When God Surprises You
This Tuesday, my book Humble Roots finally released. Several weeks ago, I'd made a plea for help in spreading the word; this plea was met with overwhelming enthusiasm and support from around the country and around the world. And yesterday, one day after release, Humble Roots, with its message of finding rest through humility, topped Amazon's Inspiration & Spirituality category
I found myself needing to sit down a lot yesterday.
But this experience also reminded me of a section in Humble Roots. In chapter 9, I tell the story of a handful of green beans carelessly tossed into a pile of dirt late one summer. A month earlier, my husband had tried to cultivate these same green beans in our garden but to no avail. He planted, he tended, he watered, he staked. But after several weeks, all he had to show for his efforts was a lush vine with no fruit. A couple of weeks later, however, my son found the bag of leftover beans and "planted" them in the dirt next to our recently constructed patio. The beans sprouted, blossomed, and produced more fruit than my husband's carefully tended ones did.
Part of humility means trusting God with our plans and submitting to the possibility that they will not be fulfilled... But part of humility means trusting God with our plans and submitting to the possibility that they will be fulfilled in ways that we cannot imagine. Because we can't know the future, we also don't know when He will choose to bless us with abundance...
The fact that success can come without our efforts is testimony, yet again, to God's surpassing power and goodness. God delights to use small, out-of-the-way, unexpected means to showcase His glory... So, what if God can grow beans in a pile of unattended dirt? What if God can bring about good things without us? What if grace is true?
I never expected Humble Roots to rank so well one day after release. But I'm learning that God often does the unexpected. And sometimes the unexpected means calling us to places of leadership and influence that we did not seek. But even here, humility guides us because humility reminds us that this--all of this--was never about us in the first place.
I've often seen women struggle when their influence grows--whether it's in a church, community, or even in the home. Sociologists tell us that women often lack the confidence to assume leadership; and so when they're put in places of influence, they can doubt their own abilities, withdraw, and self-sabotage. (On the other hand, men--as a general category--do not seem to struggle with confidence in their own abilities.) I know this lack of confidence to be true in my own life. When I'm put in front of people or receive public praise, all I want to do is close up shop and hide, preferring abdication over the need to meet expectations about future growth. But as much as humility reminds us that God is the one who makes our work flourish, humility also frees us to flourish in the midst of that work. Humility frees us to become men and women of influence.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to write a short post for womensministry.net, a site devoted to supporting and encouraging women who are called to serve in position of influence in the church. I wrote about how humility is the very thing that makes our leadership effective. Instead of leading us away from growing influence, humility frees us to step into God's call on our lives by freeing us from preoccupation with ourselves. Specifically,
1. Humility rescues us from the need to make a name for ourselves.
2. Humility frees us from the paralysis of criticism.
3. Humility gives us the confidence to obey God's call.
You can read the whole article there, but ironically enough, this was the very article that I needed to (re)read yesterday. In the midst of all the excitement and busyness of Launch Week, I'm learning to take my own medicine and remember that this isn't about me.
Praise Jesus and thank heavens, none of this is about me.
Beauty Will Save the World
In hard times, beauty is among the first things we abandon; in hard times, beauty is among the things we need most.
In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, David Brooks recounts how Frederick Douglass, a former slave and abolitionist, used photography to change the nation’s view of slavery. Renowned as a statesman and activist, Douglass was also something of an artist, carefully selecting his posture, dress, and demeanor to communicate his intrinsic humanity. Near the end of the piece, Brooks confesses
I don't understand why artists want to get involved in partisanship and legislation. The real power lies in the ability to recode the mental maps people project into the world.
Brooks may not understand the temptation, but I do.
When the world is falling to pieces around you, beauty can seem trivial. When the world is falling to pieces around you, it’s so much easier to embrace utilitarianism. Why arrange flowers to set on the table underneath the window where the sunbeam falls when all flesh is grass and the grass withers and the flower fades?
In the span of seven months, this year has brought us terror and death and anger and division and violence. These may not be the worst of times, but they are, by no measure, the best. And in times like these, it’s tempting to bypass beauty and settle for whatever gets the job done. Go directly to the punch. Take the shortest route. Cut to the chase. And then, once your work is done, Cinderella, you can think about going to the ball. Once your work is done, Cinderella, you can sit down to read a novel. Once your work is done, Cinderella, you can write a song.
But what if the work is never done? What if the work can never be done without beauty?
A few weeks ago, I listened to a 2015 interview with Sonia Manzano, best known to millions of children and their parents as "Maria" from Sesame Street. Sonia assumed her alter ego in 1971 and spent the next 44 years showing us a community who lived and loved together, who fought and forgave each other. But that world was not the world Sonia knew as a child. Growing up, Sonia’s world was plagued by domestic violence and poverty.
And in those dark times, beauty became a refuge.
“I found a lot of comfort on television when I was a kid,” Manzano writes. “So I think it's interesting that I ended up on a show that offered a bit of comfort to children who lived in the inner city… Here was a moment, an hour, where there's order, where there's humor, where there's love in a place that looks like your home.”
Award-winning children’s illustrator Jerry Pinkney, echoes a similar thought:
Our work is to create books that act as wide-open doors—books that allow all children to walk through and feel safe enough to stay.
But beauty is not simply about creating an escape from present difficulties. The work of beauty is to create a vision of the world as it was meant to be. It is a way to see past the present darkness to a future beyond. To the tired, beauty promises rest. To the oppressed, it offers freedom. To the fearful, it whispers “Hope.”
“Poets, prophets and reformers are all picture makers,” Frederick Douglass writes, “and this ability is the secret of their power and of their achievements.”
What poets and prophets and reformers offer us is a vision of the world set right. This is why beauty is so powerful and why human beings have always made art, in even the most difficult times and most hardscrabble places. The Appalachian mamaw, fingers bent and eyes straining, thrusts her needle through bits of scrap, quilting together utility and beauty. The island child, malnourished and broken by disease, still gathers bits and bobs to fashion a toy.
This is human heart searching for its home. Searching for safety. Searching for the world as it should be. For in the beginning, it was good; and in the end, it will be good again.
I write this as an act of confession. A confession of what I know to be true; a confession what I fail to do. In the turmoil of 2016, I find myself abandoning beauty in favor of the utilitarian. I find myself focusing on the immediate, preferring argumentation to persuasion. They say talk is cheap and I believe them because talk is easy. It’s easy to pontificate. It’s easy to argue. It’s easy to analyze.
It’s so much harder to hope. It’s so much harder to believe. It’s so much harder to keep faith. It’s so much harder to create.
So hard, in fact, that pursuit of beauty requires Divine intervention. To live beautifully, to live full of love and joy and peace and longsuffering and gentleness and meekness, means being filled with God himself.
And so, as with every other Divine filling, beauty begins with humility. Beauty begins when we repent of our failure to see the world beyond this present darkness. Beauty begins when repent of our failure to see the Power who is greater than evil. Beauty begins when we repent of our lack of faith, and yes, even our lack of imagination.
St. Augustine, that confessing saint, once wrote of God: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new.”
One measure of faith, it seems, is whether we can recognize the Beauty around us. One measure of faith, it seems, is whether we work to create beauty around us. One measure of faith, it seems, is whether we offer hope to those who themselves struggle to believe. Because this is what every artist knows: Show. Don’t tell.
Do not simply tell us what is wrong; show us what is right. Do not simply tell us what we must understand; show us how to understand it at a level deeper than words. Do not simply tell us what the world is; show us what it should be.
Show us beauty Show us kindness Show us courage Show us faith Show us conviction Show us love
In these hard times, we must not abandon the work of beauty. We must take up our cross and discipline ourselves to celebrate it—the quiet moments, the simple pleasures, the secret joys--even as the world falls to pieces around us. But we must do more than this. In these hard times, we must take up our cross and discipline ourselves to create beauty. We must discipline ourselves to rebuild the world even as it falls to pieces around us.
So go. Set the table with the good dishes. Pick the wildflowers that will tomorrow die. Compose a song you already know by heart. Write that novel and build that better mousetrap. And in so doing, remind us all of what the world can and must and one day will be.
Confession and Community
"Take one sleepy seaside town in England, add a pinch of intrigue, stir in a brooding Scottish detective and his engaging local sergeant, and you’ve got the makings of Broadchurch, a British crime drama whose first series was, according to its millions of viewers, basically perfect..."
Last month, our family headed out of town for a week of vacation. We're still figuring out how to do this "family vacation" thing out because neither my husband or I grew up with "family vacation" as an annual reality. Now, before my mother and mother-in-law private message me to take issue with this statement, let me clarify: Neither my husband or I grew up with a specific week built into our families' calendars that guaranteed time away. We always took family trips; we went to visit relatives or went camping, but the idea that you could set aside an entire week at the beach to simply do nothing was not part of our experience.
This is so much outside our experience, in fact, that I didn't realize that you actually have to book a house months, not weeks, in advance. So when we finally decided to plan a "family vacation," we ended up shut out of the area we wanted to visit. Enter grandparents to the rescue. Given our predicament, my husband's grandparents graciously allowed us to use their winter home to go on "family vacation." So we packed up the kids and drove 900 miles to southeast Florida... in August. Like I said, we're still learning the ins-and-outs of this "family vacation" thing.
Thankfully, there is one aspect of "family vacation" that we became experts at very quickly--the art of doing nothing. Sleeping late, lazy days, fast food, and lots of HGTV, board games, and beach reads. This year this included binge watching the second season of Broadchurch, a British crime drama that is just disturbing enough to be perfect. My husband and I had watched the previous season a couple months ago, so when I found season two at our county library, I threw caution (and late-fees to the wind) and packed it for vacation.
Now, when I say that we binge-watched those eight episodes, I mean exactly that. We have no defense, no excuse; we sat fixated for hours in front of the television; and each time, as the credits closed the episode, my husband and I would look at each other, neither wanting to be the one to suggest pushing play on the next episode, but both of us desperate to continue the story. So after two late (late) nights of watching TV well after the children were tucked in bed, I can officially tell you, "It was worth it."
While there are one or two elements that might be uncomfortable for Christians, Broadchurch delves into the human experience in ways I don't often see in pop culture. Life, death, truth, our need for community--it's all there in one small English village by the sea. If you've seen the series, you'll know what I mean. And if you've seen it, you might appreciate this piece I wrote recently for Christ and Pop Culture about how Broadchurch season 2 shows the importance of confession of sin. And this--the importance of confession--is a profoundly Christian idea. We must confess our sin in order to be reconciled to God and each other. Proof is not enough; evidence is not enough. The wrongdoer must own his wrongdoing and speak the truth about it. Without such confession, our relationships break down and we end up isolated from God and each other.
From the piece:
Within the Church, the term “confession” has two usages. The first refers to the affirmation of a specific doctrine: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord…” So begins the Apostle’s Creed, one of the oldest and most foundational of Christian confessions. With such statements, we are able to create distinct communities based in a shared reality. Creeds and confessions don’t define reality, though. Instead, they form the bonds and boundaries of communities: If we have nothing else, at least we know the truth about these things.
Christians also use the word “confession” in a more familiar way: We confess our sins. Whether this happens within the confessional booth, an accountability group, or in the dock, when we confess our sins, we speak the truth about our actions. But often we mistake the confession of sin as an individual act. At its heart, confession—whether of faith or of a lack of faith—is about building community.
Evangelicals, who have traditionally emphasized the individual believer’s immediate relationship with God, tend to focus on the personal benefit of confession; “unconfessed sin,” as the thinking goes, will hinder your fellowship with God and strip you of your own sense of personal peace. Consequently, we’re encouraged to bring our sin into the light so that it won’t have a hold on us anymore. We’re also told that such transparency will allow others to be transparent with their own failings.
What we don’t always recognize, however, is that the confession of sin also serves a purpose similar to that of the confession of faith: It creates and maintains the bonds of community. When we confess the creeds, we speak together about the nature of God and his world. When we confess our sins, we align ourselves with a shared reality about what is right and what is wrong. We align ourselves with the truth that the community holds in common... Without shared truth, community is impossible.
One other note, there are some spoilers in the full piece so be warned--go binge watch season 1 and season 2 first.
Why I Stayed in the Church
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If you spend time in the Christian blogosphere, you'll know that there's been a lot of talk over the last few days about leaving and returning to the church. Most of the conversation has been sparked by uber-blogger Rachel Held Evans' newest release Searching for Sunday. In it, Evans recounts her journey of the last few years that has taken her out of the conservative church of her childhood to a being part of a church plant to full-on disillusionment to eventually returning to a mainline Episcopal church. Like others of the Millennial generation, Evans believes her process was, in part, instigated by the failures of the conservatism of her childhood. If you follow Evans' blog, you'll know that this is not a new theme for her. Or for other bloggers in her network. In fact, this disillusionment with the church is a major component of what has made Evans so successful--she voices what a lot of people are feeling. As you can image, this makes her pretty controversial or as the Washington Post called her recently, "the more polarizing woman in evangelicalism."
And yet.
And yet, I don't believe that Evans is the only voice for how the Millennial generation is engaging with the church. Nor do I believe that Millennials are leaving the church en masse . But I do believe we are wrestling. We are wrestling with the same questions that Evans is asking, even if some of us come to different answers. At least, I know I have and am.
Part of what I think might be happening is that those of us who are staying, despite (and sometimes because of) our doubts and frustrations, simply aren't speaking as loudly as Evans and others. I know I'm not. In many ways, I'm not speaking up because of how quickly the conversation turns messy and vitriolic, and quite frankly I spend enough time refereeing fights between my kids. I don't need more online.
Still, I wonder if I'm doing a disservice to my peers. What if I could offer good answers for our questions? Or at least, I could offer different answers than the ones we're hearing? Well, at that point, at least we'd have a choice. At least, we'd know that the only solution to our frustrations isn't to leave the church. We could stay. We could stay and be part of the change we want to see.
A few months after I'd started blogging here at SAL, I wrote a post entitled, "15 Reasons I Stayed in the Church." I thought now might be a good opportunity to rehearse those reasons. I re-read them this morning and they are just as true as when I first wrote them.
First a bit of background: my husband pastors a small country church in Virginia. We were both reared in conservativism and have experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly of ministry life. We've spent time overseas in mission work, struggled through a difficult pastorate (which we eventually left), and walked through a period of doubt where we questioned both our call to ministry and God's goodness. (It was during this time that I remember telling my husband we had to stay if only because we'd make very bad atheists--even if we didn't want to believe in God, we'd always have a chip on our shoulder and nothing's more irritating than a friend with issues. If we couldn't be happy atheists, it wasn't worth walking away.)
So when I offer these reasons for why we stayed in the church, I do so as a woman who has wrestled with the church's messiness--and my own. In the end, they may not answer your questions fully, but at least they'll be a place to start: Fifteen Reasons I Stayed in the Church
I believe that there is no such thing as Church (with a capital “C”) without church (with a lower case “c”)–as messy and as difficult as that may be.
I want to be the change in the world that I seek. And that means engaging the problems closest to me. Like in the next pew. Like in this pew. Like in my own seat.
I believe that reconciling nations and people starts at home. If I can’t work toward reconciliation in my own church, there is no way I will be able to accomplish it on a broader level anywhere else.
I’m not a militant separatist. I don’t believe that everybody has to think EXACTLY the way I do before I will worship with them. Even if they are more conservative than I am.
I don’t expect the church to be anything other than it is—a group of difficult, broken people plodding their way to glory. The kingdom of God is coming; it isn’t here yet.
I believe the church is bigger than political parties even if the people attending it don’t understand that. Even if the people who leave it don’t seem to understand that either.
I believe Jesus can and wants to redeem Pharisees as much as publicans.
I believe that by staying in the church I earn the right to speak about the problems I see. It’s the old adage that you can criticize your family but no one else can. By staying with “my family,” I can speak about our failures and the doubts I wrestle with.
I believe that 2000 years of church history holds a bit more weight than my personal experience.
I have Christian brothers and sisters who have been imprisoned and lost their lives for doing the very thing that I would be giving up.
I do not want to lose people I love and who love me and my family. And while there are times that conviction must trump relationships, these relationships act as a grid to help me determine whether my convictions are sufficient enough to risk losing these people from my life.
I need the church to regularly remind me about the things that I don’t like in the Scripture. Things like God’s anger and my sinfulness–things that if left to myself, I would conveniently ignore or rationalize.
I am not an island. My choice to leave church affects everyone else in the congregation. Remove one part from the whole and it is no longer the same entity.
I have children. And while I’ll be the first to admit that it’s dangerous to raise your children in a church that distorts the gospel, it’s also dangerous to raise them apart from church altogether. One way the gospel is expressed is in the loving covenant relationship that happens in the church – I want that to be part of the warp and weave of their experience. I want them to know that real commitment means taking the good with the bad.
Jesus hasn’t left the church. I don’t mean this in a sanctimonious way. I mean simply that after he threw out the money changers, Jesus continued to worship and sacrifice in the temple. His work is to purify and redeem, not to alienate or destroy.
I'll be honest with you, even as a pastor's wife, there are days that I struggle with being in a local church. There are also days I struggle with being in a marriage. All of us do. But these struggles don't necessarily mean that something is wrong. Sometimes they mean that something is very, very right. They might mean that God is using my church and my marriage to transform me in to His own image. And if He is doing that, then the worst thing I could do is try to get out of it.
Note: I want to make it clear that some church environments (and marriages) are abusive. Please do not read this post as supporting abusive religious contexts. I'm simply arguing for the validity of the church as a whole. Entrust yourself to the True Shepherd and He will guide you.
John Updike's "Seven Stanzas at Easter"
Seven Stanzas at Easter
by John Updike
Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers, each soft Spring recurrent; it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles; it was as His Flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes, the same valved heart that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring Might new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache, not a stone in a story, but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb, make it a real angel, weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle, and crushed by remonstrance.
From ‘Telephone Poles and Other Poems’ © 1961 by John Updike.
How to Debate Vaccines* and Still Come Out a Christian
(*organic food, essential oils, education, health care, immigration, soteriology, eschatology…)
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that there have been several outbreaks of measles across the United States recently. Not surprisingly, this has led to vigorous (if not often, one-dimensional) debate about the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccinations. And all I have to say to CNN, FOX, NPR, and every other news outlet that is now covering this story: Y’all are late to the party. We mamas have been debating this for years.
I remember the first time I realized that the questions surrounding vaccines were more than theoretical. I was visiting a friend when she opened her freezer to get some ice. There, sitting next to a chub of frozen hamburger, was a tray of lab vials. When I asked about them, she casually replied, “Oh, those are my kids’ vaccines. I ordered them from XYZ instead of the standard ones. My doctor said he would administer them if I bought them and stored them myself.”
Since then, I’ve watched the vaccine debate play out on blogs, Facebook feeds, and in the corners of church nurseries. And I’ve learned a few things—mostly, that we don’t debate well and that we tend to have an unhealthy relationship with the certainty of our own choices. So in the interest of making the next few weeks easier on all of us, here are some suggestions about how to debate vaccines and still come out a Christian:
1. Realize that we live in a broken world. One of Christianity’s core tenets is that we live in a world devastated by sin. Not only does this account for the presence of disease, it also means that our ability to combat disease will always be, in someway, inadequate. Learning to navigate the brokenness isn’t simply about having enough footnotes to back up our conclusions; navigating the brokenness requires the wisdom to apply the principles we know, weigh the relevant contingencies, and come to the best possible answer. Even as we accept that we will never arrive at a perfect solution. In a broken world, the questions surrounding vaccines are more an exercise in applied ethics than a simple choice between black and white.
2. Pursue true wisdom. Very early in the vaccine debate, one side will inevitably wallop the other with “the truth”—whether it is scientific research or a secret government memo. And that’s when the trouble really begins. If we believe that we have a corner on “the truth,” we will also believe that we understand things that other people don’t. That we have discernment that others lack. (How sad for them.)
I’ve seen this happen from both sides, but the ironic thing is that this posture is fundamentally unwise. In fact, Proverbs calls this kind of arrogant certainty by another name: foolishness. True wisdom does not boast about what it knows but humbly listens and learns. In fact, the difference between wise people and foolish people isn’t how much they know. The difference is that wise people know that they don’t know everything while foolish people are convinced they do.
3. Consider you neighbor’s well-being. Jesus Christ taught us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Because of moral proximity, our closest neighbors are those who live within our own homes, and it is our God-given responsibility to care for our children to the best of our ability. But loving our children also means remembering that they are part of a greater family where God is our Father and Christ our older brother. Unfortunately, too many people parent with the aim of preserving their own nuclear families intact. We see our own families as ends in themselves rather than a reflection of a greater family.
Instead of simply weighing my responsibility to my children, I must also weigh the responsibility that my children have to their neighbors—both today and tomorrow. My goal is not to give my children the safest possible life but to teach them how to love God and their neighbor as themselves. My goal is to teach them how to live within this larger family and draw their brothers and sisters into deeper fellowship with our Father.
4. Do nothing out of fear. Whether it is fear of what may happen if you don’t vaccinate or fear of what may happen if you do, many people approach these questions from a posture of fear. This is why reactions become so intense when you offer an alternative perspective. Honestly, these conversations are rarely about the issue itself but about what we are trusting to keep us safe.
But for a Christian, fear is the worst possible motivation to make any decision. We are to be awed by nothing other than God Himself—our loving Father who is sovereign over all. When we stop fearing the wrong things and start fearing Him alone, we’ll be able to engage the questions with power, love, and sound minds. 5. Trust God. So let’s say you do your due diligence. You research every possible scenario. You humbly submit to counsel. You make your decision before God. Guess what? It’s still not going to be enough to protect your child.
One of the hardest lessons of parenthood is learning that you can’t protect your child from suffering; an even harder lesson is learning that your own parenting failures will cause some of that suffering. Just as the world around you is broken, so too, are you. You are sinful and limited. If your parenting philosophy relies on your ability to make the “right” decision, you’re going to end up one massive ball of anxiety or worse, self-righteousness. And in the end, you’ll model a works religion for your children.
It’s been said that what makes us afraid and what we trust in to keep us safe reveals what we worship. In the case of vaccines, a lot of us are trusting ourselves and our own ability to know enough to make the “right” decision. But by its very definition, this approach is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Instead, the gospel calls us to embrace our weakness, to humble ourselves, and to cast ourselves on God’s mercy. Even when it comes to something as prosaic as vaccines and the safety of our children.
Especially when it comes to something as significant as vaccines and the safety of our children.
Houses on Sand
If you show up at our church at 10:15 Sunday morning, you’ll find me in a small corner room, my knees wedged beneath a two-foot-tall table, surrounded by 4 and 5-year-olds. We’ll probably be in the middle of a Bible story by then; but if you come a little earlier, we might be using a hand play for a verse or singing a song to get the wiggles out. In our class, we know all the old standards: “Young David,” “This is the Day,” “I Will Enter His Gates," and of course, “The Wise Man Built His House.”
Those of you who grew up in church probably know this last one (and might be already be singing along.) The lyrics are taken from Matthew 7: 24-27:
24 "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
“So build you life on the Lord Jesus Christ and the blessings will come down…”
There’s only one problem with this: it isn’t accurate. This isn’t the message of Matthew 7: 24-27.
Several weeks ago, I read this passage in its broader context and was hit with the unsettling realization that for 30+ years I’d been missing the whole point. I’d understood it as the tension between Jesus and “the world” and that a life of making the right choices would result in blessing. In reality, the parable of the wise and foolish man is about an entirely different tension.
Jesus used the story of the wise and foolish man to conclude His Sermon on the Mount. He had been addressing the crowds assembled on a Galilean hillside, giving them perhaps the most nuanced explanation of kingdom living of His earthly ministry. And like any good preacher, He finishes with an application and illustration. Those who hear His words and do them will be like a wise man who builds his house on the rock; those who reject them will do so at their own peril.
So what were these “words” that the people had to either accept or reject? What had Jesus just taught them?
Among other things, He’d given them the Beatitudes, teachings on divorce, advice about money, the Golden Rule, and warnings against false teachers. On the surface, these topics seem to be very different, and yet, they are united by one central thread. A thread that runs through the entire message, binding it together in a cohesive whole. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is calling people to a deeper understanding of their faith. He is internalizing the Law, pressing them past the superficiality of just “doing the right things.”
He warns them that their own righteousness will never be enough and will even deceive them. In fact, there are false prophets so deceitful that they trick even themselves, believing that they are doing their righteous acts in Jesus’ name. But far from calling the people to abandon the law, He is calling them to a better, more encompassing faith. A faith that actually changes them from the inside out. And he concludes all this with the warning to build your life on His words and on not “the sand.”
So what is “the sand?” The sand is our righteous works.
It is not the world’s system as we tend to envision it. It is not the danger of power or ambition or the love of money or lust or greed. Jesus is warning against the danger is self-reliance. We must not place our confidence in our ability to exceed the “righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.” Because if we do, when the storms come, when the thunder crashes, and the lightning strikes, everything we’ve been building—our families, our homes, our work, even our own sense of self—will collapse into one massive pile of twisted, broken wreckage.
Just look around you. Read the blogs. Hear the stories of men and women who tried for so long and so hard to be “righteous” people. They wore the right clothes, they had the right family structures, they used the right translations, they signed the right pledges, they listened to the right music, they had the right theology, and they went to the right churches.
But when the storms came, all of this “rightness” wasn’t enough.
Several weeks ago, I shared the story of Vyckie Garrison who walked away from a legalistic faith straight into the arms of atheism. Many Christians were confused by her story. They wondered how she made such a dramatic change. Why couldn’t she simply shift to a different, perhaps more moderate understanding of Christianity? Why couldn’t she simply become more “balanced”? She couldn’t become more balanced because all the leveling in the world couldn’t change that her life had been built on the sand.
This is also why those who have grown up in other forms of legalism often walk away from “the faith.” This is why there are so many walking wounded among us. And this is why even those of us who think we’re building our lives on Jesus must be humble. Because the minute we look down on those who didn’t rely on Him, we reveal that our own hearts aren’t relying on Him either. We are putting our confidence in our own ability to be "wise" enough to embrace Him.
I understand why rules and roles and theological paradigms are so appealing. In an uncertain world, they give us safety. A checklist can tell me exactly who I’m supposed to be and where I fit in all this chaos and confusion. And for a time, it will make me feel stable and give me a sense of order. But when the storms come--and they will—the bottom will quite literally fall out because my “house” was really only ever resting on itself.
Instead, Jesus is calling us to something better. He’s calling us to be wise men and women, who know that we will never be enough in ourselves. He’s calling us to humility and the security that even if we aren’t, He is. And ultimately, He’s calling us to Himself.
Hope for Monday
It was Monday.
In our culture, Monday holds a certain psychological mystique. It’s the bully of the week. The day that knocks you down and laughs. The day that steals your lunch money. The day that many of us just hope to survive. In the words of Alexander, Monday is a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
A lot of this is because Monday is the first day back to normal after the weekend. It’s the first day back to business—the first day back to school lunches and briefcases and time cards. The coming week looms large before us, and instead of being invigorated, we feel helpless. Instead of charging forward, carpe diem, we drag and slide and haul ourselves forward, bleary-eyed and overwhelmed.
Later that Monday, after a search and rescue operation to recovery bunny, I was thinking about how we approach this day. How we tend to dread it and make jokes and commiserate on Facebook about needing two cups of coffee to make it through the morning. And suddenly, it struck me: Jesus arose from the grave on a “Monday.”
Our sense of time is a funny thing, as flexible as the cultures we are part of. Over the course of human history, calendars have been based on the moon and the sun; they’ve shifted by decrees of caesars and papal mandate. In modern history, most societies operate on a seven-day week devoting at least one day to rest. But we arrange those days differently. Some of us rest on Friday; some on Saturday, and some on Sunday.
For example, a couple of years ago, my husband and I visited our friends, O. and N., in their native Israel. At that time, they lived in a Jewish suburb of Tel Aviv but as we traveled around the country, they pointed out that many towns around them were not Jewish. Instead they were identified by whatever culture group lived there. One town was Jewish; the one next door was Islamic; and one further down the road was predominantly Christian. It’s convenient they assured us. If the shops are closed in your town because of sabbath, you simply have to visit a shop in another town to get what you need.
For those of us with Christian roots, our day of rest happens on Sunday in memory of the Jesus’ Resurrection. This makes Monday is our first day back to work. But here’s the catch: in first century Judaism, Sunday was actually the first day back to work. Modeling God at Creation, the Jews began their workweek on the first day (Sunday) and ran through Friday, with a day of rest on Saturday.
So that the day that Jesus Christ rose from the grave was actually the first day back to work. That morning almost 2000 years ago, when a handful of women made their way to the tomb, it was a “Monday.” It was their first day back to caring for children, their first day back to the marketplace, their first day back to facing the realities that had happened over the weekend. All that we associate with “Monday” they felt that morning in the garden.
And in an irony that only God Himself can offer, Jesus Christ rose from the dead on that day. After three days, He stretched out His limbs, shook off the sleep of death, got up, and got to work. He rose in power and triumph over the darkness and is right now redeeming and restoring His creation. He is right now bringing all things under His feet. And it started on the first day of the week. Just like He shined light into the darkness on the first day of creation, He shined light into our darkness through that first-day-of-the-week-Resurrection. And just like He once fashioned creatures in His own image, He is right now making us into new creatures like Himself.
It’s as if He laughed and said, “Let’s redeem this world. Let’s get down to business.”
So Monday, you don't intimidate us anymore with all your doom and gloom and promises of failure. You don't intimidate us anymore because Jesus Christ rose on the first day of the work week. And by that same power, we enter our own work week, confident that the One who works on our behalf has already gone before us and conquered all things. Even--especially--Monday.
The Good Addiction
One of the things that always amuses me about being a pastor’s wife is that people think they have to be careful around me. As if I have a delicate condition that can’t handle the realities of the world. In order to protect me, they shuffle, they fumble, they apologize and then use euphemisms to describe situations that I could paint in living color. What they don’t understand is that, behind this genteel exterior, I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen the brokenness, heard the sobs, and felt the ache of a creation waiting for redemption. In this kind of work, you lose your innocence pretty quickly.
Those who haven’t probably aren’t doing their jobs.
The other amusing thing is how quickly my conversations with my pastor-husband turn from the prosaic to the profound. One moment we’re discussing the rotation of children’s workers, and the next we’re talking about how to apply the realities of theosis to counseling.
Just last week over our dessert and coffee, we found ourselves discussing the nature of addiction. Whether it manifests itself in substance abuse, eating disorders, gambling, or pornography, the roots and overall structure of addiction is fairly consistent. And one of the most dangerous characteristics of addiction is that it always leaves you wanting more. You tell yourself this one thing, this one game, this one look will be enough. But it never is. You are left craving the next hit, the bigger fix, to achieve the high that you felt the first time.
I wonder if this is something of what Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount when He taught that if you lust after a woman you’ve already committed adultery and if you hate it’s as if you had murdered your brother. Clearly, Jesus was internalizing the Law, moving it past externals to show us that God is just as (more?) concerned with our hearts than whether or not we act appropriately. But Jesus was never one to teach one-dimensionally so I can’t help but wonder if He was alluding to something else about the nature of sin.
Could it be that Jesus was also teaching about the nature of addiction? Could He have been echoing the truth that once lust conceives, once the cycle starts, there’s little that can stop it: that lust is the gateway to adultery; hatred the gateway to murder. Like a seed, the natural course of any addiction is to sprout and eventually grow into a full-blown plant that bears fruit. Fruit that itself will contain seeds that have the potential to replicate themselves in another generation if the course of nature is left unchecked.
But then I thought, what if the problem isn’t addiction itself but the object of the addiction?
What if we are made to be addicted to something—Someone? To love Him with our whole hearts and souls and minds and bodies. To be driven, panting, thirsting after Him. To be consumed, not with wine, but with His Spirit.
What if we are made to be addicted to God?
And what if His eternal, boundless nature is the only thing that can promise a world of unending highs so that even as we need our next “fix,” He will never fail to provide it. Even as we press further and further into the mysteries of His nature, He will always be enough. He will always take us to the next level. And just like any other, this God-addiction will grow from a seed—even the size of a grain of mustard—into a full-blown plant that produces its own fruit. Fruit that itself has the potential to reproduce into another generation of faith and good works.
C. S. Lewis once famously described Christianity is a “good infection.” Taking a word that normally has a negative connotation, he taught that Jesus “came into this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has.” In keeping with this, I can’t help but think that the Christian life could also be described as an addiction. Unbounded, full-flung, unfettered addiction to life with God.
An addiction from which we will never recover.
Walking Wounded
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the religious disposition of Millennials, but being a pastor’s wife in a rural, southern setting, I have to admit that all this angst and alienation from the Church isn’t all that unusual. In fact, if you spend any reasonable amount of time around the Church, you’re sure to meet those who have been harmed by it. My husband seems to get the lion’s share of these stories, often at the most unexpected moments; sometimes it’s when he’s out running errands or when he’s picking up the kids or making hospital visits. And more often than not, they start something like this: “I used to go to church, but then this pastor…”
Now, I’ll be the first to argue for the legitimacy of the Church. In fact, I have argued for it quite extensively; for goodness' sake, not only am I a pastor’s wife, I am a religious writer. My entire life is invested in the established religious structure. (Because as much as we hate to admit it, as much as we like to believe that we are the “independent voice,” every faith blogger, by definition, is part of the reigning religious order.)
And yet.
And yet, there’s something that those of us who embrace the Church must remember about those struggling to do so--especially those who have recently emerged from a religious context empty of the gospel. When you have been taught false things about God, when leaders have spoken blasphemy in His name, when you have endured, not simply the failures of good men, but the manipulation of bad, recovering from it will not be easy. Doubt will be strong and alienation deep.
Ironically, those of us most committed to elevating the gospel in Church practice are the first to miss this. Even as we proclaim that the gospel is life, we forget that the absence of it is death. We forget that religion devoid of the gospel starves, maims, and pummels those trapped in it so that when they are finally liberated, they walk out wounded. And just like the Allied Forces were shocked when they liberated the concentration camps of WWII Europe, we continue to be shocked when we encounter those who have been harmed by religion and struggle because of it.
Notable Christian author Latayne C. Scott writes about her own struggle after leaving the religious, but gospel-absent, context in which she grew up.[i] She recounts that even after recognizing the distortions that she had been taught to believe, even after coming to understand grace, even after committing herself to the faithfulness and generosity of a community of believers; she still could not feel its safety because “nobody knew how to address the needs of a heart broken by a church.” She writes,
The unarticulated and untargeted sense of betrayal I felt became the permanent inner garment of my soul… How, I ask, would one assess all the hours of church attendance, all the vulnerabilities of prayer and fasting and secret sacrifice? …How utter the sense of loss, how unrecoverable the hours and years, how foolishly squandered the hopes.
Who do you blame when you have been duped by a church?
For me, I couldn’t find anyone to blame. Not my friends, I knew their good hearts… I wanted to reproach myself for being suckered—but how could I hold responsible the trusting eleven-year-old? The trusting teenager? The trusting college student…
If there is no loss as great as the loss of one’s god, there are few tasks to compare with setting out to learn to serve another one. If you’ve been burned by a god, how do you learn to trust another one? Make no mistake about it, I knew I needed what only he could provide; forgiveness of sins, eternal life, church and community based on truth, not beloved fictions…[but] I knew from the beginning that I would walk with a spiritual limp the rest of my life. I came to a time when I hung on only by my fingernails and Scripture passages… I hungered so desperately for the ability to trust and be vulnerable to God that I asked him to take my life if I could not experience that…
Theologically speaking, [that church] was my first love; and it broke my heart. Nothing about leaving [it] seemed courageous or noble at the time: It was pure spiritual survival, the escape from the burning building into the arms of strangers. Some of us go still-singed into atheism or simmer in anger, or distract ourselves with other things… Some of us, through the grace of God, learn to love him. Often that one act can be the greatest sacrifice of will in our lives, to respond and surrender to his love for us. And so those of us who know the safety of the Church must learn to understand those who don’t. We must learn to differentiate between those who limp across the finish line and those who aren’t even in the race. We must remember that the fight for orthodoxy isn’t simply a fight for right doctrine or an ideological battle between legalism and grace. It is a fight for souls. It is a fight to free those who have been held captive and abused in Hell’s prison camps. And we must not be surprised when they cannot run out to meet us.
We must not be surprised when they need medical attention. We must not be surprised when they can’t trust someone in uniform. We must not be surprised when their empty stomachs cannot handle a full meal. We must not be surprised when we have to pick them up and carry them. We must not be surprised if they turn out to be the most vulnerable among us.
Because as quickly as their experience will enable them to spot a false gospel, it will just as quickly make it difficult for them to embrace the truth. This should not lead us to judge them, but to judge ourselves. To confirm that we are teaching only grace and truth. To question whether we have wept with those who weep. To ask whether, like Christ the Good Samaritan, we have stopped by the way to rescue those who have been beaten and abused, robbed and abandoned.
And above all, it must make us determined to give them Jesus. We must hold out His grace and mercy; we must hold out His truth and love. Because it is here, in His presence, that these starved, helpless souls will finally find hope. Here with the One who causes the blind to see, who makes the lame to walk, and who sets the captives free. Here, only here, will they find--will any of us find—the victory we so desperately need.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________ [i] I purposefully omitted Scott’s religious background in order to let her words speak for those caught in a variety of gospel-less, but religious, paradigms. These paragraphs are take from Scott's book, The Mormon Mirage, pp.274-276, 292.
Faith for the Dark Days
Not that I was completely unaware. I knew this week was going to be busy with organizing and executing a church dinner. I expected trips to Sam’s Club and late nights of baking and centerpieces. What I did not expect were missed writing deadlines, late nights of pastoral care, and the ache of being far from family when I most needed to be close. And what I certainly did not expect was my husband's having to conduct a funeral for a mother whose children will grow up without her. Children the same ages as ours.
How deceptively simple that calendar looked last week. How benign.
On weeks like these, it’s easy to fall back on truisms--“You never know what the future holds” and “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle” and “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”—all in some half-hearted attempt to make sense of the chaos swirling around us. But I want to tell you that they are all lies. Dreadful, terrible, sugar-coated lies.
Because while I didn’t know that the future held, God did. And He let it come anyway. And I’m not so sure that grace means that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle. In fact, I’m pretty sure that God does routinely give us more than we can handle; and I’m pretty sure that, more often than not, it does break us--if not physically from the sheer exhaustion of living, then emotionally from the sheer exhaustion of feeling.
So that on weeks like these, you find yourself longing for a better place and a better time. You find yourself longing for Home and Him. And I wonder if that wasn’t what He had in mind all along. In giving us more than we can handle, He forces us to turn to Him. In allowing things that break us, He ensures that only He can bind us back together. In our weakness, we find His strength. In our brokenness, we find His healing. And in our dying, we find His resurrection.
I’m beginning to believe that this is where faith starts. Faith starts at the tomb, not at the manger; faith starts with the dying, not with the living; and faith starts with seeds falling into the ground, not with the final fruit. So that for all the joy, all the beauty, all the wonder that this life holds, it is the pain that makes space for faith. The pain makes space for us to long for something better; the pain makes space for us to cry out for something greater. And we find that something—we find Him--not by avoiding the grave but by walking right through it.
I can’t predict that next week will be any less chaotic or that all the brokenness will suddenly disappear with the turn of the calendar. Time does not heal all wounds. But I have hope in Someone who does. It's a hope that doesn’t always see and a hope that doesn’t always understand, but it is a hope that is real and beautiful and life-giving. And it is a hope that ultimately rests, not in my ability to endure the pain, but in His power to bring me back to life when I cannot.
When Less Is... Less
If you’re not among the mommy set, you may not have heard about Hattie Garlick, the UK mom who has vowed not to spend a single pound on her two-year-old son for the next year. Hattie's decision is part social rebellion, part necessity. She credits a growing distaste for “kiddy consumerism” and the fact that she was recently laid off (or as our British cousins say, “made redundant”). Ultimately, her decision is rooted in the ideas of minimalism and thrift--that we don’t need what everybody says we need and what we do need, we can find more cheaply.I know a bit about this kind of counter-cultural lifestyle. I grew up in a family of seven with an extremely limited income. We gardened, canned, and wore hand-me-downs, not because my parents were making a public statement, but because they were trying to clothe and feed us. Even today with a smaller family and a decidedly larger income, I still buy most of our clothes at Goodwill, we hunt, garden, and can, and my idea of a good time is shopping at Aldi. And yet, even I am skeptical of frugality for frugality’s sake. (If I’m honest, I suppose I’m also a bit of a curmudgeon. Whenever being counter-cultural becomes trendy, I immediately get suspicious--I don’t make a very good hipster.)
Because even while those of us enmeshed in consumerism might need to cut of our hand to save our souls, minimalism can have as many pitfalls as materialism. It’s entirely possible to trade consumerism for a Gnosticism that elevates efficiency and thrift above everything else. Just because we might be counter-cultural doesn’t mean that we don’t have our share of sub-cultural baggage. See if any of this luggage is yours:
- You don’t buy what you need. You skimp. Of course, the difficulty lies in determining the difference between a need and a want, but when thrift becomes your predominant value, it’s common to overreach on the definition of “want.” Toiletries are not wants, people.
- You get angry when the manager’s special corner is empty. Another pitfall is that you begin to feel entitled to a discount. You get addicted to “the deal” and refuse to pay full price for anything. You believe that the Sunday paper exists for the sole purpose of protecting your coupons and you feel cheated when there are none inside.
- You buy cheap instead of good. While the culture of advertising does ratchet up prices, a cheap price isn’t necessarily a bargain. Not all products are equal--there are reasons why the dollar store can sell dish detergent for a dollar. Any of which might be that it doesn’t work, it was produced with slave labor, or it includes toxic chemicals.
- You never throw anything away because “you never know.” Strict minimalists will have less of a struggle with this, but it is a significant problem for those of us devoted to thrift. I once had a great aunt who washed and dried paper towels. And Styrofoam meat trays. And plastic wrap. After all, you never know…
- You hear your children talking about life in terms of money. When you are uber-frugal, you begin to evaluate things by how much they don’t cost. Designer brands aren’t your status symbols; how cheaply you bought something is. When your children see this, you teach them that the value of something is directly related to its cost. This could come back to haunt you down the road--like when they’re choosing your nursing home.
- You become cheap with other people. Once you being to elevate thrift above your other values, it’s hard to contain it to your immediate family. While I love re-gifting as much as anyone, we must not forget that giving requires sacrifice—not on the part of the recipient but on the part of the giver.
- You judge other people who use money and space differently. For me this exhibits itself in suburbaphobia—the clinical fear of suburbia. I literally shut-down in malls and hate myself after eating at chain restaurants. And yet, I have to admit that this is simply another form of elitism; it’s the snobbery of thrift.
I wonder how we frugal-types will react when we finally reach heaven and God showers us with abundance. “I’m sorry, God, no mansion-- I’ll just take that cottage over there. And I’m not sure if I can make it to that marriage-supper thingy…don’t want to have to buy a gift. But while you’re here, where can I get the Sunday paper?”
This is not a rant against thrift but a caution about not letting our thrift and minimalism become the defining factor of our lives. Because even as our budgets shrink, it’s entirely possible that our souls could shrink right along with them. Our thrift can quickly become parsimony and our frugality, stinginess. We must remember that the problem isn’t how much money we have; it’s how much we love the money we have. So that while we steward our blessings, we don’t for one minute believe that our stewardship provided them in the first place. Or that our stewardship could ensure that they will be there in the future.
Only God can do this. And He can do this precisely because He is a thrifty God—He doesn’t waste anything and has the power to make even our suffering work out for good. And ultimately, He can do this because He is a generous God—He doesn’t spare expense and has bought us for Himself with nothing less than the precious blood of his Son. And if He didn't spare Him, how shall he not with Him freely give us all things?
Water for Life
Most us of know that our bodies are comprised of roughly 60% water, and we also know that we should drink the proverbial eight glasses a day. Nutritionists also tell us that drinking a glass of water before a meal can actually reduce the number of calories that you will consume during that meal as well as go a long way to alleviate the aquatic guilt that many of us feel when we substitute our water with Diet Coke, sweet tea, or coffee. But I’ve also learned something else about water recently. Did you know that it is actually possible to confuse hunger and thirst? Sometimes when we think we are hungry, we are actually thirsty. The two impulses are so similar that we don’t always accurately distinguish between them, and because eating is so much more sensually satisfying, we tend to gravitate to this option first. Who wants to drink a colorless, odorless, tasteless liquid when you can indulge that craving with this?
I’ve observed this phenomenon with my own children. When they were babies, we had no trouble getting them to drink enough water--their entire diet consisted exclusively of liquid. But as they’ve grown into table food, they routinely leave their glasses half-full and only ask for water after they’ve eaten something particularly salty. They do however snack A LOT. Still, I can’t say that I’m much better. I rarely feel “thirsty” so drinking enough water has become more of a conscious choice than a natural response.
I began wondering if this phenomenon—this confusing thirst and hunger—plays out in other areas of life, particularly our spiritual life. Is it possible that we think we’re hungry when we’re actually thirsty? Because I've observed another trend--a trend in my own life and among other Christians. We seem to have an insatiable hunger for Christian resources. We are driven to consume vast amounts of Christian media—books, music, sermons, podcast, conferences, and (at the risk of alienating my own audience) blog posts. We skip from the latest, greatest Bible teacher to the next. We rush from one church to another in an attempt to fill our souls.
And still we don’t feel like we're getting enough.
The truth is that we are often gluttons when it comes to consuming Christian ideas and texts. (I read recently that the English language has over 50 different versions of the Bible while some languages continue to have none.) Because of our wealth, we also have more resources than any other generation who has ever lived--more books, more studies, more music, and more programs. And while this can be helpful to our Christian walk, I wonder how many of us are replacing our resources for an actual relationship with Christ. I wonder how many of us are confusing a hunger for Christian ideas with our thirst for Him.
Are we snacking when all we really need is a long, cool, satisfying drink of pure, unglamorous water?
When your soul feels parched and dry, you need Jesus. When you feel sluggish and tired, you need Jesus. When you feel lightheaded and think you are going to faint, you need Jesus. When your vision is beginning to blur, you need Jesus. You don’t need another Bible study, you don’t need another small group, you don’t need another podcast. You need the water of life—you need to drink Him in, you need to saturate yourself in Him.
Now, I’m not criticizing the need for sound teaching or regular Bible reading—we would not know Jesus apart from His word. But I also know that it is very easy to replace the activity of knowing Him for actually knowing Him, to replace communion with each other for communion with Him. But just like our physical bodies cannot exist without water, our souls were never meant to exist apart from Jesus. Apart from Him, we will continue to be thirsty, only to return to the broken cisterns that will never completely satisfy our souls. Apart from Him, we will eventually shrivel up and die.
So the next time you’re feeling peckish, the next time you’re feeling restless or spiritually hungry, remember this: Maybe you’re not hungry at all; maybe you’re simply thirsty, thirsty for the water of life. Maybe you need to drink freely of Him. And I promise you--once you do--you will never be thirsty again.
Good Reads
When we arrive in a new area, one of the first things we do is apply for local library cards. Before finding a family doctor, before changing our voter registration, before transferring our drivers’ licenses, we find a source of cheap, sustainable books (preferably that have a four week lending period). Because as problematic as it may be to be pulled over and have to explain why you’re driving with a Indiana license when you reside in Virginia, nothing compares to the panic that grips my soul at the thought of not having bedtime stories or a pile of books waiting patiently for me on my nightstand.
For me, this love affair with books (which I suppose also meets the clinical definition of certain addictions) began when I was young. My mother was (and is still) an insatiable reader who was rarely seen without a book in hand—everything from Dickens to Horace to Austen–this woman taught me that while it’s fine for a girl to be pretty, it’s essential that she read. And do so often. My husband, on the other hand, didn’t discover reading until his sophomore year of college when his American Lit professor captured his imagination with an excerpt from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (Consider this a plug for required college English classes—you never know what they may ignite.)
And yet, I really don’t count myself among the literati. There are lots of books that I haven’t read, lots that I should have, and probably even more that I shouldn’t have. I always feel slightly inferior whenever I see my friends’ Goodreads’ lists or overhear them discussing the latest, most significant, most groundbreaking new release—the one that I didn’t even know existed. And to be perfectly honest, I find myself projecting these insecurities as I smugly pass the Amish fiction section in the local Christian bookstore--all the while secretly wondering what I’m missing.
Still, according to Karen Swallow Prior, Chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages at Liberty University, this isn’t a problem. In this interview spotlighting her recently released memoir, Booked! Literature in the Soul of Me, Prior suggests that it’s not so much what we read—although I’m sure she’d have a some recommendations—as it is that we read, that we allow the process to shape our souls as it has hers. In doing so she echoes the words of G.K. Chesterton who argues in “The Ethics of Elfland” that his faith began in the nursery where he acquired a “certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by mere facts.”
Simply put, what we acquire through literature is what we need to live in reality. When a story stretches our capacity to understand situations and characters, it is in effect teaching us how to “read” life. And through the process, we discover more about ourselves, our God, and others. Through His good gift of the book, our souls expand and we are given the opportunity to live beyond ourselves in order to gain perspective on ourselves. If only in those moments, if only through the slimmest of volumes, we are ushered into a “laboratory of life” in which we can experiment and dream, in which we can see the world as it should be or discover the tragic consequences when it is not.
It is no coincidence that Christians should be, not only people of “The Book,” but people of books. In His wisdom, our God has ordained that His words not simply be spoken by the prophets but that they also be written and preserved by the scribe. And perhaps more significantly, in His wisdom, our God has deigned to call His Son the incarnate Word—a living, breathing, walking… story. A Story within a story. The Story on which all others rest.
We should not be surprised then if our souls, the very souls that were formed after His, resonate and thrill at stories. We should not be surprised if despite ourselves we love what He loves. And we should not be surprised, that as much as we like to think that we own our books, we often find—thirty boxes and eight moving trucks later—that we are owned by them instead.
Mysterious Ways
We were walking along a particularly steep section of trail that ran just above a mountain stream when my daughter suddenly took off at breakneck speed. Apparently, despite my warnings, the sheer wonder of reaching the water below was too much for her. My maternal imagination kicked in with visions of her stumbling and careening over the edge, and I was just about to offer another warning when her six-year-old brother beat me to it.
“Sister, slow down! You’re going to fall. Just be patient.”
And suddenly my heart soared. Did I hear him correctly? Not only was he looking out for her, but he understood to connect her recklessness to a character quality! As far as parenting goes, this was a back-to-back win. Especially in light of the fact that we’ve spent the last three weeks working through a small book called Get Wisdom. It's designed to teach children core Christian virtues like love, thankfulness, and yes, even patience. I think each lesson is meant to involve my reading through the associated Scripture and then engaging the children in meaningful dialogue about how the highlighted virtue plays out in their lives. In reality, I usually make it through the Scripture and our “meaningful” dialogue devolves into a discussion of the existential quality of boogers.
I wasn’t sure how much impact it was having.
So here, in this one blissful moment on a wooded trail in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains, my hope of actually rearing these three children to responsible adulthood was restored. And, like the well-read parent that I am, I knew that I needed to affirm this moment with my son.
“Thanks, Mommy. (pause) You know where I learned that?”
“From Get Wisdom, right?”
“Nope. I learned it from Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five.”
(the giant whooshing sound of my hopes evaporating)
“You didn’t learn it from Get Wisdom?”
“No, not really. I learned it from Kung Fu Panda”
Later, after we'd returned home, I was reliving this moment along with the beauty that had surrounded us--a beauty in which every branch and every rivulet seemed to speak His name—and I realized that maybe my view of God was too small. Because truthfully, God isn’t a God that can be contained. He is so big that He fills the mountains and the streams and the valleys and when you have eyes to see Him, He just starts popping everywhere! You can’t hold back His wisdom either. You can’t contain it in a book of virtues or ten-minute sessions at breakfast. No, this God, this marvelously transcendent God, is making Himself known throughout the world and displaying His character sometimes in things as inconsequential as a child’s DVD.
I wonder if this is part of the reason why the Scripture tells us to talk about Him to our children “when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.” It’s not that we must attempt to make every moment a “spiritual” one--it’s that every moment already is by the sheer magnitude of His presence. And even while we faithfully teach our children about Him, we must also remember that He is faithfully teaching our children as well. Because no matter where they go--no matter if they sit down or rise up or walk by the way or wade in a creek in the mountains of Virginia--there will be glimpses of Him everywhere.
And if you're lucky enough, and you're a six-year-old boy, and your momma lets you, you might just be able to see His wisdom in Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five as well.
White Picket Fences and Surrender
I’m asking because I’m not sure that I know.
If you’re a regularly reader to SAL, you know that our family has had our share of difficulties—some related to ministry, some simply the pressures of adulthood—but over the last year, God has brought us into a season of blessing and stability. We recently bought our first home, my husband has a job that he loves (and does well), and I’m in the full swing of motherhood and domestic life.
But what you may not know about me is that I never really had any plans to be here. I never had any plans for Prince Charming to sweep me off my feet and even if I had, they certainly didn’t include marrying a pastor. A missionary perhaps--but only if he planned on living in a grass hut, learning countless native dialects, and contentedly eating grubs with the chief of the tribe. Instead, I married a man best suited to a quiet rural life, happiest puttering around his country parish, making plans for chickens and gardens, and putting down deep roots.
So here, over eleven years later, I’m still coming to terms with it all.
It’s not that I didn’t expect to be involved in ministry—that has always been a significant part of my life as my parents were teachers in a small church-based school—but I guess I never expected to live a “normal” American life. Growing up, because of my parents’ work, we often struggled to simply get by. I learned very early the difference between want and need and as a result, I think I actually was a lot happier than some of my peers. (To this day, I can still get a thrill out of something as simple as eating out at IHOP.) On top of that, we also suffered a house fire when I was five and spent the next decade rebuilding our home bit by bit with the help of friends and family.
Still what we lacked in finances, we had in abundance in faith and dreams. We lived on 10 acres of family homestead, complete with fruit trees and gardens, woods and a creek. We never lacked for books, music, imagination--or British television. My dad believed strongly in Christian education and made sure that his both his sons and daughters received one. And when I announced that I wanted to study the Humanities for the sheer joy of it, for the sheer joy of discovering the world that God had created, instead of trying to dissuade me and guide me to something more practical, he simply said, “That sounds fine. College is too expensive not to love what you’re studying.”
We were living Radical long before David Platt ever suggested it.
So coming into adulthood, I don’t think I had any dreams of financial success or settling down into the routines that are assumed by so many Americans. And yet here today, I find myself living a life that is polite, domestic, and comfortable. In a word, the American Dream. I’ve also discovered that this “dream” can come with a lot of angst.
How can you spend money on extra clothes for your children when you know that there are children in this world who have no shoes?
How can you indulge in the luxury of dieting and exercising when men and women around the world are expending legitimate sweat and tears simply working to provide a few morsels of food for their evening meal?
How can you enjoy the blessings of family when your friends’ marriages are falling apart and you know other mothers who are facing life-threatening illnesses and may not even live to see their children grow up?
Of course, you help where you can. You send money. You pray. You even go when God calls. But still, you return to your lovely home and air conditioning and full pantry. And on Sunday, you worship God together with other believers in freedom and comfort. And soon, the blessings, all the milk and honey, start to feel like burdens. Maybe you don’t have this problem—maybe it’s the opposite for you. Maybe you grew up in such comfort that it’s hard for you to let go of it. But maybe, like me, you grew up with deprivation and you find it hard to let go of that too.
Maybe you have a hard time accepting the blessings of God.
Because what I’m discovering is that as much as some people have to surrender to the possibility of deprivation and instability, some of us have to surrender to stability and comfort when He chooses to send them. And I’m learning that it takes as much faith to accept blessing as it is does to accept trial. It means believing that all things come from His hand—wealth, poverty, stability, trials--and it means learning to be content and thankful and full of joy in whatever circumstances He chooses to place us.
Even when it is the best of them.
Mercy That Endures
This last Sunday was no exception. My husband was preaching from Psalm 136 and one of his points was that God’s mercy endures forever. (This was the point that had been immediately preceded by a small delay when the congregation realized that a lizard was darting in and out of the pews and which ultimately resulted in several smartly-dressed parishioners on their hands and knees trying to catch the terrified creature.) But as he was unfolding the idea that God’s mercy endures, somewhere in the quiet place of my heart I heard another voice.
I heard it asking,
Daughter, how often do you endure? How often do you expect mercy to come easily? How often do you give up too soon--especially when it comes to your children?
Immediately my defenses went up.
“But you don’t understand,” I answered. “You’re God—mercy comes naturally to you. And my children? Well, they’re so foolish—they are messy and disorganized and lazy and I have to yell at them or they won’t get the point. I have to become exasperated or they just keep doing what they're doing.”
Yes, they are foolish, but do you endure?
“Oh, you have no idea how much I endure.”
No, do you really push past the barrier of your frustration, do you let your love soften your anger, do you endure? Like I do?
And I knew, of course, that I didn’t. I knew that too often I confused childishness with disobedience. I knew that even as I found characters like Anne of Green Gables and Tom Sawyer endearing, I simultaneously found their traits, once actualized in the bodies of my children, infuriating. And I knew that I all too quickly embraced my “righteous anger.”
But this Sunday, I also realized something about God. Too often I think that we imagine Him as a fixed character in a cosmic drama—He is the constant to our development, the foil to our inconstancy. And while it is true that He never changes, we must not confuse His faithfulness with being flat and static, almost as if He were a cardboard cut-out. Because if we ourselves are not one-dimensional, how could the very God who made us in His own image be otherwise?
No, He is not a force or a concept or a paradigm. He is alive--He is a living God. And being so, He exists in all the complexity that any other living being does. He exists in a kaleidoscope of love and justice, of mercy and holiness, with nothing but His own divine power to hold the tension that allows Him to be all in all--all at the same time.
So when David says in Psalm 136 that God's mercy endures forever, perhaps it does just that. It endures. It endures our foolishness; it endures our stubbornness; it endures our weakness. Like a long-distance runner or a mountain climber, His mercy pushes past the comfort zone of His justice and keeps going until it reaches the goal--the goal of forever. So that with lungs bursting and sweat dripping, His longsuffering becomes true suffering, and through Christ, His mercy willfully and strongly holds back His very reasonable frustration.
A lot of times we talk about mercy falling “like the gentle rain from heaven.” And to us at least, it seems to--it feels like rain, like cool, calming, life-giving rain on our parched souls. But we must not think that what comes down to us so easily has been bought or won easily. Mercy freely given does not mean that it was mercy freely obtained. No, as I learned this past Sunday, mercy doesn’t simply fall. Mercy fights. Mercy struggles. Mercy endures.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________ * Carl Trueman related the following anecdote that encapsulates the unique position pastors' wives often find themselves in. "Talking to a colleague the other day, he told me how, on one Sunday, he preached an absolute stinker of a sermon. After the service, he said to his wife, `That was the worst sermon I have ever preached.' `No it wasn't.' she replied `Be encouraged. I have heard you preach much worse.' That is a truly great preacher's wife for you."
The Given Life
“Mommy… (thoughtful pause) I just wonder, ‘Why am I me?’ Why don’t I have somebody else’s life? I mean, why can’t I see different things or do different things? Why am I me?”
I snapped to attention. Forget the Lucky Charms and blocked streets, this was a “teachable” moment.
“That’s such a good question.” I said. “In fact, people ask themselves that question all the time. I mean, why am I a Mommy? Why am I driving home in my van? Why do I have three children? These kinds of questions are the things that we all ask about our lives, and--”
“Not me, Mommy,” said my six-year-old son, quickly correcting me. “I never ask myself those questions--I like my life.”
Like most epiphanies, this one was quickly eclipsed by more interesting things—namely, arriving home and racing to see who could turn on the Olympics first. The moment lasted a bit longer for me though because it came on the heels of a conversation that I’d had with my husband the previous weekend. We were out celebrating our eleventh anniversary (apparently while the tenth anniversary nets you a Caribbean cruise, number eleven involves Chipotle, Starbucks, and back-to-school shopping). As is natural on this kind of occasion, we were talking over the years that had led us to this point. Because here we were in our early thirties, with three kids, living in yet another state, finally settling into our first house and none of it could have been predicted that day we first exchanged vows over a decade ago.
There’s a part of you that can’t help but wonder what would have happened if at any point you had taken a different route? If a particular street hadn’t been blocked and you had simply taken the road you intended to. And you realize that you could have been something--somebody--very different entirely.
This kind of backward longing is most tempting when things aren't as they should be. When life is difficult, when a marriage is struggling, when you feel like you’ve lost yourself along the way. And you being to believe that maybe, just maybe, you were meant to be someone else after all. That who you are today was not who you were supposed to become. And even if you were, in these times, you wish--like my daughter--you could be someone else entirely.
But the reality is that this life—the one that you are living right now—is a given life.
It’s not that we have no choice in the matter and it’s not even that our mistakes and failures don’t affect the outcome. It’s just that we’ve become too enamored with our own ability to shape our lives, with our own ability to control our destinies, with our own ability to be whoever we want to be. And we forget that today--who we are in this moment--is as much a gift as the day we first entered the world. We get so busy longing for the life we wish we had that we're not thankful for the one we’ve been given.
The given life. To live not just as if your first breath were ordained, but that every breath after it was as well. To believe that even as each choice presented itself, the hand that offered the choice was His. And to know--despite its twists and curves— He made the road run straight before you and led you exactly where you were meant to go.
This is where we must live. We must live in this moment. We must live as we have been called. We must be precisely who He made us to be.
Because once you reach that place, once you recognize that the given life, like all of His gifts, is a good one—well, in that place, it doesn’t much matter why you’re not someone else. All that matters is that He has given life to you, that He has ordained that you would exist, that He has made your life to be useful and reflect Him in a unique way.
And once you reach that place, you can say, with the confidence of a six-year-old, “Thank you--I like my life.”
Learning to Trust Again
Like most summer storms, this one went as quickly as it came, but unlike most summer thunderstorms, this one left extensive damage. We were lucky though—none of our trees came down and we never lost power. Within hours, the children were home, tucked safely into bed, and seemed generally nonplussed by the whole event. The only thing my six-year-old had to say about it (in his typically understated way) was “It was very windy. I was a little bit scared.” And that was that.
Or so I thought.
Then suddenly that same six-year-old started asking me to check the weather each morning, and that same six-year-old started needing to see the hourly forecast before he went outside to play. Then he started watching the clock and coming in early if the forecast threatened rain. He started jumping at the slightest breeze and one day, with his chin quivering, doing his best to hold back tears, he asked to go home while we were visiting a mountain overlook. He didn’t like the wind. It all came to a head when at a Fourth of July picnic, this same nonchalant little boy clamped his hands over his ears and ran screaming inside when sky turned stormy.
And then I knew we had a problem.
Despite our attempts to console him, despite reasoning with him that mommy and daddy would protect him, despite praying with him and gaining his verbal affirmation that “God is bigger than the storm,” this little boy simply doesn’t trust the weather. And truthfully, I don’t blame him.
When you’ve experienced something traumatic—whether it’s a storm or an illness or a broken relationship—you know better than to let yourself ever get caught in that situation again. You’re smarter for it. You learn to guard your heart. You learn to scan the sky and look for the warning signs. And you consider yourself, not so much living in fear, as having become older and wiser.
Until your caution turns into fear Until your “wisdom” starts to look a lot like paranoia Until you let your experience cloud everything else your life.
Then you know you have a problem.
Because as much as I understand my son’s fear, another part of me worries that as long as he lives in that fear, he’ll never be able to experience the joy of an ocean breeze whipping around him or the majesty of a summer thunderstorm. And as long as any of the rest of us continue to live in our fears—no matter how justified they are—we’ll miss the joy of so many things too. Family, community, church, friends, life. Sometimes even God Himself.
So now I’m trying to figure out how do I help him learn to trust again? How do any of us learn to trust again? How do you learn to feel the breeze without panicking? How do you stand on the mountain overlook, drinking in the winds that carry the hawk and eagle without wanting to go home? How do you face the vast ocean and delight in its mighty winds when at six you were evacuated to the bottom of a baseball stadium and the lights went out?
And maybe more to the point for the rest of us, how do you learn to love again when your heart has been broken? How do you learn to let down your guard when you’ve been hurt? How do you move past being cynical to being sensitive once again? How, like for me, do you learn to stop jumping to conclusions when everything in you wants to run screaming into the building to get away from the storm?
I’m not certain of the exact process, but I know it takes time. Not time by itself, but time for God to work. Time to let Him to rebuild the brokenness. Time to let Him heal you. Time to let Him to lead you one hesitant, terrifying step at a time. Time for you to learn how to trust Him again.
Because maybe, what we all need to recognize is that rebuilding trust doesn't ultimately mean learning to trust the weather or our churches or even another person again. Rebuilding trust means learning to trust Him. It means believing that when the storms do return, He will be right there to wait them out with you. Even if it's in the belly of a minor league baseball stadium.
My Take: Doubt, Faith, and Sibling Rivalry
Still stranger was that I found myself wanting to have doubted. I felt like I needed it as credibility somehow. Because if Christian liberty has become the new legalism, doubt has become the new “faith.” In this post-modern generation, if you haven’t doubted, you haven’t believed. If you haven’t walked away from church, you really don’t know what it is about. If you haven’t done something that flies in the face of religious convention, you are still its pawn.
And then I started thinking about all those of us who aren’t Thomases. It’s not that we don’t have our problems and it’s not that we don’t honestly investigate what we believe. It’s just that we don’t stumble over faith the way some do. In many cases, we never ran away from home--or at least we only went as far as the next conservative church. And we end up taking as much of security in this as our doubting brothers take in their ability to question.
This tension, this need to one-up each other either by our faith or our doubt, reminded me a lot of my children and their tendency toward sibling rivalry. It also reminded me of that classic story of sibling rivalry that Jesus told: the story of the prodigal son. Because if those who doubt are the younger brother who ran away from home, those who don’t are the older brother who stayed and are easily tempted to pass judgment.
Still, today’s story has a twist. In our post-modern paradigm, doubt has been enshrined, almost made a virtue, and this ultimately makes it hard for prodigals to “come to their senses” and honestly coming home in humility. Because their doubt has been affirmed, they feel comfortable with it and even demand that the father fix the things that made them angry enough to leave in the first place. But the thing about doubt (no matter what post-modernism says) is that Scripture never frames it in a positive light. Whenever someone questions God--think Job, Gideon, Zacharias, Thomas--even when their doubt is completely understandable, Scripture portrays it as weakness.
But the glorious thing about God is this: with Him, weakness is not a liability.
Because ultimately this is the grace of doubt—not how wonderfully insightful and reflective it makes us appear--but how generous and patient it reveals God to be. In our doubt, we become the foil to display His faithfulness. And through our doubt, we learn how weak we were not to believe and how much we needed Him in the first place. In this sense, doubt can be very spiritual if it leads to faith--if in our weaknesses we cry out, “Lord, I believe--help my unbelief.”
But paradoxically, those of us who haven’t experienced strong doubt can be just as weak. Because we are the older son who finds security and pride—not in our Father—but in our certainty. We stayed after all. And we all too quickly identify ourselves as the “blessed” who haven’t seen but believe and we forget that not questioning the status quo is not the same as believing the truth.
Because faith that has faith as its object is not the same as faith in the Father.
Faith that is founded on tradition or religion or simply staying put doesn’t make us anymore faithful than those who doubt. And it doesn’t make us love our Father any more than the older brother’s remaining at home made him love his father more. After all, the reward he was looking for wasn’t the joy of a relationship with him; it was the approval he expected to gain from being the “good son.”
So in the end, this is what we must seek by staying home: not the Father’s approval because of our faithfulness but the joy of being with Him. The joy of days and weeks and years of fellowship that the younger brother missed out on because of his doubt and wandering. By staying home, we have the opportunity to forge memories, create a shared history, and enjoy a lifetime of discovering, not our own faithfulness, but His.
Because what both sons were missing in it all of it—what, if we’re not careful, we’ll miss too either by our doubt or our faithfulness--is the goodness of the Father. The goodness that allows for our questions and welcomes us home once we come to our senses. And the goodness that kindly and gently reproves us when we think we have been faithful enough to earn his love. In the end, what we must not believe is that the prodigal son was somehow better for his wandering. Or the older son better for his staying.
What we must believe is the goodness of the Father who loved them both.