Tag Archives: Grief

Chapter-a-Day

Between Quiet and Noise

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Between Quiet and Noise (CaD Matt 14) – Wayfarer

After [Jesus] had dismissed [the crowd], he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone…
Matthew 14:23 (NIV)

I remember seeing a news story many years ago that talked about a special breed of audiophiles who try to get high-definition recordings of pure nature sounds. They’re the ones who record the sounds that end up on our noise machines or sound effect apps that help us sleep at night. This particular news story was about the fact that their job is getting increasingly harder. The problem is that the noise of civilization is crowding in everywhere, making it difficult to find the pure sounds of creation without planes, trains, automobiles, and cells phones interrupting.

Caught between the quiet and the noise of life. Now there’s a metaphor that resonates with me.

Today’s chapter begins with the unjust and tragic execution of John the Baptist, who was killed because a spoiled, drunken, frat-boy king got turned on watching his niece/step-daughter shake her booty at his high society soiree. Promising to grant her any wish, her mother prompted her to ask for John’s head on a platter.

John’s disciples bury the body and immediately find Jesus to tell him the news. I find it so easy to dehumanize Jesus as I read and reread the stories. Today, I found myself imagining Jesus’ reaction to the news. John was Jesus’ cousin, born within a few months of one another. Their mothers experienced miraculous conceptions and pregnancies together. They knew one another since they were kids. Our daughters Taylor and Madison each have a cousin born within months of one another. I’ve witnessed the special bond they continue to have. That was Jesus and John. Just a few chapters ago, Jesus said of his cousin, “There is no one greater than John!”

When Jesus hears the news, Matthew records that He immediately got in a boat and withdrew to a solitary place. How human. Being fully human, Jesus is going to grieve in all of the emotional stages of human grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, then acceptance. He wants to be alone.

In the quiet privacy of a boat, Jesus seeks an equally quiet, solitary place out in nature to be alone, to grieve. But He can’t escape the din of civilization:

Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns.

By the time Jesus lands onshore in a solitary place, the crowd is already assembled. He can’t escape.

I felt that tension this morning as I read about Jesus healing the sick, working miracles, and feeding the thousands. Inside, He’s grieving. Inside, He’s tired. Inside, He just wants to be left alone.

The need to be alone in the quiet leads Jesus to send the disciples on ahead in the boat. Jesus dismisses the crowd.

After Jesus had dismissed the crowd, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray.

In the quiet this morning, I found myself identifying with the tension that Jesus must have felt at that moment. I feel the pull to quiet. I need to withdraw, to feel, to ponder, to pray, to rest, to sit in the silence. But, life doesn’t stop. The task list that’s never empty, the needs of loved ones, the deadlines at work, the commitments I’ve made, the friends’ requests, the responsibilities of everyday life… every time I withdraw to a solitary place, I find them all noisily waiting for me when I arrive.

Jesus had compassion. Jesus took care of the crowds, but He didn’t give up on His need for quiet. If anything, the crowds only intensified His determination to make it happen. No crowds, no disciples even.

“Hey! Everyone? Leave me.”

Along this life journey, I’ve learned that quiet time is necessary. I may not always succeed in shutting out the world and finding the quiet. I may find the quiet only to find it encroached by interruptions. Like Jesus, I don’t want to get angry with the interrupters. I want to be compassionate. I also don’t want to give up seeking quiet. It may just have to intensify my effort to find it.

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

Book Summary List, Wayfarer Podcast

Lamentations (Dec 2021)

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Each photo below corresponds to the chapter-a-day post for the book of Lamentations published by Tom Vander Well in December of 2021. Click on the photo linked to each chapter to read the post.

Lamentations 1: Blue Christmas

Lamentations 2: How I Should Grieve!

Lamentations 3: “Yet This I Call to Mind”

Lamentations 4: It Stinks to Be Right

Lamentations 5: A Different Spirit of the Season

Chapter-a-Day

A Different Spirit of the Season

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A Different Spirit of the Season (CaD Lam 5) – Wayfarer

the young men have stopped their music.
Joy is gone from our hearts;
    our dancing has turned to mourning.
Lamentations 5:14b-15 (NIV)

Wendy and I attended the funeral of a friend yesterday. As funerals go, it was the kind of celebration of life and faith that I appreciate. After a long battle with cancer, our friend ended his earthly journey at home, surrounded by his family, holding his wife’s hand. Each of his three children shared honestly and humorously about their father’s foibles as well as his faithfulness. It is popular to say that funerals are a celebration of life, but it was really true in this case. We really felt it in our hearts as we watched and listened.

During one of the special music numbers, Wendy leaned over and whispered to me, “This sounds like a song from a Broadway musical.”

She nailed it. My eyes grew big and nodded and smiled in agreement. But that wasn’t the end of it. As the song continued, Wendy started whispering to me her vision of the musical on stage.

“This is where the chorus slowly begins to make their way on stage to join the soloist as the music swells.”

At this point, I’m laughing because I can totally see it in my head.

The song continued to build through a repeat of the chorus, and then right on cue I leaned over and whispered, “Key change!”

Wendy doubled over with laughter as the song moved to the final bridge. As it moved to the dramatic closing Wendy whispered the possible titles of the musical we’d just conjured up in our heads. I can’t remember what she said. I was laughing too hard. It’s a good thing we were sitting in the back row.

Later in the day, Wendy and I talked about the fact that we both felt very much at ease at the funeral. Our friend knew where he going and was ready to go. He lived a life of faith, hope, and love and he touched our lives in such good ways. His family was laughing amidst their tears during the funeral. The spirit in the room was that of joy, which I think gave Wendy and me the freedom to share our own laugh together. I believe there is such a thing as a good funeral, and this was one of them.

I couldn’t help but bring that to mind as I read the final poem in Jeremiah’s five-poem cycle we call the book of Lamentations. Those who like happy endings will be disappointed. If anything, Jeremiah leaves me mired in the terrible circumstances he witnessed. There’s no glimmer of hope. It’s still out there somewhere on the dark horizon.

Jeremiah even leaves a buries a clue of his sorrow into the structure of the chapter. The structure of the first four poems in Lamentations are forms of alphabetic acrostics in which the first word of every verse began with successive letters in the 22 letter Hebrew alphabet. You might notice that there are 22 verses in today’s final chapter, but the verses don’t follow the alphabetic acrostic pattern. Metaphorically, the poet is telling us that things are breaking down, the structure is falling apart.

“The music has stopped,” Jeremiah reports. No joy. No dancing. No inspirational swell of a climactic Broadway finale. Not even a funeral dirge. There’s just continued mourning, the perpetuation of chaos which ends with a final questioning cry to God, whom Jeremiah feels is distant and aloof.

Christmas Eve is a week from today, and I admit that it has felt a bit odd to journey through Lamentations while the world is waxing sentimental about gingerbread houses, Santa’s visit, and “peace on earth goodwill to men.” At the same time, there was something about this week with Jeremiah that felt honest in a healthy way. This life journey ebbs and flows, and its course doesn’t always conveniently coincide with the spirit of the holidays the world seems to annually expect of me. And, that’s okay.

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

Chapter-a-Day

“Yet This I Call to Mind”

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"Yet This I Call to Mind" (CaD Lam 3) – Wayfarer

Yet this I call to mind
    and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
    therefore I will wait for him.”
Lamentations 3:21-24 (NIV)

Jeremiah shows all the signs of being an Enneagram Type Four. The constant brooding. The wallowing in melancholy. The ability to wax eloquent and hyperbolic on his suffering and affliction. Of course, Jeremiah has far more reason than I to brood. When, in today’s poetic chapter, he states “I called on your name, Lord, from the depths of the pit” it wasn’t just hyperbole. In Jeremiah 38, his enemies literally threw the prophet into an empty well and left him to die in the muddy slime at the bottom.

And I think I’ve seen some bad days.

One of the things lost on most readers of Lamentations is the intricate way in which it is written. Each chapter is its own separate Hebrew poem. Each poem (chapter) is a Hebrew acrostic, meaning that every verse begins with a different letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Today’s chapter is the middle poem, and those who joined me for last year’s journey through the book of Psalms might remember that in Hebrew poetry, the very middle verse or stanza or poem tends to contain the central theme. The way that Jeremiah structured this cycle of poems, the first verse of today’s chapter is the central verse of the book:

I am the man who has seen affliction
    by the rod of the Lord’s wrath.

[cue: I Am a Man of Constant Sorrows by the Soggy Bottom Boys]

Yesterday, I wrote about the very human need to grieve, and the permission that God gives throughout the Great Story to do so. I believe it is healthy on all levels to process and express sorrow and grief, and God gives consistent permission to do so. Jesus even sweat blood as He expressed His despair at the suffering He was about to face on the final day of his earthly journey. Singing the blues is good for the soul.

Along the journey, however, I’ve also learned that there’s a point at which the healthy expression of my sorrow becomes an unhealthy victim status. Jeremiah didn’t die in the pit. Jesus didn’t stay in the grave. Choosing to mire myself in despair and refuse hope is to deny the very core of my faith.

Jeremiah quite obviously was a student of David’s lyrics in the Psalms. He follows David’s example both in shamelessly singing the blues, but also in finding the inflection point at which a ray of light shines in the darkness. There’s always that moment when the free-fall ends and the road begins to ascend. It’s the moment of eucatastrophe when the winds shift, the lighthouse appears on the horizon, and the seeds of hope bear fruit in the midst of despair. Jeremiah, writing from the depths of death, starvation, and devastation more extreme than David ever faces, makes the turn to hope more eloquently than David ever did:

Yet this I call to mind
    and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
    therefore I will wait for him.”

That’s the moment I seek in every dark valley of my journey. The moment that comes after I’ve cried a river of tears, screamed like King Lear and his fool into the winds of misfortune, written endless pages of guttural lament, and feasted on every angry growl of my blues collection. The moment when I lay spent from the rage and my soul can finally hear the whisper:

“Yet this I call to mind…”

Wait for it.

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

Chapter-a-Day

How I Should Grieve!

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How I Should Grieve! (CaD Lam 2) – Wayfarer

The hearts of the people
    cry out to the Lord.
You walls of Daughter Zion,
    let your tears flow like a river
    day and night;
give yourself no relief,
    your eyes no rest.
Lamentations 2:18 (NIV)

I have a friend who is experiencing pain in life that I can’t imagine. Every day is a torment. My friend has actually compared daily life to Sisyphus, who perpetually struggled to roll a boulder up the hill only to have the law of physics win every time. He would watch as the boulder rolled back down requiring him to start again, and again, and again.

My friend steadfastly refuses to talk much about it.

“I remember you telling me thirty years ago about these old farmers in the church where you interned that one summer,” my friend said to me. “How these old guys were so stoic they would refuse to go to the doctor or the hospital even though they were suffering and dying. I’ve always admired that.”

I don’t begrudge the sentiment. I’ve observed that human nature often leads one to do almost anything to avoid pain. This is especially true when that pain is perpetual. I might find ways to numb out and avoid it. I might distract my mind and soul with any number of things. I might, like the old farmers my friend admired, stoically stuff my pain and suffering down deep and stoically steel myself to silently endure. In each case, I’m still just avoiding what the Great Story states, quite directly multiple times in multiple ways: the path of spiritual progress in this life is in pain, trouble, trials, and suffering. Jeremiah’s amazing five poems of Lamentation might easily be presented as Exhibit A.

Here’s a little Jeopardy! trivia: The Hebrew title of the book of Lamentations is “How” (Hebrew: ‘êkâ), after the first word of the first line of chapters 1, 2, and 4. Here are the three lines in succession:

How deserted lies the city,
    once so full of people!
How the Lord has covered Daughter Zion
    with the cloud of his anger!
How the gold has lost its luster,
    the fine gold become dull!

There’s something I really love about that. It recognizes what I find to be exactly what I need when I’m suffering struggles on this life journey: to honestly, emotionally, and unashamedly express my thoughts and emotions in a healthy way. That’s exactly what Jeremiah’s five-poem volume, How, is all about.

How I should grieve!

Along my spiritual journey, I’ve found it interesting to observe so many people who have a base assumption that life should be free of trouble, and that when experiencing trouble one should deny it, avoid it, and pretend that everything is okay. On the contrary, my perpetual journey through the Great Story reminds me constantly to experience trouble head-on, to fully express sorrow, and to allow life’s troubles to do their spiritual work in me as I cling to hope in God’s promises and have faith that there are good things on the other side of the pain.

The Sage of Ecclesiastes said that there is a time and season to mourn and grieve on this journey just as there is a time and season to dance. I love the juxtaposition of those realities in one verse. It gives me permission (I might even say it commands me) to fully feel and express my grief, but it doesn’t allow me to sit in and wallow in victim status forever. Rather, it is in fully working through my grief that I make my way out of the valley and to the next mountain vista where I can just as fully dance on the summit. They are part of one another. My grieving gives fullness to the dancing. My dancing gives perspective to the grieving. I find that treating them as either-or experiences in life is spiritually anorexic. Experiencing their both-and interconnectedness is spiritually empowering.

In the quiet this morning, I’m reminded that there are times in this life when God gives me permission, even commands me to:

Cry out! Wail! Moan! Sing the blues!
Let my tears torrentially flow like a raging river.
Let it out around the clock.
Don’t stop until it’s done.

It’s through the free flow of my grief that God spiritually transports me to where He’s leading me.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Blue Christmas

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Blue Christmas (CaD Lam 1) – Wayfarer

“This is why I weep
    and my eyes overflow with tears.
No one is near to comfort me,
    no one to restore my spirit…”
Lamentations 1:16 (NIV)

I don’t really believe in coincidences, and I believe that everything is connected. Thus, I try to pay attention to patterns and connections.

Yesterday morning I read of the death and devastation caused by tornadoes across multiple states.

Later in the morning, I spoke with a friend among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers yesterday who is experiencing acute grief after the loss of a child.

“I can’t smile,” they said to me. “I try to do it. It’s like I’m physically incapable.”

After delivering the message in the next worship service, I was handed a note and asked to announce to our local gathering the death of a long-time, core member. He was once Wendy’s boss, and he a transformational presence in her life.

Yesterday afternoon, the blog post of an acquaintance landed in my inbox. It’s another installment in what I’ve observed to be a somewhat fashionable trend of late among a younger generation deconstructing their faith and waxing eloquent about the failings of the church/institution/Christian_brand of their youth. This individual wrote:

“I have lived…years in the company of people (and have been one myself) who are very quick to pose a theological short-hand as the solution to all of life’s woes. And when that theology fails, it is simply a problem of not believing enough.”

For the record, I don’t begrudge anyone their own spiritual wrangling on this earthly journey. Everyone has their own path to walk and their own story being told. I’ve observed that entire generations have something of a collective spiritual path. Nevertheless, it made me sad.

A couple of years ago, our local gathering went through an unprecedented season of death. I don’t remember the exact numbers but it was something like almost 200 families in our gathering experienced the death of a loved one in a period of about 18 months. This included infants, toddlers, and the son of a Pastor, who was just in his twenties. Thus, each Advent season we’ve had a Sunday we call “Blue Christmas” in which we remember those we’ve lost, and we give permission to grieve for those in the midst of it. We try to respectfully, lovingly, and sympathetically walk alongside. We do our best not to let the empty, sentimental schlock of the season distract us from the reality that there are those among us walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

Our local gathering handed out candles, along with a blessing, to any who wanted a light to remember those they’ve lost this Christmas season. Wendy picked one up as we left worship yesterday and delivered it to a loved one in the afternoon in remembrance of a key family member who passed years ago and in recognition of the recurring grief that comes with that loved one’s absence every Christmas.

Having connected all of these experiences in the past few days, I’ve decided to journey through the ancient, poetic book of Lamentations this week. Written by the prophet Jeremiah after the siege and fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C., it is a lyrical expression of grief amidst the realities of suffering and death that we can scarcely imagine. Suffering and grief for which there is no easy theological solution. More on that as we walk with Jeremiah in his grief throughout this week.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself grieving those like the acquaintance who find themselves in the company of those whose faith is “a theological short-hand as the solution of all woes.” I pray they find new company among those who choose not to deny the woes in this life for which there is no solution, but for which there is sympathy, empathy, consideration, and wordless companionship on the walk through the valley of death’s shadow. I’m grateful to live among such company, and I’m thankful that in the Great Story there’s are entire books dedicated to the realities of incomprehensible suffering and grief.

I pray for all for whom this Christmas is a Blue Christmas.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Present

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Present (CaD Ecc 2) – Wayfarer

A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God…
Ecclesiastes 2:24 (NIV)

Wendy and I had a lovely evening last night with friends who joined us for some mesquite-smoked, barbecued chicken breasts I threw on the grill for dinner. We sat leisurely around the table long after Wendy’s amazing dessert was served. We shared our respective stories with one another and plied one another with questions.

Our guests, like Wendy and me, find ourselves with more of Life’s road behind us than before us. Like Wendy and me, our guests find themselves in a good place. Like Wendy and me, our guests had their own stretches of pain and struggle in which the journey was a long, hard slog. Ironically, two of the four of us lived much of life as “straight-arrows” who, nevertheless, got tripped up along the way. Two of the four of us had stories of foolish rebellion. We all recognized how our Enneagram Types factored into the way we reacted, responded, and related to others along the way. All four of us ultimately had stories of gracious redemption which we celebrated and thanked God as we shared.

In the opening chapter of Ecclesiastes yesterday, I shared that the wise sage who authors the book, identified as wise King Solomon, is ultimately pushing into what is of value. In today’s chapter, he seems to speak from a place on life’s road in which there is more road behind him than before him. He is looking back and recounting the veritable plethora of things from which he attempted to find something meaningful and valuable.

As I read, I couldn’t help but see different Enneagram Types in the descriptions. The chapter begins (vss 1-3) with what feels like the Type Seven “Enthusiast” who indulges in a long string of pleasurable distractions. Then it shifts to the Type Three “Achiever” (vss 4-11) who scrambles to make a name for himself with his resume of meritorious successes and all the earthly rewards that came with it. Next, it’s the Type Five “Investigator” (vss 12-14) who quietly ponders the lack of meaning and value in everything he’s tried and attempts to find wisdom in these lessons. The pessimistic Type Four “Individualist” (vss 15-17) then shows up with angst and finds the glass half-empty, futile, and meaningless. The black-and-white Type One “Reformer” (vss 18-21) then waxes despairingly about how completely unfair and inequitable it is that he did all the hard work to amass all the good things in life and it all gets inherited by his children who did nothing to deserve it.

After all the seeking, pursuing, toiling, mulling, regrets, frustration, and investigation, the chapter ends with a simple, humble observation from the sage. Rather than seeking outward satisfaction in pleasures, successes, merit badges, wealth, gadgets, graduate degrees, awards, and fame, the Teacher looks inward. He addresses this one moment of being. He eschews all the previous days of the journey he’s just recounted and chooses to turns his gaze from contemplating all the days ahead which are not promised and may never come. He considers this one, present day.

Savor the flavor of mesquite-smoked chicken and the sweet tenderness of Iowa corn casserole. Soak in the laughter and love of good company. Relish the life stories for the unique and dynamic living fingerprints they are. Embrace gratitude to the full. Lay down your head with satisfaction in the tasks accomplished this day. Allow the guilt and shame of things undone fade away into the vacuum of meaninglessness. Caress the warmth of her presence, her body next to you in bed. Allow her laughter to languish in your ears.

I sit in the quiet at the beginning of this, another day. All my yesterdays are gone. All my tomorrows are only an assumption. I have this day.

I choose to be present.

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

Chapter-a-Day

At Some Point, One Must Return Home

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Then the family heads of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and Levites—everyone whose heart God had moved—prepared to go up and build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem.
Ezra 1:5 (NIV)

When I was a young man I spent five years in pastoral ministry. Three of those years were spent in a very small town here in Iowa. During those years I officiated a lot of funerals. Not only were these funerals for members of my congregation, but the local Funeral Home Director also called me when there was a family who had no particular faith tradition or church home. As a result, I spent a generous amount of time with grieving families.

During these funerals, I began to observe families in all of their glorious dysfunctions. I noticed, in particular, that these sad occasions brought prodigal children home, and that in many cases the children had not been home for many years. This taught me a life lesson: “At some point, one has to return home.” (By the way, this became the inspiration for my play, Ham Buns and Potato Salad.)

For the past few months on this chapter-a-day journey, I’ve been going through books related to what’s known as the “exilic” period when the Hebrews were taken captive and lived in exile under the ancient Assyrian, Babylonian, Mede, and Persian empires. Today I begin walking through the two books (Ezra and Nehemiah) that tell the story of the exiles return to Jerusalem and their work to reconstruct Solomon’s Temple and the protective walls of the city.

For the exiled Hebrews, their return had been something they’d longed for. Right at the beginning of today’s chapter, it’s mentioned that they’d been clinging to the prophecy of Jeremiah that the Babylonian captivity would last 70 years (Jer 25:11-12). The time for return finally arrives. At some point, one has to return home.

Reading today’s chapter, it’s easy to assume that Cyrus felt some special affection toward the exiled Hebrews and their religion. However, the decree and subsequent provision of temple articles stolen by Nebuchadnezzar represented a shift in Empirical policy. Earlier empires had ruled with an iron hand, destroying native temples and demanding that captured peoples adopt the culture of the conquerors. Cyrus, however, realized that allowing captured peoples to return to their homes and rebuild their native temples and shrines was good policy. He did the same for other peoples, as well. The move created goodwill with the people of his empire. In the case of Judah, the move also provided him with allies and a friendly outpost between himself and the yet unconquered kingdom of Egypt.

This morning I find myself thinking about returning home. It can look so different for different individuals. It might be a joyous reunion for some. For others, it’s a necessary immersion back into messy family dysfunction. There are those for whom the return home is a long-awaited return from exile. In many cases, it’s an important and necessary step in addressing past wrongs, emotional injuries, and spiritual blocks so that one can progress in his or her life journey. In many cases, I’ve observed that one can’t move forward until he or she makes the trek and faces the past. I, myself, discovered it a necessary stretch of my own journey.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself whispering a quiet prayer for those who have yet to return, those who have returned, and those who find themselves amidst the struggle of returning home.

Chapter-a-Day

Refining and Revelation

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At that time I, Daniel, mourned for three weeks. I ate no choice food; no meat or wine touched my lips; and I used no lotions at all until the three weeks were over.
Daniel 10:2-3 (NIV)

This past Sunday I had the privilege of giving the message among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers. One of the things our team of teachers has been grappling with of late is a continued season in which we are experiencing an unusually high number of deaths. From young to old, from expected to unexpected, and from natural to painfully tragic, we have had almost two hundred families touched by death in two years. It has been a long season marked by grief that seems to continue. We are going through the very human experience of trying to process and find understanding within it.

The last half of the book of Daniel is a record of dreams and visions that he had. It’s easy to get caught up in the details of the strange images inside. It all seems as confusing as an acid trip for even learned readers. I find that most people bail on it quickly and move on.

I have learned along the way, however, that some of the great lessons I’ve discovered in my perpetual journey through God’s Message are not in the details but in the macro perspective when I step back and get a handle on what’s happening on the landscape of the chapter. Today is a great example.

Daniel’s strange visions are not unique to him during this period of history. Ezra and Ezekiel were other Hebrews in the same exile experience having eerily similar visions and visitations of a fantastical nature. They were all experiencing a particularly painful time of being captives far from home. They were all in mourning for their people, their home, their culture, and their faith in uncertain times and circumstances. They had spent a lifetime in exile and were eager for a sign or promise that their people would return home from captivity, that their Temple in Jerusalem would be rebuilt, and that restoration God promised through the prophets would actually happen (think 90-year-old Cubs fans prior to 2016). In today’s chapter, Daniel had been fasting, praying, and mourning for three weeks before the vision in today’s chapter was given to him.

My takeaway from this is that these dreams and visions were given to a specific group of mourning Hebrew exiles after a long period of suffering and in the midst of a time of intense personal struggle against doubt, despair, and grief.

In the quiet this morning I find myself thinking back to particularly stressful and painful stretches of my own journey. It was in these dark valleys of the journey that very specific and important spiritual lessons and personal revelations came to light. Is there a connection? I believe that there is.

In my message on Sunday, I quoted from Peter’s letters to the suffering believers scattered around the known world. He compares the trials they are experiencing to the way fire refines gold (1 Peter 1:6-7). I have come to believe through experience that it is in the midst of suffering and trial that the non-essential trivialities with which we daily concern ourselves are burned away. When our hearts are broken and our spirits laid bare with suffering we are particularly open to what God described to the prophet Jeremiah (33:3) as “great and unsearchable things you do not know.”

[Note: Speaking of messages, I realized in writing the post this morning that it’s been a while since I updated my Messages page, which I subsequently did for anyone interested.]

Chapter-a-Day

Seasonal Companions

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My fellow prisoner Aristarchus sends you his greetings, as does Mark, the cousin of Barnabas. (You have received instructions about him; if he comes to you, welcome him.)
Colossians 4:10 (NIV)

“There are friends who are friends for a season, and there are friends who are friends for life.” Thus said a  wise woman to me while I was a Freshman in college. It was the first time I remember really thinking about the purpose and tenure of friendship in life’s journey.

Everyone knows that Jesus had twelve disciples, but Luke records that there was a wider circle of seventy-two disciples that Jesus sent out (Luke 10:1). Among the twelve it was only Peter, James, and John that Jesus called out to join Him when He was transfigured, when He raised Jairus’ daughter, and when He was in His deepest despair in Gethsemane. Like most of us, Jesus had concentric circles of relationship from the intimacy of His inner circle of three to the wider and less intimate relationships He had with the twelve, the seventy-two, and an even larger group of 500 followers to whom He appeared after His resurrection.

Along my life journey, I’ve had a number of friends, mentors, and protégés who became part of my “inner circle” during a particular stretch. Looking back, I observe a certain ebb and flow of pattern and purpose in relationships. As the wise woman stated, some paths converge for a season and then organically lead in opposite directions. Conflict, sadly, severed some relationships. In a few cases, I’ve realized it’s best to leave be what was. In others, reconciliation brought differing degrees of restoration. There is longing to experience reconciliation in yet others when the season is right. Then there are a few in which time ran out, and only memories both bitter and sweet will remain with me for the rest of my earthly journey.

Most readers of Paul’s letters skip through the personal greetings with which he typically tagged his correspondence at the beginning and/or end. This morning, it was one of these oft-ignored greetings at the end of the chapter that jumped off the page at me. Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, sends his greetings to the believers at Colossae. There is a back story there.

Mark, otherwise known as John Mark, had been a boy who was part of Jesus’ wider circle of followers. Mark’s mother was a prominent woman who also followed Jesus and likely supported His ministry financially. When Peter escaped from prison it was to the house of Mark’s mother that Peter fled. It was Mark’s cousin, Barnabas, who brought the enemy turned believer, Saul (aka Paul) into the fold of Jesus’ followers. Barnabas and Mark were part of Paul’s inner circle on his first missionary journey.

Then, it all fell apart.

In the middle of the journey, Mark left Paul and Barnabas and went back home. Paul felt abandoned and betrayed. Years later when it came time to make a return journey, Barnabas wanted to take Mark along. Paul, still angry that Mark wimped out and abandoned them, would have none of it. There was a big fight. There was a bitter separation. Paul went one way with Silas. Barnabas went the other way with Mark. The season of Paul, Barnabas, and Mark was over.

As Paul writes his letter to the Colossians it has been many years since the conflict with Barnabas and Mark. Paul is in prison and is nearing the end of his life. Mark is with him. We don’t know how the reconciliation happened or what brought them back together again, but Mark is there sending warm greetings through Paul. It’s nice to know that sometimes in this life we get over our conflicts. We let go of the past and embrace the present. Seasons of friendship can come back around.

In the quiet this morning I’m looking back and thinking of all the companions I’ve had along my journey. I’m whispering a prayer of gratitude for each one brought to my life and journey, despite where the ebb and flow of relationship may have led. And, in a few cases, I’m praying for the season when the journey might lead divergent paths back together, like Paul and Mark.