Tag Archives: Maturity

Chapter-a-Day

Best of 2023 #15

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I’m on vacation for three weeks. While I’m gone, please enjoy the top 15 posts from 2023 based on total number of page views and podcast plays. Cheers!

Beyond the Blame (CaD Job 12) – Wayfarer

“To God belong wisdom and power;
    counsel and understanding are his.”
Job 12:13 (NIV)

This past weekend, I gave a message among my local gathering of Jesus’ followers. I began the message by citing three articles I had randomly come across from my daily perusal of the news. In each case, they spoke of the current epidemic of anxiety in our culture, especially among teenagers and young adults. One of the articles I read discussed the root of this epidemic and suggested that it lies with parents.

For most of human history, children and young adults lived with the stress, anxiety, and insecurity that simply comes from living on this earth. My generation rolls our eyes at young people who are connected to their parents 24/7/365. One meme I recently saw said “my parents didn’t know where I was the entire decade of the 1980s!” It’s funny because it’s true.

I grew up having to learn to cope with naturally stressful situations because I had no choice. If I got a flat tire driving through rural Iowa, I couldn’t call someone. I couldn’t use GPS to figure out where I was or where the nearest farmhouse was. I either changed the tire with the spare in the trunk or started hoofing it until I found a farmhouse and risked knocking on the door of a stranger to ask for help.

Today’s young generations have had the luxury of parents who can and do protect them from every uncomfortable situation as they grow. Parents have gone out of their way to effectively eliminate stress, difficulty, and danger from their children’s lives while taking care of their children’s every need and granting most of their affluent, earthly desires. As these children “adult” they now see any difficulty or natural life stress as inherently bad and something to be avoided at all costs. They expect their adult lives to be as easy as their parents made their childhood and young adult years. In some cases, children refuse to leave home and feel unable to cope independently in a cruel world.

Wendy and I recently had dinner with a friend whose young adult child is walking through an acutely painful stretch of their life journey. The pain results from the actions of another person. As we explored the circumstances and the host of negative consequences that have resulted, the conversation eventually turned to our own respective life journeys. Every one of us could identify painful stretches of our own respective life journeys, and in each case the pain served to produce progress toward personal and spiritual maturity in our lives.

Perhaps the most meaningful and useful life lesson that I have gleaned from the Great Story in my 40+ years of study is the fact that suffering can produce personal and spiritual maturity while lives free of struggle are likely to produce personal and spiritual immaturity. A diverse trio of voices echo this same general principle in the Great Story: Paul in Romans 5:3-5, Peter in 1 Peter 1:6-7, and James in James 1:2-3. Struggle promotes a host of character qualities that lead to wisdom, wholeness, and spiritual maturity.

In today’s chapter, Job continues to struggle with the “why” of his suffering. He wants to know why he is going through this painful stretch of his life journey. He wants to pin the blame on something or someone. In recognizing that an omnipotent God controls all of creation, Job continues to prosecute God as the perpetrator of his circumstances.

What’s fascinating is that Job continues to hold that every event in nature and history is a direct result of God’s willful action. That’s a lot of blame to pin on God in a fallen world in which billions of sinful people have the God-given free will to choose to hurt others, even unwittingly and with the best of intentions.

In the quiet my mind wanders back to our friend’s child and the pain that young adult is experiencing as the result of another person’s actions. I think about the painful events our own daughters have had to navigate and survive in their young adult years. I recognize how those events contributed to growing them up in positive and necessary ways. I think of other friends I know with adult children still living at home unable to cope with life outside of their parents provision and enabling.

There is progress in pain if I move beyond blame.

Chapter to read for tomorrow’s Best of 2023: Job 40

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

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Short-Cuts

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Short-Cuts (CaD Hos 12) – Wayfarer

The merchant uses dishonest scales
    and loves to defraud.
Ephraim boasts,
    “I am very rich; I have become wealthy.
With all my wealth they will not find in me
    any iniquity or sin.”
Hosea 12:7-8 (NIV)

When I was a young man, I was not great with money. I confess this. It took me some hard lessons, both financial and spiritual, along with some time to get things straightened out. It has been one of the most important spiritual lessons of my entire life journey. Part of that hard lesson I learned was that sound financial strategies, much like spiritual maturity, require discipline and longevity. Short-cuts appear tempting, but they make for long delays.

Along that journey, I’ve had a number of living parables present themselves.

I’ve personally known two individuals, both sincere and devout followers of Jesus and men I considered wise, who placed all of their retirement savings in one risky investment and ended up losing everything.

My father, the accountant, has regaled me with stories, repeatedly told, of businesses he discovered were cooking the books and kiting checks. The stories end up with law enforcement, businesses closing, and business owners in big trouble.

Years ago it was recommended to me (once again, by devout followers of Jesus who I considered wise) that we switch to using a broker who was making money hand-over-fist for clients. All the powerful and wealthy were flocking to this firm. Then, I witnessed that firm quickly and suddenly implode. The palatial offices were suddenly closed. Employees were quickly spinning off to create their own companies. Investors stuck in bad investments were livid and litigious. All these years later, I hear the lawsuits are still being settled.

In today’s chapter, the prophet Hosea raises charges against ancient Israel for the corruption and dishonesty that was happening among the wealthy and powerful elites who were packing the administrations of a string of crooked kings. He describes them as sitting atop the societal and governmental food chain working their dishonest schemes and feeling untouchable while the poor and marginalized suffered.

Hosea even uses the metaphor of Jacob to describe these ancient elites. Jacob was their patriarch who deceived his older twin of his birthright and then deceived their father to get the blessing of the first-born. Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, and Hosea makes it clear that the nation of Israel was guilty of their namesake’s deceptive ways.

In the quiet this morning, I am sobered by the trip down memory lane and the number of good people I have known who made foolish choices out of an out-of-control appetite to have greater financial security or to increase their earthly treasure. I’m reminded of Paul’s words to his young protégé Timothy: “godliness with contentment is great gain.” I’m also reminded that Jesus constantly spoke of being wise about what we treasure. He repeatedly spoke of the Kingdom of God as a hidden treasure worth giving up everything to acquire, while He spoke of earthly treasure as the worst investment one can make from a spiritual and eternity perspective.

Where am I susceptible to making foolish choices? What “too good to be true” opportunity would I be foolish enough to consider? Where am I most tempted to take short-cuts in life?

Short-cuts make for long delays.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Tale of a Runaway Slave

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Tale of a Runaway Slave (CaD Col 4) – Wayfarer

Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
Colossians 4:1 (NIV)

Modern readers are likely taken aback by the first verse of today’s chapter in which Paul encourages slave masters to do right by their slaves. Why those who added chapters and verses to the text didn’t leave this verse as part of the previous chapter is a head scratcher for me because 4:1 is clearly coupled with 3:22 in which Paul encourages slaves to do their work as if they were working for God. The two verses are part of one thought.

The inclusion of slaves and slave masters in Paul’s letter to the Colossians has everything to do with a very real and personal situation Paul, and the Colossian believers were dealing with.

A modern reader wonders why Paul didn’t take on slavery as an issue of social justice. I’ve known many a critic to cite this issue as one of the reasons they refuse to believe: that Paul doesn’t condemn slavery. As I’ve pondered and meditated on the Great Story over the years, there are a few conclusions I’ve made.

First, the abolition movement would not get started until 1200 years after Paul. Slavery had always been a part of daily human life throughout history. No one questioned it in Paul’s day. France was the first country to outlaw slavery in 1315. The abolitionist movement was fueled by followers of Jesus as well as the age of Enlightenment in the following few hundred years.

As I have written before, I view the Great Story and the history of humanity as the story of one giant life-cycle. As humanity has matured from infancy to adulthood over the millennia it, like any individual human being, humanity as a whole has grown and matured, as well as struggling with core human flaws. Slavery has largely been outlawed today (though it still exists), but we’re clearly still struggling with hatred and violence that goes all the way back to Ishmael and Isaac, to Cain and Abel. Bottom line, I can’t fault Paul for not being an abolitionist in a time when it wasn’t even a consideration.

Second, there were other social ills in Paul’s day that the followers of Jesus were addressing. Roman law allowed for infanticide. If you didn’t want your baby, you could legally throw it on the dung heap. Followers of Jesus rescued and raised them. Lepers were shunned to suffer together in small enclaves outside of society. Followers of Jesus moved in with them, took care of them, and sometimes got leprosy and died with them. Followers of Jesus took care of the sick, the poor, the orphans, and the widows. Followers of Jesus built the first hospitals.

So, Paul didn’t approach slavery as a social justice issue, but as a personal one. There was a member of the local gathering of Jesus’ followers in Colossae named Philemon. He had a slave named Onesimus who stole from Philemon and made a run for it. Onesimus is now on the run, and if caught, can receive the death penalty under Roman law. The runaway slave just happens to run into Paul (coincidence?) and through their relationship, Onesimus places his faith in Christ and becomes a follower of Jesus.

In today’s chapter, there is a final section of personal greetings that most people gloss over or ignore. But there are often some really good stories buried in those words. Paul tells the Colossians that it is a man named Tychius who is going to deliver the letter Paul is writing, and with Tychius he is sending Onesimus. Tychius is carrying another letter that we know as Philemon. Onesimus, Philemon’s thieving, runaway slave is now Philemon’s brother in Christ. Onesimus is returning to his slave master to ask forgiveness and make things right. In Paul’s letter to Philemon, Paul urges him to forgive and be gracious.

Of course, all of the Colossian believers know both of these men. They were part of their community. Philemon was part of their local gathering. The very real conflict would affect them all. Paul’s encouragement to all the Colossians for slaves and slave masters to serve God by serving one another is subtle reference to the Onesimus situation Paul knows they will all be facing.

As I look back at history, I find that large meaningful social movements typically begin with a person, or a small group of people, who simply start doing the right thing by individuals in their personal circles of influence. Their actions inspire others to join in doing the same. It grows and spreads. Who knows if, in the grand scheme of things, Paul’s encouragement to Philemon and Onesimus to look beyond their earthly circumstances and view one another as brothers in Christ was a seed that took root and eventually grew into the abolition movement.

And, as a different Paul used to say, now you know the rest of the story.

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

Chapter-a-Day

The Thread

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The Thread (CaD Job 26) – Wayfarer

“And these are but the outer fringe of his works;
how faint the whisper we hear of him!
Who then can understand the thunder of his power?”
Job 26:14 (NIV)

I am surprised that I’ve never seen anyone try to stage the book of Job. 

Job and his three friends remain sitting on the ash heap where people burn their garbage. What a setting.

Job, emaciated, almost naked, and covered head-to-foot with festering sores, continues to scrape at his scabs with pieces of broken pottery. His friends, healthy, hardy, and dressed in their fine robes sit silently around him. What a visual. 

For twenty-two chapters, Job and his friends have gone back and forth in contemplation of his tragic circumstances and intense suffering. With Bill’s brief words in yesterday’s chapter, the friends appear to have nothing further to say. In today’s chapter, Job replies specifically to Bill. The Hebrew pronouns Job uses are singular rather than plural. 

It appears that Job is at the end of his patience with his friends as the conversation wanes. Job’s reply drips with bitter sarcasm:

“How you have helped the powerless!

    How you have saved the arm that is feeble!

What advice you have offered to one without wisdom!

    And what great insight you have displayed!

Who has helped you utter these words?

    And whose spirit spoke from your mouth?”

Job then proceeds to poetically contemplate God’s immense power that lies beyond human understanding. It feels as if he is talking more to himself than to his three friends. If I were directing this as a scene on stage, I would block it in such a way that it became clear Job is delivering his words to himself, to the audience like a soliloquy in Shakespeare. Why? Because he alone is privy to the depth of this insight. He sees God revealed in creation: the vastness of space, the rage of a thunderstorm, and the untamed seas. Job then recognizes that all of this is but “the outer fringe” of God’s power. He foreshadows the words of Paul who describes God as the One who can do “exceeding, abundantly, beyond all that we could ask or imagine.”

What is fascinating about Job’s beautiful description of God’s power that lies beyond imagination is that back in chapter 11 his friend Z accused Job of being unable to fathom the mysteries of God. In ten verses, Job has proved Z wrong. It is fitting that we don’t hear from Z again. In his painful cries out to God, Job may not even recognize that his suffering is giving him depths of clarity and insight to the divine that his friends will never fathom. There are spiritual insights learned amidst suffering that cannot be learned by any other means. This is why suffering is a requisite for spiritual maturity. This is why I believe Job’s is speaking to himself; He is speaking to me.

Throughout Job’s story, if I am willing to see it, I am witness to his spiritual maturation. His friends, confident in their status, education, and false sense of security, remain unchanged.

When I was a young man, I thought I had things figured out. Then life happened. Moral failure, financial failure, and divorce were among the many things that sobered me up to just how little I actually knew. Job’s suffering was perpetrated by the evil one. My suffering has largely been perpetrated by my own poor choices. Nevertheless, along my spiritual journey, suffering through the consequences of my own actions, I have humbly realized that all that I know is but the “outer fringe.” God is exceeding, abundantly beyond all that I can imagine. I am the bleeding woman simply trying to reach out with my finger to make contact with that single piece of thread dangling off the hem at the bottom of Jesus’ robe. I feel Job reaching for it, as well.

And, just that touch changes everything.

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

Chapter-a-Day

The Growth Gradient

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The Growth Gradient (CaD Job 14) – Wayfarer

“If only you would hide me in the grave
    and conceal me till your anger has passed!”
Job 14:13 (NIV)

Our neighbor has a willow tree that sits the edge of our properties. I can see it from our patio door. A few summers ago he got out his trimmer and literally cut off every branch so that just the bare trunk was left. Then he walked away. It looked so strange, and I wondered why he didn’t cut the whole tree down as I thought he was doing. Lo and behold, the tree quickly sprouted new branches full of limb and life. It was fascinating to watch.

In today’s chapter, Job continues his discourse of despair. He feels hopeless in his pain and suffering. He can’t envision any end to his suffering other than death itself, which for Job has a depressing finality of its own. Job even uses the metaphor of my neighbor’s willow tree:

“At least there is hope for a tree:
    If it is cut down, it will sprout again,
    and its new shoots will not fail.
Its roots may grow old in the ground
    and its stump die in the soil,
yet at the scent of water it will bud
    and put forth shoots like a plant.”

One of the things that I’m observing about Job as I read his thoughts anew, is the fact that he is a binary thinker. God is the unjust perpetrator of his suffering, period, end of sentence. Things are black and white to Job and he sees no gradient in between. Along my life journey, I’ve observed that human beings like things simplified into binaries. Red or blue, right or left, for or against, black or white. I believe reducing complex issues into simple binaries is one of the reasons our culture is currently so polarized.

As I contemplated Job’s use of the tree metaphor in the quiet this morning, I remembered that Jesus riffed off the same metaphor:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

In Job’s mind, he is a flower that quickly fades and is no more. In his hopelessness he dismisses the notion that he is like the tree. He wishes he was like the tree. “If only,” he says. Jesus’ words hearken back to Job. In his black-and-white thinking, Job is blinded to the spiritual gradient of growth that lies between. “You are the tree, Job. You just can’t see it.”

I have observed in my spiritual journey that suffering is, just as Jesus described, part of a spiritual pruning process that can lead to an abundant flourishing of wisdom and spiritual fruit. I have also observed that I, like Job, often respond to suffering with a “Can’t we just get this over with?” mentality. A third observation I’ve made is that, unlike the modern educational system, in God’s spiritual education system I don’t get to move up to the next grade until I’ve learned the lessons of the grade I’m in. I’ve known individuals who appear to have been in spiritual kindergarten their entire lives.

In the quiet this morning, my mind goes back to Job. His simple binary perspective blinds him from seeing that his struggle with his suffering is part of the process of spiritual maturity. The gentleman who designed the landscaping around our house told Wendy and me not to go overboard with watering our young shrubs, and not to be worried if they don’t look very healthy for a season. “They need to struggle,” he told us. “It’s the only way they will put down deep roots that are essential for life.”

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

Chapter-a-Day

Beyond the Blame

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Beyond the Blame (CaD Job 12) – Wayfarer

“To God belong wisdom and power;
    counsel and understanding are his.”
Job 12:13 (NIV)

This past weekend, I gave a message among my local gathering of Jesus’ followers. I began the message by citing three articles I had randomly come across from my daily perusal of the news. In each case, they spoke of the current epidemic of anxiety in our culture, especially among teenagers and young adults. One of the articles I read discussed the root of this epidemic and suggested that it lies with parents.

For most of human history, children and young adults lived with the stress, anxiety, and insecurity that simply comes from living on this earth. My generation rolls our eyes at young people who are connected to their parents 24/7/365. One meme I recently saw said “my parents didn’t know where I was the entire decade of the 1980s!” It’s funny because it’s true.

I grew up having to learn to cope with naturally stressful situations because I had no choice. If I got a flat tire driving through rural Iowa, I couldn’t call someone. I couldn’t use GPS to figure out where I was or where the nearest farmhouse was. I either changed the tire with the spare in the trunk or started hoofing it until I found a farmhouse and risked knocking on the door of a stranger to ask for help.

Today’s young generations have had the luxury of parents who can and do protect them from every uncomfortable situation as they grow. Parents have gone out of their way to effectively eliminate stress, difficulty, and danger from their children’s lives while taking care of their children’s every need and granting most of their affluent, earthly desires. As these children “adult” they now see any difficulty or natural life stress as inherently bad and something to be avoided at all costs. They expect their adult lives to be as easy as their parents made their childhood and young adult years. In some cases, children refuse to leave home and feel unable to cope independently in a cruel world.

Wendy and I recently had dinner with a friend whose young adult child is walking through an acutely painful stretch of their life journey. The pain results from the actions of another person. As we explored the circumstances and the host of negative consequences that have resulted, the conversation eventually turned to our own respective life journeys. Every one of us could identify painful stretches of our own respective life journeys, and in each case the pain served to produce progress toward personal and spiritual maturity in our lives.

Perhaps the most meaningful and useful life lesson that I have gleaned from the Great Story in my 40+ years of study is the fact that suffering can produce personal and spiritual maturity while lives free of struggle are likely to produce personal and spiritual immaturity. A diverse trio of voices echo this same general principle in the Great Story: Paul in Romans 5:3-5, Peter in 1 Peter 1:6-7, and James in James 1:2-3. Struggle promotes a host of character qualities that lead to wisdom, wholeness, and spiritual maturity.

In today’s chapter, Job continues to struggle with the “why” of his suffering. He wants to know why he is going through this painful stretch of his life journey. He wants to pin the blame on something or someone. In recognizing that an omnipotent God controls all of creation, Job continues to prosecute God as the perpetrator of his circumstances.

What’s fascinating is that Job continues to hold that every event in nature and history is a direct result of God’s willful action. That’s a lot of blame to pin on God in a fallen world in which billions of sinful people have the God-given free will to choose to hurt others, even unwittingly and with the best of intentions.

In the quiet my mind wanders back to our friend’s child and the pain that young adult is experiencing as the result of another person’s actions. I think about the painful events our own daughters have had to navigate and survive in their young adult years. I recognize how those events contributed to growing them up in positive and necessary ways. I think of other friends I know with adult children still living at home unable to cope with life outside of their parents provision and enabling.

There is progress in pain if I move beyond blame.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Not Without Struggle

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Not Without Struggle (CaD James 1) – Wayfarer

Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
James 1:4 (NIV)

Just yesterday I returned home from a seven day road trip. Part work, part personal, and part sabbatical, I logged more than fifty hours behind the wheel and just shy of 3,000 miles. It felt good to arrive home yesterday, like I’d reached a kind of finish line, a journey’s end.

Journey has always been the core metaphor of this blog. A wayfarer is one who is on a journey, and in these posts I write about my life journey, my spiritual journey, and this chapter-a-day journey.

On a journey, one moves and progresses towards a destination.

On both my life journey and my spiritual journey, my progress is measured, not by distance, but by maturity, wisdom, and the yield of love produced in my spirit, intentions, thoughts, words, and actions along with love’s by-products of joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.

On Wednesday of this past week, I was in Richmond, Virginia. I took the opportunity to visit the U.S. Civil War Museum located there. As is a ritual for Wendy and me, I picked up a couple of magnets to mark and memorialize the visit on the fridge back home. One of the magnets is a quote:

“Without struggle, there is no progress.”

Frederick Douglass

When reading James’ letter, I’ve found it beneficial to consider the context in which he wrote it. It was a time of intense struggle. James was not written by James, the disciple of Jesus, but by James the half-brother of Jesus who became leader of the Jesus Movement in Jerusalem. The followers of Jesus are facing persecution and many have fled the persecution and are living in other places. James chooses to remain and continue the work of Jesus.

James leadership position as a follower of Jesus in Jerusalem puts him in direct conflict with the same religious aristocracy that put Jesus to death, put Stephen to death, and sent Saul hunting down Jesus’ followers. Not long after penning this letter, James will be killed by them, as well. He writes this letter to encourage Jesus’ followers scattered to the four winds and fleeing persecution. He is writing to encourage followers of Jesus to persevere amidst the difficult struggles they faced as wayfarers on journeys of exile.

In the first chapter, James reminds these struggling wayfarers of the goal.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

The goal is maturity and wholeness which are produced through persevering in the struggle of many kinds of trials and tests of faith.

Without struggle, there is no progress towards maturity and completeness.

It feels good to be sitting in the quiet of my office this morning. I find myself thinking about “trials of many kinds” through which I have persevered. My mind flashes back to people I met and spent time with on my journey last week. Each one is facing their own struggles and trials on their respective journeys. Each one is making progress. I was blessed by my time with each of them.

I’m reminded this morning as I begin a new work week. This is a journey. Today I progress toward my destination, but not without struggle.

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

Chapter-a-Day, Wayfarer Podcast

Tent to Temple to Table

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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

The Man of Constant Sorrow

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The Man of Constant Sorrow (CaD Jer 20) – Wayfarer

Why did I ever come out of the womb
    to see trouble and sorrow
    and to end my days in shame?
Jeremiah 20:18 (NIV)

(Note: This is a good soundtrack for today’s chapter. It was going through my head as I read and wrote today’s post. 😉)

There is painting of Jeremiah by Rembrandt that hangs in the master bedroom at the lake. Jeremiah sits in a cave outside the city of Jerusalem, which is burning in the background outside the cave. It is just as he had predicted for decades. Jeremiah, and old man at this point, is isolated and alone. His head rests in his hand, his elbow propped on a copy of God’s Word. His prophetic words have all come true. He alone stood and proclaimed the truth when no one wanted to hear it. He was cancelled by the culture of his day. They mocked him, tortured him, beat him, and imprisoned him yet he refused to be silenced. Rembrandt captures the prophet in his “Aha!” moment, but there is no joy for Jeremiah in being right. There is only sorrow for his people who are being slaughtered and sent into exile. Perhaps he hears their cries and screams in the distance. It is out of this melancholy that Jeremiah will pen his Lamentations.

Jeremiah is known to history as “the weeping prophet.” One of the distinctive aspects of his prophetic writings is his David-like willingness to sing the blues. Six times in the first twenty chapters, Jeremiah has interrupted his prophetic message to the masses to issue his personal lament and complaint to the Almighty. The lament in today’s chapter (verses 7-18) is his longest and arguably most bitter. He complains about the bitter consequences of what God has called him to do, like being beaten and placed the stocks at the beginning of the chapter. He expresses his desire to quit his prophetic proclamations and walk away, but his inability to do so. He depressively expresses his wish that he’d never been born.

Jeremiah’s unabashed melancholy and willingness to express his raw emotions resonates deeply with me. I was recently introduced to a diagram that describes six stages in the path of spiritual formation and maturity. Between the third and fourth stages there is a line, a “wall.” It was explained to me that most people “hit the wall” after the third stage and revert back to the first stage. They are unable or unwilling to progress to the fourth stage that is essential in progressing to spiritual maturity. That fourth stage is labeled the “Inner Journey.”

I’ve contemplated this long and hard since it was introduced to me. I have observed that it is quiet common for individuals to refuse any kind of “inner journey.” I find it ironic that the Fourth Step of the Twelve Steps parallels the fourth stage of the diagram I’ve just described: “We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” The inner journey requires that I search my own motives, emotions, weaknesses, indulgences, reactions, and pain-points. I observed many for whom this inner-journey should be avoided at all cost. Yet, I find that Socrates had it right: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

In the quiet this morning, I find in Jeremiah (and David before him) an unashamed willingness to freely express his deepest and darkest feelings of despair, rage, and disappointment. I find in Jeremiah’s lament the childlike sense of safety to throw an unbridled tantrum before an understanding and patient parent who sees the tantrum for the momentary meltdown it is in the context of broader and more mature knowledge. Along my life journey, I have personally discovered that it is ultimately a healthy thing when I vent and express my emotions, even the dark ones, in productive ways rather than stuff them inside and ignore them until they begin to corrode my soul and negatively affect my life from the inside out.

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

Chapter-a-Day

“Good Luck Charm” Religion

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"Good Luck Charm" Religion (CaD Jer 8) – Wayfarer

“How can you say, ‘We are wise,
    for we have the law of the Lord,’
when actually the lying pen of the scribes
    has handled it falsely?”
Jeremiah 8:8 (NIV)

A few years ago, I was working with a group of leaders who were tasked with teaching the book of 1 Corinthians to a larger gathering of Jesus’ followers. Before we began, I made a copy of the text without any of the chapter or verse numbers listed. I changed the type face to a font that resembled actual handwriting and printed it and handed it out. I encouraged the team to put themselves in the sandals of a leader of the Jesus followers in ancient Corinth and to read the words as they were originally intended: as a personal letter from their friend Paul. It was a transformative exercise for us.

One of the things that I have to always remember on this chapter-a-day journey is that the chapter and verse designations were not part of the original writings for centuries. Manuscripts as early as the 4th century AD contain some evidence of text being divided into chapters, but it wasn’t until the 12th century that Steven Langton added the chapter divisions and it wasn’t until 1551 that a man named Robert Estienne added the verse definitions. In 1560, the first translation of the entire Great Story referred to as the Geneva Bible, employed chapters and verses throughout. They’ve been used ever since.

Chapters and verses are an essential method for study, referencing, and cross-referencing. That’s why they remain. However, in my forty-plus years of studying, I’ve found that they can also hinder my reading, understanding, and interpretation. Chapters and verses gain individual attention apart from the context of the whole in which they were intended when written. Individual verses get pulled out of context. In other cases, like today’s chapter, the entire chapter is merely a piece of a larger message. I can easily read and contemplate just today’s chapter alone without connecting it to the chapters before and after into which they fit.

In today’s chapter, I noticed that the Hebrew people of Jeremiah’s day were saying, “We are wise, for we have the law of the Lord.” Something clicked and I remembered something I read in yesterday’s chapter: “Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” Both chapters are really part of one message or series of messages to be read together as a unit.

Taken together, I realize that there’s a theme in Jerry’s message that I would never see if I confine myself to each individual chapter and don’t consider them together as a whole. The Hebrew people of Jeremiah’s day had misplaced their trust. They trusted in Solomon’s Temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. They trusted in the “Law of the Lord” which had recently been rediscovered and made known to them. They had not, however, placed their trust in the God who gave them the Law, nor the God who inspired the building of the temple. They were treating the temple and the Law the same way they treated the other gods who they had worshipped, sometimes within the temple they were worshipping. The temple and the Law were basically good luck charms like all the other stars, idols, and pagan images they worshipped along with them.

In the quiet this morning, I thought about people whom I’ve met and known along my life journey whom I’ve observed treating their religion and their local church building, much like the people Jerry is addressing in his message, as good luck charms. When trouble comes in life (and trouble always comes in life – God even says so) I have observed their shock and anger. I have heard them express rage at God for not warding off their troubles and making their lives free of difficulty, pain, or sorrow. But God never promised that.

In fact, when Adam and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit of their own free will, God said specifically that the consequences would include pain and conflict, sweat and toil, along with death and grief on our earthly journeys. Going to church and dressing my life up in religious traditions does not save me from any of those earthly realities. However, a trusting relationship with God gives me what I need to endure troubles in such a way that qualities like faith and perseverance, peace and maturity, along with joy and hope hone me to become more like Jesus, who endured more undeserved trouble than I could ever imagine and did so on my behalf.

Once again, a Bob Dylan lyric came to mind as I pondered these things this morning:

Trouble in the city, trouble in the farm
You got your rabbit’s foot, you got your good-luck charm
But they can’t help you none when there’s trouble…

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