Tag Archives: Rivalry

The Latest: 2021 Holidays

December 26, 2021 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

After having our home filled with our entire brood last year, Wendy and I knew that this year was going to be a stark contrast since neither the Scottish crew nor the South Carolina crew, were going to be making it back to Iowa. Thus, we begin this holiday edition of The Latest with Halloween, which we had to enjoy vicariously from across the pond. Taylor gets the great mom merit badge for Milo’s awesome firefly costume.

Meanwhile, down across the Mason-Dixon line, Madison got into the festive spirit at work with her amazing Poison Ivy make-up design.

Late autumn felt a lot like late summer this year. The weather has been unseasonably warm. It’s Christmas Eve day as I type the draft of this post and the forecast high is 59 degrees. We have a trip to San Diego scheduled next week to enjoy some “warm” weather and escape the “frigid” Iowa winter. The forecast high while we’re in San Diego next week? 59 degrees. 🙄.

Meanwhile, Wendy and I stayed busy in November. I delivered a keynote address at the fall conference of the Iowa Communication Alliance. Wendy continues to keep me on track as the “Senior Director of All the Things” for Intelligentics while also helping to manage “all the things” for Selah Studios. I also continue to serve the teaching team at Third Church, and I preached three of the five Sundays in November. Wendy and I also enjoyed, once again, being a part of Pella’s annual Tulip Queen Announcement Party again this year. Wendy is serving a multi-year stint on the committee and acts as the Director of the evening program. I was Master of Ceremonies again this year.

Wendy and I continue to feel honored to help her Grandma Vander Hart, who turned 94 this year and continues to live independently in her apartment. Wendy and I check in with her regularly and make sure she has what she needs. Some days we get to read the daily devotional for her, along with running errands and helping with odd tasks around her apartment.

Grandma Vander Hart joined us for Thanksgiving at our house, along with my parents, who drove down from Des Moines. It was a relatively quiet affair compared to some years, but we loved hosting these three. We had a traditional Thanksgiving meal with turkey, potatoes, stuffing, and gravy. The afternoon was spent lounging and chatting.

We were also honored this fall to play host for a long-standing family rivalry. My nephew, Sam, grew up a Green Bay Packers fan. Misguided as that is, he mustered the wisdom to marry a Vikings fan which only fueled the friendly rivalry we’ve enjoyed his entire life. Sam brought his family, and our niece Emma, down to Pella for George’s pizza and the Packers-Vikings game. Vikings won this time, which was a rare treat the way things have gone in recent years.

Our place at the lake tends to sit empty from November through March, but this year my friend Matthew and I headed south for a personal retreat over a long weekend in early December. The weather was amazing with temps in the 70s and 80s. It was 75 degrees one evening as I grilled some steaks on the deck, where we were also blessed to enjoy lunch a couple of the days.

Our grandson, Milo, celebrated his 4th birthday in early December, and we had to celebrate via FaceTime. What we weren’t expecting was the present that Milo had for us. He donned his “Big Brother” t-shirt to announce the pending arrival of another grandchild next summer!

We also got to celebrate the 2nd birthday of our niece, Anya in December with a birthday party at her house. It also gave us the opportunity to hang with our newest nephew, Owen.

Last year at Christmas we held the inaugural family Christmas Cocktail Contest. The kids wanted to make it a tradition, but we had to do it this year via video call across three weekends. Not as fun as being in person, but we certainly had had fun connecting online and sharing a drink and a chat together.

Christmas without the kids in town ended up being a fairly low-key affair. With the unexpected passing of our dear friend, Shay’s, mother, Wendy and I spent Christmas Eve visiting the VLs who had driven through the previous night to return from a Christmas ski vacation. We then walked home (did I mention it’s unseasonably warm this year?) where “ma in her kerchief and I in my cap” both settled in early for “a long winter’s nap.”

Having headed to bed early, I was awake for the “night watch” and enjoyed praying, reading, and some extended quiet time in the darkness before dawn until Wendy rose for the day. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and opened gifts between the two of us. We even snuck in a FaceTime call with Milo to let him show us his Christmas haul as we were getting ready for the day.

Wendy and I hosted anyone from our families who wanted to come for a charcuterie spread on Christmas Day. The guests began to arrive late morning. Covid worries and seasonal viruses prompted some last-minute cancellations, but we had a wonderful constellation of loved ones including Wendy’s sister and her family from Denver, my brother from Boise, our parents, and Grandma VH. After eating, there was the sharing of gifts. My dad and sister made a stained-glass Santa ornament for us. My mother’s favorite color is purple, so Wendy and I gave her the most purple robe we could find along with matching slippers. About mid-afternoon, the entire VL crew walked over to join the festivities. Amidst the din of Christmas revelry, we enjoyed a Zoom chat with Madison, Tay, and Clay.

Wendy’s Christmas Charcuterie Spread

By evening, all guests had departed. Wendy and I cleaned up and then had a quick FaceTime call with our friends Kev and Beck to open their gifts to us which were still under the tree. After that, we settled in on the couch to watch the Guy Pearce – FX interpretation of A Christmas Carol (it’s amazing, trust us). Other than an emergency V-Dub Pub to-go order, we enjoyed a quiet evening before retiring together with our hearts, heads, and tummies full.

Today, we head to Ankeny for Christmas with the Hall Clan.

Merry Christmas, friends.

“God bless us. Everyone.”

Chapter-a-Day

Of Tribe and Time

May 12, 2020 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.”
Exodus 1:8-10 (NRSVCE)

When it comes to a film, the first shot the director gives you is always an important one. In movie terms it’s called the “establishing shot” and most casual viewers don’t realize how important it is to provide you with the setting, the environment, and the emotion. In many cases, the establishing shot will foreshadow the entire theme of the movie with one quick visual. For those interested, here’s a quick look at some of the best of all time…

Likewise, great authors provide readers with a literary version of an establishing shot. The opening prologue or chapter lay out the scene for the reader.

In today’s chapter, the author of Exodus establishes the scene for the story and the journey on which I am about to embark. At the end of Genesis, Jacob (a.k.a. Israel) and his 70 descendants and their families, flocks, and herds had migrated and settled in the area of Egypt to escape a famine. His long-lost-son, Joseph was Pharaoh’s right-hand and had welcomed them and provided for them.

Exodus now picks up the story, and in the establishing shot, we find that Israel’s descendants have settled in Egypt and have been fruitful in multiple ways. His sons and grandsons are growing their families, having lots of babies, and each is becoming his own tribe. Between Genesis chapter 50 and Exodus chapter 1 we’ve gone from one Hebrew tribe to twelve growing tribes. The problem is, political winds have shifted.

In ancient cultures (we’re talking about 3500 years ago) the world was a harsh, violent, lawless and brutal place. It was tribal. You were born into a tribe, your tribe protected you, and life was about surviving against other tribes. Some tribes, like Egypt, had successfully become nations but every nation and every tribe was focused on protecting themselves against the threat of other tribes bent on conquest.

In Egypt, the new Pharaoh (that is, Egyptian ruler) and his administration take stock of the fact that Israel’s tribe has become tribes, and they have slowly proliferated within Egypt’s kingdom and territory. That is a threat. Remember, it’s a tribe vs. tribe world. Having that many people from a foreign tribe living in their kingdom was scary. It’s one thing to protect yourself from an attack from the outside. It’s another thing if a tribe living among you goes rogue. From a political perspective, Pharaoh had to address the threat. So, he moves to persecute the Hebrew people living among them and to limit their population growth.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself mulling over both the differences and similarities in our world. It’s that point of tension between two extremes. On one hand, the world has changed drastically in 3500 years and that’s the reason many 21st century readers struggle mightily with the brutality and violence of the ancient stories of the Great Story. If I want to understand the Great Story, I have to be willing to embrace that I will never fully understand ancient history yet embrace the understanding that it has value in the context of a larger eternal narrative.

On the other hand, I also find myself muttering that there is “nothing is new under the sun,” and the more things change the more they stay the same. In China, the government is persecuting people groups and religious groups within their population to try and stop their proliferation. They also have, over recent decades, infamously adopted birth control measures eerily similar to Pharaoh (e.g. allow the girls to live, but not the boys) in an effort to control the political and economic threat they feel from population growth. It also strikes me, as I mull things over, that the same tribalism at the root of the Egypt/Hebrew conflict presented in today’s chapter is at the root of everything from benign sports rivalries to toxic racial, social, nationalist, and religious prejudice. I also think of gangs, cartels, crime organizations, religious denominations, and political parties. Humans are still tribal in a myriad of ways.

When Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, told the story of the Good Samaritan, healed the child of a Roman Centurion, and sent His apostles to “ends of the earth” He was pushing His followers beyond their tribe. He prescribed a different type of conquest in which tribal boundaries are breached with love and proliferate generosity, understanding, forgiveness, repentance, and redemption. That’s the tribe with whom I ultimately wish to be associated.

Chapter-a-Day

Prejudice, Comparison, and That Which I Control

October 30, 2017 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?” they asked. “Hasn’t he also spoken through us?” And the Lord heard this.
Numbers 12:1-2 (NIV)

Our local gathering of Jesus’ followers has spent the past eight weeks in a series on “Kingdom Culture.” In the prayer Jesus taught His followers to pray it says, “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We’ve been talking about what it means to live and relate with one another as a part of God’s kingdom on earth.

The sticky wicket, of course, is that any group of humans in an organization tend to have relational struggles and conflicts over time. Despite what Dr. Luke described in Acts 2: 42-47 as an idyllic beginning, even the early church began to struggle rather quickly. Most of the letters that make up what we call the New Testament address relational struggles within the local groups of Jesus’ followers. Paul himself had famous rows with Peter and Barnabas.

It was no different for Moses and the Hebrew tribes as they leave Egypt and begin to be make a nation of themselves. In the previous chapter the conflict was with the whines of the “rabble” within their midst. Today is is Moses very own siblings.

What’s fascinating to me is that Miriam and Aaron at first complain about Moses’ wife being a Cushite. There were multiple regions referenced as Cush in ancient times. It is not known for sure who they were referencing here. At least some scholars believe that they were referencing Moses’ wife Zippora who was from the land of Midian. Whatever the case, they complained about Moses’ wife being a foreigner, but then immediately discuss what appears to be envy and jealousy for their brother, Moses’, standing and position. How very human of us it is to complain about one thing on the surface (Moses being married to a Cushite) that masks a deeper resentment (sibling rivalry, envy, and jealousy about brother Moses’ standing with God as leader and prophet).

This morning I’m thinking about how common the human penchant is for prejudice, jealousy, and envy which leads to back-biting, quarrels, and conflicts both small and great. I’m reminded of Jesus’ conversation with Peter on the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee when he prophetically reveals to Peter the violent end he will endure. Peter’s immediate response was to look at John and ask, “What about him?”

Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.”

I am so given to worrying about others, comparing myself to others, and seeking some sort of perceived personal equity with others. Jesus response to Peter tells me to stop concerning myself with useless and destructive comparisons. Each person is on his or her own respective journey, and their journey will not look like mine. My time, energy and resources are to be focused on my own journey, my own relationship with God, and the personal thoughts, words, and actions I control with my heart, mind, eyes, ears, mouth, hands and feet.