekiel’s vision of the new temple (Ezekiel 40:16), and were used to welcome Jesus, God tabernacled on earth, to Jerusalem (John 12:13).

We have four giant redwood trees in our back yard. When I get too caught up in the dramas of daily life, I go outside and look at them. I think, these trees will be here long after we and this house are gone. Here they are, quietly but constantly flourishing, spitting out bud and pine, heaving up tons of water. The wicked are like the grass, here today and gone tomorrow, but the righteous are like a tree in God’s presence. We will last past these times and ever bear fruit. These trees live in an entirely different scale of time and matter, and in our sabbath-rest pauses, it’s good to remember that.

The Belt of Truth

“Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth…” – Ephesians 6:14

In Greek, “having fastened on the belt of truth” is only two words, perizonnymi alethia, which means “girded with truth.” The word “belt” actually isn’t there, but it’s the closest modern corollary. In those times, the girdle on a Roman soldier was a “breech-like apron which hung under the armor, which was made of sewn leather for protecting the thighs, fastening articles of clothing, tucking in long skirts of a robe for greater freedom of movement.” It was fastened around the waist with a belt which held the sword; sometimes two belts were worn crossed, one for a sword and one for a dagger.

The belt and apron were the most intimate articles of armor: closest to the body, largely unseen. they had to be put on first. They functioned less for their own sake than to help provide scaffolding for the other parts of the armor: a place to store weapons, to fasten or tuck in clothing.

Isaiah 11 says in reference to Jesus: “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor… Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.” Here, the belt indicates qualities that are most inherent to, most centered in, the character of Jesus; the qualities by which he sees and judges the world around him.

Truth is like that for us. We fight against the schemes of the devil, the father of lies; the first thing we must do is be centered in the truth. We must see and judge the world by that truth, not by what our eyes necessarily see, or our ears necessarily hear. Truth is the place from whence we can draw our offensive weapons. Truth is what gives us freedom of movement; “the truth will set you free” (John 8). You probably couldn’t tell by outward glance whether a soldier had on his girdle and belt: but as soon as the fighting started, you could tell by the weapons he drew, by his nimbleness of movement, whether he had remembered to fasten those inner layers. So it is with us: we must begin by fastening on the belt of truth.

Broken Cisterns

“… for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” – Jeremiah 2:13

Water management and distribution was a big deal in the arid ancient near east, and so wells and cisterns were commonplace. Wells were long tunnels dug down to reach groundwater. Cisterns, on the other hand, were shallower pits dug into the ground to catch and store rainwater. They had to be waterproof: otherwise, of course, the rainwater would simply seep out into the ground.

Cisterns were hewn out of rock. Why would anyone do that kind of backbreaking work when there is a fountain of water available? Why would anyone actually leave a fresh source of water for a stagnant one? Yet that is what we do. There is something in us that wants to have it our way, on our own terms, through our own doing. Soren Kierkegaard once said, “If I had in my service a submissive Jinni who, when I asked for a glass of water, would bring me the world’s most expensive wines, deliciously blended in a goblet, I would dismiss him until he learned that the enjoyment consists not in what I enjoy but in getting my own way.”

But the cruel truth is that our cisterns are not waterproof. Our work is in vain; the water ever eludes us. None of our toiling and achieving can ultimately or permanently attain for us that for which we thirst. Jesus, sitting at a well, said in John 4, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The first step is to see that our cisterns are broken; they are beyond repair. The second is to return to the fountain of living water. If you know this gift of God, Jesus says in John 4, you would ask, and he would indeed give you living water.

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.” 

The Small and Hidden Life

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

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

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

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

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

The Way of the Wind

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

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

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

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

Perennial Streams

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

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

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

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

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

Psalms Through The Testaments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Giving and Taking Away

“Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’” – Job 1:20-21

Material things are harder to come by these days. When I can’t just drive ten minutes to a store to buy something, I have to ask myself whether it’s essential (well, not truly), whether I still want it (yes), and then whether I’m willing to wait a month to get it after ordering online (okay, fine). During the wait, I find myself pondering the nature of my attachment to my things. How do I react or feel when I can’t have them right away? What or who do I truly value and think upon?

Perhaps a greater question is, how do I feel when things have been taken away from me? Not only access to material goods, but experiences and routines and plans? Job here has just lost an incomprehensible number of things: all of his livestock, children, servants. He has lost his wealth, his standing and identity in the community, his family, all at once. And yet without suppressing his pain, in the very place of his sorrow, he worships. How can this be?

Job makes a simple statement: his life is entirely founded on grace, not on meritocracy or entitlement. Just as he did not receive things because he deserved them, he cannot fault God for taking them away. As John the Baptist said, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven” (John 3:27). Not even one. Job believes this. He believes it so thoroughly that in the absence of all things he can bless God.

Thomas Merton writes, “if we love God for something less than himself, we cherish a desire that can fail us. We run the risk of hating Him if we do not get what we hope for.” Do I love God for himself, or for what He gives me? Do I grasp how deeply his grace runs in my life? Is the reality of who God is greater than the material things surrounding me? May we be people who can bless God in abundance and in loss.

The Shadow Of Death

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” – Psalm 23:4

I am struck today by the phrase “the shadow of death,” which in Hebrew is one word, tsalmaveth, a compound word created from tacking together tsel (shadow) and maveth (death). Death-shadow. Not death itself, but the threat of death, the certainty of death, the darkness and grip of death. In reality we all live with the certainty of physical death, though the vast majority of us don’t think much about it at all, at least until we were forced to by this pandemic. It would be funny if it weren’t so morbid, the way death can be seen looming these days in every cough and on every doorknob. 

But there are all kinds of other deaths too, from sin and its addictions, from spiritual attack or situational threats, and the pandemic, like any trial, exposes these too. David says living in the shadow is like a journey through a valley, a narrow gorge with walls looming high. Not much light gets in those kinds of places. If there’s a bend in the path, you can’t see far ahead. If you’re in a battle, you’re exposed and vulnerable. The horizon is lost.

The natural response is fear. But David says, I won’t be afraid. Not, I am not afraid. It’s as if he’s willing himself into the truth, speaking it over himself: not that the valley will end. But that God is with him in it. A shepherd’s rod and staff were used to defend and protect, to retrieve, to manage and direct. They carried personal authority and significance. The comfort David has is not paltry; it is as real and reliable as the rod and staff he held in his own hands all those days in his youth.

And we have an even greater comfort. Isaiah 9 says, “The people who have walked in darkness (chosek) have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness (tsalmaveth), on them has light shone.” A light shines in the death-shadow! This light is Jesus, of whom John writes, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” This God-with-us Jesus came to resurrect us to new life and free us forever from death.

If Psalm 22 is a song of affliction, and Psalm 24 the tale of a victorious monarch, then Psalm 23 is the bridge between them, the path we walk between suffering and triumph. Much of it may be unclear. But the sovereign God, who taught a young shepherd boy lessons he would later carry into the dark valleys of his life, is as actively present with us here as he ever was before. 

Time Traveling

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – Psalm 22:1

I’m a bit of a sucker for a good time-traveling novel. Sometimes, during a walk around the neighborhood, I imagine that I’ve stepped into another time, into some dystopian world where everything is the same and yet strikingly different. Those are the same neighbors, but now we cross into the road to avoid each other; those are the same roads, but now they are bare of cars. There is a blanket of post-apocalyptic stillness upon the world, the silencing of all regular markers of life, and in some ways time has lost its meaning.

Psalm 22 is a time-traveling psalm. Within the text itself, David takes himself from present (verses 1-2), to past (verses 3-5), to present (verses 6-8), back to past (verses 9-10), to present (verses 11-21), then to the future (verses 22-31)—as if it is only be revisiting the past in the context of his present affliction that he can be driven to a glimmer of future hope. It is only by stepping outside of his present moment that he can reconcile himself to it.

But the psalm also reappears hundreds of years later when Jesus speaks its first line on the cross. There is no way David could have known how closely he was describing the passion of Jesus as he wrote these words, and yet they could not have been more eerily accurate if Jesus himself had traveled back in time to write them. Matthew goes to particular trouble to show this in chapter 27 of his gospel: “All those who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads” (Psalm 22:7) parallels “And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads” (Matthew 27:39); “ ‘He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him’” (Psalm 22:8) parallels “ ‘He trusts in God; let God deliver him now’” (Matthew 27:43); “they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots” (Psalm 22:18) parallels “they divided his garments among them by casting lots” (Matthew 27:35). Jesus’ hands and feet were pierced (Psalm 22:16) and he thirsted (Psalm 22:15, John 19:28). It is not difficult to imagine that Jesus had this entire psalm in mind when he spoke on the cross. 

Spurgeon wrote: “For plaintive expressions uprising from unutterable depths of woe we may say of this Psalm, there is none like it. It is the photograph of our Lord's saddest hours, the record of his dying words, the lachrymatory of his last tears, the memorial of his expiring joys… We should read reverently, putting off our shoes from off our feet, as Moses did at the burning bush, for if there be holy ground anywhere in Scripture, it is in this Psalm.” That is how I find myself wanting to read it, this Good Friday season. Sometimes dystopian experiences provide valuable perspective; new times lend fresh meaning to old words. I have here a picture of the heart of my beloved Jesus as he hung on the cross for me, and it is as real for me now, in my time, as it ever was before.

Leisure

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” – Romans 1:20

I’m finding that this new world has changed my relationship with entertainment and leisure. Perhaps because my days are more intense and non-stop, because there is a greater sense of restlessness with being cut off from outside activities, or simply because I’m generally online more following news and connecting virtually with others, the lure towards media-oriented, escapist entertainment is greater. It’s tempting to be lazy about what I read or watch, but part of navigating the new rhythms of this life is recognizing that I must also navigate what I do with my spare time. Are there inner emotions, stresses or struggles underlying the impulse for escapism? How does what I read or watch affect me? How does it reveal what I crave or long for, or what I believe will save me? How can I readjust my leisure life in a healthy way?

The question I’ve typically used to help me sort through whether something is a healthy form of leisure is: how life-giving is this activity for me? After I do it, do I feel more refreshed, energized, or renewed, or do I feel more deadened or tired? But as I was reading our passage in Romans, it occurred to me that there could be a deeper question to ask. Paul says that when we look at things in our world, one of two things can happen: we can perceive the nature of God, or we can perceive idols that replace God. All of God is writ in his creation, but how we perceive it can be vastly different. 

The truth is, I come to my leisure time with a need. How can I use the free time I have to perceive God in the way I need to receive Him, to receive life in Him? Sometimes I need to perceive God’s vastness after a cloistered day at home: that may mean going outside, or reading something that expands my awareness of the world. Sometimes I need to perceive God’s presence in suffering or emotion: that may mean reading a book or watching a movie that gives me an excuse to cry. Sometimes I need to perceive God’s image reflected in the parts of me that aren’t related to being a mom: that may mean exercising an old hobby. Sometimes I need to remind myself of aspects of God I can’t see myself: that may mean connecting with some friends. 

Conversely, does my leisure sink me more deeply into idolatry in any way, or to an unhealthy degree? Is it leading me, however insidiously, to exchange some truth about God for a lie, to serve some aspect of creation rather than the Creator (verse 25)? The line between something showing me an image of God, and becoming an idol unto itself, is a tricky one, and I generally have to be both brutally honest and uncomfortably vigilant with myself. Sometimes these are the hardest, unseen battles that I fight. But I don’t do it to be legalistic. I do it because I know that how I spend my leisure time is one of the most important things I do. I do it because I love Jesus, and I know that ultimately in Him is life (John 1:4). May God reveal Himself to us in the ways we need life and rest as we walk into each day. 

Hands

“You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” – Acts 20:34-35

I have always been struck by the poignance of Paul’s farewell to the Ephesian elders. It’s not hard to imagine him with extended hands here, a laborer’s hands. It’s likely he continued tent-making in Ephesus as he had in Corinth (Acts 18:2), working with leather or cloth made of goat’s hair, using ropes and loops to fashion them into a product that could be sold. His were hands that bore the marks of his profession, work he did not for personal profit, (“I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel”) but to serve. One can’t help hearing the words he later penned in a letter to these same people: “…let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28).

There is something about this I appreciate as a mostly-stay-at-home mom. This is what we do, isn’t it? We use our hands to take care of necessities and minister to the weak: we wash dishes, load and fold the laundry, wipe butts and noses, dress and feed and tidy. It is an unending stream of manual labor, but it is inseparable from our ministry. The labor is our ministry. The word for “ministry” is Greek hypereteo, from huperetes, which means “rower”: the people hidden unseen in the bottom of the ship, endlessly moving the oars to power the ship forward. It was a job no one wanted, that condemned slaves were consigned to, but Paul says that is the way he has willingly loved and served others.

Not that long before this, another man appeared to friends he would leave soon, and said, “see my hands” (John 20:27). Jesus’ hands too bore the scars of his labors, first as a carpenter who came laboring into this earth in human form, then as one crucified. His hands said it all, bearing the mortal marks of the nails, yet come back to life, able to touch Thomas and the others. Able to stoke a charcoal fire and clean out fish as he continued his labors (John 21:9). He himself lived out the words he spoke, that it is a blessing to be able to labor in our giving, however unseen, whatever the marks they leave on our hands.

Jesus The Gardener

“Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, who are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’” – John 20:15

The first person who sees Jesus in his resurrected body supposes him to be the gardener. I have always loved the flavor of ordinariness this brings: Mary was in a garden. It was early. She wasn’t expecting anything. Who else would it be that time of morning? There was nothing particularly glamorous about how Jesus looked, perhaps, either then or ever before. And I find myself loving him for all that: that he is the kind of person one would assume gets his fingers into the dirt. That he looks like someone who labors, who would be up when most people aren’t. That he meets us in the most ordinary ways in our day and even in our suffering.

And, of course, what Mary assumes is profound. A few days before his crucifixion, Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). He went on to die, and “in the place where he was crucified there was a garden… and they laid Jesus there” (John 20:41-42). He then came alive as the firstfruits of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15) to become the gardener, cultivating and making the way for new life.

In a way, the whole Bible is an epic garden story. As Sinclair Ferguson puts it, “Adam was to ‘garden’ the whole earth for the glory of His Father. But he failed. Created to make the dust fruitful, he himself became part of the dust. The Garden of Eden became the wilderness of this world.” The one who was called to keep the garden instead brought the curse of thorns. But as the second Adam, the second gardener, Jesus restores us to life both now and ultimately in the new creation: for when John sees the new earth coming down from heaven, it looks like a garden, with the tree of life in its center (Revelation 22).

And so, it turns out, Mary was not that far off. In the throes of her grief, reaching out through her tears, she uttered words that were truer than she realized. There, alive, walking through the garden that early morning, was the true Gardener, the fulfiller of every hoped-in promise, every longing for life. “Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle” (Isaiah 55). He is the tender to whom we turn, and then the one who sends us out in turn to garden the world.

Let It Be

“Leave him alone, and let him curse.” – 2 Samuel 16:11

There are profound parallels between our Old and New Testament texts today. David does not fight Absalom, but leaves, weeping as he ascends the Mount of Olives, allowing Shimei to curse him (in a passage we’ve discussed before). Jesus also goes to the Mount of Olives in great distress, refuses to fight, and gives himself up to derision. In his book The Stature of Waiting, W. H. Vanstone notes how Jesus goes from “action,” a time marked by initiation and activity, to “passion,” a time marked by things being done to him and having no control. The turning point is when he allows himself to be handed over. “Jesus fulfills his vocation not in action only, but also in passion,” he writes. When he says “it is accomplished” (John 19:30), he is saying not only “I’ve done all I wanted to,” but also, “I have allowed to be done to me what needed to be done to me to fulfill my vocation.”

Our culture is preoccupied with staying in control. As people age, we talk about them “still being active,” as if that is the primary marker of worth or meaning. We assume that power is active, but we see that David and Jesus chose to not act, to instead be the recipient of others’ actions. They were not passive because they were lazy, or unaware of the situation, or even without power to retaliate. They were passive in the sense of intentionally yielding control, because they were actually more aware of the situation than usual: they saw more of its spiritual reality, and more of their own calling, than was apparent to others.

Sometimes we fulfill our vocation by allowing things to be done to us. We receive the erosion or limitations of our physical bodies. We receive the attitudes of our teenagers as they are separating from childhood. We receive the grief of seeing people leave a church or community when we have been called to stay. We may receive all manner of things during seasons of waiting or suffering. “The truth,” writes Nouwen, “is that my suffering for love is a much greater part of my life than my action.” The world says to be older is to gain more control, “but Jesus has a different version of maturity: it is the ability and willingness to be led where you would rather not go” (John 21:18). These experiences are not only a normative part of the Christian life, but they can be the very living out of our vocation, the very following in the path of Jesus.

The Holy Spirit

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever … it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” – John 14:16-17; 16:7

“From my perspective, the Holy Spirit is tragically neglected and, for all practical purposes, forgotten. While no evangelical would deny His existence, I’m willing to bet there are millions of churchgoers across America who cannot confidently say they have experienced His presence or action in their lives over the past year… The benchmark of success in church services has become more about attendance than the movement of the Holy Spirit.” – Francis Chan

For some reason, it’s easy to subconsciously think of the Holy Spirit as an “it”: some kind of electrical energy we charge up on or impersonal force we wield. But the most basic thing Jesus tells us here is that the Holy Spirit is a “him.” He is a person with feelings (Ephesians 4:30), thoughts (Romans 8:27), and a will (Hebrews 2:4). He is someone we have a relationship with. Having him fill us is less like calling down some force from the skies, than like inviting a person into our home, someone for whom we might clean and arrange our space.

He is also God. There are several Greek words for “another,” but the one Jesus uses here means “similar, same”: and indeed, they are spoken of interchangeably (1 John 2:1). The Holy Spirit is not some lesser being, some commodity we use for our own purposes. He is God himself. To fail to submit to and trust in him is to fail to submit to God.

There are many things about the Holy Spirit to think on from these chapters, but one is this interesting word Jesus uses to describe him, translated “Helper” (ESV), “Advocate” (NIV), “Friend” (MSG), “Comforter” (KJV), “Counselor” (MEV). The Greek is parakletos, from para, which means “to stand alongside,” and kletos, which means “to declare or call.” Together, they mean “a legal advocate”: someone who is called to one’s side to plead one’s cause before a judge or counsel for defense. The Holy Spirit defends us against enemies on earth and in our own hearts. He testifies that we are children of God (Romans 8:16), under the new covenant (Hebrews 10:15), saved (Hebrews 2:4) and have eternal life in Jesus (1 John 5:6). He intercedes for us in prayer (Romans 8:26).

Have you had anyone in your life who is truly for you? Who is loyal to you, to the end? It is mind-blowing, life-changing, really, that I have someone like that, with me all the time. Jesus actually says it is better for him to go away so that I can have the Holy Spirit. Do I really believe that? Most of us would probably say we would rather have Jesus in the flesh. When was the last time you undeniably saw the Holy Spirit at work in or around you? What is your relationship with him? Do you live any differently because you have his power and presence within you?

Emptying

“Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” – John 12:3

Every time we see Mary, she’s at the feet of Jesus: learning (Luke 10:39), grieving (John 11:32), and here, worshipping. Mark tells us that the ointment of nard came in an alabaster flask, which Mary broke (Mark 14:3). Nard was exported from the Himalayans, and this amount would have been worth 300 days’ wages; it was likely their financial security. But the nature of the jar was all-or-nothing: she could not have given just part of it, even if she’d wanted to; she had to break it apart and give it all. 

One chapter later, we once again see someone tending to the feet of those gathered for a meal, under the shadow of Judas. This time, it’s Jesus, enacting Philippians 2 by taking off his robe (“did not consider equality with God a thing to be held on to”), tying a towel on (“taking on the form of a servant”), washing feet (“humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death”), putting his robe on and returning to his place (“God has highly exalted him”). This downward-shaped parabolic movement is often called the “kenosis,” from the Greek word for “emptied” found in Philippians 2:7. Emptied. Like the alabaster jar.

I read somewhere, “Judas is following Jesus because of what it gets him. Mary is following Jesus despite what it costs her.” I’ve always been struck by the radical beauty of Mary’s act, but really, it points to the beauty of what Jesus is about to do for her. He emptied himself, at great cost. Sometimes we forget that Jesus existed before he came into our world. While he was fully God on earth, there were things he gave up to take on human form. And every step on earth was a step towards the cross, where he emptied himself of life and poured out his blood for my sake. I think of the smell that must have filled the room when Mary broke open the jar, and I think of how Paul put it: “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). 

Speaking The Glory

“Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.” – John 12:41-43

What is God’s glory? We bandy the phrase about as if it’s common knowledge, yet when you look it up, you get enigmatic phrases like “the infinite excellency of the Divine essence.” Herman Bavinck says: “The ‘glory of the Lord’ is the splendor and brilliance that is inseparably associated with all of God’s attributes and his self-revelation in nature and grace, the glorious form in which he everywhere appears to his creatures.” God’s glory is the infinite, indescribable perfection and glory of all of his attributes. He is not only loving, but glorious in his loving; not only just, but glorious in his justice. 

Just before this passage, John quotes Isaiah chapter 6, in which we read: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his—” holiness, surely? But no—“glory!” God’s glory is his inherently great and beautiful holiness, but it is also the going-public of his holiness, the way he makes it manifest, the way he puts it on display for us to comprehend. There is an interior-exterior dynamic at play, which Bavinck’s definition also gets at. And that interplay exists too in our true response to God’s glory: it is not enough to see it and believe it. We must confess and display it. As Jonathan Edwards wrote, “Sometimes [glory] is used to signify what is internal, inherent, or in the possession of the person: and sometimes for emanation, exhibition, or communication of this internal glory.”

John makes a contrast here. Both Isaiah and “many even of the authorities” saw God’s glory: Isaiah saw God on his throne, the seraphim, the smoke, the shaking (Isaiah 6). The “many” saw Jesus (“we have seen his glory,” John 1:14), who is literally “the glory that comes from God.” Yet while Isaiah “said” and “spoke,” the “many” did not confess. Why? The word for “glory,” doxa, means on the simplest level “opinion, view.” They cared more about the opinion of others than they did about the opinion of God. They cared more about how others viewed them than they did about Jesus himself.

The Pharisees were the largest, most important group of Jews at that time, who controlled the synagogue and the perceived way to God. How often do we silently believe in our hearts, but fail to confess, to live it outwardly in some way, because we don’t want to lose a certain kind of community or credibility? We may hesitate to admit a sin addiction to another person, or let people at work know what we believe, or live counter-culturally if we’re the only ones doing it. Confession, especially around here, can come at a cost. Love for the glory of man runs deep in us. It takes a heart-experience of the glory of God to transform us. It takes being touched with the burning coal, with Jesus who truly takes away our sins. May we be people who not only want to shine out the being of God but experience His delight in us when we do so.