Tag Archives: Affection

We’re All Suckers for a Love Story

March 2, 2015 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

I will do this to recapture the hearts of the people of Israel, who have all deserted me for their idols.
Ezekiel 14:5 (NIV)

Let me confess something to you. I am a sucker for a great love story. Wendy, Taylor, Madison and Suzanna can all tell you that I’m a real softie when it comes to a well written tear jerker. Don’t get me wrong. I am a guy and I love my action movies, but have you ever noticed that even that all great action movies have a love story woven through them? Script writers learned long ago that love stories are a core part of the human experience and a big part of what we respond to as we sit in front of that screen.

I believe that this has a great deal to do with how God created us. The Great Story that God reveals between the beginning of Genesis and the final chapter of John’s Revelation is a love story. It is the love story between God and humanity. God even uses the metaphor of marriage to describe the relationship between Jesus and His followers.

There is no relationship that doesn’t have its ups and downs. Even the best of marriages suffer their share of conflict. So it is with the Great Story. At the point of the story in which Ezekiel is telling, the relationship between God and His people is experiencing acute relational pain. God’s people have been adulterous. Their hearts and spirits had strayed. They had given their greatest affection to other idols and gods. There was a significant break in the relationship, and God was intent on “recapturing the hearts of the people.”

I find it hard to imagine worshipping the kinds of idols that stole the hearts of people in Ezekiel’s day. Worshipping at a pagan shrine or making an “offering” to have sex with a temple prostitute of the local fertility god is something I can’t even fathom. And yet, it seems to me that being driven by lust to have sex with a prostitute in service to Asherah is really no different than being driven by lust to masturbate to pornography or have sex with a prostitute in service to the almighty dollar. Our idols have changed faces over the millennia, but the core relational issues remain the same.

Today, I am thinking about the idols that steal my affections from God. And, I am grateful for God’s never ending desire and efforts to recapture my wayward heart.

Chapter-a-Day

Affecting the Almighty

December 29, 2014 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

source: oxfordshire church photos via Flickr

If you sin, how does that affect him?
If your sins are many, what does that do to him?
Job 35:6 (NIV)

Elihu, the fourth and youngest of Job’s so-called friends, continues his pent-up diatribe in today’s chapter. His point seems to be that God’s lofty omnipotence places the Creator above the affectations of humanity. Eli calls into question whether our sins or wickedness have any affect on the Almighty, and I find the question fascinating.

A few summers ago I read the book Holy Sh*t by Melissa Mohr who explores the history of swearing and profanity. I learned therein that throughout the middle ages Western culture would have answered Eli’s question emphatically. The really bad swearing of the day was to swear by Jesus’ blood or Jesus’ wounds. For example, in the opening scenes of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1, the bawdy Jack Falstaff utters profanity in saying “‘sblood” (contraction of swearing “by His blood”) and “‘Zounds” (contraction of swearing “by His wounds”). The culture of that day held that swearing by the body, blood, or wounds of Christ was so profane that swearing in such a manner resulted in further bodily injury to Jesus. If you swore you were perpetrating actual physical harm to the Savior in heaven. Wow.

This morning I am once again finding truth at the point of tension between the two extremes. Elihu’s projection of God who is above being affected by humanity is inconsistent with the entire story of God’s Message, in which God intimately cares for His fallen creation and loves us sacrificially in order to redeem us. The believers of the middle-ages, however, took that intimacy to an opposite extreme in thinking that when my momentary frustration leads to an inappropriate utterance, I have Jesus crying “ouch” in heaven’s throne room. That idea of that, in fact, seems more than a little bit twisted.

My long sojourn through God’s Message and my experiences in this life lead me to believe that God does care about us. I believe that God cares about what we think, say, and do. I believe that God is grieved at our penchant for doing the things we know we shouldn’t and choosing out of the things we should say and do. Let’s not forget that at the beginning of Job’s story God actually expresses His pride and deep appreciation for Job’s righteousness. God could be above it all, as Elihu suggests, but that’s the beauty of the Christmas story which we just celebrated last week. God cared. God sent His Son as a gift to make a way for salvation, and He made a point by sending His Son to be born of a seemingly insignificant peasant girl, arriving in squalor, worshipped by poor shepherds. That doesn’t sound like an aloof God unaffected by humanity. It seems to me that this is a story of God’s affections for even the least of us.

Top Five Tuesday, Wayfarer's Journal

Top Five Things I Appreciate About My Dad

June 13, 2014 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

Chip off the ol' block. — Chip off the ol’ block.

It’s Top Five Friday! From the home office in Pella, Iowa. Here are the top five things I appreciate about my father.

He said “I love you”…every day. He has also said “I’m proud of you.” I have met a startling number of men on my life journey who have significant soul wounds from fathers who never said those words. It wasn’t until I set out on a journey of my own to discover about what it means to be a man that I discovered how this simple act, one that I’d always took for granted, was a true act of manliness that many males just don’t get.
He taught me how to be affectionate. I’m a hugger. I loved cuddling with my daughters when they were young. I love cuddling with my wife, hugging her, holding her, touching her. I know that the women in my life value my ability to show appropriate, manly, loving affection. I learned that from my dad who was always affectionate with my mother, and with me and my siblings. Interestingly, my earliest memory is of my dad holding me. We were sitting in a black leather chair. He was wearing a white t-shirt. I couldn’t have been older than two or three.
He taught me to shoot, to fish, and to hunt. While I never developed a passion for fishing and hunting like my dad had, I certainly value the knowledge and the many memories I have of days spent fishing the boundary waters and walking the autumn fields of Iowa with my dad. As an adult, I was once asked if I wanted to go hunting with a bunch of men from church. They assumed that I was unlearned in the field, but I agreed to go and brought my brother’s 20 gauge Remington shotgun to the hunt. The boys gave me a hefty dose of ribbing about my “small gun” and asked why I didn’t use a 12 gauge shotgun which was more powerful and had better range. A short time later when I was the only member of the party with a pheasant in the bag I smiled at my surprised companions and quietly said, “If you know how to shoot, you don’t need a 12 gauge.” Thanks, Dad.
He taught me the value of hard work. It wasn’t something he said, but something he did. It was growing up watching him do what needed to be done every day. It wasn’t just the getting up and going to work early every morning or sitting and working at the kitchen table on weekends during tax season, but also they way he spent evenings and weekends doing what needed to be done around the house, fixing things up, making things better. It was the expectation of being productive, giving it your best, and doing a good job no matter the task. I watched. I learned. I’m grateful.
He let me become who I was meant to be. I never felt pressure to be what he wanted me to be or hoped I would be. He didn’t tell me what college to go to and I didn’t get a stern lecture when I chose to be a theatre major. I was never told what extra-curricular activities I would be involved in, but got to choose and explore those things which I enjoyed and the things in which I was interested. I was quietly allowed to make mistakes, even tragic ones, that led to failures which I needed to experience in order to grow and mature. There was never an “I told you so,” “If you’d only listened to me,” “I could have told you,” or “What in the hell were you thinking?!” There was, however, if I may reference the top of this list, always an “I love you” and always a hug.