The Medium Of Endor

“Therefore I have summoned you to tell me what I shall do.” – 1 Samuel 28:15

This is certainly a strange passage. Saul, afraid of the Philistines, reaches a new low: unable to hear from God by other means, he consults a medium, breaking a law that he himself had set (28:3) and which directly violated the law of God (Deuteronomy 18:9-11). He goes to the trouble of disguising himself and traveling past the Philistine camp to reach Endor, and stranger yet, Samuel appears from the dead. Most commentators believe this truly is Samuel; it is unclear whether he is summoned by God or by necromancy or how much the medium knows. 

But what is most striking to me about this episode is how clearly it fulfills words Samuel spoke to Saul the last day Saul saw him alive: “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king” (1 Samuel 15:22-23). Divination is abhorrent to God because it is idolatry, a rejection of God’s word in seeking supernatural guidance elsewhere. The fact that Saul resorts to such means shows us something: he is desperate to know the future. He is desperate to know what will happen. He wants to be told what he should do, but he doesn’t really have a heart of obedience. He disobeys in the worst ways just to ask.

How many of us have said, “I just want to know God’s will! I just want to know what God wants me to do. If he would just tell me, that’s all it would take.” We ask because we want a God we can “summon” for information. We are not asking for wisdom, really: we are asking for knowledge, a specific kind of knowledge about the future. We want outward data, but God cares more about inward direction. We listen for future answers, but God desires the kind of listening that is lived out in present obedience. It is that kind of obedience that changes who we are, and God ultimately cares more about who we are than just what we do. What good is it knowing which job to pick if you’re still idolizing it? Which person to marry if you’re still selfish? If God told us what he wanted, would we really do it? Has not God already told us what his will is for us, all throughout the Bible, implicitly and in many places, explicitly? 

The irony is that Saul goes to desperate, criminal measures only to hear from Samuel the same thing he’s heard in the past. There’s little new information offered, and what is new is bad. “Sheol” means “the asking place,” and “Saul” means “the asked for one”: in a grim play on words, we learn the asking place will now receive the asked-for one. Knowledge without obedience has only led Saul to death. Chronologically, this story is out of order: it is sandwiched prematurely into the story of David as he lives with the Philistines (27:1-28:2 on one side, 28:3-25 on the other), which brings out interesting comparisons. Both David and Saul are outside of the Israelite camp, but while the medium at Endor asks Saul, “why have you deceived me?” the prince of Gath tells David, “I know that you are as blameless in my sight as an angel of God” (29:9). We see from these stories that true future life and victory comes when we are willing to search out any rebellion or presumption in our hearts, and to live out a listening obedience in the present. 

Puritan Prayer

From a puritan book of prayers:

Help me.

I am so slow to learn,

   so prone to forget,

   so weak to climb;

I am in the foothills when I should be

   on the heights;

I am pained by my graceless heart,

   my prayerless days,

   my poverty of love,

   my sloth in the heavenly race,

   my sullied conscience,

   my wasted hours,

   my unspent opportunities.

I am blind while light shines around me:

   take the scales from my eyes,

   grind to dust the evil heart of unbelief.

Make it my chiefest joy to study thee,

   meditate on thee,

   gaze on thee,

   sit like Mary at thy feet,

   lean like John on thy breast,

   appeal like Peter to thy love,

   count like Paul all things dung.

Give me increase and progress in grace so that there may be

   more decision in my character,

   more vigour in my purposes,

   more elevation in my life,

   more fervor in my devotion,

   more constancy in my zeal.

As I have a position in the world,

   keep me from making the world my position;

May I never seek in the creature

   what can be found only in the Creator;

Let not faith cease from seeking thee

   until it vanishes into sight.

Ride forth in me, thou King of kings and Lord of lords,

   that I may live victoriously,

   and in victory attain my end.

Ambulation

“A man of understanding walks straight ahead.” – Proverbs 15:21

“For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.” – Psalm 116:8-9

The first time I saw a labyrinth, I didn’t see the point. It seemed like a lot of moving without going anywhere. But the point is the movement, which I felt again today when I had the chance to walk one. When you walk a labyrinth, you know where you will end up (the center, or back at the entrance point). You know where to place your next step on the path. But there is just enough complexity that you can’t completely trace all the points in between. And what you realize as you walk through it is that you don’t need to. Once you begin to let go of that, and just put one foot in front of the other, you become newly aware of things. Exterior things, like the breeze and the trees, the chirping of birds nearby, the expanse of sky above and the feel of the path below. Interior things, like longings and fears and questions. The steps become a metaphor for the spiritual journey, a way to physically walk out an intention or prayer.

It’s a bit disarming how faraway-clear the goals of my life were in early adulthood. I knew at the age of 14 where I would be when I was 18, and 22, and 26. In medicine, you start preparing for applications four years in advance, study for tests half a year in advance, all the little goals coalescing into bigger goals, never a question really of what you will be doing. Even after training is finished, the tendency is to keep living life from station to station: career advancement, home acquisition, family establishment. 

But this year has brought me to a place unexpectedly out of that mold. I feel like I did in the labyrinth: I know our values and mission and the ultimate end of things that matter, and the next few exploratory steps are concrete enough, but the middle is unclear. There’s no distinct timeline or goal. There’s no knowing what factors will come into play. There’s only one foot in front of the other. 

The kind of understanding that I tend to want is to see all the steps to the end, but sometimes understanding is simply to walk the next step ahead. Not run or skip, not sit or dawdle, but walk: a regular, rhythmic, intentional movement forward one step at a time. When we move like this, we are more able to be present to ourselves and those around us. We are more able to test our hopes and exercise our faith. We are more able to address the questions God really cares about: not, what specific outcome am I going to get? but, what direction is my heart and mind growing towards? “For we are his workmanship,” Paul tells us in Ephesians 2: “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Not work in them, but walk in them. He has delivered us and prepared us for this good purpose.

David And Jonathan

“And as soon as the boy had gone, David rose from beside the stone heap and fell on his face to the ground and bowed three times. And they kissed one another and wept with one another, David weeping the most. Then Jonathan said to David, ‘Go in peace, because we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord.’” – 1 Samuel 20:41-42

It's hard not be struck by the physical and emotional expression in David and Jonathan’s friendship. Sarah Sumner writes, “No, they weren’t gay. It is not gay for a man to love another man.” We are so conditioned to think about sex that we have a hard time conceiving of genuine affection. She taught her third grade students, “Hardly, hardly ever is love meant to be romantic. Nearly, nearly always love is meant to be for family and friends.” It wasn’t sexual when John the apostle reclined his head on Jesus’ breast (John 13:23), when the Ephesian elders “wept aloud” and “embraced” and “repeatedly kissed” Paul as they saw him for the last time (Acts 20:37). It wasn’t sexual when David and Jonathan kissed and cried as they said goodbye.

Some of this can be cultural: when I first moved to the Bay Area, I was struck by how much less people hugged here compared with in southern Virginia. I missed the long, close hugs of my old girl friends. But culture aside, I wonder if there really is such a thing as “the affection of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:8): a pure, deep fondness felt for a spiritual friend, expressed in touch and tears, in a way that is not only healthy but reflects the affection that Jesus has for us. Children understand this best, I think. Children are always touching us. They cry because they miss us. They use the word love all the time.

We’ve lost something of this in our current-day conception of male friendship. Traditional ideas of masculinity do not tend to include being deeply relational or emotionally expressive. Yet when Lazarus died, Jesus cried so hard for him that his love for Lazarus was evident (“See how he loved him!” John 11:36). We see the weeping of David in Jesus himself. They were men who cried for their friends, loved their friends, changed plans for their friends, sacrificed for their friends. 

It can be hard to find friendships like this, man or woman. The older I get, the more I realize how much intentionality, commitment, and sacrifice it takes to be a true friend. But this story reminds me that it’s worth it. It encourages me to see and be thankful for the friends I have. It challenges me to keep praying for and being open to new and deepening friendships. It exhorts me to be willing to give things up for my friends. And in this story I see Jesus, who like David is my King, yet calls me his friend. He feels affection: he not only loves me, but likes me. He lay down his life for me, for the very reason that I am his friend (John 15).

Firm And Steady Hearts

“He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. His heart is steady; he will not be afraid.” – Psalm 112:7-8

The condition of the righteous man’s heart is described here with two similar words. The word translated “firm” is Hebrew kuwn, used over 200 times in the Old Testament, meaning literally “to stand upright,” establish, set up. The word translated “steady” is Hebrew camak, a rarer word, meaning “to place or lay upon something, so that it may rest upon or be supported by it.” If you trace the 49 times it occurs in the Bible, for a long time you read about the laying of hands, by a priest on an animal, by a leader to his successor. You read about Samson, leaning with all his weight onto pillars on either side. Finally, you read about how the psalmists lean on God, who sustains (3:5) and upholds (37:17, 51:12, 54:4, 145:14). And this gem in Isaiah 26:3: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed [camak] on you, because he trusts in you.”

It’s almost as if the second word is an elaboration of the first. This man’s heart is established, not by his own doing or strength, but because he is leaning on God. There is an implication here that we live in a world teeming with the threat of bad news, and the natural thing is to let fear seep in, to be unstable in the interior world of our thoughts, feelings, being. The fear of bad news is often at the root of our anxiety, our inability to wait, our withdrawal, our confusion. What would your life look like if you were never afraid of bad news?

That would be more than mere imperturbability: it would be a perfect peace. But look carefully: it is God who keeps us in perfect peace: our part is to keep our mind stayed on him. When you lean on something, you put all your hopes on it. It is the priest putting all his hopes on the animal sacrifice to atone for the sins of his people. It is Moses committing his hopes for his people onto Joshua. It is Samson placing one last hope at the end of his life onto two pillars. It is the living out of trust. What we lean on is what we actually trust.

Psalm 112 is an acrostic poem, each line beginning with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. There is a kind of liturgy the author follows, in tracing through the familiar, unchanging pattern of the alphabet the truths he knows about God and how the man who fears him is blessed. I’ve been sorting through a lot of news lately, some of it bad. I feel the inner landscape of my thoughts and feelings shifting all the time. But into the change shines these verses, like an anchor of light dawning in the darkness (verse 4). There are a lot of things we can’t lean on, not really, in this world: our jobs, children, health, parents, possessions, minds, talent. But we can lean on God. And He can keep us in perfect peace.

From Thirst To Rivers

“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” – John 7:37-39

During the Festival of Booths (Deuteronomy 16:13, Numbers 29:12), there was a ceremony of water-pouring that, though never recorded in the Bible, is well-documented historically: at dawn on the first seven days of the festival, a priest would lead a procession down to the pool of Siloam, where a golden pitcher was filled with water. The procession returned to the temple as the morning sacrifice was being offered, and the water was poured out at the altar as the temple choir began to sing the Great Hallel (Psalms 113-118). The ceremony was not enacted on the eighth day. It is among a crowded throng of thirsty pilgrims, after enactment of God’s past provision and their continued need, that Jesus makes this proclamation, the same one he made to a solitary Gentile woman by a well (4:14).

Jesus gives us the living water of eternal life. But he doesn’t go on to say, “into” our hearts will flow living water. That would be the logical conclusion. The movement is in the opposite direction: “out of” our hearts flow rivers. No one knows for sure what Jesus is quoting here, but one possible reference is Ezekiel 47, where we see water flowing from the temple, first ankle-deep, then knee-deep, then waist-deep, then becoming a river that one cannot pass through. A river deep enough to swim in, that gives life wherever it goes, on whose banks are trees with leaves that do not wither and fruit for healing. We see similar imagery in Revelation 22, where the “river of the water of life, bright as crystal” flows from the throne of God through the city with the tree of life on its banks. 

And so, this is not just water-talk, but temple-talk. Jesus is God tabernacling on earth; the Spirit flows like the river, received after Jesus was “glorified.” “Throughout John’s gospel,” writes N.T. Wright, “there is a build-up towards the ‘glorification,’ the ‘lifting up,’ of Jesus—which turns out to be, with heavy paradox, the crucifixion of Jesus seen as the moment when his glory is fully and finally revealed, when the love of God which was always at work in him shines out most fully.” We are filled with the Spirit not for our own sake, but for the sake of spreading God’s glory and life into the wider world. This is a feast not only of celebration, but of vocation. After all, that was the ceremony: the filling in, the pouring out. We drink not to become lakes, but rivers, until “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).

Prudent In Speech

“Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence, and the Lord is with him.” – 1 Samuel 16:18

David will go on to become the most frequently mentioned man in the Bible aside from Jesus, but it’s interesting that here, the first time we really hear about him from someone, we learn that he is “prudent” in speech—Hebrew biyn, meaning discerning, eloquent. Perhaps the speaker was providing assurance that David was sufficiently politically correct for a royal court, but regardless, the statement is made. It stands in striking contrast to a story just two chapters earlier, in which Saul makes a rash vow that results not only in the fatigue and sin of his people, but in the near-death of his own son: “Cursed by the man who eats food until it is evening and I am avenged on my enemies” (14:24). Saul speaks in the heat of the hard-pressed day. His words are a curse. He is motivated by self-concern. We do not hear a word from David at all yet: but apparently he speaks with such prudence that he has acquired a reputation for it.

Our language matters: it is highlighted in both the downward trajectory of Saul, and David’s first rise to notice. What does it mean to be prudent in our speech? Prudence implies a kind of sagacity and judgment. To speak with prudence is to speak out of a right view of things. Jesus says in Matthew 5, “Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.” We understand how to speak when we understand God’s place in this universe, and when we understand ours. We understand how to speak when we understand that our words carry weight: they refer to real things with real spiritual realities. They reflect the ordering of our hearts and minds. They shape the realities of the people and world around us.

Eugene Peterson writes, “Every time we open our mouths, whether in conversation with one another or in prayer to our Lord, Christian truth and community are on the line. And so, high on the agenda of the Christian community in every generation is that we diligently develop a voice that speaks in consonance with the God who speaks, that we speak in such a way that truth is told and community is formed.” Our language matters. May we cultivate through our speech a consonance with the God who is always speaking. May we be known for our prudence.

Looking On The Heart

“When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed is before him.’ But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” – 1 Samuel 16:6-7

Samuel is a pretty perceptive guy by now. He hears directly from God; he knows God’s mind; he is steeped in God’s leading. He completely stands out for these reasons. And yet, he sees Eliab and thinks, this is it. In Hebrew, the word is emphatic: surely, without a shadow of a doubt. That is how powerful outward appearance is.

Our tendency to be biased by outward appearance is something so deeply part of our makeup that we have to step back very far to see it in ourselves. I was struck recently by how true this is when it comes to dating. Most Christian singles would say they prioritize the spiritual maturity of a potential date, but what they are really doing is first selecting the top handful of people who are most physically attractive. Then they look within that group and ask, okay, who has a good spiritual life? But they may have completely passed over men or women who would make fantastic life partners, ultimately on the basis of physical appearance.

This leads to a kind of spiritual myopia. Myopic people can’t see clearly not because the image isn’t being focused into a perfectly sharp point within their eye; their retinas are just a few millimeters too far back to receive it. Bringing what God sees into the focus of our own souls and minds takes intentionality. It takes practice listening for God’s voice: Samuel hears God speak continually here. It takes being willing to listen even when, or perhaps particularly when, it goes against our natural perceptions: Samuel obeys despite his own sure feelings. It may take letting more appealing options pass you by. It takes perseverance: Samuel continues through seven sons. It takes pressing into confusion with hard questions: Samuel asks, are all your sons here? It takes patience: Samuel is willing to wait there, standing.

When I look at people, I want to have sacred eyes. I want to look on their inward being as God does. I want to see both their true value and their true condition: because only then can I speak to who they are, in a way they can receive. Only then can I know how to respond, or when to respond. After all his journeying and listening and obeying and persisting and asking and waiting, the time came when Samuel emerged from his grief over one king to anoint another. God kept his promise to guide him, and it turned out to be a walk through this lesson: the Lord looks on the heart.

Discernment

From Henri Nouwen:

“Discernment is a spiritual understanding and an experiential knowledge of how God is active in daily life that is acquired through disciplined spiritual practice… The great movement of the spiritual life is from a deaf, non-hearing life to a life of listening… Living a spiritually mature life requires listening to God’s voice within and among us… When we are truly listening, we come to know that God is speaking to us, pointing the way, showing the direction… Discernment reveals new priorities, directions, and gifts from God. We come to realize that what previously seemed so important for our lives, loses its power over us… To our surprise, we even may experience a strange inner freedom to follow a new call or direction as previous concerns move into the background of our consciousness. We begin to see the beauty of the small and hidden life that Jesus lived in Nazareth. Most rewarding of all is the discovery that as we pray more each day, God’s will—that is, God’s concrete ways of loving us and our world—gradually is made known to us.”

Offering

“‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?’ Jesus said, ‘Have the people sit down.’… Jesus then took the loaves.”- John 6:9-11

For fun, we estimated that we packed 532 school lunches one year. Lately, I’ve been transitioning the kids into packing their own lunches, but it’s still quite a daily production. I like to think that the boy in this story brought a lunch packed by his mother, though of course we don’t know. But it probably was the result of some kind of ordinary, everyday labor. What’s remarkable is that the boy bothers offering it at all, given the size of the crowd. The disproportion is enormous. There’s no logic to it. One can’t blame Andrew for his question, the same question asked by Elijah’s servant when Elijah accepts an offering of twenty barley loaves in 2 Kings 4:42-44: “How can I set this before a hundred men?”

That’s the question I have sometimes, if I really examine myself. How can I set this before everyone? How can what I offer be enough? How can what I say, bring, or do meet the need that I see around me? But Jesus does not ask me to concern myself with that. He takes me just as I am: without criticism or appraisal. He does not say to Andrew, this is all you could scrounge up? He does not disregard the boy’s contribution. He takes it, receives it into his own hands, and gives thanks for it.

In the 2 Kings passage, the bread that is brought is “bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley.” The firstfruits were that first offering from the harvest once the Israelites came into the promised land (Leviticus 23): it was both a reminder of God’s provision and a product of their own labors. It was an act both of thanksgiving and of trust. N. T. Wright wrote when speaking of how Jesus’ resurrection is a sign of our own one day: “The point of the firstfruits is that there will be many, many more.” That is what Jesus does here in John. He takes the proffered loaves and makes many, many more. Imagine the boy’s wonder, seeing the loaves he had carried with him and given up, now being passed from hand to hand by the thousands.

Spurgeon preached of this passage: “I do not say that every man of common ability can rise to high ability by being associated with Christ through faith, but I do say this—that his ordinary ability, in association with Christ, will become sufficient for the occasion to which God in providence has called him.”

The Currency Of Attention

“Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord.” – Psalm 107:43

At a Stanford seminar Dave attended recently, someone asked, what is our currency nowadays? It is our attention. “In an information-rich world,” writes Herbert Simon, “the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: the attention of its recipients.” Our problem nowadays is not “information scarcity” but “attention scarcity.” The focus has become not on filtering out data that distracts our attention, but on designing systems that constantly try to grab our attention: ads, spam, click-bait, emails, notifications, social network requests, sponsored posts, and more.

Our attention is a limited and valuable commodity for which we are solicited, currency we are trading in every day, whether we’re consciously aware of it or not. Our attention is powerful: it determines where we direct our energy in all its other forms—our time, thought, creativity, money. Our attention shapes our connections. We are so habituated to multi-tasking that it is virtually a gift to focus our attention solely on one person.

The other day, I saw Elijah as I was walking over to his classroom to pick him up after school. I stopped for a moment, stopped thinking about logistics and being distracted by all the people around me, and watched him. He was a lone island in an eddy of swirling children, standing still and perfectly prepared, jacket on and dutifully zipped all the way up to his chin, neon-orange backpack strapped on, hands in his pockets, gaze off in the distance, striking in his calm. He didn’t seem anxious or hurried. The same day, I stopped and watched Eric doing math problems at the dining table. He never stopped moving, at one point crawling onto the table in his intensity of focus, gesticulating in glee at solving the puzzles.

It’s so rare that I’m silent and undistracted in my focus on the children, and that day, I felt like I could see things about the boys that I sometimes forget: Elijah’s preternatural calm and need for solitude, Eric’s inner intensity and need to have that drawn into a place that challenges him. Our attention shapes our affections: those moments helped me not only learn about my kids, but feel more love for and joy in them. Sometimes I think, God, the way I can show you that I love you, the way I learn more about and have greater joy in you, is to give you the gift of my undistracted attention.

This takes practice. In a milieu where multi-tasking is the norm, it takes effort to be conscious of the directions of our attention, and practice to focus it. This is of course the basis of the meditation which people here place great stock in, but what the Psalmist showcases is not an emptying of all thought, or focus on those that generate calm or happy feelings. What he does is much more like my moments with the boys: an intentional connection with another being through undistracted observation. He gives his attention to the love of God towards the longing lost, the laboring imprisoned, the dying fool, those drowned by troubles, and he considers how steadfast that love is. What has your attention? This is a question worth considering because, as the psalmist reminds us, wisdom is found in how we spend that currency.