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Chapter-a-Day

The Futility of Flight

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The Futility of Flight (CaD Jer 42) – Wayfarer

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘If you are determined to go to Egypt and you do go to settle there, then the sword you fear will overtake you there, and the famine you dread will follow you into Egypt, and there you will die.
Jeremiah 42:15b-16 (NIV)

Wendy and I were once cast in a production that was eery little story about a young couple being stuck in a myriad of ways. We did not play the couple, but were rather part of a dream-like menagerie that revealed the couple’s true relational issues.

In the course of the story, Wendy’s character confronts the young woman, who keeps trying to run away in fear. No matter where she runs, however, the young woman runs right into Wendy.

That show came to mind as I read today’s chapter, in which the small contingent of former soldiers who took vengeance out on the rogue Ishmael and his gang of assassins in yesterday’s chapter, now ask Jeremiah to pray for them as they plan to flee with their families to Egypt in fear of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon’s wrath.

God’s answer through Jeremiah was not what the contingent wanted to hear.

Jeremiah tells the group that they must do the hard thing. Stay, stand firm, and face the consequences with the Babylonian overlord. Yes, the same King of Babylon who just destroyed Jerusalem, killed countless numbers of their fellow citizen, and took most of the other residents captive. “Trust Me,” God says. “Have faith that the King of Babylon will do the right thing, and I will make sure that every little thing is gonna be alright.”

What I really found fascinating was the next part of God’s word through Jeremiah. He tells the contingent that if they flee to Egypt (and it sounds like God knows they’re going to do it anyway) then all the things that they are running from are the very things they will run into in the land of the pyramids. Their flight would be futile.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself thinking back to the stretches of my journey in which a ran from different things. There have been times when I ran out of fear of a conflict or confrontation. There have been times when I ran away from facing up to my own mistakes or poor choices. Other times I have run away from doing the hard thing and instead sought out an easy alternative. As a follower of Jesus, however, I have found that God’s economy works just like the device in that production. No matter where I run or how far I run, God is there asking me to face the very thing I fear. As David put it in Psalm 139:

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

Time and time again in the Great Story God reveals that His purpose is a relationship with me in which I grow into intimacy and spiritual maturity. That growth curve requires growing pains, struggle, trials, and even suffering. This is the exact opposite of culture and the human condition that continue convincing me that things on this life journey should be easy, comfortable, pleasurable, free of pain, full of fun, and always lucrative. The more I’ve learned to trust God in my trials, the more I’ve come to acknowledge the futility of my fleeing whatever it is that I don’t want to face. When I trust God to stand and face whatever it is I’m afraid of the less time and energy I waste fleeing from whatever it is that I’m only going to run into again and again and again.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Running and Return

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But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish.
Jonah 1:2 (NIV)

Running away is a common theme throughout the Great Story. It takes many different forms. Call it running, hiding, fleeing, wilderness, or exile…

  • Adam and Eve hid from God in their shame.
  • Cain was doomed to be a restless wanderer.
  • Abraham was called to leave his home and people.
  • Jacob fled after deceiving his father and brother.
  • Joseph was sold into slavery and exile.
  • Moses fled to Midian after committing murder.
  • David fled to the wilderness from Saul.
  • Elijah fled to the wilderness after defeating the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.
  • The Hebrews were taken into exile in Babylon.
  • Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted.
  • The prodigal son took the money and ran to a distant country.
  • The disciples fled to Galilee after Jesus’ crucifixion.

Today we start back into the story of a prophet named Jonah. He is called by God to go to Nineveh, a provincial Assyrian city about 550 miles to the northeast of Jonah, and prophesy against it. Instead, Jonah books passage across the Mediterranean to Tarshish, a city on the southern tip of what is now Spain, 2500 miles to the west. At the time of Jonah, Tarshish would have literally been considered the end of the world and as far away from Nineveh as one could possibly get. Jonah was running from his calling. He was fleeing his destiny. He went on the lam from God.

I have found that a great many people have periods of their life journey in which they flee something. It’s part of the human experience. There are things one learns, experiences, finds and/or acquires only in the wilderness. Perhaps that is why wilderness is a part of every mythical heroes journey.

I have my own period of self-imposed running earlier in my life. I ran from a lot of things for a lot of reasons. I wandered to places I should never have been and did things I should never have done. I now consider that stretch of my life journey “the dark years.” And yes, looking back with hindsight I see how it was critical for me to experience it.

In Jonah’s case, we find him trying to run away from God. I couldn’t help but hear King David’s lyrics in my spirit as I read the chapter today. Lyrics, by the way, with which Jonah would likely have been familiar:

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

In the quiet this morning I’m thinking about both the pain of my dark years and once again grieving the injuries I caused to those I love. I’m once again reminded that I was always aware of God’s presence, even in the darkest of places. I’m also thinking about the purpose that the dark years served in the long run of my spiritual journey.

You see, just as the wilderness is a consistent theme, so is the return.

Chapter-a-Day

Hitting the Wall; Pressing On

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photo by Josiah Mackenzie via Flickr

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Galatians 6:9 (NIV)

This past weekend I had the opportunity to hang out with some old friends from high school. They all ran together on the cross country team back in the day. Running was never my sport. I  tried it one year, but it wasn’t my thing. Nevertheless, I learned a lot from hanging out with runners. Once in a while, the guys would attempt a marathon. When they would talk about their experience with the marathon they would talk about “hitting the wall.” It’s the point at which they would fatigue mentally and physically to the point of wanting to give up. If they could gut it out and continue on they would get a surge of energy and  a dose of “runner’s high” to carry them on, but they often would hit the wall and bail out.

I’ll be honest. This morning as I read the words “Let us not become weary” my heart said, “Too late.” I am feeling weary. I am hitting the wall. Don’t worry; I am not weary to the point of giving up as Paul admonished, but I have come to realize along the way that there are certain stretches of the faith journey in which weariness sets in. It is inevitable. In a marathon, everyone hits the wall at some point.

It was in worship yesterday morning that I truly realized it. The tears started and wouldn’t stop. It was a good thing. It’s one of the things that worship is meant to accomplish. We need moments to pour it all out so that God has room to re-fill us. For me it is not one major thing burdening me but a host of little things that, en masse, have worn on me. It is what it is. I’ve been here before. I will be here again. When you run a marathon you’re going to hit the wall at different points along the way. You push through.

Today, as I start a new week, I am hitting the wall and pressing on.

Theatre Journal, Tom's Photos, Uncategorized

Places! (sprint)

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Places! (sprint)

What audience members never see is an actors quick change and literal sprint around the back of the auditorium to make it back on stage in time for their next entrance.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Psalm 37

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Put your hope in the Lord.
    Travel steadily along his path.
Psalm 37:34 (NLT)

There was a poster that hung in my room when I was a teenager. It pictured a long country highway that went up and down rolling hills as far as the eye could see in a blistering summer sun. In the foreground was a runner. The caption read “The race is not to the swift, but for those who keep running.” It was a riff off my favorite theme from Aesop’s fables: “Slow and steady wins the race.”

That poster is long gone along with all the other stuff you could find in my room when I was a teen including my devo glasses, pencil thin neck ties, my LP album collection, and my walkman stereo cassette recorder and crumbling foam headphones. The truth of the statement on that poster, however, stands the test of time. It is just as true as when David penned it 3,000 years ago and when Aesop penned the Tortoise and the Hare some 400 years later. Technology is changing our world so rapidly that the world has likely seen more change in the 30 years since I’ve been a teenager than it did in the centuries between David and Aesop, perhaps even more than the millennia that separates you and me from the both of them.

Living in a world of such rapid change, we need to cling to Truth more than ever before.

The world has changed. The road has taken me to amazing highs and through deep valleys. I’ve been weary. I’ve been injured. I’ve stumbled and I’ve fallen. I am, however, still plodding along step-by-step. Despite the extreme changes and conditions I experience in my outside circumstances my faith quietly glows as a reactor in my spirit pushing me on. My heart is fixed on the Hope before me.

Step-by-step I enter this, another day. It is my 16,911th day in the race. Talk about a marathon.

Slow and steady.

Keep running.