The Two Sons in Jonah

“And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” – Jonah 4:11

Reading through the prophets, the book of Jonah feels refreshing, perhaps because, despite being considered a prophetic book, it only has one sentence of actual preaching. The rest is narrative. One thing many commentators have noticed about that narrative is how it correlates with the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. In the first half of the book, Jonah plays the younger son. He openly refuses to obey God’s command to go to Nineveh, running away on a ship going 2,500 miles in the opposite direction. Then in the second half of the book, Jonah plays the elder son. He goes obediently to Nineveh and preaches his one sentence, but then when the people of Nineveh repent, he becomes furious, bitterly resenting God’s mercy.

It’s easy to disparage the younger son and approve of the older one, just as it’s easy to think Jonah learns his lesson when he finally makes his way to Nineveh—but in reality, both are wrong. We reject his love when we disobey in open rebellion. But we also reject his love when we obey in self-righteousness. Both fail to understand the meaning of God’s grace.

Grace is God “appointing” a fish to swallow Jonah when he should have perished in the sea (Jonah 1:17). Grace is the father running out to embrace his youngest son. Grace is God entreating the angry Jonah just as the father goes out to entreat his elder son. Grace is God appointing his son Jesus, who called himself the greater Jonah (Matthew 12:40) and like Jonah, would allow himself to be cast to death for the sake of others, only to rise in three days. But unlike Jonah, Jesus would weep for the city. He would go outside the city, not so he could see its condemnation, but so he could die on a cross for its salvation.

Timothy Keller writes, “Salvation belongs to God alone, to no one else. If someone is saved, it is wholly God’s doing. It is not a matter of God saving you partly and you saving yourself partly. No. God saves us. We do not and cannot save ourselves. That’s the gospel.” Our disobedience does not bar us from salvation. Nor can our own righteousness earn it. It is entirely God’s gift to us. 

Both stories end in mid-conversation. At the end of Jonah, God asks, “should I not pity Nineveh?” At the end of the parable, the father tells the elder son, “all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate…” But we don’t hear the response that God or the father receives. The stories stop suddenly, on a cliffhanger—as if the question is coming at us, too. As if God is waiting, too, for our response. Do you understand what grace means? Will you receive it? 

Godly Grief

“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you…” – 2 Corinthians 7:10-11

I never thought deeply about what it means to apologize until I had kids. As every parent knows, it’s only too easy for the words “I’m sorry” to actually mean “I want to get out of a consequence” or “I only regret getting caught” or “fine, whatever.” I remember breaking it down at one point into three parts: I’m sorry for what I did, this is how it hurt you, this is what I will do different (acknowledgement, remorse, restitution). Though it was probably good to talk through, I don’t recall it working very well. 

What do I want from my kids when they apologize? I don’t want them to regret what they did only because it caused them inconvenience or embarrassment. I want them to see their action from the perspective of the person they offended and within the context of their relationship with that person. I want them to care about that other person and their relationship with them so much that they feel saddened by what they did.

I wonder what God thinks of our apologies. I wonder how many of mine revolve around myself: words I say to make myself feel better, to achieve self-liberation from guilt, or simply out of thoughtless habit. I wonder how much of it is primarily motivated by regret over circumstantial consequence or embarrassment to my pride. But true remorse is “godly grief”: sorrow for my sin as it relates to God and in view of my relationship with Him. It is not ultimately about me but about Him, the one I have offended. It produces true repentance, produces earnestness, indignation, fear, longing, zeal, the avenging of wrong. “Repentance,” writes Tim Keller of this passage, “is a deep experience which profoundly affects the mind, will, and emotions.”

And true repentance leads somewhere. Self-centric sorrow traps us in the same place: it causes a kind of self-obsessed regret, a wallowing in our mistakes, a replaying of what might have been or how people think of us, that ultimately paralyzes us. Paul says it produces death. But godly grief is mobilizing. It leads to life and growth because it brings us right to the heart of the gospel. As the old hymn goes, “Could my zeal no respite know / Could my tears for ever flow / All for sin could not atone / Thou must save, and Thou alone.” There is something so sweet, so powerful in the salvation we experience through Jesus that our regret is actually gone. I don’t know about you, but sometimes my regret is so overpowering that it is an act of grace itself to find that I can be freed from it. We find, rather, that we are able to rejoice (6:9) and find comfort (6:13). “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus says, “for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).

Stages Of Life

“The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair.” – Proverbs 20:29

The Bible Study Fellowship I attended in Virginia was composed mostly of women with, well, gray hair. They would look at me, sleep-deprived, nursing, pregnant, hauling toddlers and diaper bags, or all of the above, and say fondly, “the days are long but the years are short.” I’ll never forget how excited the women in my group were for each new baby I had, how special they made me feel. I was able to emerge from my life of surviving from one nap to the next long enough to hear their wisdom: value the stage that you’re in because it won’t last forever and one day you will miss it.

Our society values youth, almost to the point of being pathological about it, but Proverbs recognizes the strengths of every stage of life. The Hebrew words used here for “glory” and “splendor” both essentially mean beauty. If you look them up in a lexicon, they define each other: the word for glory can also mean splendor; the word for splendor can also mean glory. Yet they are different words. There is a unique kind of beauty to be admired and valued in each stage of life. As Tim Keller writes, “The young have a strength and an unwearied ambition that older people cannot muster. The old have a perspective, wisdom and dignity that younger people have yet to acquire. These are all distinct goods that should be enjoyed in their time.”

We should enjoy these goods. We should look for the beauty in our stage of life. Today I hugged Emmy, the only one who still has some baby fat, a little harder. I noticed Ellie’s goofy theatrics, Eric’s irrepressible energy, and Elijah’s quiet curiosity. They will probably not be so open and unfiltered about sharing these things with me forever. And we should spend time with people in other stages of life, for the wisdom, energy and perspective they can offer. 

We do tend, though, to long for the stages of life we’re not in. No stage is perfect, but one day, our bodies will be resurrected and redeemed. There will be revealed a kind of glory, beauty and splendor that leaves no room for longing (Romans 8:18-23). J. R. R. Tolkien captures a bit of this in his description of the death of Aragorn: “Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him with wonder; for they saw the grace of his youth, and the valor of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were all blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendor of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.”

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).”

An Excellent Wife

“An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.” – Proverbs 12:4

Most of us think a good deal about how to excel in parenting, in our careers, in housekeeping, in organizing events, in working out. How often do I think about what it means to be an excellent wife to my husband? My marriage matters the most for anything else I do: as Tim Keller says, “if your marriage is strong, you step out into the world in strength; if your marriage is weak, you step out into the world in weakness.” My parents always say, “the most important give you can give your children is a healthy marriage.” My marriage is also one my greatest callings in life: as Francis Chan writes, “Because I am crazy about Lisa, I want her to have a great life. But more than that, I want her to have a great eternity. I want her to look back at her life without regret. I want her to be confident that the time she spent on earth prepared her for heaven. Most importantly, I want her to hear God say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master’ (Matt. 25:23).”

I know these things, but sometimes the most important things are also the least urgent, the least vocal ones. My work and ministry ask me for things. My kids ask me for things. Dave does not go around asking me, “have you thought about me today? Have you prayed for me today? How are you preparing me for eternity?”

But Proverbs tells me that what I bring to Dave in my marriage will be evident over time. A crown is by nature external and visible. It proclaims and reflects the glory, identity, and worth of the person wearing it. In contrast, osteomyelitis is initially invisible and can take a long time to develop. But bones are meant to support and move the body; they are the very scaffolding of life, and when they become infected, fever, pain, fatigue, immobility and permanent damage results. 

The word “excellent” here is Hebrew chavil, most often translated “army.” It refers to a person of valor and strength, to forces in battle, which lends perhaps a more military connotation than would be apparent in the English reading. Crowns were often given after battle, as we see with David in 2 Samuel 12:30.

I am going to end up being one of two things for Dave: someone who battles with all my strength for his eternal good, who becomes his very crown, his reward and glory—or someone who saps his energy, cripples him for the fight, is a caries in his life. The contrast is drastic, but consider that there is not a middle option described here. I am living towards one or the other of these ends in some way every day in our marriage. I can think of couples who have been together a long time, where the wife has strengthened her husband, proclaimed his worth, and herself become more beautiful by it. I can also think of couples where the wife has immobilized and drained the life from her husband. Where are we on this spectrum? What does it mean for me to be an excellent wife today?

Free To Sabbath

“You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” – Deuteronomy 5:15

“Anyone who cannot obey God’s command to observe the Sabbath is a slave.” – Tim Keller

The institution of Sabbath comes only after liberation from slavery. We tend not to connect the two, but it is the primary reason Moses gives to keep the Sabbath. Quite simply, as slaves, the Israelites could not have kept a Sabbath. The Egyptians made themselves to be gods, and they exerted their dominion over the Israelites through work. And so, the Sabbath was not only the most concrete of all signs that the Israelites were no longer slaves, it was also a reminder that though they would still work, the work was no longer their master.

The Sabbath is a declaration of our freedom. Work is not our master, nor are we masters of our worlds through our work. In one sense, I take this quite literally. I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t beholden to work: as a student, to assignments and deadlines and exams; as a resident, to assigned shifts, clinic and operating room schedules. As moms, our time is not our own, and each stage has its own kind of work. After a week of freedom from routine, I realized coming back how much I really am at the beck and call of school and sports schedules, the emotional and practical needs of the kids. I am a slave to my labors.

Be a slave long enough, though, and it becomes your identity. We don’t know who we are without our work. We begin to believe we are gods through our work. In this deeper sense, I need Sabbath to help recover the me that is not a mom. I need Sabbath to remember that I am not the one who keeps the world running. I need Sabbath to reenter the goodness of a creation that exists outside the tunnel vision my work tends to inhabit.

It is all one journey: leaving Egypt and entering Sabbaths. And Moses emphasizes here that this journey is a story of rescue. It is not something we do on our own, but that God does for us: he brings us out with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. Hands are a universal means of work. Whatever cogitation may be behind it, ultimately it is my hands that operate, that cook and clean, that hug and dress, that type and write. But I can enter the Sabbath because it is God’s hands that have done the work. He has the might and power to release me from bondage. He has reached out to me; Christ has crossed realms to enter my world. To keep the Sabbath is to remember that I am neither slave to my work nor master of my world, but that God has rescued me with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. 

Balaam And His Donkey

“Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, ‘What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times? And Balaam said to the donkey, ‘Because you have made a fool of me. I wish I had a sword in my hand, for then I would kill you.’” – Numbers 22:28-29

Other than the snake in the Garden of Eden, this is the only time in the Bible when an animal speaks in a human language. It seems almost humorously out of place, like something you’d read about in Narnia, not Numbers. Yet, curiously, here it is. There is an almost intentionally comical contrast between this utterly ordinary animal, who nevertheless saw spiritual reality in the situation, and the internationally-renowned and sought-after diviner, who nevertheless was blind to what was going on.

The Hebrew word used here for a domesticated female donkey, aton, literally means “be patient” (apparently they weren’t known for their speed), and ironically, we find that is exactly what Balaam is not doing. He is on the wrong path, but when God blocks his way, he responds with a version of road rage. He is absolutely closed to the idea that God may be in this, and in fact becomes so angry he doesn’t even marvel when his donkey speaks! He responds instead with self-centered rage (I can’t help contrasting Shasta’s reaction to hearing Bree talk in The Horse And His Boy: “Shasta stared into its great eyes and his own grew almost as big, with astonishment. ‘How ever did you learn to talk?’ he asked”).

I actually feel a bit convicted about road rage, reading this. It’s easy to get upset at other drivers because we’re not accountable face-to-face for our actions, just like Balaam thought he was alone with only servants and animals. It’s easy to dehumanize the other driver. For some reason, we tend to become disproportionately rule- and/or goal-oriented when driving, rather than willing to give grace or be open to any part our own fault has played. We can end up acting irrationally and dangerously in our anger.

Whether on the road or in life, when things perturb our plans, when we’re blocked from going where we want to be, as fast as we want to get there, how open are we to what God is trying to show us? Does our impatience or anger prevent us from seeing a lesson to learn, a word to receive, or feedback to consider? Are we not open to spiritual truths because we judge too harshly the messenger? As Keller writes, “Even a laughable messenger might be delivering a true message.” Even an unskilled preacher may speak a life-changing truth, like in Surgeon’s conversion story. Even someone you don’t respect or expect may reveal an aspect of your character or personality worth attending to. If what we care about, what we look for, is God and what He may be saying, we listen with much more openness and humility.

In the end, the biggest difference perhaps between Balaam and his donkey was his pride and her humility. His pride gave rise to violent anger; her humility moved her to mercy. The angel was the one with the sword in his hand after all, not Balaam, and seeing this, the donkey acts to save his life, three times. She is struck, so that he is not. So many years later, Jesus rides into the city on a donkey, to do the same for us, so we too can have the chance to confess and turn back, so that we too can love mercy and walk humbly with our God.

Thinking On Steadfast Love

“We have thought on your steadfast love, O God,

in the midst of your temple.”

- Psalm 48:9

The translational variance for Hebrew chesed—“steadfast love” (ESV, RSV), “unfailing love” (NIV), “lovingkindness” (KJV, NASB), “love-in-action” (MSG)—gives us an idea that it is a word for which no English counterpart really exists. Chesed is used only in cases where there is some recognized tie between the parties concerned; it is not a haphazard love or kindness. N. H. Snaith writes, “the theological importance of the word chesed is that it stands more than any other word for the attitude which both parties to a covenant ought to maintain to each other.” It is thus perhaps thought of as a combination between love and loyalty. But the root of the word means “eager or ardent desire.” This is not a resigned, obligatory or passive kind of loyal-love.

If a word doesn’t exist in a language, does a familiar notion of that word also not exist within the culture that language represents? If the chesed of God was worth the thoughts of the Psalmist, how much more us English-speakers. At the very least, we can think on this in the manner of our post-enlightenmenet, postmodern, Western minds: give it our individual, speculative, narrative mental attention. As the Psalmist does, we step into past evidence.

But we also think in other ways. The Hebrew damah used here for “thought” is translated various ways based on context: it can mean to purpose, meditate; but also to imagine. To be silent. To wait. To compare or be like. God’s chesed is so out of my ordinary experience at times, that I need to give it my silent attention. I need to give it my time. My imagination. Tim Keller said once that he reads The Lord of the Rings once a year to “baptize the imagination” and that phrase has stuck with me. I think about how naturally imagination comes to my children—sometimes more naturally than reality—but I need to be more intentional about feeding and freeing that part of myself.

Thinking on chesed is also not done alone or in a vacuum. The plural “we” is used, and the location is the temple, a congregational place, built by and for all the people of God. We think in the presence of God. We think through history or liturgy. In the consciousness of God’s holiness, as all the objects and materials and colors and smells in the temple pointed to. We think through the person of Jesus, who spoke of himself as a temple.

When was the last time you thought about God’s loyal-ardor, his sustained, covenantal desire and kindness towards you? Towards us, the church, his people? 

The Golden Calf, Part Two: Cultural Idols And Worldviews

“The people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, ‘Up, make us gods who shall go before us.’” – Exodus 32:1

It is interesting that this episode occurs en masse. Aaron acts as leader, but we see that the people were the driving force from beginning to end: the pronouns throughout the story are all plural. The noise is collective. They do it all together. David Brooks says that in our culture of “hyper-individualism,” we have this concept of the “buffered self”; we like to think that we are all making our own choices about how to live. But the reality is, our framework for viewing the world, and the choices we make, are undoubtedly affected by the culture in which we live. The calf wasn’t made in one person’s tent. Similarly, we oughtn’t think about idols as only existing in the personal sphere.

Our community group last spring discussed cultural idols as we read through Tim Keller’s book Every Good Work, summarizing Keller’s points and adding our own. Here is the summary:

Traditional culture: idols are stability, honor, family group, nation tribe, security, tradition, religion. Meaning is derived from being faithful to one’s duty, honoring family, holding status. Pros: loyalty, selflessness, collective well-being, social stability. Cons: racism, marginalization, suppression of liberties, shame

Modern culture: idols are science, knowledge, empiricism, reason, individual freedom, equality, and progress. Meaning is derived from “discovery,” career and personal happiness. Pros: technology, public health (okay, that was from Dave), arts, social mobility. Cons: disenchantment with faith, too much stock in autonomy

Post-modern culture: idols are deconstruction, “mood,” cynicism/suspicion of universal claims, “means without ends,” no moral absolutes, consumerism, capitalism. Meaning is derived from self-actualization, self-expression, and self-determinism. Pros: critical thinking, justice, plurality of voices. Cons: intolerance of absolute truth, over-deconstruction (no meaning in anything), “unconscious conformity,” consumerism

Silicon Valley: idols are ideas, innovation, disruption, optimization, tolerance (“you be you”), inclusion, health/fitness, “changing the world,” social mission, uniqueness, self-care. Meaning is derived from “changing the world,” pursuing your passion, becoming famous, inclusively accepting everyone. Pros: social justice, physical health, environmental awareness, racial diversity, opportunity. Cons: exclusive inclusion, socioeconomic/educational homogeneity, anxiety/stress, lack of contentment, burn-out, gentrification

We then tried to identify the world view, or “master narrative,” of our culture by asking three questions: how are things supposed to be? (purpose) What is the main problem with things as they are? (problem) What is the solution and how can it be realized? (solution) 

For Silicon Valley, the purpose is that we control our own destiny. Human potential should be limitless. We should have informed, rational decision-making; we should be anything we want. The problems are intolerance, lack of connectivity, unequal starting points, and lack of information. The solution is technology, education, and inclusion.

For the gospel, the purpose is to be in relationship with God. The problems are sin, idolatry, fractured relationships, pride. The solution is Jesus, grace, redemption, restoration, repentance, reconciliation, hope.

This was just what our group came up with at that point in time. What would you add or change? Do you see evidence of these cultural idols or worldviews around you? 

The Golden Calf, Part One

“So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf.” – Exodus 32:3-4

The story of the golden calf merits regular reading: it’s one of those events that is completely different to hear about versus actually read about. Each time I read it, I feel a sense of incredulity and horror. Aaron called this calf YHWH? The sound of their feasting and play was such that Joshua’s first thought was that they were at war? Moses made them drink gold dust? All Aaron could say was, “out came this calf”? The Levites killed 3,000 of their own men in cold blood? God sent a plague upon them? So many details that get left out of Sunday school class.

If I think about it, though, it’s not all that unimaginable. They hadn’t heard from Moses for forty days, no texts, no updates: that’s a long time. They had grown up under a Pharaoh-god who surrounded himself with gold and gods with bovine heads. Perhaps it is not such a surprise that this was what their imaginations turned to in their newfound autonomy and wealth; it was something they had been excluded from, and perhaps lusted after, in their past. They wanted something visible and immediate. They wanted worship they could get something out of. And so, this grotesque parody: a self-made, self-serving, culturally-relevant idol that they inserted into their newfound identities and stories—giving it God’s name, crediting unto it the feasts and the exodus. 

Don’t we all do that? Don’t we so easily turn our worship to what is immediate, visible, or culturally advertised, and feed it with our imaginations, energies, or thoughts? Jobs, romantic partners, children, fitness, money—any good thing made the ultimate thing, what Augustine called “disordered loves.” The gold in their ears was meant to be a reminder of God’s unexpected grace (Exodus 12:35), not melted down into idols, and when they left the scene, the Israelites no longer took ornaments with them (Exodus 33:5-6).

All of life is a gradual growth in learning to enthrone God, and dethrone idols, in our lives. Martin Luther wrote, “I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel… that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel willeth me to receive this, and to believe it… Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into our heads continually.” Tim Keller elaborates: “So Luther says that even after you are converted by the gospel your heart will go back to operating on other principles unless you deliberately, repeatedly set it to gospel-mode.” How do you do this in your own life? How do you continually beat the gospel into your head? How do you identify and root out the idols in your life? These are recurring questions for all of us, because it is so easy—like the Israelites, when Moses turns his back, when nothing seems to be happening—to look back to the golden calf. 

Pondering Our Paths

“Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of the evil. Avoid it; do not go on it; turn away from it and pass on.” – Proverbs 4:14-15

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth…

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.”

- Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken’

I like what Keller writes about this verse in Proverbs: “Life is likened to a path because every action takes you somewhere.” We like to think we are completely in charge of every choice we make, but on some level, each action changes us in a way that affects the next action we take, and the one after that, and eventually the direction in which we go. It’s like that saying about how thoughts lead to actions, which lead to habits, which lead to character.

This plays out in lots of ways. Our actions place us in environments where subconscious cues and cultural mores affect how we act and think, what we buy and do, more than we realize. It’s no accident that, after moving to the Bay Area, I’ve started working out, wearing joggers, and buying organic (sometimes, like at Costco, I feel like I don’t have a choice). The culture and value system at our workplaces, sports teams, schools, local neighborhoods all affect us more than we think, not to mention advertisements, phone notifications, and more. 

Our actions inform our feelings. In our Disneyfied, be-true-to-your-heart culture, we like to think that our feelings should drive what we do, but the Bible commands us often to do things, not feel up to them first. I always thought that part of the reason I loved our kids as newborns, even though they basically only cried, pooped, and slept at that stage, was because I sacrificed so profusely to care for them. C.S. Lewis writes, “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.” The same could be said of acting in dislike towards someone.

Our actions inform our thoughts. Romans 8:5 says, “those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” Wouldn’t we tend to write that the other way around? If you set your mind on the flesh, then you live according to the flesh—that seems more logical. But that’s not how the sequence goes here. Our actions determine what we set our minds upon.

The wisdom here is simple. Realize that you tread a path in life. And “knowing how way leads on to way,” be careful with each step. The tone of this section is one of extreme vigilance: keep hold, don’t let go, avoid, turn away, let them not escape, look directly forward, do not swerve. Obviously this does not come effortlessly: it is much easier to discount our actions, to tell ourselves they don’t matter, or that we can always go back. But the truth is, every action takes you one step farther in one direction or another. “Ponder the path of your feet” (Proverbs 4:26).

Lessons In The Dark

“In the night also my heart instructs me.” – Psalm 16:7

“Your religion is what you do with your solitude.” – Archbishop William Temple

David doesn’t actually write “my heart” here. He writes, “my kidneys,” Hebrew kilyah. According to an article in the American Journal of Nephrology, “While the Syrians and the Arabs viewed the liver as the center of life, the kidneys, in contrast, held a primary place of importance in Israel. In Hebrew tradition, they were considered to be the most important internal organs along with the heart. In the Old Testament most frequently the kidneys are associated with the most inner stirrings of emotional life. But they are also viewed as the seat of the secret thoughts of the human... the kidneys thus are primarily used as a metaphor for the core of the person, for the area of greatest vulnerability.”

Sounds a bit strange, but perhaps not unlike the way we use the word “heart”; after all, the translators merely substituted one organ for another. Internal organs that function in involuntary darkness. Have you marveled at the recesses of your body, the things it does where no light ever shines? Your atrial valves opening, the ventricles contracting, millions of nephrons filtering a hundred milliliters a minute? In college, while every else partied on a Friday night, I would slip into a dark lab, anesthetize rats, and filet them open to find their kidneys. I saw my first live human kidney during a laparoscopic case my third year of medical school. I remember the first time I slipped my gloved hand into the recesses of a patient’s open abdomen, slippery organs parting before my fingers. 

Makes me think about mental laparotomies in the dark. In the moments stripped of distractions and prompts, lying there at night, where do our minds wander? What do we habitually think about when we don’t have to think about anything? What do we most like daydreaming about? What fantasies give us most comfort? What unprompted feelings surface in the dark? What involuntary longings rise?

Perhaps we think about a romantic figure or storyline, a dream house, a fantasy vacation, a job promotion, an object to acquire. Perhaps we feel anxiety, anger, boredom, despair, anticipation. These things, David says, teach us something valuable. Those feelings may be our truest ones; those longings a window into the deepest parts of ourselves. The things we think about, as Temple suggests, may be what we truly adore, what we worship. They are our gods. To consume them without regard, Keller suggests, is like popping pieces of candy between meals: these habitual comforts can blunt our hunger for God.

At times my thoughts in the night have illuminated lifelong addictions or idols that I have needed to work through. At times they relate to aspects of myself I have been unable to exercise in this stage of life, and for which I am thankful. At times they are sheer escapism, and I need to face what I fear. What do your thoughts and feelings tend towards in the dark, and what do they teach 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. 

Take My Yoke

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” – Matthew 11:28-30

“Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, 

Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, 

   where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; 

   hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.” 

– Puritan prayer

If you’re tired, most people would say, stop working. Go to Tahoe, or a spa; get some self-care. Not that there’s anything wrong with those things. But no one would say, go get under a yoke and plow a field.

Jesus says the way to find rest is not to stop working, but to take his yoke. What does this mean? It involves recognizing there can be what Keller calls “the work under the work,” the need to prove and save ourselves, to achieve worth and identity, through our work. This kind of striving never ceases, in play or labor. There is a letting go of this that comes when we come to Jesus. To take a yoke, we change our posture: head bent, not looking too high. We become meek and lowly as Jesus is. There is a yielding there that is learned and received, a yielding that is rest. 

There is then a walking in step. Nearly all yokes are made for two animals, typically oxen, for the purpose of alignment, to guide them in the same direction. I wonder if Jesus is the other one bearing the yoke with us, as he refers to it as his yoke? We walk in step with him, there is a rhythm: pause when he does, bear the load forward when he does. He bears the load with us, which makes it easier, easier to know he knows exactly what we feel. He loves us, and we see every day as a chance to live out in our labor, and in our Sabbath rests, our love for him. This is the easy yoke, the light burden, the received rest.

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.

Hunger And Thirst

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” – Matthew 5:6

“To be hungry is not enough; I must be really starving to know what is in His heart towards me. … When the prodigal son was hungry he went to feed upon husks, but when he was starving, he turned to his father.” – J.N. Darby

What is righteousness? Unfortunately, in modern English that word often has the negative connotation of a condescending, rigid morality, a meaning almost synonymous with self-righteousness. But Biblically, the Greek word daikos has a relational side that the English word lacks: it means “to be right with”—as Keller puts it, “to be presentable,” “to pass inspection in the eyes of a significant other,” “to be found pleasing in the eyes of someone I want to please.” Righteousness here means wanting to be right with God: it encompasses both justification and sanctification. We receive righteousness by faith, but I think here too there’s a sense of the desire to be free from sin and its power, a longing to be positively holy.

What does it mean to “hunger and thirst”? Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes: “It means a consciousness of our need; it means a deep consciousness of our great need even to the point of pain. It means something that keeps on until it is satisfied. It does not mean just a passing feeling, a passing desire… Hunger is something deep and profound that goes on until it is satisfied. It hurts, it is painful; it is like actual, physical hunger and thirst. It is something that goes on increasing and makes one feel desperate.”

That’s true, isn’t it? Ellie came back from farm one day when I picked her up from school (yeah, their school has a farm), cheeks red and hair plastered with sweat, and she pretty much couldn’t think or talk about anything except drinking a glass of water, which she did as soon as she got home. When you’re truly hungry or thirsty, it’s the top thing on your mind. It’s something we’re active about. And it doesn’t stop. Isn’t it odd that we are designed such that, no matter how much we eat or drink, we will inevitably become hungry or thirsty again? 

In fact, the more we are filled, the more we hunger and thirst for what filled us. Our appetites are malleable. My friend who weaned herself off sugar, for example, found that after a few weeks, foods she found normal before now seemed distastefully sweet. I think of my appetite as something valuable to me—it is coinage I can spend on some kind of intake; once satiated, the appetite is gone, and what I have chosen to intake has changed me, and changed what I will long for, in some way or other. If I really hunger and thirst for righteousness, I will not only avoid anything patently harmful or sinful, but I will avoid anything that dulls my spiritual appetites. If I knew we were going to an all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ for dinner, would I go eat a bunch of snacks that afternoon? Of course not!

As Lloyd-Jones writes, “There are so many things… that are quite harmless in themselves and which are perfectly legitimate. Yet if you find that you are spending much of your time with them, and that you desire the things of God less, you must avoid them.”

What do my thoughts, feelings and actions say about what I am hungering and thirsting for? Jesus does not say, “hunger for happiness and you will find it,” but “hunger for righteousness and you will be happy.” Not only happy, but “satisfied”—Greek chortazo, which literally means “to gorge.” To feed in abundance, the same word used to describe the feeding of the four thousand, when there were seven full baskets of food left over (Mark 8), and the feeding of the five thousand, when there were twelve baskets left over (Luke 9). So much of what we hunger and thirst for leaves us unsatisfied: but deep longing for holiness, to be right before God, will leave us chortazo—fully satisfied, with more left over.