Gideon's Ephod

“And Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his city, in Ophrah. And all Israel whored after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family.” – Judges 8:27

I’m slowly reading through Watership Down with Ellie and Eric, and for a long time we were in suspense about what mysterious thing was wrong with the first warren Hazel and his friends encounter on their journey. All the rabbits there are sleek and well-fed, but there is an atmosphere of unspoken fear and secrecy. They finally discover the truth in one horror-filled moment: “What enemy was at work on the other side of the hedge? There were no cries—no spitting of a cat, no squealing of a rabbit—only the crackling of twigs and the tearing of the grass in violence. By an effort of courage against all instinct, Hazel forced himself forward into the gap, with Fiver following. A terrible sight lay before them… Bigwig was lying on his side, his back legs kicking and struggling. A length of twisted copper wire, gleaming dully in the first sunlight, was looped round his neck and ran taut across one forepaw… The projecting point of one strand had lacerated his neck and drops of blood, dark and red as yew berries, welled one by one down his shoulder. For a few moments he lay panting, his side heaving in exhaustion. Then again began the struggling and fighting, backward and forward, jerking and falling, until he choked and lay quiet.”

Snares are things that trap you unexpectedly. They appear simple, even harmless, but are purposely set for one reason: to immobilize and kill. Early on, God warns the Israelites that the Canaanite “gods shall be a snare to you” (Judges 2:3): idols, in other words, work like snares do. They insidiously trap and enslave, they ultimately control and immobilize, and their end is death. In this passage, Gideon refuses a golden crown only to turn around and make a golden ephod, melting down earrings in a way that eerily resembles how the golden calf was made (Exodus 32). The ephod was intended for glory and beauty, to bear the names of God’s people in remembrance before Him, to receive God’s guidance through the Urim and Thummim stones set upon it (Exodus 28). The actual ephod was worn at that time by the high priest in Shiloh (Judges 18:31), but by creating his own version of it, Gideon takes something that God intended to symbolize beauty, relationship, and guidance, and turns it into a snare for all the people. 

How can the vestures of our faith become idols? How can the very tools of worship become hindrances of that worship? How can we look towards our ministry to be our savior? How can the beauty of the created keep us from experiencing the beauty of the Creator? Perhaps we become ensnared by legalism; by power, visibility, or reputation in ministry; by a desire to control God on our own terms; by overemphasis on a particular style of worship; by the momentary at the cost of the eternal. The danger of these kinds of idols lies in their hiddenness, even to ourselves, cloaked as they are by the veneer of religion, by victory and rest as it was for Gideon (Judges 8:38). In the story, it took Hazel, Silver, Buckthorn, Pipkin and Fiver, working together and in turns, to dig out and bite through the peg to free Bigwig. It took seeing the copper wire for what it was to move them from a place of indolence and material comfort. May God open our eyes to the presence and workings of hidden idols in our lives.

Repentance Vs. Regret

“When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites, the Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel. And he said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery.” – Judges 6:7

Judges has a cycle of rebellion, retribution, repentance, and rescue, which is repeated six times throughout the course of the book. The fact that God sends an unnamed prophet here to speak to the Israelites suggests that there is something about their cry for help that may be regret, but falls short of true repentance. What is the difference between the two? Regret, or worldly sorrow (2 Corinthians 7), is sad over the consequences of sin rather than the sin itself. Once the consequences go away, the behavior returns. Repentance is sad at how the sin grieves God and results in the loss of a relationship with him. Repentance opens the door to grace and restoration, the ability to move on past the sin. 

Regret is about ourselves; repentance is about God. The prophet’s brief sermon is entirely God-centered: he wants them to see who God is and what He has done; he wants to drive home what their disobedience means to that God, rather than just what their disobedience means to them.  

How can we discern whether we respond to sin with regret or repentance? We can go to God’s word, just as the prophet quotes God to his people. We can observe patterns of sin in our lives. As one commentator wrote, “If you are continually falling into the same spiritual pit and your falls are not decreasing in number or intensity, you may be responding to sin in regret rather than repentance. In other words, you may regret the troubles your sin causes but be unwilling to reject the idol underlying the sin, which is still attractive to you.”

We can examine our patterns of confession. It is telling that we so often find it easier to confess alone or within a congregation than to one or two other people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it well:

“Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution... Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.”

What We Consume

“I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house; I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.” – Psalm 101:2-3

Being healthy in what we read or watch in our spare time is challenging for many reasons. It’s easy to follow cultural cues and norms. It’s easy not to be accountable for it. It’s easy after a hard day to feel entitled to whatever provides momentary pleasure or escape. Because so much of what we consume is impure, not in a moral sense (though that may be true too), but in the sense of having degrees of good and bad mixed in together, it’s easy to be led along by the good bits and be careless of the bad bits. It’s easy to be blind to how thoroughly we are affected by what we consume, in our fantasies, moods, mindsets. It’s easy to ignore the evolving nature of it all, the fact that our very appetites are changed, our prohibitions numbed, along the way. 

The word for “worthless” here is Hebrew beliya’al, which is a combination of two words. Beliy means “consumption, wearing out.” This is a movement that is not cataclysmic, but erosive, gradual, insidious. Ya’al means “to ascend on high, to rise above” or “to excel, profit, benefit.” 

We see that the focus here is not on sin at all. The focus is on ya’al and what consumes it. This is not a list of rules but a love song: “I will sing of steadfast love… to you, I Lord, I will make music.” The precedence here is not legalism but longing: “oh, when will you come to me?” The psalmist has purposely put his mind to what is blameless; he attends to every step (“I will walk”); he desires transparent integrity in the most private spheres of life (“integrity of heart within my house”). The focus here is not moral code—it’s not where the line of sin is, and getting as close to that line as possible without crossing it—the focus here is longing and love that leads to a desire for integrity and blamelessness, that leads to a vow to avoid anything that would not be of benefit towards that. It is Paul saying, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. I am meant for the Lord, and He is meant for me (1 Corinthians 6).

This is a particular area of struggle for me: maybe because of cravings for story, or an unusually vivid imagination and memory, I have found that I need to be more careful than most about what I read or watch, and the learning of that was a long and painful process, with some regrets along the way. It wasn’t until I changed that I realized the depth of this truth that what I set before my eyes is everything. It both reveals and transforms who I am, how I think, what I desire. Jesus put it best: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if the eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23). May I walk with integrity of heart within my house. May I not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.

When God Is Not Obvious

“So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, but they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.” – Luke 24:28-29

In his book Discernment, Nouwen writes that he spends at least an hour in prayer and meditation every morning—without it, “my life loses its coherence, and I start experiencing my days as a series of random incidents and accidents rather than divine appointments and encounters.” He may not have a particularly “close feeling” with God, and often it’s not pleasant to his senses, but “the way I become aware of God’s presence is in that remarkable desire to return to that quiet place and be there without any real satisfaction. And I notice, maybe only retrospectively, that my days and weeks are different when they are held together by these regular and ‘useless’ times. God is greater than my senses, greater than my thoughts, greater than my heart. I do believe that God touches me in places that are hidden even to myself.”

Jesus remains hidden during most of his encounter with two disciples on the road to Emmaus. And that’s part of what makes this story so poignant, isn’t it? He looks at these disciples as they “stood still, looking sad.” He listens to their experience. And rather than immediately revealing himself in person, which would have made both logical and emotional sense, he takes them through the Scriptures so that they can see him there instead. It was only in retrospect that they saw the significance of that time: “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” 

It’s easy to have a consumeristic view of our daily times with God. It’s hard to keep reading the Bible or praying if we feel like we aren’t “getting anything out of it” or seeing results. But often, the effects of those times are only appreciated in hindsight. Often, God works in ways and areas within us that are hidden even to our own eyes. I don’t know why Jesus did not say to those two disciples, “it is I!” as he did to Mary. Instead, he walked them through the Word. He waited for their invitation. He took, blessed, broke, and gave the bread—the holy, in the mundane. Jesus takes an ordinary meal, that as his followers these disciples must have done with him many times in the past without anything at all remarkable happening, and reveals himself both during and through it. And then, he vanishes. Leaving them with the remains of dinner, perhaps. The dishes to do.

Sometimes, I have Mary-moments. More often, I have Emmaus-experiences: going along the road through the Word, carrying my confusion or sadness or weariness, wondering where Jesus went, moments of recognition mingled with periods of remembering. But he is no less working, whether I have a sense of it or not. He is no less present, whether I feel it or not. He is greater than my senses, and the decision I make to spend time with him matters.

Obedience In The Unseen

“And she said, ‘I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.’” – Judges 4:9

“As we live our ordinary lives we are declaring all the time exactly what we are.” – Martyn Lloyd-Jones

At this time of transition from the bronze to the iron age, Sisera’s 900 iron chariots represented a huge technological advantage. In human terms, Barak was leading his 10,000 men into certain slaughter, but they stream down Mount Tabor anyway under Deborah’s command. We learn later in song (Judges 5:21) that God flooded the valley, creating mud that clogged the chariots’ wheels and giving the Israelites victory. 

Barak points to Christ, who like him is under authority (John 8:28), does not act apart from the one who sent him (John 5:19), and is victorious through obedience (Romans 5:19, Philippians 2:8; Hebrews 5:8). In all this, he demonstrates courage, humility, and a faith for which he is remembered in Hebrews 11. But most of all, he does it all unseen. He goes on a mission instigated by a woman and finished by a woman, knowing he will get little credit for it.

Sometimes it feels like my hardest battles are the ones I fight unseen, the hidden battles of ordinary life. Battles to control what I say or don’t say. Battles to not indulge in self-pity, complaint, judgment, or gossip. Battles to give up what I know God is calling me to turn away from. Battles to forgive someone, again. Battles to discipline well when I’m tired. Battles over my thoughts in the dark before sleep. I fight these battles against my own sinful nature, against the schemes of Satan, and for the most part there is no element of public recognition. The struggles are real, hard, and sometimes long; the victories when they happen can be unmistakable experiences of God’s power. But no one really sees them.

Barak had no less courage though he knew there would be no fame, and neither should I. Because the reality is, of course, that I am seen. Deborah’s words echo Jesus’: I will be with you. Mount Tabor is thought to be the place of Jesus’ transfiguration so many years later, the place where God declares his love to his Son as he does to us. The Holy Spirit lives inside me. I am not alone, in these most important battles in my life.

Left-Handed Salvation

“The Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, the song of Gera, the Benjamite, a left-handed man.” – Judges 3:15

After Othniel, none of the judges named in this book seem like who you’d expect to be a leader. Deborah is a woman, Gideon the least in a house of the weakest clan, and Ehud is left-handed. At that time, the right hand was a symbol of power and ability: God swears by his right hand, has pleasures at his right hand, and the Chosen One sits at his right hand (Isaiah 62:8-9; Psalm 16:11, 110:1). In Hebrew, Judges 3:15 literally says Ehud was “unable to use his right hand,” leading some scholars to speculate that he had some kind of paralysis or disability. No one would expect a left-handed man to be dangerous. They would assume that if he could not wield a weapon with his right hand, he couldn’t wield one at all—and that is why he was admitted to the king’s presence both publicly and privately. No one thought he could be a threat; he was completely beneath their notice.

Paul tells us in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians that God does not choose the worldly-wise or powerful. He does not choose those of privileged birth. God chooses the foolish, the weak, the low and despised. Why is this? 

The temptation for the Israelites at that time was not outright rejection of God so much as adding him to a pantheon of gods. The prevailing polytheistic culture objected not to the existence of God, but to his absolute sovereignty. When it came to various Canaanite gods, you generally did something to please a certain god so that they would give you something in response. But God is making it clear that he does not work as idols do. He chooses the unexpected, and works through them in strikingly different but undeniably powerful ways, to show that he is not a vending machine or formula. He is not one of many. He cannot be manipulated. And what he wants is not merely our tribute but our hearts, our total surrender to him alone. 

David Jackman writes: “Let us remember that Israel’s flirtation with other gods came from their over-domestication of the living Lord. It was because they thought they had God sewn up, in their pockets… [His] unbreakable promises led them to presume upon his mercy to the point of indulgence… they thought they had trained God. That is always the essence of idolatry… [Then] God teaches his rebellious people their total dependence on omnipotence by breaking out of their predictable boxes to use methods and men that no one could have imagined."

Jesus came like the left-handed Ehud: “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him… we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:2-3). He was beneath our notice. And through him God shows us that salvation comes left-handed. Not in the way we would think or the world would laud, but in a way that shows us he is a God like no other.

Repentance

From John Stott:

“Repentance is a definite turn from every thought, word, deed and habit which is known to be wrong. It is not sufficient to feel pangs of remorse or to make some kind of apology to God. Fundamentally, repentance is a matter neither of emotion nor of speech. It is an inward change of mind and attitude towards sin which leads to a change of behavior. There can be no compromise here. There may be sins in our lives which we do not think we ever could renounce; but we must be willing to let them go as we cry to God for deliverance from them. If you are in doubt regarding what is right and what [is] wrong, what must go and what may be retained, do not be too greatly influenced by the customs and conventions of Christians you may know. Go by the clear teaching of the Bible and by the prompting of your conscience, and Christ will gradually lead you further along the path of righteousness. When he puts his finger on anything, give it up. It may be some association or recreation, some literature we read, or some attitude of pride, jealousy or resentment, or an unforgiving spirit.”

Consolation

“When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.” – Psalm 94:18-19

When I went back to work after Eric was born, he refused to take the bottle. He would go on hunger strikes for days. At one point, my dad drove him into work so I could rush out between patients to nurse him. Eventually we got him to take the bottle (by filling it with orange juice), but I still remember him wailing inconsolably in the back seat of the car each time I ran out. 

There are two Hebrew words in this verse that are rarely used in the Old Testament, but that both occur again in succession in a passage in Isaiah 66. Tanchuwm, or “consolation,” is used as well in Isaiah 66:11: “Rejoice with Jerusalem… that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious abundance.” Sha’a’, or “cheer,” literally means “to stroke” or caress in comfort, and is used again in Isaiah 66:12, where it is translated “bounce”: “and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip, and bounced upon her knees.”

When you are that crying infant, what you long for is something specific that only one person can provide. That’s how I feel when I’m sad sometimes: what I want is not just distraction or sympathy or even mere comfort. I want consolation. I want something that holds both grief and comfort in full view, together. I want a comfort that speaks to my grief, that tells me my grief is not meaningless and shows me my grief is understood. And that’s the beautiful picture these words create: there is an answer, that goes beyond comfort, in fact, to deep delight. That nourishes, gives life and satisfaction. That speaks without words, in exactly the way we cry for. The nature of my sadness is meant to point me to the Consolation of Israel (Luke 2:25), upon whom I can cast the cares of my heart (1 Peter 5:7), who will one day wipe away every tear from my eyes (Revelation 21:4).

Consolation that glorious seems too good to be true, and some days, too hard to reach for. It’s easier to be drowned in or drained by feeling down. But that’s why it’s good to hear the testimony of this Psalmist. He wrote these words in the midst of terribly crushing events (verses 5-7). His truth can be the same for us.

Optimization And Obedience

“And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.” – Judges 1:19

In the book of Joshua, we saw God’s faithfulness in bringing his people into the promised land, defeating their enemies, and giving them rest. But at the time of Joshua’s death, there was still much to be done in settling the remainder of the land and pushing out its inhabitants. Joshua leaves them with exhortations to trust and obey God: and here, in the book of Judges, which covers the period from Joshua’s death until the first kings, we see how they do. 

Judah is the first tribe God tells to go and claim their portion of the land: “Judah shall go up” (1:2). Then something curious happens. Judah does go up, but instead of trusting completely in God, he asks the Simeonites to go with him as well: “Come up with me” (1:3). He obeys, but not completely. God still gives Judah victory, but we see later that Judah does not completely drive out some of the Canaanites, “because they had chariots of iron.” From there, it’s a cascade of similar behavior from all the tribes: that of Joseph, Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, who allowed the Canaanites to live with them. Even worse were the Asherites and Naphtalites, who went to go live among the Canaanites. By the end of the chapter, there’s a sad kind of contrast: the language is now not about the boundaries of God’s promised land, but “the border of the Amorites” (1:36).

The Israelites’ obedience to God was diluted by their own human calculations, by what seemed to make more military or economic sense. And on first reading, it all works. On first reading, this is a chapter of great conquest: the Israelites were living in the land, living a life their enslaved predecessors would never have dreamed of. But in reality—and the previous book of Joshua makes this unmistakably clear—they have not fully obeyed God. They trusted in their own assessments more than they trusted God.

This is a constant temptation for us, particularly living in an age where we rely so much on data, data that we can optimize for and with. As Virginia Heffernan from The New York Times writes, “In the last few years, The Huffington Post has doled out advice on how to ‘optimize’ your three-day weekend, your taxes, your Twitter profile, your year-end ritual, your sex drive, your website, your wallet, your joy, your workouts, your Social Security benefits, your testosterone, your investor pitch, your news release, your to-do list, and the world itself.” Optimization, she points out, is back-formation. It worships efficiency or performance. It flattens values: “there’s optimal at one end and the dread of suboptimal at the other.”

Optimization is like a functional crutch here in the Bay Area. When faced with a goal, we simply look at the data, research from experts or figure out what everyone else is doing, and back-engineer to increase our odds of achieving the outcome. It tends to lead to anxiety and FOBO (Fear Of Better Options). But that is not how God calls me to live. My mission is dependent on Him, not on data. He values faithfulness over outcomes and obedience over optimization. At the heart of it all is this question: who do I believe has true power and control, God, or me? God, or the data? God, or my chariots? God, or my ability to make things happen? My answers to these questions may not be outwardly obvious, but they change everything. The book of Judges ends with horrific levels of disobedience, but it is here too, however early and small. 

Discipline

“Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” – Proverbs 13:24

The question I get asked most frequently as a parent is: how do you discipline your children? Most people seem to be looking for technique, several kinds of which we’ve used. This verse is quoted with some controversy in the context of spanking: some claim the word for “rod,” shebet, refers to the kind of wooden stick used for physical punishment; others point out that it is the same word used in Psalm 23:4 of the comforting shepherd’s rod. Regardless, the main point is that disciplining our children is such an important part of how we love them that to avoid it is akin to an act of hatred. And most of the time, when discipline fails, it’s not a matter of improper technique as much as how we use them.

The word for “love” here, ahab, is the same word that describes how God loves us (Deuteronomy 6:5). We must always exercise discipline in a way that represents God: in the life of our children, we are the look of God’s face, we are the touch of His hand, we are the tone of His voice. Think for a moment about the glory of God’s utter faithfulness in how he reveals his authority and law to his children: that is how we are to discipline our children. Never inconsistently or affected by our own emotion or mood. Never selfishly or affected by how they make us feel or look. Never impatiently. Never with demeaning or condemning words.

In other words, before we discipline our children, we must discipline ourselves. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes, “When you are disciplining a child, you should have first controlled yourself… What right have you to say to your child that he needs discipline when you obviously need it yourself? Self-control, the control of temper, is an essential prerequisite in the control of others.” It does no good to have the perfect technique down if you use it sometimes but not others, or if you use it in anger. As we ask God to bring us into greater submission before Him, to help us overcome our own anger and frustration, we allow Him to reveal in us any sinful or selfish ways we view our children. The more we open ourselves to receiving His correction in our lives, the more we can rightly love our children through the correction we offer them. 

The word for “diligent” here is shachar, which means “to break forth as light, as the dawn,” which one lexicon describes as “a word altogether poetic.” It reminds me of when Zechariah speaks of “the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high” (Luke 1:78). We are to earnestly seek the dawning of the good news of Jesus into our lives. To look for the breaking in of God’s mercy. To diligently orient all our discipline so that it points to the gospel.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of discipline as opportunities God gives me to allow the Holy Spirit to work His conviction and grace in my children’s lives. God has given me authority over my children, but He has not given me the power to change them. I can’t fix them; it’s not up to me. Only the gospel has that power. If I operate on the assumption that I can change my children, then I see every misbehavior as failure, and I become over-focused on the behavior itself. But if I realize that only God can change my children, I look diligently for every opportunity to open their hearts to the work of the Holy Spirit: and discipline moments are exactly those kinds of opportunities. Nothing reveals the heart condition of my children like their misbehavior does, and if I modify their behavior but miss their hearts, I don’t really change them for the long-term, anyway. 

Orienting discipline towards the gospel means coupling any discipline technique with instruction, typically a brief conversation that helps them understand the heart struggle behind their behavior, presents the gospel in some form, and opens space for confession and grace. Most of the time, nothing seems to happen, and that’s normal. But sometimes His grace really does break through. It was during a discipline moment that Eric accepted Jesus as his savior. He has been our most difficult child to discipline, and it was an episode like any other, but somehow that day, when I explained that Jesus died not only to free him from the consequence of his sin but the power it held in his life, something clicked. I don’t know how many conversations after difficult discipline moments I’d had with him before that day—very many—and I’ve never had an experience quite like that with the other children—but I thank God I can look back now and see that it is always worth it. Being diligent in our discipline is one of the most important ways we love our children, even though it’s one of the hardest things we do. 

Being Careful With Our Loves

“Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God.” – Joshua 23:11

“My weight is my love. Wherever I am carried, my love is carrying me.” – Augustine, Confessions

In this chapter, Joshua speaks his last words to the leaders of Israel: he looks back and he looks forward, much as we do this time of year. Not one word has failed of all the good promises God made to us, he says of the past. And do you want to know the single most important factor in determining whether your future will be good or bad? How careful you are to love God.

This verse has six different words in the Hebrew: m’od shamar shamar nephesh ahab Yehovah Elohim. Shamar means to keep watch or guard, and is repeated twice for emphasis. What do we guard? Our nephesh, our souls, our whole selves, a word which doesn’t explicitly make it into the ESV translation. Ahab is a comprehensive word for love, though it literally means “to desire, breathe after,” getting at a sense of longing, delight, and affection. Yehovah elohim are personal and universal names for God. 

But the word that strikes me most is m’od. It is an intensifier which means “exceedingly, diligently” and comes from a root word that refers to a wooden poker, the kind used to rake embers and stir a fire. What an interesting word picture: that there is, within my soul, the embers of love. The need to desire after something. As James K. A. Smith writes, “To be human is to be on the move, pursuing something, after something. We are like existential sharks: we have to move to live.” And that desire is powerful, like a conflagration that grows easily out of control, that drives and consumes us: because we are what we love; we become what we worship. We are defined not by what we know, but by what we desire. It is what we desire that drives how we live.

The person who realizes this, who realizes the importance and power of his or her desires, is the one who holds the fire poker, the one who tends the embers. Because love is not, as popular culture likes to think, something we are seized by, or fall into, or stumble upon. It is a choice, but I think this picture goes beyond choice: it introduces a sense of diligence and habit. The point of the fire poker is to adjust the wood so that the flow of oxygen, availability of fuel, and proximity of nearby embers either make the fire grow or force it to die out. It takes constant attention and some amount of practice. The same is true of our desires: they grow, or die out, depending on the kind of attention and practice we give them. Love as it is lived out in our lives is, in this sense, not so much a conscious choice as a baseline orientation. And we reorient our desires not by acquiring information, but through practices that inform the habits of how and what we love, through rituals, routines, rhythms, done over and over again.

Learning to love God takes practice. It takes understanding the pyrotechnics of the soul, the workings of desire. It takes choosing to suffocate unhealthy appetites or idolatries in our lives by ruthlessly cutting off whatever habits tend to feed them. It takes repetitive, daily exposure to God in his Word. It takes various spiritual practices that nurse our loves, and there are many very good ones, many worth exploring until we find a good rule of life for the season we are in. This new year, this new decade, what are the loves that are being lived out in your life? What habits do you have in place to train your dispositions, to form, teach and affect your desires?