Among some of the historical family ephemera in my personal archives is a marriage certificate for my great-grandparents. The certificate is for their second wedding. They were married, then got divorced, and then got remarried. Ironically, I think I have the second marriage certificate for our daughter, as well. It’s funny how history repeats itself.
Some relationships are like that. They work, and then they don’t, and then the parties work through their differences and return to covenant. They recommit.
In today’s chapter, Nehemiah and the returned Hebrew exiles in Jerusalem return to their covenant with God. It’s a covenant that God refers to as a marriage on numerous occasions. In essence, the document that they sign and seal is a new marriage certificate. In yesterday’s chapter they confessed that they had broken faith and walked away from the marriage. Now, they are getting remarried.
In this marriage certificate, Nehemiah lists a number of things to which they are committing to make the relationship work. They agree to live according to the principles God laid out in the Law of Moses, to keep the sabbath, to be generous, and to be faithful to the system of worship God prescribed.
Nehemiah 10 invites me to ask not just “What do I believe?” but “What am I willing to commit to — publicly, practically, persistently?” The ink on Nehemiah’s covenant scroll reminds me that faith needs form the way that saying “I do” at the wedding needs daily relational acts that put flesh on the commitment. Promises whispered in private take root when I bind them to community, to habit, to rhythm.
I’m reminded in the quiet this morning that my relationship with God is a marriage, and each new day is like my own “signing day.” It’s a daily covenant renewal of the soul:
To rest when the world demands endless work.
To give generously when culture teaches us to hoarding.
To honor sacred time and sacred space.
To live and love distinctively, not for separation’s sake, but so that light may be visible in the dark.
Nehemiah and the Hebrews’ story is really a love story between God and a people saying again: “We’re still yours.” And that’s a sentiment I whisper in my actions each day to both God and Wendy.
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!
Outside the curtain that shields the ark of the covenant law in the tent of meeting, Aaron is to tend the lamps before the Lord from evening till morning, continually. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. Leviticus 24:3 (NIV)
It was a bitterly cold night forty-four years ago last month. I was just a snot-nosed fourteen year-old kid. I was a middle-schooler for crying out loud. I walked down the aisle, knelt down, and prayed a prayer of total surrender. As did this, everyone sang,
“I have decided to follow Jesus. No going back. No going back.”
Young people, especially adolescents, make a lot of silly statements at that stage of their lives. If you had asked me then, I’d have probably told you that I was going to study Law and go into politics. Perhaps I would be President of the United States someday. That was what my yet to be fully formed brain was thinking before that night. But something happened in that prayer of surrender that penetrated far deeper than the fog of adolescent angst, dreams, and natural delusion.
“Though none go with me, still I will follow. No going back. No going back.”
Here I sit in the quiet, forty-four years later. I’m still following. The spiritual reality is that I’m following Jesus closer than ever, even though it looks very different than I could have even conceived forty-four years ago. It’s less religious and more relational. It is intensely personal and organic rather than being communal and tied to an organization. It is less sure and more real. It has grown in intimate mystery as I have slowly learned to relax my fingers clinging to human dogma. I’m loving far more, and judging far less than I ever have before. Forgiveness comes easier. So does generosity.
“I have decided to follow Jesus. No going back. No going back.”
A few days ago, in my post/podcast entitled Ritual and Spiritual, I talked about the 40-watt light-bulb inside the candleholder above the altar of the church in which I grew up. I was taught that it was “the eternal flame” that illuminated the altar always.
In today’s chapter of God’s priestly manual for the ancient Hebrews we learn where the Methodist church learned about eternal flames and altars. There were golden lamp stands that God had Moses and the Hebrews make and place outside the “Most Holy Place” of his traveling tent temple. Others stood by the altar outside the tent temple. Aaron the high priest, and his priestly sons were to tend the lamps and keep them burning around the clock. This required constant attention, making sure the wicks were trimmed and replaced and that they never ran out of oil. If they weren’t vigilant in these mundane tasks of checking, adding, replacing, and maintaining, the fire would go out.
What I once again find so profoundly simple is that God gave this metaphorical lesson to His people in the toddler stages of humanity that we humans might grow-up, mature, and learn the spiritual lesson that the metaphor had to teach us. Jesus made it clear that the lesson was not that we should replicate this practice of building altars in churches and hanging 40-watt light bulbs over them. This, by the way, requires nothing from the humans responsible for them other than telling the janitor to replace the bulb once every year-or-two to make sure it doesn’t burn out and no one notices until Sunday morning worship. That’s not quite the spiritual lesson of vigilance, discipline, and maintenance that God was giving Aaron and the boys.
The lesson of the “continuous flame” was a spiritual lesson for the day when Jesus would come, indwell, and illuminate my 14-year-old heart, mind, and soul.
“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:14-16 (MSG)
How do I keep the Light of the World burning within and shining out in my words, actions, and relationships for forty-four years? This is where the routine of spiritual vigilance, commitment, investigation, and mundane perpetual maintenance that God taught Aaron and the boys comes in. Being a disciple of Jesus has not been simply a process of hooking up the wires, flipping the switch, and changing the bulb every few years. Keeping the spiritual flame burning and the Light shining has required more diligence, discipline, and perseverance than that. Not that I haven’t had my own struggles to maintain it in the ebb and flow of this life journey. I’m human like everyone else. Some seasons I’ve done better than others.
Still, here I am in the quiet this morning, still tending the internal spiritual flame. Another chapter, another hour of meditation, reflection, and internal conversation with God’s Spirit. Another day on this earthly journey.
“I have decided to follow Jesus. No going back. No going back.”
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!
[Joshua said] “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15 (NIV)
Our local gathering of Jesus’ followers has been studying James‘ letter to Jewish believers who were scattered by persecution. I’ve been spending a lot of time in it in recent weeks. One of the major themes of James is that being a follower of Jesus is not simply a mental assent to belief in Jesus. James makes it clear that real faith generates and motivates action. He’s riffing on a word picture that Jesus used when He told His followers to pay attention to the fruit a person produces in their life and relationships. He said that one can tell what is in a person’s heart by the fruit of their actions.
Today’s chapter is the conclusion of the book of Joshua. The conquest of the Promised Land was successful. The land had been allotted to the twelve tribes. The people had settled. In the final act of Joshua’s leadership, he calls the tribal assembly together. Joshua reminds them of their family’s story, starting with Abraham, and how God had led their ancestors to this particular moment of time. Joshua then acknowledges that in the land that Abraham left, and the land that they just conquered, there are many dieties worshipped. He reminds them of commandment numero uno in the Top Ten commandments God gave them: serve God alone.
Joshua then calls for a commitment. It’s a fish or cut bait moment. He tells the tribes to choose whether they will serve the God of Abraham and Moses, or if they are going to serve the plethora of local idols and dieties worshipped by other peoples in the region and around the world. Joshua then makes his choice public: “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
The thing that struck me as I read this call to commitment was that Joshua didn’t ask the people which god they would believe. He asked them whom they would serve. The Hebrew word used can also refer to the act of tilling the ground in preparation for planting, growing, and harvesting. In a way, Joshua’s question lays the foundation for Jesus’ word picture: For whom will you labor? Who’s fruit are you going to produce?
In the quiet this morning, I’m thinking about my own journey. When I was a kid, I took a class, assented to a statement of beliefs, and got a certificate making me a member of a church. A couple of years later I realized that this had nothing to do with the person I was. I may have believed in God, but I was serving only myself. The fruit of my life was sour grapes. It’s when I chose to step out onto this faith journey, to actually follow Jesus, and to serve Him that the seeds of good fruit got planted.
Which brings me back to James, who writes:
Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?James 2:14-17 (MSG)
It’s not about what I believe. Its about who I serve.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
“In view of all this, we are making a binding agreement, putting it in writing, and our leaders, our Levites and our priests are affixing their seals to it.” Nehemiah 9:38 (NIV)
One of the benefits of studying God’s Message over time is that you eventually begin to make connections and see patterns across the Great Story.
In today’s chapter we have the Israelites gathered together. They’ve been defeated and enslaved by the Babylonians for 150 years, but the King has allowed them to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls. They return, remember anew the Great Story and renew their commitment to God and His laws. They make a “binding agreement” to be faithful.
Just like when they were gathered in Sinai and Moses gave them the law to begin with…
Just like the multiple times they got rebellious and stiff-necked during their forty-years of wandering and renewed their commitment…
Just like at the dedication of Solomon’s temple…
Just like during the time of King Josiah when the law of Moses was found and read for the first time in a generation because the people had abandoned their faith to pursue pagan religions…
Just like…me… and the countless “binding agreements” I’ve made with God at camps and conferences and workshops and worship services through the years, only to prove myself faithless again and again.
One of the themes of the Great Story is the same theme I see in my own spiritual journey. People are people. No matter how hard I try and however many well-intentioned “binding agreements” I make with the Almighty, I always fall short of keeping them. But, that’s the point:
[Jesus] saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:5)
…if we are faithless, [God] remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.(2 Timothy 2:13)
When in my repetitive, never-ending, cyclical faith-less-ness I finally stop trying to earn my spiritual merit badge, then I finally begin to understand the depths of God’s mercy, grace, and faith-full-ness. That’s when I truly begin to understand the Great Story. That’s when real Spirit-ual growth begins to occur.
“Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15 (NRSV)
We have increasingly become a culture that boils things down to simple thoughts. We gather quotes, sayings and images on social media. We try to say something or quote something worthwhile in the 140 characters that a tweet will allow. Everything is reduced to make it smaller, pithier, and more quickly consumed. And, in doing so we lose context. Without context things change and lose the fullness of meaning.
“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” Joshua said in today’s chapter. These words can be found on countless Pinterest images (example above), plaques, wall hangings, keychains, bookmarks, pens, and etc. It’s a popular sentiment and statement of commitment. I’m afraid very few people know where it originated or its context.
Joshua, the chosen successor to Moses, is at the finish line of his life. He’s dying. His number is almost up and he knows it. He gathers the nation together around the Big Top – the great tent that had been Israel’s mobile worship center since the days of Moses himself.
Joshua recounts the story of the nations history from Abraham to their present day (“Where have we been?”).
Joshua reminds them of the blessings they are enjoying in the lands which had become their inheritance (“Where are we now?”)
Then Joshua calls them to commitment: “Choose this day whom you will serve…” (“Where are you going?”)
The call to commitment is not for Joshua himself. He’s done. He’s run his race. The answer to the question of commitment will have no bearing on him. He no longer has an earthly future. He’s making a declarative statement for his family. He will not have any power to enforce it, he will not be physically present to hold his family accountable to it, and he has no assurance that they will actually fulfill it. It is a faith statement.
Joshua’s statement belies the real question that is weighing on his 110 year old heart: “What am I leaving behind?”
His statement, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” is far greater than the letters on a Pinterest post can provide to the casual observer. The depth of it cannot be realized in reading the mere words. It’s important to understand the whole story and the context in which the statement is made. This is a declaration of death-bed desire. It is a plea to his descendants. This is Joshua’s great and motivating want. It is the revelation of his dying wish and his heart’s pure and final longing.
Today, we come to the end of Joshua’s story. It is the final chapter in the book, and in a moment of unplanned synchronicity it falls on the day before my 50th birthday. Today, I find myself asking:
Today you have obtained the Lord’s agreement: to be your God; and for you to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, his commandments, and his ordinances, and to obey him. Deuteronomy 26:17 (NRSV)
It was a cold February night in 1981, but I still remember it vividly. I had been born and raised in a Christian home. My parents took me to Sunday School and each summer I went to Vacation Bible School. Just a year or so before I had gone through confirmation class and was confirmed as a member of the church at the age of 13.
But, all of that had largely been going through the religious motions. It had been doing what my parents told me to do. It had been doing that which was expected of me. What happened on that February night had been unexpected, at least to me.
On that I night, I heard God in my spirit ask me to make my own choice and my own commitment to follow. It was spiritual and intimate and profound. It was powerful in a way that changed the map of my life journey, and that of others, in incalculable ways.
As I read today’s chapter, I found it fascinating that at the end of all the laws and regulations God brought the people to make a choice and a commitment to enter into an agreement. “Today,” God said. “Make a choice. Make a commitment.” It’s one thing to hang around God in a noncommittal sense and go along with familial or societal expectations of going to church or loosely identifying with religion. It’s another thing altogether to go all in; to make a choice to follow Jesus, and obey.
Today, I’m reminded of a choice and a commitment that I, myself, made nearly 35 years ago which, to this day, intimately shapes my life journey moment-by-moment, day-by-day, week-by-week, year-by-year, decade-by-decade. Today, I’m reminded of the words to the simple song that was playing on a cold February night in 1981:
Whatever your lips utter you must diligently perform, just as you have freely vowed to the Lord your God with your own mouth. Deuteronomy 23:23 (NRSV)
Just a few weeks ago I saw something on television that brought back memories of a kid I knew in high school. He was the big talker. His mouth was a never ending stream of braggadocios comments and tall tales about his experiences and accomplishments past, present, and future. It was so bad that some of his insane statements became legend among my group of friends. As far as I know, he did not remain a friend of any of us for long.
He came to mind again as I read this morning’s chapter. Today’s chapter is full of rather interesting and miscellaneous laws the ancient Hebrews had regarding who could and couldn’t enter the Lord’s assembly, how to handle human excrement/emissions, and the line between snacking from a neighbors grave vine and downright stealing from him. Fascinating, but admittedly not the most inspirational of thoughts for my day.
Then I came to the verse pasted above and it leapt off the page at me. While I can claim innocence from the type of arrogant tall tales of my high school acquaintance, how often have I promised and then not delivered? How often, with the best of intentions, have I stated that I’ll do this or that and then not followed through? Elsewhere in God’s Message is says that if you’ve committed the least of these offenses you’re as guilty as having committed it all. Ugh.
Today, I’m reminded of a simple rule of life: I don’t be a big talker, even in little ways. I don’t want to promise what I can’t or won’t deliver, even with the best of intentions. Say what I’ll do, and do what I say.
So we fasted and petitioned our God about this, and he answered our prayer. Ezra 8:23 (NIV)
Before setting out on the long journey from Babylon back to Jerusalem, Ezra had the people fast, pray and commit themselves and their journey to God.
Today, I come out of my quiet time without great insight. Rather, I am struck by a simple reminder to begin my journey, each day’s journey into life, by taking time to petition God.
As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owners except to feast their eyes on them? Ecclesiastes 5:11 (NIV)
As Wendy and I prepare for selling our house, we are in the process commonly known as “de-cluttering.” We are going through everything we own and choosing to peddle, pitch, or pile into storage. It’s been a long time in coming and it’s been a fascinating process. We are certainly not candidates for an episode of Hoarders, but there are moments when the shelves and containers full of stuff seem endless.
Last night, I sat on the living room floor and went through two large containers with receipts, owners manuals, warranty information, tax documents, and etc. It was crazy how much paperwork we have for the smallest of things, and I was shocked at the amount of peripheral documentation builds up around the ephemera of our daily lives. Much of what I went through was for gadgets, appliances, technology and d00-dads we don’t even own anymore. Oy!
The de-cluttering is having a fascinating and positive effect on both Wendy and me. The house feels more open and peaceful, our day is strangely lightened. When we feast our eyes around the house there is less to consume our mindshare, less to worry about, less to have to think about, and less we have to do something with. It is making us consider how we want things to be different in our new home.
As I read through Solomon’s wisdom regarding the silliness of the accumulation of things I am both convicted and encouraged this morning. I am sure that what I am feeling is common to virtually all who have gone through this process, but it is where I am in the moment and Solomon seems exceptionally wise from where I am standing this morning.
As I look back over my life journey I realize that I have often been considerate of things I should do, but then fell short of actually doing them. As I think about my desire to commit to permanently de-clutter house and life, I am mindful of something else the Teacher wrote in today’s chapter:
When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. It is better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it.
Oh, my dear children! I feel as if I’m going through labor pains for you again, and they will continue until Christ is fully developed in your lives.. Galatians 4:7 (NLT)
Several years ago my mother was greeting at church and a woman asked her if she was Tom Vander Well’s mother. “I am,” my mother answered. The woman told my mother that she had been my first grade teacher and she wanted my mother to say hello to me. I was blown away to know that Mrs. Avery would remember me after all those years. I loved her. She changed my life by giving me a love for school and for learning. I made a point of visiting her a few weeks later to tell her that and to thank her. Sitting in her living room, she pulled out my old class photo and began naming each student and talking about each one as if we were the previous year’s class. When she told me that she prayed for each of her students, I wasn’t surprised.
I’ve been teaching a class this fall on creativity. It’s been several years since I’ve taught, and I’ve been amazed to remember how intensely I feel for those in my class. In my morning quiet times I find myself thinking of each one, naming them individually and praying for them. During the week I feel concern. I wonder how their week is going and what God is doing in their lives through the assignments and material.
I identified with Paul when in today’s chapter he described his feelings of responsibility for those he taught in Galatia as labor pains. On one hand it seems a bit of an odd metaphor because, face it, neither Paul nor I can really understand true labor pains. I think Paul used the metaphor because as a teacher you realize that something is being birthed in your students. There are new thoughts, new perceptions, and there is new life emerging when God’s Spirit is at work. And that is the key. God and the students are doing that hard work. I’m just a facilitator and conduit. Nevertheless, when I’m involved in the facilitation of that process, I experience a love and commitment to those in my charge.
