See-and-Hide

“The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.” – Proverbs 22:3, 27:12

One game the kids never tire of is hide-and-seek, or its variant, sardines. One of their favorite things to do in new or old spaces is to ferret out the perfect hiding spot. I suppose there’s an excitement in staying hidden while someone passes you by. 

That’s the mental image I have when reading this verse. Proverbs uses the word “prudent” eight times, and it is always associated with some element of concealment. A prudent man covers shame (12:16), conceals knowledge (12:23), does not lay open his folly (13:16), and hides himself (22:3, 27:12). He makes himself unavailable for the danger.

How can I make myself unavailable for danger, for temptation or sin? The first step is to see. I can track patterns to see if there are particular physical or emotional conditions, times of day, triggers or social situations where I tend to struggle with a habitual sin. I can do an end-of-day examen or journaling session to reflect on sins in my day and what may have led to them. I can give more consideration to areas of danger that may be coming in the future.

The second step is to hide. This may mean avoiding certain movies, books, or news articles. It may mean refraining from speaking. It may mean avoiding hanging out with certain people or at certain places. It may mean removing environmental cues or triggers around the house. It may mean actively seeking spiritual fellowship and accountability. It may mean finding a positive pursuit to make myself less available for dangerous distractions. 

The point is, making ourselves unavailable for danger can be an option. We don’t always have to stand and fight or struggle. But it requires prudence. It requires a certain kind of vision and knowledge about ourselves and about the situations and dangers around us. May we have wisdom to see what is coming and hide ourselves if we need to.

Resilience

“He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing.” – Proverbs 29:1

“What people need, it seems, is not a stress-free life, but the framework to treat stress well; to use it as a stimulus for growth, rather than buckling under it.” – Kirsten Burkett, Resilience: A Spiritual Project

One of the hardest things to teach our children is how to receive reproof without becoming defensive. There’s some variation depending on age and personality, but nearly always the response to a statement like “what you did was wrong” is some version of, “but last time this happened” or “they were wrong too.” Last week I found myself trying to explain to the kids what being “defensive” means: it’s like holding up a shield so that any negative feedback bounces off. That’s our natural instinct. But sometimes, you need to put the shield down and receive the negative thing; you need to try to listen, because that is how you grow. 

It occurs to me that this is about having a kind of resilience, the ability to bounce back from something bad. Indeed, this verse uses the language of elasticity: to stiffen ourselves against reproof is to become dangerously brittle. There may come a day when we snap. But receiving reproof is learning to be flexible, to have resilience, so that by implication we may heal and grow. 

“Resilience” has become somewhat of a buzz-word in popular psychology, but while resilience research centers on a lot of the same concepts that we see in Christian spirituality—adversity leading to strength, importance of meaning and purpose, benefits of hope and optimism—Christianity offers deeper, more centered answers, I think. Christianity says that resilience is possible because you are deeply loved. When my children know that reproof comes from a parent who loves them in a deep and even sacrificial way, they are able to lower their shields because they know that whatever comes their way will ultimately not shatter their sense of self, their identity as a beloved child. Secondly, resilience is possible because Christianity says that suffering is not all bad. Our response to adverse events depends not so much on the event itself as on our belief about that event—and if we believe that God can use even suffering to build our faith and purify our hope, then our response to it will be different.

We need resilience these days—spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical resilience. May we learn how to regroup in the face of unexpected challenges, may we never lose our hope and joy, may we not be afraid to walk through suffering, because we are deeply centered in a God who loves us and has called us to this moment we are in.

A Liturgy Before A Meal Eaten Alone

from Every Moment Holy, by Douglas McKelvey:

You created us for companionship,

O God, for the sharing of burdens,

for the joining of celebrations,

for the breaking of bread in fellowship, 

and so it is not unnatural

that we should taste a particular sorrow 

when eating a meal alone.

Sit with me and linger

at this solitary table, O Lord.

Sit with me as my father.

Sit with me as my brother.

Sit with me as my shepherd.

Sit with me as my friend.

In the absence of human companions,

may I know more fully your presence.

In this silence where there is no conversation, 

may I more clearly hear your voice.

Use my own momentary loneliness

to work in me a more effectual sympathy 

for others who are often alone,

and who long for the companionship

of their God and of his people.

Let me afterward be more intentional

in the practice of hospitality.

Let me sometimes be the reason

the loneliness of another is relieved.

Meet me now in my own loneliness, O Lord. 

Meet me in this meal. I receive it as your 

provision for my life in this hour.

Amen.

Knowledge and Wisdom

“Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.” – Proverbs 28:26

We were in a bible study group once, preparing to study the passage in which Abraham is asked to sacrifice Isaac, and the leader asked us to share the thing about ourselves that would be hardest to give up. Some people said their ethnicity, or a physical ability, but for me it would be my mind. I remember taking care of a patient with brain cancer once, and the process in which she lost her ability to think without having insight about what was happening struck me so much I wrote a piece about it called “Losing Your Mind.”

The fact is, I rely on my mind quite a lot. I count on my ability to list-make, analyze, discuss, reflect, or research whatever comes my way. And in this post-Enlightenment, information age, don’t we all? Isn’t that our first impulse? There’s always another book or article to read, another expert to consult, another angle from which to analyze the situation.

None of that is bad, but this proverb states quite baldly that if we primarily live by trusting our minds, we are fools. The first and second half of this verse are cataclysmically different. They exist in two different paradigms. The second half talks not at all about thinking but about walking: he who “walks in wisdom,” it says, not “thinks in wisdom.” We can think all we like, but in the end trusting our minds will not really tell us how to walk out our lives. That requires wisdom. And wisdom is seeing that we need deliverance. We don’t need to try harder or get more information: we need to be saved. We need to pray. We need to ask for help. This is not to say wisdom does not include knowledge, but it is something far more than that.

And so I ask myself: how much do I rely on what I think or research, and how much do I rely on prayer? How much do I sit and stew about the possible outcomes, and how much am I willing to just take the next wise step forward? How much do I think it’s really up to me, and how much do I trust in a God who delivers? Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.

Thirty Days

“The king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction, that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions.” – Daniel 6:7

For some reason, I’ve never noticed before that the prayer ban was only for thirty days. It was temporary! This puts Daniel’s actions in a whole new light. Have you ever gone thirty days without praying? I’m sure I have at many points in my life. 

In fact, think of all the things Daniel could have done to avoid death. He could have closed his windows so no one could know he was still praying. He could have decreased the frequency of his prayers. He could have prayed silently to himself and not out loud. And of course, he could have just taken a thirty-day break, before going back to praying like he had before. But Daniel was so committed to his spiritual routine that he was willing to die for it. 

There were other complex things at play here too of course—but the point is, what does it take to upset my spiritual routine? A lot less than a death threat. Fatigue, travel, torpor, an alluring or entertaining distraction. How much do I value talking to God on a daily basis? To Daniel, doing that was worth his life. And so he acted just “as he had done previously.” That phrase is significant. His spiritual routine eased the way for him to continue living out his faith even during a time of crisis and attack. And at the same time, the crisis and attack revealed just how much that routine and that prayer meant to him.

Do you have a spiritual routine? Would someone be able to say about you, “I know what time of day I can catch her praying”? If you feel caught up in a moment of crisis or unprecedented circumstances, are you continuing those routines? More than ever, we need right now to be spending time with God in prayer.

One Day As A Thousand Years

“But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness.” – 2 Peter 3:8

When the kids were younger, one of the hardest questions to answer was the one Dave would ask on coming home from work: “how was the day?” It was impossible to summarize. Every moment felt like an extremity of emotion: incredible elation when something cute was said or a gross motor milestone was achieved. Inexpressible frustration when the milk spilled, or a diaper blow-out delayed getting out of the house on time, or I had to discipline someone several times in a row. Sometimes it wasn’t a moment at all but the low-grade, constant state of fatigue that bled into everything else.

This happens to some degree for all of us, I think. There are moments we experience that are hard for others to ever fully understand: inner battles, mental struggles, a particularly rewarding or challenging encounter at work or home. There are moments too awesome or terrible to put into words, too close to share easily.

It’s really special that Peter says here that with God, one day is as a thousand years. That means God experiences one hour of our day as 41.7 years. One minute to him lasts 251 days. Can you imagine existing within one minute as if it lasted over eight months? How many different ways would you experience that minute? What kind of understanding would you come to about what happened in that minute? How would you come to see, feel, and think about it? 

I’m not sure we’re meant to take the expression quite that literally, but the point is, God comprehends our every moment in a way that no one can. In a way that perhaps even we can’t. There is nothing in our day that is lost to him. There is nothing we can’t share with him. There is no moment he does not understand.

A Thousand Years As One Day

“But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness.” – 2 Peter 3:8

One curious thing about infants is that they only have two conceptions of time: now, or never. I remember when our children would sit in their high chairs banging their spoons for food; I would say, “wait a minute,” and they would burst into tears as if I meant “I’m never going to feed you anything ever again.” Waiting five minutes, I suppose, seemed like waiting an eternity; it may as well never happen.

How often I’m like that! God, I want this now. I really can’t wait a day, a week, a year. Asking me to wait years may as well be asking me never to have it at all. I become bitter, resigned, impatient, distracted. Yet to God, a thousand years is like a day. Part of faith is learning to live according to the reality of what will surely come, even if it seems a long way off to us. 

Will Jesus ever really come? That’s what Peter’s readers were asking. We don’t see anything happening. Nothing’s changed since the beginning of creation (slight hyperbole). Peter senses the hurt and resignation behind those questions; his tone is one of tenderness here, like the one of a parent explaining to their infant—wait. Your food is coming. It may feel like forever, but I promise it will happen, and you can trust my promise. 

“Delay,” wrote Charles Ellicott, “is a purely human conception.” To the Lord, “a thousand years… are but as yesterday when it is past” (Psalm 90:4). We are prisoners of our conception of time, but if we know who God is, if we trust Him and His word, the same word that created the world, then we must trust that He will indeed fulfill his promises to us. We must in faith live according to that reality. We must be patient as he is patient with us (verse 9).

Enough Light for the Next Step

“Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path.” – Psalm 119:105

This verse says, your word is a lamp to my path, not the sun to my world: when we hold a lamp in the dark, it only casts the light so far ahead. The Message translates this, “By your words I can see where I’m going; they throw a beam of light on my dark path.” A beam of light. Just enough to see a few steps forward.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to the first day of school with so much still unknown. Normally, we would be in a flurry of back-to-school playdates and teacher meetings and educational nights. We’d be dusting off backpacks and lunch bags and preparing for school run routines. At this point I don’t really know what my kids will actually be doing for school. I don’t know when or for how long they’ll be on screens each day. I’m not sure how our home lessons will fit into that, or how it will look coordinating four different schedules. I’m not even sure which schooling option will end up being the best.

Our school district superintendent wrote recently, “Information shared by the District, including principals, is as good as the day it is issued.” We’ve all had to learn that the hard way, I think: that we can’t really know anything for sure these days. We can’t expect to see too far ahead. And yet this is the way that God’s word works in our lives: it gives just enough light for the next step. There is something about the revelation and movement of the Christian walk that works exactly this way—that doesn’t tell us what the future holds, only what we have to do in the coming hour or day. “The art of living,” Nouwen writes, “is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go. Let’s rejoice in the little light we carry and not ask for the great beam that would take all shadows away.”

A Study In Anger

“Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated… Because the king’s order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And these three men… fell bound into the burning fiery furnace.” – Daniel 3:19-23

In this passage, king Nebuchadnezzar is “filled with fury,” which ironically in Aramaic means “full of heat.” This is no steady or even momentary opposition to unrighteousness, but a sudden outburst sparked by offended pride. We learn four things here about angry outbursts. 

First, they distort our perception. Nebuchadnezzar had reason to trust these three men; just one chapter ago, he had appointed them over affairs in the province. But here “the expression of his face was changed” against them. Angry outbursts always distort our perception of others and the situation in ways we may not realize until later.

Secondly, angry outbursts are irrational. There was no logical reason for ordering that the furnace be heated seven times hotter—if anything, the victims would have died more quickly and been tortured less. The ways we vent our anger during outbursts usually don’t solve the problem or even make much sense. 

Thirdly, angry outbursts are always urgent. The entire thing was rash to start with (“if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace,” verse 15), but his outburst causes him to act with even greater urgency. There was nothing about the situation that was a true emergency, but that’s how these outbursts work: they flare up in the moment. They make waiting seem impossible.

Lastly, angry outbursts cause collateral damage. Nebuchadnezzar ends up killing the innocent men who carried out his orders. Angry outbursts always hurt more than just the people we target; they affect bystanders in ways we may not intend or be aware of.

Anger itself is not a sin, but Nebuchadnezzar’s story is a warning that angry outbursts almost always lead to sinful behavior, because they distort our perception of reality, lead us into irrational behavior rather than true problem-solving, and cause us to act too urgently in a way that ends up hurting everyone present. May we learn from his example and be wary of these outbursts in our lives.

A Liturgy For Those Flooded By Too Much Information

from Every Moment Holy, by Douglas McKelvey:

In a world so wired and interconnected, 

our anxious hearts are pummeled by

an endless barrage of troubling news.

We are daily aware of more grief, O Lord, 

than we can rightly consider,

of more suffering and scandal

than we can respond to, of more 

hostility, hatred, horror, and injustice 

than we can engage with compassion.

But you, O Jesus, are not disquieted

by such news of cruelty and terror and war. 

You are neither anxious nor overwhelmed. 

You carried the full weight of the suffering 

of a broken world when you hung upon 

the cross, and you carry it still.

When the cacophony of universal distress 

unsettles us, remind us that we are but small 

and finite creatures, never designed to carry 

the vast abstractions of great burdens,

for our arms are too short and our strength 

is too small. Justice and mercy, healing and 

redemption, are your great labors.

And yes, it is your good pleasure to accomplish 

such works through your people,

but you have never asked any one of us

to undertake more than your grace

will enable us to fulfill.

Guard us then from shutting down our empathy 

or walling off our hearts because of the glut of 

unactionable misery that floods our awareness. 

You have many children in many places

around this globe. Move each of our hearts

to compassionately respond to those needs 

that intersect our actual lives, that in all places 

your body might be actively addressing

the pain and brokenness of this world,

each of us liberated and empowered by 

your Spirit to fulfill the small part

of your redemptive work assigned to us.

Give us discernment

   in the face of troubling news reports.

Give us discernment

   to know when to pray, 

   when to speak out, 

   when to act,

   and when to simply 

   shut off our screens 

   and our devices,

   and to sit quietly

   in your presence,

casting the burdens of this world 

upon the strong shoulders

of the one who

   alone

is able to bear them up.

Amen.

Names

“And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.” – Daniel 1:7

“Bel bows down; Nebo stoops; their idols are on beasts and livestock; these things you carry are borne as burdens on weary beasts.” – Isaiah 46:1

In a way, the story of what captivity meant to Daniel and his friends are all in this one verse. Daniel means “God my judge”: a reminder both of the God who sees everything he does, and of Daniel’s vocation as a prophet who would proclaim God’s judgment to his people. Belteshazzar means “Bel’s prince.” Bel was the principal divinity worshipped in Babylon; to be considered his prince was a flattering distinction for the youthful Daniel. Your God is out of the picture now, he is being told. You have been selected as the cream of the crop, the prince of Bel himself; that is who you are.

There is an erasing of Yahweh in the other name changes. Hananiah, which means “favored by Jehovah,” is changed to Shadrach, which means “inspired by the Sun-god.” Mishael, which means “who is what God is?” is changed to Meshach, which means “who is what the goddess Shak is?” Azariah, which means “whom Jehovah helps,” is changed to Abednego, “servant of Nebo.” Nebo likely referred to the planet Mercury, worshipped by the Babylonians and in the name of king Nebuchadnezzar himself. 

Both sets of names assume that our identity is inseparable from who we worship. That we all serve something. That we all need the kind of favor, help and wonder that can only come from something outside of ourselves. But the longing and the purpose have been rewritten: not as coming from and looking to Yahweh, but as it relates to the alluring Babylonian pantheon of the cultural majority. Is this so different from what we do, from the messages we hear? We have our own gods of career, children, appearance, achievement, and so on. 

But as Isaiah says, these gods become burdens. They bear us down, like weary beasts. What promises freedom only brings us into captivity. “Listen to me,” God says. “I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save” (Isaiah 46:4). Daniel and his friends will not forget this, and neither should we.