Teach Them To Your Children

“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” – Deuteronomy 11:18-19

I need regular reminders that one of the main goals of parenting is to teach our children the word of God. Sending them to church does not suffice: consider that my kids spend over thirty hours a week at school, learning all kinds of other subjects, not to mention hours on sports or music. How many hours a week are they learning the Bible? The fact is, my kids aren’t spontaneously picking up the Bible. It’s up to me to teach them.

We can process this in two practical ways. The first is through daily family devotions. God’s word is to be on our hands and between our eyes: it has to be there every day; it has to be something we can’t avoid seeing. Family devotions provide that kind of daily discipline and reminder. The format, timing and content changes with each stage, but the point is to have one, to not give up experimenting until you find something that works. Even something short, done daily, is better than attempting something elaborate that is hard to keep up. Generally, we try to at least have some element of prayer and direct encounter with God’s word. We’ve found the easiest way to read the Bible is through books like The Ology or to pick a short Bible passage that we write up on the wall and talk slowly through. The kids are surprisingly willing to memorize things, so we’ve memorized the books of the Bible, the Ten Commandments, and are starting on the beatitudes. We end with sharing time, for prayer requests, to bring up unresolved emotional issues from the day, or to report on how we’re feeling (for some reason, Elijah always says with a dramatic sigh, “I’m tired”). We encourage them to pick people to pray for, or one of the adults just prays if attention spans are waning. 

In the past, we’ve done other things like sing through a hymnal (the Trinity hymnal is my favorite) or read about famous Christians. During December we go through a simple advent calendar. We encourage the kids to ask questions, no matter how basic. And finally, there’s the biggest secret to success: ice cream. At one point my parents advised making Bible time synonymous with ice-cream time, and well, now they won’t let us miss a night.

A second way is to ask God to help us both work the gospel into, and bring the gospel out of, any given moment of the day. We are to talk of the Bible when we walk, sit, lie down, and rise. This is not a program or an event; this is a lifestyle. Certain habits outside of family devotions can help, like listening to Adventures in Odyssey or GT Halo in the car, praying the Bible during bedtime routines, stocking up on Bible-based books we can’t find in libraries. But mostly, this involves doing everything Moses talks about in the earlier sections of these verses: after all, it is to us parents that Moses speaks. Our children can only receive what we have to give, and if the word is impressed on our hearts and souls, we won’t be able to help living this way. More than anything, our children will see what the word means to us: how precious it is, how holy and esteemed. And that’s my hope. I hope they love it, because I do. I hope they treasure it, because I do.

ABC's Of The Word

“And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.” – Luke 8:14

One of my most memorable rotations in medical school was working on the surgical trauma team in the emergency room of Massachusetts General Hospital (or “Man’s Greatest Hospital,” as we liked to call it). As a third-year medical student and the lowest on the totem pole, my job was to carry around a right-handed glove and a packet of lubricant and basically stay out of the way until the team did a log-roll, at which time I would check for rectal tone. I loved it, though: the pace, the variety and intensity of the cases we handled. No matter what came in the door, the first thing we checked was always the same: the ABC’s, or airway, breathing, and circulation, in that order. Is the airway blocked? Are there spontaneous respirations? A regular rate and rhythm? The most basic thing to life is oxygen getting to tissue cells: hypoxia can lead to irreversible damage in neurological cells within minutes.

The word of God, Jesus says, is not information we download of a Sunday morning. It isn’t an injection we take during a few devotional moments. It is life that grows, and to grow, it needs continual air and circulation. It is capable of being choked, its purpose in us aborted. The Greek word for “mature” is the same used of pregnant women. What suffocates the life of the word within us? Jesus identifies three things: cares, riches, and pleasures.

The word for “care” here, merimna, comes from a root meaning “to separate into parts” or “to cut into pieces”: this is an anxious kind of care, that comes from feeling drawn in different directions. Seems like this describes the baseline temperature of life here, where we’re expected to be simultaneously excellent in all areas of life. I love bullet journaling, but the fact that I need one to keep track of all the threads in my life says something, surely. The word for “riches,” ploutos, comes from a root meaning “filled,” referring to not merely possessions, but an abundance of them. The word for “pleasures,” hedone, means not merely pleasure but the insatiable desire for it; not merely concupiscence, but any lust that drives us to quarrels and distorts our prayers (James 4:1, 3).

These are thorns. Weeds are not plants that are bad in and of themselves: they are simply growing in the wrong place or to the wrong degree. They have become, as Augustine put it, disordered loves. But weeds do tend to be plants that proliferate easily and propagate effortlessly when unchecked. I love the mint in our plant beds, but I keep it in a pot within the earth because otherwise it would take over the entire space. And so, cares, riches and pleasures are not bad things, but they tend to take over easily. They can strangle all the life out of the word planted in us.

How do we weed out the garden of our souls? There is a lot to be said for learning to curb our appetites, our possessions, our anxious cares, and many times, I’ve regretted not doing that earlier or more habitually in my life. But ultimately, I think we have to love the plant that is growing. We have to care about its life and desire its fruit so much that we are always checking its ABC’s. Reordering loves is a matter of being pierced with love for Jesus, who wore a crown of thorns so that we could cast all our merimna on him (1 Peter 5:7). As Augustine wrote: “The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”

Shema

“And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, ‘Hear, O Israel…’” – Deuteronomy 5:1

Listening is complicated. There what you think, then what you say, then what the other person hears, then what they think about what they hear. Any step of that can get muddied up by bias, expectation, mood, tone, concurrent noise, and, in the case of young children, more important questions like can I have ice cream? We talk a lot at home about what tends to help the other person listen (direct eye contact, a touch to get attention) and what doesn’t (raising your voice, which alienates the listener and makes you mad if you weren’t already). We talk about how it helps to give a verbal sign that you heard, like “coming” or “okay,” even if you can’t do what is asked right away. All things I need to work on as much as the kids do.

But in the Bible, listening is about even more than all that. Did you know that there is no Hebrew word for “obey”? The word translated “obey” in our Bibles is Hebrew shema, which is the same word translated “hear” in this passage. Shema is about a lot more than acoustics. It means to focus on, to understand, to respond. It is used by Leah, who names her son Simon (Shim’on) “because the Lord has shema that I am unloved.” It is used at the beginning of many Psalms to ask God to act (“shema my voice when I call, O Lord,” Psalm 27:7). It is used by God twice, for emphasis, in Exodus 19:5 when he asks us to “shema shema my voice, and keep my covenant.” To hear is to obey; they are one and the same. 

True listening, listening the way God means, requires attention and action. This is so important that it became the name of the prayer Jews have recited twice a day for thousands of years. In a world of push notifications and banner ads, where multi-tasking is the norm, what do you stop to focus on? What do you give your attention to? Do we hear the summons of God’s word, understand it in a way that changes how we live? 

Free To Sabbath

“You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” – Deuteronomy 5:15

“Anyone who cannot obey God’s command to observe the Sabbath is a slave.” – Tim Keller

The institution of Sabbath comes only after liberation from slavery. We tend not to connect the two, but it is the primary reason Moses gives to keep the Sabbath. Quite simply, as slaves, the Israelites could not have kept a Sabbath. The Egyptians made themselves to be gods, and they exerted their dominion over the Israelites through work. And so, the Sabbath was not only the most concrete of all signs that the Israelites were no longer slaves, it was also a reminder that though they would still work, the work was no longer their master.

The Sabbath is a declaration of our freedom. Work is not our master, nor are we masters of our worlds through our work. In one sense, I take this quite literally. I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t beholden to work: as a student, to assignments and deadlines and exams; as a resident, to assigned shifts, clinic and operating room schedules. As moms, our time is not our own, and each stage has its own kind of work. After a week of freedom from routine, I realized coming back how much I really am at the beck and call of school and sports schedules, the emotional and practical needs of the kids. I am a slave to my labors.

Be a slave long enough, though, and it becomes your identity. We don’t know who we are without our work. We begin to believe we are gods through our work. In this deeper sense, I need Sabbath to help recover the me that is not a mom. I need Sabbath to remember that I am not the one who keeps the world running. I need Sabbath to reenter the goodness of a creation that exists outside the tunnel vision my work tends to inhabit.

It is all one journey: leaving Egypt and entering Sabbaths. And Moses emphasizes here that this journey is a story of rescue. It is not something we do on our own, but that God does for us: he brings us out with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. Hands are a universal means of work. Whatever cogitation may be behind it, ultimately it is my hands that operate, that cook and clean, that hug and dress, that type and write. But I can enter the Sabbath because it is God’s hands that have done the work. He has the might and power to release me from bondage. He has reached out to me; Christ has crossed realms to enter my world. To keep the Sabbath is to remember that I am neither slave to my work nor master of my world, but that God has rescued me with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. 

Ask Now Of The Days That Are Past

“For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of... know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth beneath; there is no other.” – Deuteronomy 4:32-33, 39

“Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.” – Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship Of The Ring

I’ve set myself the rather onerous task of going back to create family albums for each year, which means culling back through five years’ worth of photos. It is strange to realize that the younger two probably remember very little of their beginnings in Virginia, and what I put in these albums will likely become what they remember. 

Deuteronomy begins with Moses creating a forty-year photobook of the past. He has brought the Israelites to the brink of the promised land for the second time, but now with an entire generation gone. Some of the people before him were born in the wilderness, not as slaves; what they remember will be through story. We have a need for stories. Have you ever felt this? Children love and ask for stories. I crave them regularly myself, through a good movie or novel.

Part of our need for story is because all stories tell us about who we are, what we are here for, where we are going. Narratives are so foundational to how we think that they determine how we understand and live life itself. Our response to any situation is based on our grasp of the story. Human actions are all enacted narratives. And all narratives inform our actions. There is always a story under the story. Disney movies aren’t just princess tales; they are statements on self-actualization, individualism versus tradition, the primacy of romantic love, and so on, and if we watch enough of them, certain beliefs will seep in. Stories provide us with worldview, the comprehensive perspective from which we interpret all of reality, the lenses through which we see the world.

As Moses is wrapping up the first of three speeches that comprise the book, he does a remarkable thing. He takes off those glasses and holds them up for inspection. He asks, what does our historical narrative teach us about who we are? Who God is? How we should respond? He isn’t just trying to get the facts down. He’s trying to equip a new generation of Israelites with the master narrative they need to understand who they are and how to live, knowing they will be entering a land where the story the majority culture tells will be far different. What stories do our culture and workplace tell about who we are, how things are supposed to be, and how we get there? What story does the Bible tell? What stories are our children hearing at school, in books and TV shows, through our family life? In what ways have all these stories informed how we live, and the stories we ourselves tell?

God's Grandeur

By Gerard Manley Hopkins:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

All-Night Prayer

“In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve.” – Luke 6:12-13

What was the most important decision you have made in your life? In your ministry or career? How did you make that decision?

Luke tells us something none of the other gospels do: what Jesus does the day and night before making the most important decision of his ministry. He doesn’t consult for advice, take a survey, conduct interviews, bullet journal, list out pros and cons, review studies. Not that any of that is bad, but Luke describes with bracing simplicity the one thing he knows Jesus did: leave the city, seek solitude, and pray. The Greek for “pray” here is proseuchomai, and can refer not only to prayer, but a prayer-house. The Jews had these places away from the cities (Acts 16:3), on river banks, groves or hills; they usually consisted of a rough enclosure made of stone or trees, below an open sky. 

To be honest, I value my sleep, perhaps more so the older I’ve gotten. The only time I’ve pulled all-nighters have been the rare night before a major exam, or when required to during rotations in medical school and residency. I’ve never prayed all night. Yet that is what Jesus models for us here: whatever else you may do before an important decision, pray. Pray in a way that is marked by solitude, by extensiveness, perhaps by retreat to a sacred space.

Being compelled to spend an entire day and night in prayer is not something that rises out of the blue. It comes from a regular experience of God in prayer, and we see this as well in Luke, who describes Jesus praying more than all of the other gospels combined (Luke 3:21, 5:16, 6:12, 9:18, 9:28, 22:32, 23:34, 23:46). Too often, we do anything but pray. We worry or analyze. We make our own decisions and ask God to postscript a blessing.

I think about the important decisions I face in my life. As a parent, I think about perhaps the two most important decisions my kids will make: deciding to follow Jesus, and deciding whom to marry. Am I praying about these things, with at least some of the fervency and consistency they require? When was the last time I retreated to spend more extensive time in prayer? 

Growing All The Richer

“One gives freely, yet grows all the richer;

another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.

Whoever brings blessing will be enriched,

and the one who waters will himself be watered.”

- Proverbs 11:24-25

There’s a scene in the TV show Parenthood where someone is amazed Kristina Braverman can get her son to do homework. Without saying a word, she reaches under the counter and pulls out a huge tub of candy. The other day, we had a family meeting because the boys had been fighting more than usual, and after a prolonged discussion of factors and possible solutions (Esme’s suggestion: pay them all money not to fight), we settled on stickers. If they could go half a day without fighting, all four get a sticker. If someone is a peacemaker at any point, all four get a sticker. It actually worked for the few days we tried it. Man, I’m going to miss the days the kids could be bribed with stickers.

These verses don’t say, “one gives freely, because one mustn’t be selfish.” Or, “whoever brings blessing will be a nice person.” We aren’t supposed to not desire wealth, riches, and return. This runs all through the Sermon on the Mount: “rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven… for if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?... for then you will have no reward… And your Father who sees in secret will reward you…” (Matthew 5-7). We aren’t supposed to not lay up treasures. We aren’t supposed to be above reward.

What we ought to do is see how reward and true wealth work. If I operate only in a material, immediate plane, these verses don’t make any sense—and too often, my first instinct is to hoard what I have. But there’s botanical element weaving through this chapter in Proverbs. The Hebrew for “gives freely” means literally “scattered,” as in seed, which only yields crop if one lets go of it, dies to it. True generosity requires perspective, seeing that we grow rich not through what we hang on to, but what we give up, because it brings us eternal rewards and earthly non-material rewards. Because the act of giving is itself a reward, which, as David preached, transforms us. True generosity requires we have something to give, a deep experience ourselves of the seed of the Word and the living water. May we receive these verses as rebuke, encouragement, promise; may we see how they work true in our lives. 

Satisfaction Of The Soul

“My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food.” – Psalm 63:5

Isn’t this what we all want from Thanksgiving? We want to be satisfied with food, good food, abundant food. But really, we want all the things that food represents: tradition, home, gathering, warmth. I’ve had some really great Thanksgivings in my life. I’ve flown homesick down the coast on fall breaks, anticipating the day my mom would stick a turkey in the oven early in the morning, the aroma wafting through the house all day. I’ve sat down around a table crowded full with old and new friends here in California. I’ve made the same stuffing and cranberry conserve recipes for years, perfected a dry brine, and this year nailed the gravy.

But still something is missing. I feel like this about many holidays as I grow up. I find myself longing for a holiday in my memory that probably never existed: a pureness of joy. Less toil. My degree of preparation and delight perfectly matched by those around me. True belonging and understanding. No one missing. 

These, I realize, are soul-hungers. My own particular soul-hungers. God, I see that my hunger is for you. Your glory breaks down upon me now through these moments: times like today when life stops so we can gather around a turkey on a table. But these are just glimpses. David said, my soul will be satisfied with marrow and fatness. With fat and fatness. It was like he was trying to capture something he couldn’t quite put sufficiently into words, this idea of something that is what we long for on the tongue, but then that stays with us in the belly. True satiation of the soul.  Can my soul truly be satisfied with anyone else? With anything else?

So, after everyone leaves, after the clamor stops and the leftovers are packed and the dishes done, I meditate on you in the watches of the night. I don’t think David is satisfied at the time he is writing this; it seems like he’s in a difficult place, or at least that he’s searching. But he writes this like a promise. I remember you, God. I meditate on you. And my soul will be satisfied.

Jesus And Jubilee

“… to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” – Luke 4:20-21

In the perfect rhythm of God’s rest and restoration, every seventh day was a sabbath day. Every seventh year was a sabbath year. After every seven sabbath years was a Jubilee year, the sabbath of sabbaths. Leviticus 25 tells us they were to count “seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years.” And then, in Daniel 9, we are told that the anointed one, the prince, will come in “seventy weeks” of years, seventy times seven years. The Jubilee of Jubilees. “This predicted 490 years,” writes N. T. Wright, “haunted the minds of devout Jews in the centuries immediately before and after the time of Jesus. There is plenty of evidence to indicate that people were calculating, as best they could, when that time would be up.”

It is in this context that Jesus announces his public ministry, a moment most clearly defined here in Luke 4. Jesus reads from Isaiah 61, and when he gets to the part where Isaiah refers to Leviticus 25, when he gets to the Jubilee year, he stops. He sits down and says, today this is fulfilled. The Jubilee of Jubilees, the prince of Jubilee, is here. 

There is some shadow of the Sabbath in our culture, but we don’t really have a good grasp of Jubilee. None of us have experienced it, and it is unclear whether or not the Israelites ever did; they certainly weren’t by the time of the monarchy. The Jubilee was only experienced once in a lifetime, every fifty years. It taught the Israelites that the land on which they lived belonged to God; that life was to be lived in community; that each person had equality and personal dignity in their shared identity as God’s people; that life had a rhythm of worship, work and rest. The Jubilee countered tendencies towards inequality and poverty through socioeconomic restoration of people and land. But it was also rooted in spiritual restoration; its beginning was marked by the Day of Atonement.

Jesus arrives at this time, reading this passage, to show us that he is all that the Jubilee points to. Rest, redemption, forgiveness, justice. This is what his public ministry will be about. What does the Jubilee mean to you? How is Jesus this for you?

Silence And Time

“For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.” – Psalm 62:1, 5

In this psalm, David is under attack, yet the state of his inner life is marked by two things: silence and time. Nothing could be more diametrically opposed to his circumstances. How many of us, when we feel battered and shaken, when we most want direction and circumstantial assurance, would tell ourselves to wait, and be silent?

In her book Invitation to Solitude and Silence, Ruth Haley Barton describes what it was like to begin having daily times of solitude and silence: “I began to experience the ‘spiritual law of gravity’ that functions just like the physical law of gravity, and little by little I learned to trust it. When a jar of river water sits still, the law of gravity causes the sediment to eventually settle to the bottom so that the water becomes clear. We don’t have to do anything to cause that settling except leave the jar alone for a while. The same is true of the spiritual law of gravity. When we sit quietly in God’s presence, the sediment that is swirling in our souls begins to settle.  We don’t have to do anything but show up and trust the spiritual law of gravity, that says, Be still, and the knowing will come.”

David’s waiting was not aimless, but the aim was not a circumstance but a person, God alone, and this word alone, ‘ak, means truly, surely, only. He saw that his need was not primarily for a better strategy or response, but his need was for utter rescue, rescue that could only be found in God. 

Without regular times of silence, I sometimes don’t even know what my soul’s real needs are. I need time for the silt to settle, time to hear my need for salvation. Often I find an unexpected need to feel cared for, and like David need to hear God’s steadfast love (verse 12). Often I find myself relying primarily on my own ability, and like David need to hear that power belongs to God (verse 11). Often I find myself disheartened by the sin and apathy within and around me, and like David need to recover hope from God (verse 5). “The things that we most need to be known and solved and figured out in our life are not going to be discovered, solved, or figured out at the thinking level,” Barton writes. “The things we most need to know, solve and figure out will be heard at the listening level, that place within us where God’s Spirit witnesses with our spirit.” I wait in silence for you, God, and you alone.