Tag Archives: Child

Chapter-a-Day

“Break This Wild Pony!”

Leave a comment

“Break This Wild Pony!” (CaD Lev 26) – Wayfarer

“‘If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze.’”
Leviticus 26:18-19 (NIV)

Last week I wrote about our granddaughter Sylvie and her two-year-old willfulness. I will never forget the words of our son-in-law as he and our daughter addressed the subject of their daughter’s stubborn self-will.

“We’re going to break this wild pony!” her father proclaimed with all of the love and resolve of a parent who ultimately wants what is best for his daughter. He knows instinctively that allowing her self-centered tenacity to continue will not be healthy for her or those around her in the future.

Exactly.

We are down to the final two chapters of God’s ancient priestly manual for His ancient Hebrew people in the toddler stages of humanity. Today’s chapter reads like a father addressing his toddler in simple and direct terms.

“Trust me on this, kiddo. If you obey and do as daddy says, then things are going to be good between us. Life is going to be better and more enjoyable all around for you. If, however, you refuse to obey and continue in your stubborn, willful disobedience, then I’m afraid life is going to get extremely difficult and not at all enjoyable for you. You can learn this the easy way or the hard way. It’s your choice, but I love you and I am not going to let you get away with being a self-centered little shit-hill.”

[By the way, “shit-hills” is what my grandma Vander Well called me and my siblings after spending a week with us while our parents were on vacation in the UK. I was five. I’m sure we earned the four-letter-laden moniker. It seemed apt in this context.]

What really blew me away as I read through God’s warning to His brood of toddlers is that it is a prophetic foreshadowing of exactly what is going to happen 750 years in the future:

“I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you.”

Eventually, about 500 years after God warns His children about this in today’s chapter the Hebrew family splinters into two with the siblings factions at war with one another. That’s what happens when stubborn toddlers grow up to be pig-headed adolescents. About 200 years later, one set of siblings is conquered by the Assyrian Empire. About 150 years after that, the other set of siblings falls to the Babylonian Empire.

“When you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands. When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will be able to bake your bread in one oven, and they will dole out the bread by weight. You will eat, but you will not be satisfied.”
Leviticus 26:25-26

When they were conquered, the city of Jerusalem was surrounded in a siege by the Babylon. The Hebrew people stuck inside the walls slowly used up all of their provisions until starvation set in. Jeremiah describes it in his poem of Lamentations:

All her people groan
    as they search for bread;
they barter their treasures for food
    to keep themselves alive.
“Look, Lord, and consider,
    for I am despised.”
Lamentations 1:11

God goes on in Leviticus:

“You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.” (vs 29)

Jeremiah goes on to describe this eventuality:

“Look, Lord, and consider:
    Whom have you ever treated like this?
Should women eat their offspring,
    the children they have cared for?”
Lamentations 2:20

God continues in today’s chapter:

“I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins.” (vs. 33)

Jerusalem was utterly destroyed along with Solomon’s famous temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Both the Hebrew children of the northern kingdom and southern kingdom were taken into exile by the Assyrians and Babylonians, just as God foreshadowed.

But the bitter consequences of a child’s stubborn will and rebellion do not change the love of a parent. The hope is that those harsh life lessons will eventually lead to a change of heart. God even foreshadows this in today’s chapter.

“‘But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors—their unfaithfulness and their hostility toward me… I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them.’” (vss. 40, 42, 44)

It was while in exile in Babylon that the stories of Daniel, Esther, and Ezekiel take place. Just as promised, God does not abandon them in exile, but uses them to encourage His people and bear witness to their enemies. In the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, God brings His humbled and repentant children back home to Jerusalem like the Prodigal Son in Jesus’ parable. They rebuild Jerusalem and their lives.

There are even more direct prophetic connections and spiritual truths in today’s chapter than I have time and space to unpack. I hope you get the picture. In the quiet this morning I am amazed at the layers of meaning and spiritual truth contained in one chapter. God and humanity, parents and children, prophecy and fulfillment, historical events and metaphorical spiritual lessons that are applicable for me today are all crammed into 46 verses.

As I enter my day, I am reminded that no matter how old I get in physical human terms I never stop being a child of God. Each day my heart, my mind, my actions, and my choices can search out and follow my Father’s will. I can also choose to follow my own stubborn will, self-centered desires, and indulge my base human appetites. It is the same every day. It is my choice. My choices have natural consequences of both flesh and Spirit.

What choices will I make today?

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
Chapter-a-Day

Who Changed? The Parent or Child?

1 Comment

Who Changed? The Parent or Child? (CaD Lev 20) – Wayfarer

“You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them.”
Leviticus 20:23 (NIV)

Our granddaughter, Sylvie, is an absolute delight. She is also a willful child in excess measure. Once Sylvie sets her will to what she wants or doesn’t want, you are in for the challenge of your life..

Sylvie is currently potty training. She’s taken her own sweet time getting here. When she came to stay at Papa and Yaya’s house last week we quickly discovered this little game she was playing. When her body told her it was time to do the numero dos, she would tell us she had to go potty. We put her on the pot and she would quickly ask for a wipe, use it and then say she was all done without accomplishing the deed. She loves putting the toilet paper in the adult potty and flushing it. Back she went to playing until a few minutes later she said she has to go potty again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I went along with it the first two or three times, but I was not playing that game all day. What Sylvie doesn’t know is that I successfully raised her Aunt Madison, who was a Grand Master when it came to being a willful child. Sylvie experienced a side of Papa last weekend that she’d never really experienced before. It didn’t change my love for her one iota. She just learned that there’s a serious side of Papa that will meet her toddler willfulness head-on.

When Sylvie is a teenager, and when she becomes a young adult out on her own, my relationship with her will be very different. It’s a natural life progression. Right now, she is a willful toddler who needs loving but very firm and sometimes serious authority from her parents and grandparents to guide her in doing the right and healthy thing.

In this chapter-a-day journey through the book of Leviticus, I have repeatedly used the metaphor of humanity being in its’ toddler stages back in 1500 B.C. One of the hardest things for modern readers of the Great Story to grapple with is that the God of Leviticus seems so different and hardcore than the teachings of Jesus. I think it’s easy to lose sight of who really changed between the two. If our adult daughters, who now have children of their own, behaved in a way I found improper today I wouldn’t shout “NO!” at them with my authoritarian voice, command them to cease, and threaten them with a time-out, being grounded, or inflicting some kind of uncomfortable punishment (not that some parents don’t foolishly still use variations of these tactics with their adult children). That would be silly. They are adults and my relationship with them has changed, though I’m still the same father I was when Grand Master Madison was Sylvie’s age exhibiting her willful shenanigans.

In today’s chapter, God goes back to the sex thing that He addressed with His toddler children two chapters ago. He repeats (you have to repeat things a lot to toddlers) the authoritarian prohibitions of practicing child sacrifice (like the people groups around them were doing) and committing various sexual acts, most all of it referring to incest, which the people groups around them were doing without restraint. The threat of punishment was blunt and severe, just like one threatens a willful toddler.

In the quiet this morning, I thought back to a conversation Wendy and I had with friends over brunch yesterday. The conversation was about children in young adulthood. Children at that stage of human development make some really, really foolish mistakes (the same way we did when we were their age) but a parent must use a far more subtle and nuanced approach in attempting to guide, instruct, and support them towards wise and healthy decisions. The authoritarian toddler stage is pretty easy by comparison. Parenting a young adult requires the surrender, faith, and patience of the Prodigal’s father.

This begs the question, of course, in what ways is God still having to have surrender, faith, and patience with me in my “adult” stages of life? In what aspects of my life am I still being the Prodigal?

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
Chapter-a-Day

God With Us

1 Comment

God With Us (CaD Lev 3) – Wayfarer

The priest shall burn them on the altar as a food offering, a pleasing aroma. All the fat is the Lord’s.
Leviticus 3:16 (NIV)

I saw an adorable post on social media the other day. A young child had been given the assignment to draw what it means to be “safe.” The child made a rudimentary sketch of himself in bed between his dad and mom. Such a simple childlike understanding. “If I’m with dad and mom, all is right with the world. I’m loved, provided for, and protected.”

The Hebrews had a word for that sense of wholeness, peace, and well-being: Shalom. While the word is literally translated as “peace,” it has a much broader definition that envelopes experiencing that feeling of “God is good. Life is good. I’m good.“

It is difficult for a modern reader to understand how radical the instructions God was giving to Moses and the Hebrew people was at the time it was given. The world in which the Hebrews lived was filled with thousands of gods. Egypt alone had well over a thousand gods in their religious pantheon. The gods were often attached to a place. Every town and city-state had its own god. So when you left that town, you left that god and would go visit the god of the next town. In ancient Mesopotamian religions, the gods inhabited their own spirit world and had little regard for human beings who were lesser than and relatively unimportant to them and their world.

The God of Moses is so very different.

God initiated the relationship with Moses and the Hebrews. He heard their cries from slavery, showed up, and delivered them. He’s led them into the wilderness and now God initiates the establishment of an ongoing daily life and relationship with them. They don’t have a place yet. Thus, God has Moses create a tent temple that they can carry with them. Wherever they camp, they set up God’s tent temple smack-dab in the center of camp. The people set-up camp around it. God isn’t associated with a place, He is associating Himself with a people. He is Immanuel: “God with us.”

This is important in understanding the third of the five different sacrifices God establishes for His people to make on the altar of His tent temple in today’s chapter. It is known as a “fellowship” offering, but also as a “peace” offering because the word used for this offering is rooted in the Hebrew word “shalom.”

What makes the Fellowship offering unique is that it is the only one of the five offerings in which the person or persons bringing it get to participate in consuming the food that is burnt on the altar. All of the other offerings are handed to the priests, the priests then handle the sacrifice and, at that point, everything is between the priest and God. With the “fellowship” offering, everyone is involved in sharing the offering together. It is, in a sense a communal meal together with the individual, the priest, and God. It foreshadows a day when God Himself will come to the table, make Himself the offering, and say to us, “Take this and eat. It’s my body broken for you. Take this and drink it. It’s my blood shed for you. Do this whenever you get together an remember.”

But humanity isn’t there yet. They are just infants and toddlers in their understanding of this One God, this Creator God, who is also a parent. God is providing simple ways to show the ancient children so that they might understand. He is with them. He loves them. He is protecting them. He will provide for them. “I’m right here in the center of your world, your community, and your family. Cuddle in next to me, my child. Be safe. Find shalom.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
Chapter-a-Day

Time to Drive

Leave a comment

Time to Drive (CaD Ezk 44) – Wayfarer

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: No foreigner uncircumcised in heart and flesh is to enter my sanctuary, not even the foreigners who live among the Israelites.
Ezekiel 44:9 (NIV)

I was driving with our daughter Taylor in the car. It was a gorgeous, quiet day late in the afternoon. She was around eleven or twelve years old at the time. About a block from our house was this giant parking lot that sat completely empty. I pulled into the parking lot and Taylor was wondering what was going on. I told her we were switching seats and that I was going to give her an opportunity to drive the car.

Taylor was completely freaked out by this, and that first driving lesson didn’t last very long, but she did it. She learned the basics of an accelerator and brake pedal, about shifting the car into gear, and she performed some basic turns with the steering wheel.

I not only had the joy of taking her completely by surprise, but I was also wanting to plant a seed in her soul. She was on the cusp of a new phase in life when she will find herself capable and responsible for things that were once forbidden to her. And while she was still a few years from having legal permission to drive a car, the truth is that she was already far more capable than she even knew – she’d never even thought about it.

In today’s chapter, Ezekiel’s vision continues and he is reminded of all the rules of the priests in the Temple that were established back in the book of Leviticus. In a previous post, I talked about God being a God who makes distinctions. And in today’s chapter, we are reminded that in that day there were distinctions between priests and non-priests, even between Jews and non-Jews. By the time Jesus appeared on the scene, the distinction had morphed into outright prejudice and religiously sanctioned racism.

But humanity grows and matures the way my daughter does. There was a time when the distinction was made “You are not to drive. Only daddy or mommy drives. That’s your seat. This one is mine.” But there comes a time when the distinction is removed. Jesus came to remove the distinctions and do something completely new.

Paul, who was himself a Jewish religious and legal scholar who became a disciple and apostle of Jesus, explained the removal of the distinction Ezekiel shares in today’s chapter between Jewish Levitical priests and “uncircumcised foreigners” to the believers in Ephesus:

(I know this is a long passage, but imagine yourself being one of the “uncircumcised foreigners” who was never allowed into the Temple and had been treated like a second-class citizen your whole life reading this for the first time.)

 The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.

Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.

That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
Ephesians 2:14-22 (MSG) emphases added

Jesus came to usher in a new age of humanity in which the Temple is no longer a bricks-and-mortar building but a flesh-and-blood organism. Everyone who is in Christ is a brick of the living, breathing Temple, and everyone who is in Christ is a priest of that Temple. We’re all included, we’re all a part of it.

In the quiet this morning, I am grieving the fact that for two thousand years the Institutional church has largely succeeded in putting the old distinctions back in place in which professional clergy are the only holy priests and the people in the pews are the unholy commoners. But that’s not what Jesus taught or intended. You and I, my friend, are a brick in the Temple and we’re Priests in this world to show others by our lives, our words, and our example the love and way of Jesus.

Jesus came to tell all of us “Get over here in the drivers seat, my child. It’s time to learn to drive.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Love & Punishment

Leave a comment

I will not carry out my fierce anger,
    nor will I devastate Ephraim again.
For I am God, and not a man—
    the Holy One among you.
    I will not come against their cities.
Hosea 11:9 (NIV)

As a child, I remember noticing patterns in life. There was a certain flow to how things happened. One of these patterns was how my parents exacted punishment. When I was caught doing something bad, my parents anger was aroused. The punishment was carried out, and I was typically remanded to my room to think on both my infraction and the shame of my punishment. A short time later, my parent would come to my bedroom much calmer and full of compassion. Hugs were then doled out as I expressed my remorse. I was given a reminder of their love for me and wanting the best for me.

Jesus used multiple metaphors in His parables to share about God’s Kingdom and how it works. He spoke of a woman tearing apart her house looking for a lost coin. At another time it was a man selling everything he had to acquire a field that held buried treasure. More famously, He used the example of father who graciously, and lovingly welcomes his lost son home.

In the same way, the ancient prophets would use different metaphors to deliver what was. basically the same message. Hosea has repeatedly used the metaphor God gave him of Israel being like a promiscuous and adulterous wife. In today’s chapter, Hosea switches to a completely different metaphor and prefigures Jesus’ parable of the lost and prodigal son. Hosea describes God lovingly delivering his son Israel from slavery in Egypt, teaching the boy to walk, lovingly leading and feeding the lad as he grew into a nation. But the boy foolishly rejected his Father and, like Jesus’ prodigal, will find himself broken and destitute in the “distant land” of Assyria.

Once again, like I experienced with my own parents, Hosea mixes punishment with both grace and hope. Yes, Israel will find itself in captivity and exile. Yes, the boy will suffer the consequences of his hard-hearted rebellion. But, just as I learned that after the punishment and remorse came grace, compassion, and restoration, the boy Israel will return from exile and punishment, the relationship between boy and Father restored.

In the quiet of this morning after Thanksgiving, I find myself grateful for loving parents who modeled God’s love in the way they parented and punished. I hope that my children might say the same as they look back on the example I set as a father. I am also grateful that Jesus ultimately fulfilled Hosea’s prophetic vision of a loving, gracious, and compassionate Father by by coming not to condemn the world, but to graciously save the world.

In a world that is currently tearing itself apart with hate and prejudice, and reeling from the consequences of that vitriol, I pray that I can be a living example of God’s love, grace, and compassion that both Hosea, and Jesus, proclaimed.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day, Wayfarer Podcast

Tent to Temple to Table

3 Comments

Tent to Temple to Table (CaD Ex 25) – Wayfarer

And have them make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them.
Exodus 25:8 (NRSVCE)

Our children posted a rather hilarious video of Milo over the weekend. At first, we couldn’t figure out what he was doing shaking his bum towards daddy’s legs. As we listened to the audio it became more clear that Milo was making like the Stegosaurus on his shirt and shaking his spiky “tail” to protect himself from the predator, played by daddy, whom I presume was cast in the role of a T-Rex. Yesterday, on our Father’s Day FaceTime, we got to witness Milo reprise his role for us a shake his little dino-booty for Papa and Yaya’s enjoyment.

It’s a very natural thing for us to make word pictures and games for our children and grandchildren to introduce them to concepts, thoughts, and ideas that are still a little beyond their cognitive reach. Even with spiritual things we do this. Advent calendars with numbered doors help children mark the anticipation of celebrating Jesus’ birth. Christmas gifts remind us of the gifts the Magi brought the Christ child. Wendy often recalls the Nativity play she and her cousins and siblings performed each year with bathrobes and hastily collected props which helped to teach the story behind the season.

In leaving Egypt and striking out for the Promised Land, Moses and the twelve Hebrew tribes are a fledgling nation. Yahweh was introduced to Moses in the burning bush. Moses introduced the Tribes to Yahweh through interceding with Pharaoh on their behalf and delivering them from Egyptian slavery. Yahweh has already provided food in the form of Manna and led them to the mountain. In today’s chapter, God begins the process of providing a system of worship that will continue to develop a relationship of knowing and being known.

As I described in my podcast, Time (Part 1), we are still at the toddler stage of human history and development. The Ark of the Covenant (yes, the one from Raiders of the Lost Ark) and the plan for a giant traveling Tent to house God’s presence, are all tangible word pictures that their cognitive human brains could fathom revealing and expressing intangible spiritual truths about God.

Along my spiritual journey, I’ve observed that as humanity has matured so has God’s relationship with us. Jesus pushed our spiritual understanding of God. “You have heard it said,” he would begin before adding, “but I say….” I have come to believe that Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection were like the “age of accountability” in which we talk about when children become responsible adults. Jesus came to grow us up spiritually and to mature our understanding of what it means to become participants in the divine dance within the circle of love with Father, Son, and Spirit. On a grand scale, God is doing with humanity what Paul experienced in the microcosm of his own life:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

1 Corinthians 13:11

I have also observed, however, that human beings have a way of getting stuck in our development. Many adults I know are living life mired in adolescent patterns of thought and behavior. Many church institutions are, likewise, mired in childish religious practices designed to control human social behavior, but they do very little to fulfill Jesus’ mission of bringing God’s Kingdom to earth. Again, Paul was dealing with this same thing when he wrote to Jesus’ followers in Corinth:

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh.

1 Corinthians 3:1-3a

There is a great example of this from today’s chapter. God provided the Ark of the Covenant, and a traveling tent called the Tabernacle, as a word picture of His presence and dwelling with the wandering Hebrew people. It was a physical sign that God was with them. Once settled in the Promised land, the temple that Solomon built in Jerusalem became the central physical location of God’s presence. When Jesus came, however, He blew up the childish notion of the God of Creation residing in one place. Jesus matured our understanding of God’s very nature and the nature of God’s presence. With the pouring out of God’s Spirit to indwell every believer, Jesus transformed our understanding of God’s dwelling and presence. “Wherever two or three are gathered,” Jesus said, “I am among them.” The place of worship transitioned from the Temple to the dining room table. After the resurrection, Jesus was revealed during dinner in Emmaus, making shore-lunch for the disciples along the Sea of Galilee, and at the dinner table behind locked doors where the disciples were hiding.

Wendy and I have this quote from Brian Zahnd hanging on the fridge in our kitchen:

“The risen Christ did not appear at the temple but at meal tables. The center of God’s activity had shifted – it was no longer the temple but the table that was the holiest of all. The church would do well to think of itself, not so much as a kind of temple, but as a kind of table. This represents a fundamental shift. Consider the difference between the temple and the table. Temple is exclusive; Table is inclusive. Temple is hierarchical; Table is egalitarian. Temple is authoritarian; Table is affirming. Temple is uptight and status conscious; Table is relaxed and ‘family-style.’ Temple is rigorous enforcement of purity codes that prohibit the unclean; Table is a welcome home party celebrating the return of sinners. The temple was temporal. The table is eternal. We thought God was a diety in a temple. It turns out God is a father at a table.”

In the quiet this morning I find myself thinking about the ancient Hebrew people struggling to mature their understanding from a polytheistic society with over 1500 dieties to the one God who is trying to introduce Himself to them in ways they can understand. I am reminded of the ways Jesus tried to mature our understanding of God even further. I find myself confessing all of the ways through all of the years of my spiritual journey that I have refused to mature in some of the most basic things Jesus was teaching.

As Wendy and I sit down together to share a meal together this week, my desire is to acknowledge Jesus’ presence. To make our time of conversation, laughter, and daily bread a time of communion with God’s Spirit. I think that’s a good spiritual action step.

Bon a petite, my friend. May you find God’s Spirit at your table this week.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Evolution of Conversation

Leave a comment

Evolution of Conversation (CaD Jos 10) – Wayfarer

There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!
Joshua 10:14 (NIV)

Communication between parent and child changes so much over time. Wendy and I are loving watching our kids parent a four-year-old, and hearing the silly things that our grandson comes up with. The last I heard, Milo’s recommended name for the little sister in mommy’s tummy was “Harry Houdini.” Hey, the kid has a point. She does still have yet to escape the womb.

Conversations with my daughters changed and evolved over time. From the simple discussions with a toddler to the incessant “why” phase and then the years of instruction to navigating the life changes of adolescence. Then come the years of parental exile when it becomes obvious I’m not high on the conversational priority list. As they leave the nest, there begins a phase of requesting help and answering questions about the functional “how-tos” of life on your own which leads also to more adult conversation in which more complex topics are addressed, including the hard conversations required to address unresolved issues from the past.

I have always talked about the fact that humanity’s relationship with God across time reflects the development of the relationship between a parent and child from birth to adulthood.

In today’s chapter, we’re still in the toddler stages of humanity’s relationship with God. Joshua and the army continue their conquest of the land of Canaan. First, their new allies, the Gibeonites, are attacked by a coalition of neighboring forces and cry out to Joshua for help. After defeating this coalition of forces, the army continues a campaign to subdue the region.

In one fascinating aside, Joshua cries out to God to stop the sun and moon. Interpretations of this event vary. Literalists believe that God miraculously stopped time. Others argue that the sun and moon in the sky together were a bad omen for their opponents and Joshua wanted to extend the fear. What struck me, however, was the author’s observation that this was a first, that God would listen to a human being.

This being a momentous event, that of God listening to a human being, struck me because, in my post-Jesus reality, I am encouraged to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17). Jesus encouraged His followers to literally “ask, seek, and knock” in prayer, explaining that a good father wouldn’t give a stone to his child if asked for bread (Matt. 5:7-11). Prayer is such a continuous part of my inner dialogue and my daily life, that it is hard for me to fathom a reality in which I didn’t think God would listen, and respond.

Humanity’s relationship with God has changed drastically between the days of Joshua and today. The very act of prayer has developed and evolved over time. I also can’t forget that with a Creator God, everything that He makes is layered with meaning. This development and evolution of communication also took place within my spiritual life cycle. From the moment I was “born again” in spirit to the place I am on my spiritual journey 40 years later, my relationship and conversations with God have grown, developed, and matured.

God’s relationship with humanity. My relationship with my parents. My children’s relationship with me. My relationship with God. My relationship with others. There is a natural growth and development of communication that takes place over time. In each relationship, I have a responsibility for the communication on my end. If I fail in that responsibility, the relationship suffers and may even die.

Thus saith the Mandalorian: “This is the way.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Life-Long Lessons

Leave a comment

Life-Long Lessons (CaD Jos 7) – Wayfarer

Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant, which I commanded them to keep. They have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen, they have lied, they have put them with their own possessions.
Joshua 7:11 (NIV)

There is a legendary family story that happened when our daughter, Madison, was only about four or five years old. On my way out of the house to run an errand, I heard our older daughter, Taylor, screaming in the backyard. I walked around the back of the house to see Madison hitting Taylor repeatedly on the head with a whiffle ball bat.

I yelled at Madison to stop and immediately scooped her up in my arms in parental frustration. I decided to put her in the car seat and give her a talking to while I ran my errand. I forcefully and sternly told her that hitting someone on the head with a baseball bat was a naughty thing that you should never do. From the car seat, Maddy softly said:

“But, daddy, how do you know?”

I told her that she could hurt someone by hitting them on the head with a baseball bat.

“But, daddy, how do you know?”

My already angry voice rose to a new decibel level, and I told her that I know because it has happened. I told her that people have died by getting hit in the head with a baseball bat!

“But, daddy, how do you know?”

Now I was really frustrated. “BECAUSE IT WAS IN THE NEWS!” I shouted at her.

“Daddy?” Maddy asked.

“WHAT?!?!” I replied.

“Grandma said you can’t believe everything you hear in the news.“

Ironically, just as I finished typing this, our adult daughter Madison called me. That stubborn, willful little child bent on vigorously defending her act of assault and battery on her big sister grew into a lovely, well-behaved adult. But that was the point of my sometimes being a stern and disciplinary parent. A four-year-old doesn’t always understand the larger implications of their actions and, if I want them to learn some of the basic behavioral rules of life, I had to demonstrate the hard side of love.

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that what God is doing with the Hebrew tribes is showing them a different way. Ultimately, God reveals this eternal vision through Jesus and His followers. Everything and everyone is connected in love that can’t be explained or understood in human terms. Everything that flowed from the Creator flows back to the Creator and the only word we have for it is holy, and that human term doesn’t do it justice.

I’ve come to believe that the entire Great Story is like one lifetime. From humanity’s birth in Genesis to our death and resurrection in Revelation. As I read Joshua, I have to remember that humanity is in the toddler stage of history and God is trying to explain some basic rules of Life to His children. God is saying,

“Everything in this world that you think is yours actually belongs to me. I love you and will gladly share all good things with you. but first, you have to give up any claim on it. Oh, and realize that when you act disobediently out of pride and selfishness it negatively affects everyone in the family, including me. It’s all connected.”

In today’s chapter, God deals pretty harshly with a man from the tribe of Judah who disobeyed God’s command and took plunder for himself and then hid it in his tent. That was the way all the other human tribes operated. Conquest was about plunder, power, and pillaging. “I’m teaching my children a different way. It’s something you don’t quite comprehend at this age, but someday you will grow to understand.”

In the quiet this morning, I find myself thinking about my own failures and shortcomings in terms of how they affect everything and everyone to whom I’m connected. I enjoy the vantage point of living in the adult era of human history, but I observe we’re still struggling to fully understand the way Jesus came to teach us we’re all connected, and how we treat one another is how we treat God. I’m still learning the lesson. The way I think, behave, and relate affects the whole. I’m still working on it, and I’ll continue to do so until the end, just as humanity does the same thing on a larger scale. The promise is that I will one day fully experience what God has been trying to reveal to us.

Until then, I press on one day at a time, endeavoring to follow the way Jesus shows me. One day, I’ll experience it fully.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Me and Messy Family

1 Comment

Me and Messy Family (CaD Gen 28) – Wayfarer

Esau then realized how displeasing the Canaanite women were to his father Isaac; so he went to Ishmael and married Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham, in addition to the wives he already had.
Genesis 28:8-9 (NIV)
Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s household, then the Lord will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.”
Genesis 28:20-22 (NIV)

I’ve written a couple of posts recently in which I touched on the fact that the Bible really doesn’t specify any type of ritual or tradition around marriage. In fact, the closest it gets is right in the second chapter of the Great Story. A man leaves his father and mother, is united with his wife and two become one.

As I’ve meditated on this over the years, I’ve come to observe that the focus is almost always on the two becoming one. But rarely do we think about or discuss the pre-requisite of leaving the parents, which happens for both spouses even though only the male is specified in the text.

In today’s chapter, we find the twin brothers, Esau and Jacob, on divergent paths. Esau is already married to two Hittite women who have brought chaos and conflict within the family system. Having been cheated out of his birthright and blessing by his twin brother and mother, Esau is understandably bitter. Realizing how much his parents hate his wives, Esau decides to double-down and marry two more Hittite women and bring even more disruption into the family system.

Jacob, on the other hand, goes into exile with his mother’s family in order to find a wife from within the tribe. While on his way, Isaac meets God in a dream, receives the blessing God gave his grandfather and father, and chooses in. He makes a vow to follow and worship God and embraces Abraham’s covenant.

Welcome to the mess.

There was a specific stage of my own life journey when I thought long and hard about what it meant to be my own person, establish my own house, and separate from the family system of my childhood. I made a couple of key discoveries during this stage of my life:

It’s hard not to play the role one has developed as part of a family system. I leave home. I do my own thing. I follow my own path. Then I go to my parents for the holidays and I find myself thinking, acting, and behaving within the family system as I always have since I was a kid. This isn’t necessarily unhealthy, but neither is it necessarily healthy. I discovered that it was important for me to see it and work through it myself.

Parents are part of the entire equation. Both Isaac and Rebekah played a role in the conflict between the brothers. Parents can help or hinder their children’s “leaving” and the establishment of their own lives, homes, and family systems. The past decade has been crucial for both Taylor and Madison as they are in their own stages of establishing their lives. It’s not always easy to let go. It’s hard to watch them stake their own claims and feel the separation that naturally happens when one becomes independent of the system I established and controlled for so long. I am constantly having to have talks with God, myself, and Wendy about how best to bless our children by repeatedly choosing to let them go.

While Isaac, Rebekah, Esau, and Esau’s four foreign wives live in the messy consequences of Isaac and Rebekah’s own meddling, I have a feeling that twenty years of exile from that family system will be good for Isaac. He needs time and distance to establish his own relationship with the God of his forefathers, to become a husband, to become a father, and to make his own way.

In the quiet this morning, I can’t help but think about this life journey. Once I was a child learning what it meant to leave home, to be one with another, to be a father, to establish my own family system. Now I’m a parent learning to let go of daughters who are one with another and establishing their own family systems. It’s all part of the journey with its mess, mistakes, chaos, crazy, blessing, joy, laughter, and beauty.

I just want to do each stage well, and I’ve learned that I give myself some grace because I’m always a work in progress. I want to progress. I want to bring more sanity than insanity to the lives of our children and grandchildren. I want to make relational choices that will allow for more health than dysfunction. I desire that I can be more gracious and less demanding. I pray that I can increasingly trust God with the lives of my adult children so as to avoid meddling in their lives out of my personal fears and mistrust.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Devastation, Dinosaurs, and Spiritual Development

Leave a comment

Devastation, Dinosaurs, and Spiritual Development (CaD Ps 79) – Wayfarer

Pay back into the laps of our neighbors seven times
    the contempt they have hurled at you, Lord.
Psalm 79:13 (NIV)

It’s Christmas season! Yesterday, Wendy and I had the blessing of hugging our children and our grandson for the first time since last December. Milo got to put the ornaments that celebrate each of the four Christmases he’s been with us on the tree. Around the base of the tree is my father’s Lionel train set, and Milo became the fourth generation to experience the joy that train chugging around the tracks.

As I experience Christmas anew this year through the eyes of a three-year-old, I’m reminded of my own childhood. Each year I would get out the Sears Christmas Wish Book catalog and make my bucket list of all the toys that I wanted. It was usually a big list and included a host of big-ticket items my parents could never afford and probably wouldn’t buy for me even if they could because there’s know way that the giant chemistry set was going to accomplish anything but make a mess, require a lot of parental assistance, and probably blow up the house. I couldn’t manage such mature cognitive reasoning in my little brain. All I knew was it was really cool, it looked really fun, and all my friends at school would be really jealous.

Along this life journey, I’ve come to understand that my finite and circumstantial emotions and desires are often incongruent with the larger picture realities of both reason and Spirit.

Today’s chapter, Psalm 79, is an angry blues rant that was written after Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Babylonians. It is a raw description of the scene of devastation after the Babylonians destroyed the city and razed Solomon’s Temple to the ground in 586 B.C. Blood and death are everywhere. Vultures and wild dogs are feasting on dead bodies because there aren’t enough people alive and well to bury the bodies. The strong, educated, and young have been taken as prisoners to Babylon. The ruins of God’s Temple have been desecrated with profane images and graffiti. The songwriter pours out heartbreak, shock, sorrow, rage, and desperate pleas for God to rise up and unleash holy vengeance in what the ancients described as “an eye-for-an-eye and a tooth-for-a-tooth.”

As I read the songwriters rant this morning, there are three things that give me layers of added perspective:

First, when God first called Abraham (the patriarch of the Hebrew tribes and nations), He made it clear that the intent of making a nation of Abraham’s descendants was so that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through them, not destroyed.

Second, God had spoken to the Hebrews through the prophet Jeremiah warning them that the natural consequences of their sin and unfaithfulness would be Babylonian captivity through the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, to whom God referred through Jeremiah as “my servant.” It appears that the songwriter may have missed that.

Third, I couldn’t help but read the songwriter’s plea for God to pay back their enemies “seven times” the contempt that their enemies had shown them, and think of the time Peter asked Jesus if he should forgive an enemy who wronged him “seven times.” Peter was trying to show Jesus that he was beginning to understand Jesus’ teaching. To the Hebrews, the number seven spiritually represented “completeness.” When the songwriter asked for “seven times” the vengeance it was a spiritual notion of “eye-for-an-eye” justice would be complete. Peter’s question assumed that forgiving an enemy seven times would be spiritually “complete” forgiveness. Jesus responds to Peter that a more correct equation for forgiveness in the economy of God’s Kingdom would be “seventy-times-seven.”

I come back to the songwriter of Psalm 79 with these three things in mind. The first time I read it, like most 21st century readers, I was taken back by the blood, gore, raw anger, and cries for holy vengeance. Now I see the song with a different perspective. I see a songwriter who is devastated and confused. I hear the crying out of a soul who has witnessed unspeakable things, and whose emotions can’t reasonably see any kind of larger perspective in the moment.

This morning I am reminded of what I discussed in my Wayfarer Weekend podcast, Time (Part 1). Humanity at the time of the ancient Hebrews was still very much in the early childhood stage of development. The songwriter is expressing his thoughts, emotions, and desires like a child desperately asking Santa for a real dinosaur for Christmas. Not just any dinosaur, a real T-Rex to put in the backyard.

Today’s psalm is another example of God honoring the need that we have as human beings of expressing our hearts and emotions in the moment, as we have them, no matter where we find ourselves in our spiritual development. As my spiritual journey has progressed, I’ve gotten better at processing my emotions and having very different conversations with God about circumstances than I did when I was a teenager, a young adult, a young husband, and a young father. It doesn’t invalidate the feelings and conversations I had back then. They were necessary for me to grow, learn, and mature in spirit.

In the quiet this morning, I’m identifying with the songwriter of Psalm 79, not affirming blood vengeance and “eye-for-an-eye-justice,” but affirming that it was where the songwriter was in that moment, just like I have had some rants and prayers along the journey that I’m kind of embarrassed think about now. This is a journey. I’m not who I was, And, I’m not yet who I will ultimately become in eternity. I’m just a wayfarer on the road of life, taking it one-step-at-a-time into a new work week.

For the record, Milo. No, you can’t have a real dinosaur. Sorry, buddy.