Ner was the father of Kish, Kish the father of Saul, and Saul the father of Jonathan, Malki-Shua, Abinadab and Esh-Baal. 1 Chronicles 8:33 (NIV)
I often get asked if I play golf. Our house sits nestled in a neighborhood on a golf course with the clubhouse just a couple of blocks away, so it’s a natural question for people to ask. My answer is that I’m a once-a-year charity best-ball tournament golfer. My goal in this once-a-year charity best ball tournament is to have ONE of my shots over 18 holes be the “best ball” of our foursome. If I do that. I consider it a win.
I do know a lot of people who are avid golfers, and I know it can be addicting for some people. Along my life journey, I’ve met a person or two who were obsessed. It was all they talked about and it was where all of their time and money went. I remember one person whose marriage was on the rocks because his wife considered herself a “golf widow.” Yikes!
I’ve observed along life’s road that you can tell a lot about a person by observing where they invest their time and energy, and what they like to talk about.
In today’s chapter, the Chronicler turns his genealogical focus on the Hebrew tribe of Benjamin. What’s odd about this is that he already listed the tribe of Benjamin in yesterday’s chapter seven (7:6-12) squeezed between the tribes of Issachar and Naphtali. Now he circles back to give a much more extensive look at Benjamin. Why?
The Chronicler is sitting in the rebuilt Jerusalem where the rebuilt Temple stands. He is among many former citizens of the southern kingdom of Judah who have returned from exile in Babylon. As he writes this retrospective history of his people, he is trying to make sense of where he and his people stand at this moment of their Great Story and their relationship with God. We learn a lot about where his mind is focused based on where he spends his genealogical time and energy.
For example, the Chronicler chose to begin his vast genealogical research focused on the tribe of Judah, even though Judah was the fourth oldest of Jacob’s sons. Judah was the largest tribe, made up the majority of the southern kingdom of Judah, and was the tribe from which King David came. He now focuses on Benjamin because when the kingdom split into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah, the tribe of Benjamin stuck with Judah. It was from the tribe of Benjamin that Israel’s first king, Saul, emerged as well as Saul’s son Jonathan who played a large role in David’s story as David’s best friend. Many of the exiles returning from Babylon were from the tribe of Benjamin, perhaps even the Chronicler himself.
In the quiet this morning, I find myself meditating on focus. I’m not an obsessed golfer, but that’s not to say I don’t have other obsessions. I still make daily choices about where I spend my time, attention, and resources. What are they? What do they reflect about me and my life priorities?
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
I remember one of my first reports in school was to write about a President, and my report was on Ulysses S. Grant. Few people know that this was not his name. His given name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. When he was registered at West Point a clerical error listed him as Ulysses S. Grant. Rather than go to the trouble to have it corrected, he just went with the flow.
My study of the famous Civil War general and 18th President back then portrayed Grant as arguably the worst President in history. I remember being rather shocked by this revelation and by the fact that seemingly no scholar had anything good to say about him or his presidency.
Last year I read Ron Chernow’s recent biography of Grant and was fascinated to find a very different take on the man than what I had read when I studied him in my youth. It’s fascinating how our perceptions of past leaders can change with time along with the experiences of history.
One of the things I’ve heard casual critics bemoan about the Bible is the repetition. For example, today our chapter-a-day journey wades into the book of 1 Chronicles, which is largely the same story we read in the books of Samuel and Kings. I get it. To the casual reader, the repetition seems unnecessary. But is it? Sometimes a historian revisits history from a different place in time and finds a fresh perspective and lessons that are needed in that place at that particular moment in history.
The author of Chronicles is writing at a tenuous moment in history. The nations of Israel and Judah were defeated and taken into exile in Assyria and Babylon. Years later, a remnant of exiles returned to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple under the Persian Empire which ruled the entire region. In the quiet this morning, I tried to place myself in the sandals of those who have returned to rebuild. Everything has changed.
They once had their own nation, then two nations, that are no more. There is no Hebrew king. There is no heir of David on a throne. What does it mean to be God’s people now? Does God even have a plan for His people? Do their faith and their traditions mean anything anymore or was it all a mirage?
What’s fascinating is that I find very relevant and contemporary sentiments in these questions at this moment in history. I hear voices in our culture disparaging Christianity in total and arguing that the world would have been better without it. Current generations have deconstructed their faith and are now trying to find their way through the rubble. We live in a time when technology and information are bringing more wholesale change at a more rapid rate than at any time in human history.
Does my faith mean anything in this time and place? What is God doing? Is God even a part of the equation? If so, what am I to make of it all?
It’s in asking these questions that we go back to the Story itself to seek answers. We start at the beginning and look at the Story with a fresh perspective. That’s what the author of Chronicles has done. He is writing hundreds of years after the books of Samuel and Kings were written. From his precarious moment on history’s timeline, he is revisiting the entire story from all the sources at his disposal to share with his generation.
And so, he goes back to the beginning. He starts with a genealogy. Here is the cast of the Story, of history. A man had a family. The family became clans. Clans became tribes. Tribes became nations. Nations became Empires. But it started with family. My family. Our family.
In the quiet this morning, I feel the call of the Chronicler to join him in revisiting the story once again. Eyes open. Heart open. God, give me a fresh perspective to help guide me through this current stretch of my journey.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
The Earth and Eternity Connection (CaD Lk 16) –
Wayfarer
“[Abraham] said to [the rich man], ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’” Luke 16:31 (NIV)
I have confessed in previous posts that I was foolish with money when I was young. When I got my allowance, I spent it and I didn’t spend it wisely. I made a lot of foolish choices.
As a child, I remember being plagued with existential angst. I was this unique person with fingerprints, thoughts, and personality. I was a soul trapped inside this one-of-a-kind body living on this planet in a vast universe. Who am I really? What am I doing here?
Was there a connection between my existential angst and my foolish choices with money?
When I became a disciple of Jesus, those existential questions went away. Jesus was very straightforward in His teaching. There is an eternity that lies beyond this life, and His disciples are to live this life with that eternity top-of-mind. My earthly thoughts, words, relationships, and financial choices should be made with an eternal perspective.
In today’s chapter, Jesus is focused on money and material wealth in this life. He started by telling a parable that highlighted how shrewd people become when they believe this earthly journey is all there is. People learn to cover their rear ends, take advantage of others, and hoard wealth and possessions for themselves. If this world is all there is, then the things of this world will be what you treasure.
Luke finishes today’s chapter with a different parable. A rich man had a homeless beggar who slept on the sidewalk outside his house. Both men died. The beggar ended up in heaven hanging out with Father Abraham, while the rich man landed in the torment of Hades. The rich man realized what a foolish mistake he’d made and begged Father Abraham to send the beggar to his family to tell them about the eternal consequences of their lives.
Abraham tells the rich man a hard truth. The message of eternity has been proclaimed through the centuries. It’s right there for any who are willing to hear it. Sending the beggar won’t do any good, Abraham explains. Those unwilling to believe won’t even listen to a person who rises from the dead.
Even after I chose to become a disciple of Jesus, it took a while for this eternal perspective to change some of my patterns of thought and behavior. The truth is I’m still working on it every single day. But it has changed me, and it continues to do so. If I really believe what I say I believe, then my earthly choices will reflect my eternal perspective. If they don’t, then Jesus’ words convict me: “If you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?”
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
“Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God’s intimate friendship blessed my house, when the Almighty was still with me and my children were around me…” Job 29:4-5 (NIV)
Over the past year or two, Wendy and I have been observing and discussing how the two of us think differently about time. As an Enneagram Eight, Wendy is future oriented. She is always thinking about what is ahead and what needs to be done to ensure that everything runs smoothly once we get there. As an Enneagram Four, I have a past orientation. I’m a lover of history and I’ve always had a freakish kind of memory. To this I can pull up a photo of my first grade class and tell you the name of pretty much every classmate. I could also point out the house where about half of them lived.
So, yesterday while grocery shopping Wendy asked me if we had a bottle of cranberry juice left on the shelf of the pantry because I had just opened a new bottle from the pantry the day before. In Wendy’s future orientation one should naturally make note of these things so that when we’re at the store we can get one, if needed, to make sure there’s at lest one on the shelf at all times for that morning when we run out at breakfast. I think there was one more on the pantry shelf when I opened a new bottle the day before. I think there was. I don’t know. But, I distinctly remember when I was five and we had this corner cupboard with a lazy susan, and things would fall off in the back of the cupboard and because I was the smallest my. mom would have me crawl onto the lazy susan and she’d spin me around to retrieve the fallen cans from the bottom of the cupboard in the back. That, I remember.
Herein lies the issue.
For that past twenty-some chapters, the ever-suffering Job has been sitting on his local refuse burn pile telling his three amigos that he would like to have his day in court with God. He’d like to put God on the witness stand and cross-examine the Almighty because Job is convinced that he has been wronged and God is the perpetrator. With today’s chapter, we enter a new phase of the Job story. Starting today, and with the following two chapters, Job makes his closing arguments in the metaphorical trial he’s been living out inside his head and heart.
Like a defense attorney speaking to me, his audience and jury, Job begins with a trip down Memory Lane. He waxes nostalgic of the days before that day when a rogue derecho killed all of his children and, simultaneously, some neighborhood gangs stole all of his flocks and fortune. He’s pulling the heart-strings of this past-oriented jury member. I feel it, Job. Oh how good life was, back in the day when I rode my Schwinn five-speed Stingray to the 7-Eleven on Douglas Avenue. It was a half-block east on Madison, hang a right and head south on 31st street, then just three blocks past the Cron’s house to Douglas. The 7-Eleven was on the northwest corner. It used to be a DX station. I’d fill up the Briggs and Stratton push mower. Gas was about 25 cents a gallon. But the DX closed and it became a 7-Eleven where almost every day in the summer I bought a Big Gulp for a quarter that I’d probably earned doing Scott Borg’s paper route at the VA hospital that morning.
Oh…I’m sorry…we were talking about Job, weren’t we?
Along my life journey, I’ve observed that it’s easy to glorify the past, especially for those of us who have a natural bent toward nostalgia. When life gets complicated, when I’m suffering in the present and find it difficult to see any hope for the future, I can reach back to the past like a drug. It provides cherished memories and drums up nostalgia-fueled good feelings. And, that’s what Job does in today’s chapter. The chapter follows an ancient poetic structure in which Job not only waxes nostalgic about how blessed he was, but at the center, he extolls the virtues of his generosity and benevolence (in defense of his friend Eli’s accusation in 22:9):
I was blessed (vss 2-6) I was honored (vss 7-10) I was generous and benevolent to the poor and needy (vss 11-17) I was blessed (vss 18-20) I was honored (vss 21-25)
In the quiet this morning, I am reminded that my natural bents can end up with crooked and unintended consequences. The glorification of what was can easily lead to me not being fully present in what is nor prepared for what is to come. For Job, I wonder if his trip down Memory Lane is essentially serving to emotionally pick at the scabs of his present suffering and fuel the fire of his resentment. I have learned along my life journey that sometimes I have to will and to discipline myself to be fully present in the moment, and give time and energy to preparing for what’s ahead. Gratefully, I have a partner who provides me with a really good example to follow.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
A Selective Backward Glance (CaD Job 8) –
Wayfarer
“Surely God does not reject one who is blameless or strengthen the hands of evildoers.” Job 8:20 (NIV)
I mentioned a previous post some of the different ways people communicate, and I hinted at time orientation. I hadn’t given a ton of thought to this until earlier this year when Wendy and I began to really explore how it affects our relationship and communication.
I have a very strong past orientation. I love history. When I was young adult and really began digging into understand myself, I began to dig into my family history. I am a product of the family system into which I was born and raised. My parents were products of the family systems into which they were born and raised. Human systems have certain ways they function and operate which can be generational in nature. In digging into the past I discovered a lot about my family and myself. Often look back in time to gain clarity on my present circumstances.
Wendy has a very strong future orientation. She appreciates my love of history, but also she rolls her eyes when I geek out on it. Unlike me, she is always thinking ten steps ahead with her internal radar because she knows that future circumstances will go much smoother for everyone involved if things are planned well, prepped for, and executed properly.
We have come to realize that some of our marital strife comes from the different time orientations with which we navigate life, but that’s another blog post.
In today’s chapter, we find Job continuing to sit on the refuse ash heap in his off-the-charts agony joined by three friends. Eli insinuated that Job’s suffering must point to some secret sin that caused the Almighty to punish Job. Job’s response was that he was innocent and did nothing to warrant his suffering, and challenged his friends to prove him wrong. So, his friend Bill steps into the batter’s box to take his swing.
Bill is a straight-shooter. He is direct and gets right to the point. He takes issue with Job’s claim of innocence and anguished cries to the Almighty. To Bill and his theological world-view, this is a black-and-white issue: “Your children sinned. God took them out. Period. End of sentence.”
What follows is fascinating because Bill clearly has a past time orientation. He tells Job to look to the past, the wisdom of the ancients and ancestors. in order to gain clarity on his present circumstances. Bill then shares a Hebrew wisdom poem (vss 11-19) about how the godless suffer the consequences of their godlessness. He then concludes in his black-and-white worldview that suffering is a spiritually natural consequence of godlessness and if Job was really blameless then God would restore Job’s fortunes and blessings.
I pondered Bill’s words in the quiet this morning. As someone with a strong past orientation, I quickly found Bill’s argument ludicrous. Human history is a long string of stories about human suffering, punctuated by certain events in which suffering happened on a massive scale. Within those events are nameless, faceless human beings who did not deserve their fate. My mind immediately reminded me of my trip to the U.S. Holocaust museum and the sight of all those shoes piled up just as they were piled up when their nameless, faceless owners were stripped and sent to the gas chambers.
My brain then provided me with a name, and a face from the past: Corrie Ten Boom and her family. Every other member of her family took of their shoes and placed them in that pile. Their only crime was that their love of Jesus and their desire to do the right thing led them to hide Jews in their home in an effort to save their lives. Her story of suffering in the concentration camp echoes Job’s anguished cries, and rightly so.
So, all due respect Bill, but in telling Job to take a backward glance to the past, to the ancients and their wisdom, you have chosen to be carefully selective in your stated evidence, so as to justify your simplistic conclusion. History is filled with nameless, faceless individuals who echo Job’s anguished cries in the suffering and death they blamelessly endured. Bill, you told Job that his words were “a blustering wind,” but it is your simplistic, theological world-view that I find as hollow as that pile of old, footless shoes.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Mark 14:3 (NIV)
In today’s chapter, Mark provides a Cliff Notes summary of the fateful night of Jesus’ arrest. As I read the familiar episodes, I was struck at the contrast between Mary’s anointing of Jesus (she is not named in Mark’s biography of Jesus, but John names her, the sister of Lazarus) with expensive perfume, and the actions/behaviors of the Twelve.
Jesus has now been speaking of His arrest, suffering, and death for some time. The response of the Twelve has ranged from silence to confusion to outright disapproval. Mark’s version of events in today’s chapter reveal the behavior of the Twelve to be disagreeable and inattentive to the weight of the moment.
Mary, on the other hand, seems to see what no one else sees. She alone embraces what is about to happen, understands the weight of it, and responds by embracing what Jesus has said would happen. Mary alone acts as a willing participant. Her actions are to bless Jesus before His passion and to metaphorically prepare Him for death. Mary is the only person who seems to see and humbly accept. And, she’s criticized for it.
Jesus’ chosen disciples, meanwhile, can’t believe one of them would betray Him. They can’t stay awake with Him, even after He asks of them this small favor. They can’t stay and stand with Jesus in His moment of need. They can’t even admit they know Him, when confronted with multiple opportunities to do so.
In the quiet this morning, I can’t help but imagine myself in the roles of both Mary and the Twelve. Luke shares that Mary was one to sit at the feet of Jesus and hang on His every word to the point that her sister was indignant (everyone, it would seem, gets indignant with Mary). As much as I would like to think that I would have Mary’s insight, I am reminded that it came at the cost of ignoring urgent things in order to invest in important things. Her devotion to “asking, seeking, and knocking” appear to be the precursor to her spiritual perception.
Have I sacrificed things distracting and urgent to invest myself in Jesus as Mary did?
I have to confess that I identify with the dudes…
Present, but imperceptive.
Great intentions, but greatly inattentive.
Braggadocios during warm-ups, but bungling in the game.
Of course, today’s chapter is not the end of the story. The dudes will keep following. They will learn. They will turn the world upside down.
I’m looking out the window at the lake as I type this. Another day has dawned, and so my story isn’t over either. I take hope in that this morning. Like the dudes, I’ll keep following, too. I’ll keep learning. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even turn a few things upside-down before this wayfaring stranger’s journey is over.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
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.
“And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.” Joel 2:28 (NIV)
“Teacher,” asked the student, “I have been reading the prophets and I have many questions.”
“Rightly so,” answered the Teacher. “Many look to the prophets for answers when often the greatest treasure found in their words is the discovery of the right questions.”
“Is the prophet writing about a time that was, or is it about a time that is, or is it about a time that yet will be?” asked the student.
“Yes,” answered the teacher, softly.
“I don’t understand,” said the student. “Which is it?”
“Of course you don’t understand,” said the teacher. “Your confusion is rooted, my child, not in the words of the prophets but in your understanding of God who revealed to them their message. In your mind, you’ve confined God inside of time. But, time is a construct of creation and God existed before creation. Therefore, God exists outside of creation and is not confined by the construct we call time. Thus, you must consider that those marvelous things God reveals to the prophets may, like God himself, be at once about what was, what is, and what will be.”
The prophetic message of Joel reverberates with the words of the teacher. Today’s chapter is at once about what was happening in Judah, what would happen on the day of Pentecost in the book of Acts, and what has yet to happen.
It was verses 28-32 of today’s chapter that Peter quoted on the miraculous day in Jerusalem recorded in Acts 2. Jesus’ followers, male and female, young and old, were gathered together when the Holy Spirit came upon all of them like a rushing wind and they all began to speak in all of the various languages of the throng of Jewish pilgrims crowded into Jerusalem for the Pentecost feast.
One of the things that strikes me about both the words of the prophet and the event on Pentecost is the loss of delineation between nations, gender, and age. The pouring out of Holy Spirit on and into the followers of Jesus was not discriminatory, neither was the manifestation of the Spirit in the proclamations being made in various languages of the world.
The further I get in my spiritual journey, the more I have come to embrace the understanding that the gifts and callings of God’s Spirit are not discriminatory in any way. Just as the teacher revealed to the student a God who is not confined by time, so Joel’s prophesy and the events of Pentecost reveal a God’s whose indwelling Holy Spirit, the spiritual gifts Holy Spirit gives, and ministry to which Holy Spirit calls individuals are not confined by human distinctions of race, gender, age, education, nationality, political world-view, or socio-economic status.
It is only we human beings and the institutional church that we humans built that has chosen to pick-up those distinctions that God blew away and discarded on the Day of Pentecost and set them back in place within our religion.
In the quiet this morning, I’m reminded that the Great Story reveals God to be exceeding, abundantly beyond all that I could ask or even imagine. Like the student, my problem is so often rooted, not in my understanding of the Story God is authoring, but in my very understanding of who God has, is, and will reveal Himself to be.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. Malachi 4:2 (NIV)
My vocational career has been spent surveying customers for various clients around the world. One of the fascinating trends I’ve seen over the years is how customer expectations have changed since the advent of the internet age and the proliferation of cell phones. In the wake of Big Tech, time-related dimensions of service have become bigger drivers of customer satisfaction. In general, we are more impatient. We want faster answers. We don’t like to wait.
Wendy and I often muse how much we appreciate having information at our fingertips. We’ve kind of become Jeopardy! geeks and sometimes the answers prompt more questions about things we didn’t know. The other night, Wendy didn’t have her phone next to her as we were watching, so she simply lifted her Apple watch to mouth and asked Siri a question. Her watch immediately and audibly provided her with the trivial answer.
“Did you see what I just did?” she marveled at me.
For a disciple of Jesus, this trend represents a tremendous challenge. The spiritual journey as a follower of Jesus is fraught with waiting. Spiritual growth is an organic process that requires time for roots to dig deep in the Spirit, for growth to take place, and for fruit to emerge. Faith is “the assurance of what we hope for” which, by its very nature, means it’s out there and I have yet to fully take hold of it but believe with hope that I will. Paul put it this way in his letter to the followers of Jesus in Phillipi:
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Press on. Persevere. Reach. Strain. Those are the elements of the Spirit journey. It becomes an even greater challenge in an age when the expectation and normal human experience is immediate information and satisfaction right from your wristwatch.
One of the most fascinating things about the prophetic works of Malachi is its placement in the great story. Malachi was the last of the ancient prophets. His book was placed at the end of the prophets. Malachi was prophesying around 430 B.C. The next book in the Great Story is Matthew‘s biography of Jesus four hundred years later.
Today’s brief chapter is a set-up to the wait that is coming.
Revere my name. Remember the Law of Moses. Watch for Elijah.
A big Day is coming.
Wait for it.
In the quiet this morning, I spent some time looking back at my own spiritual journey. There have been so many time when I had to wait for promises to be fulfilled, prayers to be answered, and waypoints on the journey to be reached. The waiting, in turn, required praying, keeping the faith, hoping, pressing on, and developing patience. And, that’s the point. God’s goal for me is spiritual maturity, and that never happens in an instant.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
Elisha replied, “Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: About this time tomorrow, a seah of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.”
The officer on whose arm the king was leaning said to the man of God, “Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?”
“You will see it with your own eyes,” answered Elisha, “but you will not eat any of it!” 2 Kings 7:1-2 (NIV)
The stories of the prophet Elisha are so filled with the mysterious and the miraculous that it’s easy for me to get focused on the stories and lose sight of the larger story that’s being told.
After the tribes of Israel were divided into northern and southern kingdoms, the two southern tribes that constituted the Kingdom of Judah clung to the house of David and to the worship of God in Jerusalem. The ten northern tribes making up the Kingdom of Israel denied the house of David and they freely embraced the regional and local pagan gods. Spiritually speaking, the northern tribes were prodigal children, and Father God wanted them to leave the spiritual pig slop of their wayward faith and come home.
The prophetic lives of Elijah and Elisha were exclusively centered among the prodigal children of Israel. They were God’s agents and the sheer number and concentration of miracles that God performed through them during this period of history are rivaled only by the time of Moses and the Exodus and by the ministry of Jesus and His apostles.
As I meditate on this in the quiet, I can’t help but think about what God is saying through each of these three chapters of the Great Story.
In the time of Moses, God’s people are enslaved by Egypt and God desires to free them from their slavery and lead them to a Promised Land.
In the time of Elisha, God’s people have abandoned God, and run away from their spiritual home. God desperately desires to convince them to come home.
In the time of Jesus and the apostles, the world is enslaved to sin and God desires to free me from this slavery so that I might be led to an eternal Promised Land.
I believe the miraculous in each of these chapters of the story are indicative of just how passionate God is in his desire for His creation and His people.
In this context, the story of the siege of Samaria in yesterday’s and today’s chapters take on a deeper and larger meaning than the events they describe. The horrific consequences of the siege should have shaken the leaders of Israel to turn back to God and cry out to God, but they refuse. Even when Elisha (who, along with Elijah, has already performed plenty of miracles that the king and his team know about) announces that God will miraculously lift the siege overnight, the immediate response is doubt. The subsequent miraculous fulfillment shows God’s people how much He wants them to turn their hearts back to Him. The fulfilled prophecy of doom for the King’s doubting official is a stark metaphorical contrast pointing to His people the consequences of their continued spiritual rebellion.
In the quiet this morning, I’m thinking about God’s heart desire as revealed, not only in the events of today’s chapter, but in the sending of Jesus to be the atoning sacrifice for my sin, that I might be in relationship with Him. It’s basically the same message:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
Like God’s people wasting away behind the besieged walls of Samaria, I can choose to believe, or not.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
