Gentleness

“Your gentleness made me great.” – 2 Samuel 22:37

“Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent it is than force!” – Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

Is it easy for you to conceive of God as gentle? Perhaps that has to do with how much gentleness we ourselves have received, and I look back now with thankfulness for that in my life. I don’t have many early childhood memories, but nearly all of them are of gentle physical gestures: my dad holding me while walking in the dark of our living room at night, tucking me into bed. Dave, who is stronger than me in many ways, is someone I would describe as gentle in word and deed. I spent an extended year of training at Hopkins with an attending who was known for his gentle manner towards difficult patients. 

Gentleness is often considered synonymous with kindness, but they aren’t the same: if kindness describes our actions, gentleness gets more at the manner in which we act. If kindness is goodness in action, gentleness is more goodness in disposition. How we do what we do. When we handle something with care, we are making a statement about how valuable that item is to us, about its relative fragility compared with our relative power. We are choosing to wield our strength in a way that honors and understands the nature of what we’re dealing with, in a way that expresses grace, care, and love. In the New Testament, the word for gentleness, praytes, is often associated with meekness, as in “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:1). As Gayle Erwin writes, “When I look at the clues that indicate the nature of Jesus—born in a barn, questionable parents, spotty ancestry, common name, misdirected announcement, unattractive looks, reared in a bad neighborhood, owning nothing, surrounding himself with unattractive co-workers, and dying a shameful death—I find his whole approach unable to fit into the methods that automatically come to mind when I think about ‘winning the world.’ His whole approach could easily be described as nonthreatening or nonmanipulative. He seemed to lead with weakness in each step of life.”

Strength in weakness. Greatness through gentleness. I have always loved that line of David’s, because it is an attribute of God we so rarely hear praised. God has been gentle with me: never forceful or harsh; every rebuke and encouragement bathed in the gentle love of his presence. When I acknowledge and receive that from Him, I am able to be gentle with myself. I am able to be gentle with others, to be more careful and less careless in how I treat this person for whom my gentle Savior died.

The Lord Will Keep You

“I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?” - Psalm 121

We’ve begun our foray into the Songs of Ascent, the fifteen Pilgrim Psalms (120-134) most commonly thought to be sung by Israelites on their way to Jerusalem for one of three annual agricultural festivals. Psalm 121 does sounds like the song of a sojourner, with hills in the horizon, the potential for feet to slip, language of sun and moon and coming and going. One has the sense of a traveler planting one foot in front of the other, and its structure mirrors this step-by-step progression. The idea towards the end of the previous line is often picked up and repeated in the next line, a literary technique known as “anadiplosis.”

The first step comes when he lifts up his eyes to the hills: when he stops looking at the ground, or the people around him, and looks up. Most think these are the distant hills of Jerusalem, the place for which he longs. But he needs help. The destination is far. Where does my help come from? He answers himself in the next line, the next step: from creator God. How does he help me? The rest of a song is a series of steps carrying along the word keep, Hebrew shamar, meaning “to watch, to guard.” The meaning of God-as-keeper builds in description as the word is used with increasing frequency of repetition. He does not sleep, which means he guards you day and night, which means he keeps your life, and he does so now and forever. Keeps, keeps, keeper, keep, keep, keep: the word is used six times. Each time, a step. Each time, a reminder. Each time, a further meditation.

I thought about this Psalm today as a prayer for my children, and suddenly it read completely differently. My help comes from the Lord, and just as surely, he will keep my children. I can pray this for them, whatever journey they take in life. The famous missionary David Livingstone read this Psalm before setting out for the African continent in 1840. His mother-in-law, Mrs. Moffat, wrote him in Linyardi that Psalm 121 was always in her mind as she thought about and prayed for him.

This Psalm was recited by the entire congregation, not while sitting in a building, but while walking side-by-side. And so it is a prayer meant to be spoken, not only over our children, but over every believer we travel with together. It is meant to be heard, to be received as spoken over us. The Lord will keep you. 

The Infinite

From a puritan book of prayers

Thou great I AM,

Fill my mind with elevation and grandeur at the thought of a Being

   with whom one day is as a thousand years,

   and a thousand years as one day,

A mighty God, who, admist the lapse of worlds,

   and the revolutions of empires,

   feels no variableness,

   but is glorious in immortality.

May I rejoice that, while men die, the Lord lives;

   that, while all creatures are broken reeds,

      empty cisterns,

      fading flowers,

      withering grass,

   he is the Rock of Ages, the Fountain of living waters.

Ahithophel

“When Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his donkey and went off home to his own city. He set his house in order and hanged himself.” – 2 Samuel 17:23

The extremes in Ahithophel’s life are a bit alarming. He goes from being esteemed by both David and Absalom as a god (“Now in those days the counsel that Ahithophel gave was as if one consulted the word of God,” 2 Samuel 16:23), to committing suicide once Absalom took Hushai’s advice over his. The truth was, Hushai’s advice was (intentionally) bad, and it would lead to Absalom’s death. Ahithophel had not lost his touch; he had it more than ever. Why go hang himself?

We don’t know for sure. Perhaps it was simply having idolized his high status and career success so much that it was unbearable to feel passed over. Ahithophel was David’s most valued counselor, and was specifically requested by Absalom at the start of his conspiracy (2 Samuel 15:12, 2 Chronicles 27:33): that is a kind of power that would have gone to anyone’s head. Sometimes the best way to identify idols in our lives is to see what affects us most when we don’t have it. How would I react if I were to lose my mind, my physical health, my ability to work, my status as a parent, my wealth? Would I be sad or completely destroyed, without any remaining sense of meaning or identity, unable to go on? 

But we also know that Ahithophel was the father of Eliam (2 Samuel 23:34), who in turn was the father of Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:3)—a fact David was full-aware of, as it was the very first thing he learned about her. Eliam was one of the mighty men of David, as was Ahithophel’s son-in-law, Uriah. David had betrayed his closest counselor by violating his granddaughter and killing his son-in-law, a man who fought together with his own son. Perhaps this was why Ahithophel betrays David in turn by joining Absalom, proposes killing David himself (2 Samuel 17:2), and takes his life when he finds the conspiracy will likely fail. God had forgiven David, but perhaps Ahithophel had not. Are there ways we hold on to bitterness and a vengeful desire for our own justice in our lives?

There are faint echoes here of Judas, another man who betrayed a King only to hang himself. And just as we see the sovereignty of God in that situation, we see it here. When Ahithophel advises Absalom to publicly violate his father’s concubines, God uses that counsel to fulfill his word (“he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun,” 2 Samuel 14:11). But God also foils Ahithophel’s counsel to achieve his purposes (“the Lord ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel,” 2 Samuel 17:14). If anything, we learn that human thinking, even from the sagest man in the kingdom, is not enough. God’s power, his ways and thoughts, are higher than ours. Wisdom does not guarantee a righteous end. Ahithophel’s great-grandson Solomon would also be known for his wisdom and have to figure this truth out for himself. 

Jesus The Gardener

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

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

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

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

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

Gracious Words

“The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord, but gracious words are pure.” – Proverbs 15:26

Dean suggested last Sunday that one way to show sacrificial love was to “sacrifice that juicy tidbit to point the conversation in a positive direction, and say about others what you would want them to say about you.” That resonated with me. I struggle sometimes, not so much with malicious gossip, but the urge to pass along some annoying interaction or impression. When I struggle with a mom at school, I feel tempted to tell another mom who has also had issues with her. When a personality, opinion, or style of doing things challenges me, I’m tempted to vent to someone more similar to me in those areas. What I am really seeking is validation and sympathy for my annoyance. Maybe mixed in is some genuine openness to advice or desire to be understood, but mostly I want to have an audience to air my grievances. I care more about that than what kind of impression I could be spreading about someone.

The word “pure” has two main meanings. It can mean clean, as in not filthy or dirty, including the idea of ceremonial or Levitical purity, being unsullied before a holy God: “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27). It can mean unmixed or unalloyed, single, without hypocrisy, without folds, open, nothing hidden. This gets at the idea of true sincerity, being single-minded, having single-eyed devotion: “unite my heart to fear thy name” (Psalm 86:11).

Gracious words are pure. They safeguard us from being dirtied by the sin of complaint or judgment, and they safeguard the reputation of others. Have you noticed that there is a kind of power or reality that is birthed when you speak your thoughts out loud? We may have abominable thoughts, but we can still guard our words; sometimes we are able to stop patterns of sinful thinking by changing what we say. Gracious words also do not give room for division or hypocrisy; they keep our selfishness from creeping in and spreading to others by example. 

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths,” Paul says in Ephesians 4:29, “but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” Gracious words are those that give grace. They come at a cost: after all, the grace Jesus gives us, though free, is costly. Do I desire purity of substance and heart before God? Am I willing to give up my own rights or comforts or sinful tendencies, so that I can give others the grace I myself have received, through my words? 

Let It Be

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

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

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

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

The Holy Spirit

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

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

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

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

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

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

Covetousness

“I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight?” – 2 Samuel 12:8-9

When God sends Nathan to confront David, Nathan talks about covetousness, something so often at the root of other sins. It’s no accident that it’s the one commandment Paul mentions in Romans 7:7 when he explains how the law reveals our sin. It is the last of the ten commandments, and in a way underlies those before it. And while the preceding commandments are perfunctory (“You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.”), God is strikingly specific when it comes to coveting: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Ex 20:17).

This is worth ruminating on, because I find that covetousness is essentially normalized by our consumeristic culture. Consumerism breeds covetousness. Consumerism is more than simply the consumption of goods; it is a worldview that tells us we must acquire ever more or ever better goods as a means to deserved self-gratification or self-actualization. It works best when we set our sights on something specific: it starts with generalized discontentment and moves towards specific envy.

It tells us marriage is about making ourselves happy, not sacrificially loving someone else. That sex is about self-gratification, not relational giving. That jobs are about self-glorification or earning esteem to feel good, not a sense of vocation or calling. That parenting is about having kids who fulfill your own ambitions or make you look good, not stewardship for God’s kingdom. That material possessions are about comfort or status, not experiencing God’s faithful provision. And so it is easy to feel discontent if we don’t have the spouse, sexual partner, parenting outcomes, or possessions that we want or feel we should have. It’s easy to covet what we see around us.

At heart, coveting is despising God’s word. We despise what he has given us, but we are also despising his invitation to ask him instead for what we want. Isn’t it interesting that God says, “And if this were too little, I would add to you much more”? Do we really believe that? Do we believe Jesus when he says, “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Matthew 5)? Asking takes vulnerability and trust. It forces us to examine our worldviews and confront the nature of our longings. It opens us to experiencing the love of our father God. It is far easier to simmer into discontentment or fall into envy. May God expose any covetousness or self-focused consumerism in our hearts, and lead us instead to see His goodness and long for His glory in our lives.

God Be In My Head

Frontispiece to the Book of Hours, Sarum Primer, 1514

God be in my head

And in my understanding

God be in my eye

And in my looking

God be in my mouth

And in my speaking

God be in my heart

And in my thinking

God be at my end

And my departing

Let Me Hear Joy And Gladness

“So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her.” – 2 Samuel 11:4

“Let me hear joy and gladness… Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.” – Psalm 51:8, 12

In this section of 2 Samuel, we see the horrific results of sexual sin in David’s life. And yet, in his prayer of repentance in Psalm 51, he does not mention sex at all. As one person wrote, “Why isn’t he crying out for sexual restraint? Why isn’t he praying for men to hold him accountable? Why isn’t he praying for protected eyes and sex-free thoughts? The reason is that he knows that sexual sin is a symptom, not the disease. People give way to sexual sin because they don’t have the fullness of joy and gladness in Christ. Their spirits are not steadfast and firm and established. They waver. They are enticed, and they give way because God does not have the place in our feelings and thoughts that he should.”

I don’t know how intentional this lack of mention of sex in Psalm 51 is, but it is interesting to read it as a response to sexual sin. Circumstantial accountability and other practical measures may be important, but that is not what David asks for—he asks for a renewed spirit. He asks for restored joy in his salvation. And something about that rings true to me. Pathological guilt is of limited help in combating sexual sin. Sometimes it isn’t even about sex at all, but rather anger, boredom, weariness, insecurity, or some other underlying issue. The battle at heart is a spiritual one, and the solution ultimately must be as well. We learn to fight sexual sin by learning to love God more. We cry out, let me hear your joy and gladness. We learn to hear by marinating ourselves in the Word, by seeing Jesus as so holy and precious to us that we hate anything that keeps us from seeing and following him better. In moments of struggle we cry out for the Holy Spirit to uphold us with a willing spirit.

I was reading Thomas Merton’s writings on solitude when I came across this unexpected passage: “One vitally important aspect of solitude is its intimate dependence on chastity… Nowhere is self-denial more important than in the area of sex, because this is the most difficult of all natural appetites to control and one whose undisciplined gratification completely blinds the human spirit to all interior light… self-control is not only desirable but altogether possible and it is essential for the contemplative life. It demands considerable effort, watchfulness, patience, humility and trust in Divine grace. But the very struggle for chastity teaches us to rely on a spiritual power higher than our own nature, and this is an indispensable preparation for interior prayer. Furthermore, chastity is not possible without ascetic self-sacrifice in many other areas. It demands a certain amount of fasting, it requires a very temperate and well-ordered life, modesty, restraint of curiosity, moderation of one’s aggressivity, and many other virtues. Perfect chastity establishes one in a state of spiritual solitude, peace, tranquility, clarity, gentleness and joy in which one is fully disposed for meditation and contemplative prayer.”

Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5)—and while this refers to much more than sexual purity, that is certainly included. It’s interesting to consider this in light of Merton’s thoughts. It’s interesting to see how our conduct in this area of our lives bleeds so heavily, for good or ill, into other areas of our lives. If David’s story tells us anything, it is that we all can have these struggles. We all need to pray his prayer.