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? 

Sleep

A Sabbath poem by Wendell Berry:

The body in the invisible

Familiar room accepts the gift

Of sleep, and for a while is still;

Instead of will, it lives by drfit

In the great night that gathers up

The earth and sky. Slackened, unbent,

Unwanting, without fear or hope,

The body rests beyond intent.

Sleep is the prayer the body prays,

Breathing in unthought faith the Breath

That through our worry-wearied days

Preserves our rest, and is our truth.

Life In The Loops

“A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” – Proverbs 10:4

“People underestimate the importance of diligence as a virtue. No doubt this has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is defined as ‘the constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken.’” – Atul Gawande, Better

I have no qualms about staying at home more than being a physician, but it is strange to have trained for over twelve years for an entirely different thing than what I do now most of the time. I found during training that in the world of medicine at least, I am at heart a surgeon: I thrive best employing mind and fingers, knowledge and artistry, to achieve visible results and progress. At home, if there’s action that needs to be taken in a crisis, I’m great: figure out if a cut from a fall needs stitches or just steri-strips; get four kids, four backpacks, one cello loaded into the van in minutes.

But that’s not most of life at home. Most of life is a litany of unremarkable, mindlessly Sisyphean tasks. Packing lunchboxes only to have to clean them out and pack them again. Dropping off kids only to pick them up only to drop them off again. Cleaning things only to have them get dirty again—counters, towels, sheets, dishes, children, clothes, floors. Teeth. I actually had this moment where I realized that having four children meant keeping 128 teeth clean (and straight) over the course of 23 years. 

Medicine does not exactly train you for this. At my previous job in private practice, the mantra was, “physicians should only do what only physicians can do.” I had two scribes with me in clinic, two assistants in the operating room; I didn’t have to touch paperwork, drape the patient, do anything except call out orders or hold out my hand for instruments or lenses. This wasn’t to be nice to us, but to work us harder, through a higher volume of patients and cases, and the pace was anything but mundane.

But at home, mundane is the language of love. Repetition speaks. My vocation is found in doing again what I did before, choosing again what I chose before. A word for this perhaps is diligence. The Hebrew word charuwts has an interesting double-meaning: literally, it means “to dig” (as in a ditch—which makes me think of Brooks’ phrase, “digging the damn ditch”) or “to sharpen” (as in, a threshing-sledge, for agricultural work). Labor-intensive, repetitive, mundane work. But charuwts can also be translated “gold,” as indeed it is in four of the nine times it occurs in the book of Proverbs. No one is sure why—because gold is dug out? Because gold has a sharp or bright color? It certainly adds a bit of poetic redundancy to this verse.

Diligence is not necessarily a vaunted virtue. It is often not seen, or credited. But it is of great value, and it leads to what is valuable. And this proverb praises not “diligence,” but “the hand of the diligent.” Diligence in action is how we live out faithfulness, how we demonstrate love, how we steward well what we’ve been entrusted with. There are days when I feel like all I do is wash dishes: which I mean less as complaint than a statement of fact. Six people eating three meals and, some of them, three snacks a day go through a lot of dishes. But at least right now, this is where I sense God wants me to be: washing the dishes, with the hand of the diligent. Living life in the loops, and believing in the value of it.

Firstfruits

“When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord.” – Leviticus 23:10-11

Have you ever experienced the start of something that filled you with great anticipation and hope for what was to come? I think of the first time I saw Ellie on a sonogram. The opening prelude to an orchestral piece in a concert hall. Appetizers in a multi-course meal at a good restaurant. The first time I held Dave’s hand. I think the moment when the Israelites held a handful of the first of their barley harvest was a moment like that. They were holding the answer to God’s promises: they had arrived in the promised land after years of wandering and battle. They had planted their own crops. But this first of the harvest was also a promise that more was to come. 

We talk about Jesus as the lamb that died on the Passover, or how the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost, but we don’t as often discuss what it means that Jesus rose on the day of Firstfruits. This was the day when they took that first handful of the harvest and gave it to God in an act of thanksgiving and trust. The point of the firstfruits is that there will be many more. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep… For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.” Jesus rose, and because he did, we will too. His resurrection was a firstfruits of what is to come: this is the great hope that we have.

N. T. Wright expounds on this in his book Surprised By Hope. “Many Christians,” he writes, “don’t know what the ultimate Christian hope really is… The classic Christian answer to the question of death and beyond is not so much disbelieved as simply not known.” What are we waiting for? What are we going to do about it in the meantime? The answers to those questions lie in the realization that salvation is not about “going to heaven when we die”; it is not the death of the body and the escape of the soul. Salvation is being raised to life in God’s new heaven and new earth. “Heaven, in the Bible, is not a future destiny but the other, hidden, dimension of our ordinary life—God’s dimension,” Wright explains. “God made heaven and earth; and at the last he will remake both and join them together forever.” 

Jesus’ bodily resurrection is a promise of not only our own resurrection, our own new bodies, but the recreation of the world. The things we do in our life now are not just to make it more bearable until we leave it—they are a part of building for God’s kingdom. They are not valueless because God will raise it to new life. Jesus’ resurrection is my hope for everything: for myself, for my work, for the world I live in. It is the reason I believe that nothing I do is in vain. That day, when the Israelites reaped their first harvest, when they felt hope and anticipation grip their hearts and fill their hands: that was the day Jesus rose.

Feasts Of The Lord: A Primer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Belief And Unbelief

“Immediately the father of the child cried out [with tears] and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’” – Mark 9:24

In a faint echo of Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai, Jesus descends from the mountain here to find confusion and chaos: the scribes arguing, the disciples trying and failing to cast out a spirit due to lack of prayer. It’s difficult to have a child and not feel the pain of the father in this story, and when he first comes to Jesus, you get the sense he sees Jesus as another in a long line of attempts. His speech reminds me of what any patient walking into a clinic room would say. But in verse 24, there’s a shift of tone, focus, manner. He cries out from the heart. He believes. He doesn’t say, “I believe, help my child!” He sees that the issue is not Jesus’ willingness or ability, or even the situation his child is in: the issue is his own unbelief.

Spurgeon said, “Is it not a very singular thing that as soon as ever he had a little faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, he discovers the great abyss of his unbelief? … Until a man gets faith, he may think he has got it; but when he has real faith in Jesus Christ, then he shudders as he thinks how long he has lived in unbelief, and realizes how much of unbelief is still mixed in with his belief.” It’s true: whenever I read this story, I realize how much my struggles stem from a lack of belief in God’s power. My diligence veers into anxiety because I don’t really believe God has the power to control every detail of every situation. I over-process with myself or others because I don’t actually believe that God has the power to hear and respond to every word of prayer. I complain because I don’t actually believe in the power of God’s sovereignty to work every situation for eternal good and Christlikeness. 

But despite the presence of some measure of unbelief, Jesus heals the child. This is a piercing encouragement to me: that Jesus works in my life despite and into my areas of unbelief. Faith is not a state of psychological certainty or complete lack of functional doubts. It is a confession, a decision to believe and obey despite doubts and fears. It is a willingness to bring ourselves and our situations before him. It is being an attentive witness.

In the end, the father’s quest to find healing for his child led to healing for himself. That’s another thing I love about this story. Lately, as I’ve been reciting the verses in Matthew 7 about the speck of dust and the log, I’ve been thinking about parenting. I’ve been asking myself, how do the issues my children struggle with point to similar areas God needs to work in me? How must I come to Jesus to find my own healing before I can see clearly to help my children? The father’s recounting of his child’s issues ultimately led to his own confession. And that led to watching as his child rose up to new life through the power of the word of Christ. That must have been something to see.

Speaking To Our Souls

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” – Psalm 42: 5, 11; 43:5

What things can we tell about the psalmist in Psalms 42-43 (which nearly all commentators believe was originally one psalm)? He is in a state of spiritual dryness: deer drink instinctively and constantly; panting for thirst (verse 1) suggests drought-like conditions. He is or feels lonely, removed from communal worship: he used to sing with a multitude (verse 4), but now lives in remote mountains (verse 5). He lives in a skeptical, spiritually hostile environment: those around him continually say, “Where is your God?” (verses 3, 10). He feels “cast down,” depressed.

What I perversely love about these psalms is that he never ends up feeling better. There’s some progression between the three refrains, but he still ends each time speaking of turmoil in the present tense, praise in the future tense. When I feel bad, I tend to either let my thoughts pull me down more and more, or I tend to repress them and do anything I can to feel better. The psalmist does neither. He doesn’t deny feeling bad: he pours out his soul (verse 4) in prayer and examen before God. He names his feeling to himself: “Why are you cast down…?” He shares how it feels, like “all your breakers and your waves have gone over me” (verse 7).

But he also addresses himself. He doesn’t fall prey to morbid rumination or introspection: he instructs himself. Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes about this in his book Spiritual Depression: “Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.’”

What he says to himself isn’t, stop feeling bad. What he says is, what are your hopes? Hope in God. I don’t think hope is a feeling for him at this point. Hope is a belief. Hope is a series of statements: “my salvation.” “My God.” “Steadfast love.” “God of my life.” Hope is memory: “therefore I remember you.” “These things I remember.” Hope is a melody: “at night his song is with me.” Hope is knowing the ending: “Then will I go.” Over and over again, “I will praise.” “I shall again praise.” 

What do despondent feelings reveal about where your hopes are? How do you instruct your soul? Sometimes I reread old journal entries, listen to good hymns or songs, slowly recite memorized scripture, listen to biographies of people like William Cowper or Charles Spurgeon. How do you hold the truth before yourself when you need to?

A Tale Of Two Goats

“For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the Lord from all your sins.” – Leviticus 16:30

“For the like of the great day of atonement, we look in vain in any other people. If every sacrifice pointed to Christ, this most luminously of all.” – Samuel H. Kellogg

Leviticus describes the rituals, priesthood, and purity laws required for a sinful people to enter God’s holiness in a symmetrical structure: 

            chapters 1-7: Rituals (animal sacrifice)

            chapters 8-10: Priesthood (ordainment)

            chapters 11-15: Purity laws (food, health)

            chapters 16-17

            chapters 18-20: Purity laws (moral behavior)

            chapters 21-22: Priesthood (standards of living)

            chapters 23-28: Rituals (sacred days, festival days)

Highlighted in the middle of the book is what has been called “one of the mountain peaks of the Scriptures” and “the Good Friday of the Old Testament”: the Day of Atonement. It was the one day a year designed to cover all the sins of all the people, including unintentional sins. It was the one day the high priest could enter behind the veil into the Holy Place. It became the most holy day of the Jewish year, celebrated as Yom Kippur or “the day of covering,” so central to Jewish life it was simply called “yoma,” or “the day.”

At the center of this day were two goats, which together constituted the singular sin offering (Leviticus 16:5). One goat was killed and its blood sprinkled on the mercy seat in the Holy Place, literally between the cloud of God’s presence over the seat, and the law in the ark of the covenant under the seat (Exodus 25:21). The second goat bore the sin of all the people and was sent into the wilderness.

Why two goats? There has been much debate about their typology, but I think the simplest answer is that God wants to show us that when atonement is made, he both forgives and forgets our sin. God is not forgetful per se, but he chooses not to recall our sins to memory; they are completely removed from his sight. “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us,” David writes in Psalm 103:12. Micah writes, “you will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). When John the Baptist sees Jesus, he exclaims, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Aaron alone witnessed what happened with the blood of the first goat; the second goat was an object lesson meant to be seen by all.

Lately I’ve been thinking about this idea of forgiving myself. Sometimes a particular sin haunts me, and I struggle with replaying it, or find it hard to let go of lingering feelings of shame or regret. People talk about being able to forgive yourself, which is theologically incorrect: I can’t forgive myself, only God can. What I struggle with is not forgiving myself so much as believing that when God has forgiven me, it also means the sin has been removed. I picture the second goat, wandering into the horizon, so far I can’t see it anymore, never to come back, not having to hold on to the shame or punish myself anymore. The main way the people had to participate in the Day of Atonement was to rest (Leviticus 16:31), to do nothing. All we have to do is receive what God has done for us, and that includes believing that he has sent our sins far away. As the author of Hebrews writes when he recounts the Day of Atonement, “how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14). We are clean, truly clean. 

Up From This Misty Lowland

From A.W. Tozier in The Pursuit Of God:

“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.”

Ego Eimi

“He came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.’ And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded.” – Mark 6:48-51

One of the neat things about reading consecutively through the Old and New Testaments simultaneously is that you can draw interesting parallels. In this passage, the grammar of the Greek emphasizes Jesus’ intent to pass by his disciples. A remarkable idea, surely. Did he think to casually wave hello as he strode by? The word “terrified” here is the same one used to describe Jesus’ agitation in the Garden of Gethsemane—the disciples were deeply troubled and afraid. The words Jesus utters to them, through the dead-of-night dark, through their fear, are amazing: “ego eimi.” I Am.

When Moses asked for God’s name at the burning bush, God replied, “I Am Who I Am,” which was shorted to a verbal noun of four letters, YHWH, probably pronounced Yahweh, and translated in English “Lord.” This became the Jew’s primary term for God, used 6,700 times, compared with the 2,500 times the more generic semitic term for divinity, Elohim (translated “God”), is used. 

Jesus, passing by, utters the Greek translation of YHWH, ego eimi. Where have we seen this before? At the end of Exodus 33: “Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory.’ And he said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.”… and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.”

Moses longed to see God, but could not even glimpse his face. So many years later, God again chooses to reveal himself, in the person of Jesus, the I-Am passing by in glory. I wonder if the disciples recalled Job 9:8, describing God “who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea,” or Psalm 77:19, “your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen.” I wonder if they recalled Moses, the shepherd leading his people through the Red Sea, as they saw Jesus, walking through this one. The same I-Am, creator-God, shepherd-God in Exodus, Job, Psalm, is here, in Mark. No wonder they were afraid and utterly astounded.

Framing the ego eimi are words of personal compassion. Take heart, tharseo, surely one of the most encouraging words in the Greek language, translated elsewhere “be of good courage; be of good cheer.” Don’t be afraid. The previously-unattainable Yahweh is present in a deeply personal way. And then Mark, whose paucity of words and focus on action serves us well here, describes two simple events: Jesus gets in the boat with them. The winds cease. That’s all we really need to know, isn’t it? The I-Am is here, and he gets into the boat with us. No longer must we struggle with the oars against the headlong winds.

Today I felt a bit jittery: I had just written up our November calendar. In addition to continuing family routines, we’re opening our home this month to the neighborhood, medical students, non-believing friends, communities within the church, kids’ school friends, work colleagues. Most of them for the first time, all of them unpredictable. I could feel myself starting to strain against the oars, and realized, no, what I need is to realize Jesus is in the boat with me. Jesus is showing me that the indefinable YHWH, the ego eimi, can be defined as God actively present with me. As Theodorus C. Vriezen writes, “ ‘I am who I am’ means, ‘I am there, wherever it may be… I am really there!” Take heart, I-Am, don’t be afraid.

Parenting: Never An Interruption

“And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’” – Mark 5:30-31

I was recently home alone with the kids, mollifying Eric out of a grumpy mood by folding paper airplanes with him in my office room, when Ellie came up wanting to show me a math strategy she’d invented. Earlier Emmy had said she was hungry; I’d sent her off to peel a clementine for herself. Now Elijah came up wanting one too, so I sent him off with the same instructions. I asked Ellie to show me, but she said I had to come sit down with her so I told her to go back out for now. I managed to supervise a few more folds of the airplane before I heard bawling from the kitchen. I left Eric, went out to find Elijah crying because he had asked Ellie whether a fruit in the fruit bowl was an orange or lemon? and she had refused to answer. I told Ellie she wasn’t being very kind, told Elijah it was an orange and wiped his tears on his blankie as Emmy calmly handed me all her clementine rind bits as Elijah happened to be obstructing her access to the trash can. I got Elijah a clementine only to turn around and find Ellie crying. I had just sat down with her when I heard Eric yelling in frustration from the other room because he couldn’t figure out how to fold his airplane.

Rachel Jankovic, a mother of five under five at the time, writes in her book Loving The Little Years about “the bulk effect,” when the collective level of stress is more than the sum of its parts. This is to be expected in big families, and it’s important not to blame one child when responding to the stress of the whole situation, or to see children as problems to be organized rather than individuals. “Christian childrearing,” Jankovic writes, “is a pastoral pursuit, not an organizational challenge. The more children you have, the more you need to be pastorally minded. Look to each of their souls and their needs… Study them. Seek them out. Sacrifice the thing you were doing to work through minor emotional issues. A lot of children from big families discover very early on that their parents simply do not have time for their problems.”

Jesus is surrounded here, we are told twice, by a great crowd, an immense throng of people. He is on a time-sensitive, public mission. The woman had already been physically healed. She obviously did not mean to interrupt him, touching only his garment, in secret, so he would not be delayed by loss of time or being publicly acknowledged as now ceremonially unclean. Why did he stop? Perhaps because he wanted to clarify that her healing came through faith, not some semi-superstitious touch of cloth. Perhaps to demonstrate the necessity of confession. Perhaps because as a poor, unclean outcast, as someone who had reached the desperate end of all else that could help her, she needed to be seen, to be called daughter, to receive peace. Even though she was already physically healed, it is only later in verse 34 that Jesus says, “be healed of your disease.”

But the point is, Jesus stops. He stops to address the gospel-need, the heart-need, of someone who to everyone else was an interruption. Isn’t this so much of what parenting is about? Sometimes moments I perceive as frustrating interruptions are actually opportunities God provides to help me see the heart- or gospel-need of one of my children. The point is not to vent my frustration, or take it personally, or merely manage them all into better outward behavior. The point is to be willing to let go of agendas and appearances to pause and ask as Jesus did, who touched me? To look at our children and ask, who are you? Are you reaching out to me? What is going on in your heart? How do you need the gospel in this moment? 

In that particular moment, I felt like Ellie, who tends to ask the least, needed me the most, so I stayed with her, and the others ended up being fine. But it might be different each time. I’m constantly reminding myself that when pressed upon by the crowds, when the bulk effect takes hold, it’s important not to lose my sense of presence or vision. Jesus’ interruption ended up being an opportunity to glorify God and embody the gospel more in the life of both the woman and Jairus’ daughter than he would perhaps have otherwise. May we see the people before us as he does.