Tag Archives: Understanding

Chapter-a-Day

Finding Forrest

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Finding Forrest (CaD Matt 13) – Wayfarer

Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable.
Matthew 13:34 (NIV)

I have a confession to make. The first time that I saw the movie Forrest Gump I bawled like a baby on the way home. I remember being absolutely perplexed as I drove the tears pouring down my cheeks. I didn’t know why I was crying. I had no clue what it was about the movie that so obviously touched something so deep inside my soul.

Forrest Gump was released in 1994. That particular waypoint of my Life journey was an important one. I was 28 years old with two wee girls at home and a struggling marriage. My life was not turning out to be anything I expected it to be. I couldn’t see it at the time, but I was about to embark on the most important stretch of self-discovery of my life. It was a difficult stretch that would lead to some deep, dark valleys before I would find my way back to high places.

It would be twenty years or so before I would add a layer of self-understanding in learning about being an Enneagram Type Four. Equipped with that lens, my emotional reaction to Forrest Gump finally becomes clearer. An Enneagram Four’s core fear is that there is something hopelessly flawed in me, like Forrest’s diminished mental capacity which he can do nothing about. A Four’s core desire is to be special. The entire story of Forrest Gump is that of him being uniquely special, intersecting with the most famous people and moments of history, and most importantly having a life-changing impact on loved ones like Jenny and Lieutenant Dan. Forrest Gump tapped into core fears and desires I didn’t see at the moment. It resonated so powerfully and deeply within my being that I wept uncontrollably while having zero understanding why. I found a piece myself in the story of Forrest Gump. Such is the power of story.

In today’s chapter, Jesus speaks to the crowds following Him in a series of parables. They’re simple metaphorical stories and Matthew says that during this stretch of Jesus’ ministry He exclusively used them in teaching the crowds. Gone is the direct, plain language of the message on the hill. Jesus tells little stories about sowers, seeds, farmers, wheat, pearls, treasure, and weeds. Jesus tells His disciples that the purpose of the parables is to both reveal and conceal for spiritual purposes.

Jesus paints a simple story that draws listeners in. Once I am in, one of three things happens. First, I might not see, hear, or understand what Jesus is saying in the story. Whatever Jesus is talking about is concealed to me at this time. Second, I might find myself in the story. I am the seed that fell on the soil. I am the weeds springing up among the wheat. I am the woman who would sell everything she had in order to have the treasure Jesus is offering, and this understanding propels me forward in my spiritual journey. Third, I might find myself in the story and utterly reject what has been revealed.

In the quiet this morning, I’m feeling a bit nostalgic as I remember back to 1994. I thought that I knew so much about myself. I thought I knew so much about Jesus. Driving home from Forrest Gump weeping for unknown reasons was spiritual significant in ways I couldn’t see or understand. I found myself in the story, and it propelled my spirit forward on the journey to discover more.

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

Chapter-a-Day

Of Change and Health

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Awake, harp and lyre!
    I will awaken the dawn.
Psalm 108:2 (NIV)

Do you ever have random conversations that stick in your memory? I was on a trip with a colleague. While aware that we are each followers of Jesus, we didn’t talk about spiritual things very often. My colleague comes from a very conservative, almost fundamentalist viewpoint on things and he surprised me by wanting to ask my opinion about the weekly worship among the institutional church where he was a member.

It happened that my colleagues tribe had recently made the switch from a very traditional worship experience that involved singing traditional hymns, many of them having been in existence for hundreds of years. The church was migrating to using songs of the present-day genre. He was clearly struggling with this.

I have shared many times that I have been a spiritual wayfarer who has experienced and participated in a rich diversity of spiritual traditions. I have been in the emotionally rockin’ pentecostal tradition, the corporate silence of the Quaker Meeting House, the high-church liturgy of Roman Catholic church, the call-and-response of the black church, the intellectual approach of mainline institutions, the simplicity and sincerity of rural worship in a developing country, and the down-home family environment of a “house church.” My attitude has never been to ask “Which is right?” In fact, I’ve never really worried about asking “Which is right for me?” I’ve always tried to be fully present where I have been been led and ask myself “What good can I gain from this experience?”

I am aware, however, that my colleague has a more black-and-white view of both faith and life. The change in music genres within his local gathering had him rattled.

Colleague: “I’m struggling with these ‘seven-eleven’ songs. It’s the same seven lines sung eleven times.”

Me: “You mean like Psalm 117 that only has two lines which were likely repeated in worship?”

Colleague: “It’s just so repetitive. Singing the same thing over and over.”

Me: “You mean like Psalm 136 that repeats ‘His love endures forever’ twenty-six times?”

Colleague: “It’s not right. They take little pieces of a great hymn and mess it up by changing it. It was meant to be sung in its entirety!”

As this point, I could have pointed my colleague to today’s chapter, Psalm 108, because the entire thing is simply a cut-and-paste mash-up of Psalm 57:7-11 and Psalm 60:5-12. In fact, there are multiple examples both in the Psalms and in the writings of the ancient prophets when entire sections would be cut-and-pasted into an updated work. There are also examples of this in other ancient Mesopotamian cultures. It was quite common.

I don’t really know how the conversation landed with my colleague. I could tell that he was disappointed (maybe even a little frustrated) that I didn’t agree with him and provide him an affirmation of his opinions. He never brought it up again.

In my life, I have found change to be really difficult for people in almost any circle of life. When you mix in both change and religious tradition it can take on an added layer of emotion. Suddenly the change gets escalated to a level of religious orthodoxy. Sides are taken. The discussion escalates to arguments. Then comes entrenchment. Very often the next step is the severing of relationships. Groups split.

Along my spiritual journey, I have always assumed that change is a natural part of creation. Most things in life cycle in one way or another. What goes around comes around. Styles come back around and get freshened up. Religious traditions and practices that were once abandoned as “old and outdated” come back in vogue to bless a new generation of Jesus’ followers.

So it is that as I watch the changes that constantly happen around me on multiple levels, I try to keep my emotional reactions in check. Instead of digging in my heels and demanding that my love of the perfectly acceptable way of doing things is understood, I try to divert my energy to asking “What good might be gained from this change?”

In the quiet this morning, I find myself reminded of a mantra that I was introduced to by my friend. It made its way around the internet and I am unsure of the source. I once used it in a message, but I don’t know that I’ve ever referenced it in one of my chapter-a-day posts. It’s always stuck with me:

Healthy things grow.
Growing things change.
Change challenges me.
Challenges force me to trust God.
Trust leads to obedience.
Obedience makes me healthy.
Healthy things grow...

Chapter-a-Day

Tribal Stories & Ballads

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Tribal Stories & Ballads (CaD Ps 105) – Wayfarer

Remember the wonders he has done,
    his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced…
Psalm 105:5 (NIV)

I have a couple of short stories in my possession that were written by my great-aunt. They tell the stories of her father and her paternal grandmother, which would make them my great-grandfather and my great-great-grandmother. They are pretty amazing stories that would be lost to history were it not for them having been researched, written, and handed down.

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that Wendy and I are asking questions about the distraction of having more information at our fingertips at any moment of our day than was available in all the libraries in all the world when we were children.

As I read through the ancient Hebrew song lyrics, that we know as the Psalms, one thing it’s easy to lose sight of was the fact that the very act of having a written record of the lyrics was an arduous task. Very few people could read or write, and very few people had the means with which to have the materials necessary to write things down and archive them. In that world, information was shared in stories around the fire at night which had been passed down through story-telling for generations. In that culture, songs became an important medium for sharing important stories of family and history.

The historic ballad is a well-established genre within music. When I was a kid, Gordon Lightfoot’s moody ballad The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald became an oddly popular song. I haven’t heard that song for years, but I remember the tune, a bunch of the lyrics, and the story it tells of a doomed freighter sinking in Lake Superior. I’ll link to it for those who’ve never heard it. Warning: It’s an earworm.

Today’s chapter, Psalm 105, is the same genre of song. It was written as a retelling of the story of the Hebrew people from a nomadic tribe, to slaves in Egypt, and their miraculous exodus out of slavery to become a nation. Songs can be sung and pondered while one works, by families and communities in social gatherings, by parents and children at bedtimes. It was a critical way of telling and re-telling the important stories of a person, a family, events, tribes and nations. To know and remember the song is to have the story always on the tip of your tongue waiting to be shared and passed along to others.

If you’ve been following along on this chapter-a-day journey, you know that Wendy and I have spent much of the past month in quarantine with our children and grandson. As most families do, we regularly find ourselves wandering down memory lane, sharing stories, and reliving events of our familial journey together. I’ve watched Milo and thought about the fact that he’ll be one (among others, I hope!) who will one day be sharing the stories of our tribe.

As I’ve been meditating on how technology is forming us, I’ve thought about the difference between information and knowledge, between data and understanding. In a world in which all the information of our lives can be digitally stored and accessed, I wonder if we’re at risk for losing out on the intimacy of generational storytelling, the experience of a tribe singing their shared story in song, and the understanding that comes from the weaving of both the data and relationship with the deliverer.

My mind wanders back to those short stories written by my great-aunt. I hear her voice as I read those words. While I never met my great-grandfather or my great-great-grandmother, I knew Aunt Nita. She was a living, breathing, loving conduit connecting me to the stories of my tribe, and that layers the stories with added emotion and understanding. I hope that those stories get passed along, not just through bytes of information consumed conveniently on a screen at will, but through love and relationship.

I guess if that’s my desire, then it’s also my responsibility.

Chapter-a-Day

Child-Like Feelings, Child-Like Faith

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Child-like Feelings, Child-like Faith (CaD Ps 74) – Wayfarer

Do not ignore the clamor of your adversaries,
    the uproar of your enemies, which rises continually.
Psalm 74:23 (NIV)

Our grandson, Milo, turns three in a few weeks. And, while we haven’t physically seen him in almost a year, our video chats across the pond along with photos and snippets reveal a normal little boy complete with fits and tantrums. When Ya-Ya Wendy and Papa Tom mentioned we couldn’t wait to have him visit us, he ran and got his shoes on because he thought the transatlantic flight to Papa and Yaya’s house was boarding immediately. The photos of his meltdown pout upon hearing that there was no immediate flight to Papa and Yaya’s house are priceless.

I’ve come to realize along my life journey that there are aspects of childhood that we as human beings retain. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Jesus told us that child-like faith is a spiritual necessity in following Him. I have observed, however, that child-likeness takes many forms. Just as we are called to have child-like faith, we can also have child-like frustrations.

Today’s chapter, Psalm 74, is an ancient Hebrew blues lyric written after the city of Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple were destroyed by the Babylonians. Amidst the rubble, the ruins, and the reality that scores of his friends and family were marched off into captivity and exile in Babylon, Asaph expresses his grief and confusion in a song.

Asaph is in full meltdown blues mode. God has forgotten His people. God has abandoned them. There are no prophets to give voice to God’s message. God has given no time frame for how long the Hebrews are going to be in their exilic time out. Foreign gods have defeated, dishonored, and defamed the Almighty, and God is ignoring the whole affair.

Except, none of it is true.

There was a prophet left and his name was Jeremiah. God had spoken through Jeremiah to tell the Hebrew people they would be taken into Babylonian captivity for seventy years. God also spoke through Jeremiah to explain that there was eternal purpose in their circumstantial pain. Through Jeremiah, God told His people to settle into captivity, to pray for their enemies and captors. He told them to pray for Babylon to prosper. Another prophet, Daniel, was one of the exiles, as was Ezekiel. Through Daniel, it became clear that God was actively working to reveal Himself to the Babylonian king and people.

In the larger context of the Great Story, Asaph’s blues read like a child’s tantrum. But isn’t that exactly what I do when I lament my own circumstances without any understanding of what God may be doing on a larger scale? If I lack the faith to believe, or the sight to see, that God has not abandoned me and God is fully engaged in my circumstances, then I’ll be full meltdown blues mode myself. Just as I confess I have been on many occasions.

My mind wanders back to my grandson, and I am reminded of the photo of Milo seriously lamenting that he can’t go to Papa and Yaya’s house. The picture was texted to us accompanied by his mother’s confession that she and daddy have to actively keep themselves from laughing at times. For Milo, feeling all the feels is honestly where he is at in the moment. For mom and dad, who see and understand the moment in the much larger context of life, the job is to help the little man feel all the feels, get through the rough moments, and keep pressing on in the journey.

How often do I allow my circumstances to send me into a child-like tantrum in my thoughts, emotions, and spirit? How do I recognize it in the moment, and transition those child-like feelings of fear, anxiety, and despair into the child-like faith Jesus requires of me?

The fact that Asaph’s song made it into the anthology of Hebrew song lyrics tells me that, like a good parent, God understands that sometimes we have to feel our feels. And, like a good parent, God keeps beckoning me, leading me forward in this spiritual journey to deeper levels of understanding, greater levels of spiritual maturity, that ironically result in the simple purity of child-like faith.

Chapter-a-Day

A Good Day

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Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
Mark 10:35 (NIV)

Every parent knows a set-up question when they hear it.

“Dad? I’m going to ask you something and you have to answer ‘yes.'”

“Mom? Haven’t I been really, really good this week?”

The set-up question is intended to get the desired answer from the real question. I remember being a young boy playing this game in my prayers with God. If I wanted the Vikings to win the game or my older brothers girlfriends to simply “stop by” our house (they always doted on me, and I loved it), then I would barter with the Almighty to get my wish. I might make the case for my good behavior to have been good enough to “earn” what it is I wanted. I might have promised all sorts of obedient services I could render on the back-end of my fulfilled wish should my Genie-God grant my self-centered request.

Obviously, as a young boy, I had a lot to learn about God, prayer, the Great Story, and my role in it. I’m grateful that God is eternally patient and faithful.

In today’s chapter, I found my lesson wrapped in the layout of events that Mark includes as Jesus prepares to enter Jerusalem for the climactic week of His earthly sojourn.

First, Jesus sends a rich, young man away sad because the man was unwilling to do the one thing that stood between him and God: sell everything he owned and give it to the poor. In the post-event discussion with His followers, Jesus reminds them that in the economy of God’s Kingdom (the real one, not the false one that the institutional church created for 1700 years) “the first will be last and the last will be first.”

The very next thing, Jesus tells #TheTwelve for the third time exactly what’s going to happen:

“We are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.”

Sometimes I’ve noticed that the chapter breaks and headings that modern scholars have introduced into the text keep me from seeing the flow and connections between pieces of the story. Today was a great example. Jesus reminds the disciples that the first will be last, and then He gives them the ultimate example: I, the miracle-working Son of God who heals, frees, feeds, and raises people from the dead, am going to submit myself to suffer and die in order to redeem all things.

What happens next?

James and John come to Jesus with a “set-up question!”

“Um, Jesus? We want you to promise to do whatever it is we’re about to ask you.”

What was the question? They were looking out for numero uno. If Jesus was going to die, then the brothers Zebedee just wanted to tie up some loose ends. They wanted to make sure that their eternal future was secure. They wanted to ink the deal with Jesus, once and for all, to make sure they ended up “Top Dog” on the heavenly food chain.

I can hear the echo of Jesus’ words from what seems like every single chapter I’ve read the past two weeks: “Do you still not understand?”

For the record, James and John got about as far as I did with the Vikings winning the Super Bowl.

In the quiet, on this Good Friday morning, I am reminded of all the ways I have cast myself in the role of James and John. It might have been cloaked in religious set-up questions, bartered goodness, and the economics of a worldly institutional kingdom dressed in religious robes. The truth is what I’ve been quietly contemplating this week. In so many ways, I know that I still don’t completely get it.

Good Friday. The secret trials. The kangaroo court. The beatings. The mocking. The jeering. The crowd screaming for blood. The scourging. The nails driven into wrists and feet. The hanging naked on a cross as public spectacle; Naked, bleeding and losing control of his bodily functions in front of His own mother. And, as He hangs there between heaven and earth on the cusp of death…

Making sure his mother will be cared for.

Forgiving His executioners.

Extending grace to a confessed and convicted thief.

“The first shall be last. If you want to be the greatest, you must become the servant of all.”

A good day to open my head and heart to continue understanding, to continue getting it, and continuing to let it change me.

Chapter-a-Day

Getting It

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[Jesus] then began to teach [the disciples] that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.
Mark 8:31 (NIV)

I spoke to a friend on the phone yesterday. We, of course, discussed the current world situation with the COVID-19 pandemic and how different our lives have been the past few weeks with everyone stay home and keeping to themselves.

“And it’s Holy Week!” my friend exclaimed. “It doesn’t feel very Holy. It feels more like a week with holes.”

I thought about Holy Week as I read this morning’s chapter. I’m half-way through Mark’s version of Jesus’ story. If I’d been thinking ahead I should have scheduled to start a week earlier so that I’d be finishing the story on Easter weekend. Oh well. One more thing to add to the list of things that feels a little “off” right now.

I find it interesting that while Jesus has been speaking in parables and metaphors for several chapters, He is quite direct and plain-spoken about how His story is going to end. It isn’t even a veiled foreshadow. He just puts it right out there.

Peter rebukes Jesus at this point. Ironically, Jesus has been complaining for two chapters about the disciples not understanding His parables. Now He speaks more directly to them than perhaps He’s ever done. They still didn’t understand.

Here’s the thing. The people who walked with Jesus, talked with Jesus, witnessed the miracles, and spent three years in His constant presence didn’t get it when He said it to them plainly.

Who am I to think that I totally get it? How much don’t I get? What am I missing? How frustrated is Jesus with me? Is He shaking His head from heaven? “Tom! Dude! Forty years you’ve been following me, and you still don’t understand?”

I’m kind of glad that things are different this year. I’m asking myself this morning how much the traditions, the trappings, the religious services, the Easter dresses and bonnets and brunches and egg hunts distract me from getting it as I should.

The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law. He must be killed and after three days rise again.

I think maybe it’s good for me to be alone during Holy Week for a change. This plain-spoken statement of Jesus is probably something I should sit with in the quiet for a while. It’s something on which I need to ponder and let penetrate.

Lord, have mercy on this blind and deaf follower.

I want to better understand.

Chapter-a-Day

Initiative and Patience

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“Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”
Jeremiah 33:3 (NIV)

Along my spiritual journey I’ve come to understand that progression in the journey requires a heady mixture of what, on the surface of things, seems contradictory ingredients. God asks me to develop both initiative and patience.

Jesus made it clear to any who would follow Him:  “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Asking, seeking, and knocking are verbs. They are actions initiated by the one who is doing the asking, seeking, and knocking. I also find it fascinating that Jesus did not mention one, but three distinct verbs with slightly different metaphorical meanings. I have learned along my journey that I have to be proactive if I wish to make spiritual headway. God doesn’t give passing grades for simply showing up at class and warming a seat. If I want to move to the next spiritual grade level I have to fully participate in each lesson, assignment, experiment, exercise, and practicum. Initiative is required.

In today’s chapter, God speaks through the ancient prophet Jeremiah and foreshadows Jesus’ spiritual lesson. “Call out to me,” God says. Take the initiative. Pick up the phone. Give a shout. If I do, then an answer is promised. “Great and unsearchable things” of which I am ignorant.

In the rest of Jeremiah’s message God takes responsibility for the judgement on the nation of Judah, but then spends the rest of the chapter giving a vision of healing, restoration, redemption, and blessing. “Yes,” God says, “I am letting my children experience this hardship, but if they take the initiative to seek me out and have patience they will ultimately find that this has all been part of a much larger plan.”

This is where I find patience required. I started my spiritual journey following Jesus almost 40 years ago, and there are things I’m only beginning to learn and fathom as I approach the 40 year milestone (which is full of all sorts of spiritual significance in the Great Story). If I had bailed out early, there is so much I would have missed.

This morning I find myself thinking of the times as a parent that I earned my children’s wrath for doing what they could not, would not understand in the moment. They only saw the surface of things through the immature lens of their immediate desires. Meanwhile, as a father I was more interested in their long-term character and spiritual development than in making my child momentarily happy. Even as a parent trying to raise spiritually mature children I had to take the initiative to do what may have been unpopular in the moment and have the patience that my children would someday thank me for seeking what was best for them.

At this, the beginning of another work week, I find myself once again taking the initiative to ask, seek, and knock what God would have for me in the days ahead. And, I patiently press forward one step at a time.

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The Challenge in the Way We See the World

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The earth will be completely laid waste
    and totally plundered.
The Lord has spoken this word.
Isaiah 24:3 (NIV)

Over the past week in the United States we have seen a clash of peoples with very different world views; People who see the world very differently. The presidential election has brought those stark differences into the spotlight, along with our continued struggle to to love those with whom we disagree and to let discourse rule over discord.

I don’t hear people talking much about world views any more. I had an entire class on it in college in which we defined many of the more popular world views, discussed them at length, and weighed their differences. My impression is that higher education has changed a lot in the past 20 years. At the liberal arts college I attended we were taught that the loss of an election to those who saw the world differently was reason for fascination, personal challenge and understanding rather than fear and loathing.

World view is the primary way we see the world. World view is the lens of our core religious, political, and socio-economic views. Our world view is the filter through which we see the world and process news and events. It is a very human thing to assume that our world view is right and others world views are wrong; to struggle with those who don’t share our own personal view of the world.

There is, however, value in understanding how I view the world and to have it challenged. This is where discourse is a worthwhile friend.

Today’s chapter highlights a piece of world view that has been challenged in recent years. I had a discussion about this with Wendy and one of my daughters this past week in light of the surprising results of our election. Many followers of Jesus hold to what is essentially a medieval world view as it relates to our view of the future. This world view holds that things are going to get progressively worse and worse until there is apocalypse, and then Jesus will return and redeem everything in a eucatastrophic climax to the Great Story.

There is another world view I’ve been reading from some modern day mystics which takes an opposite view. God is progressively redeeming things. Things are getting better all the time, though we can’t really see it. Despite our fears, worries and a media bent on showing us all that is sensationally wrong with the world things are actually getting better as God’s resurrection power spreads in an ever-expanding universe.

So which is it? Apocalypse and eucatastrophe or evolving redemption? Isaiah’s prophetic words today certainly lends itself to the former. The world laid waste in desolation, but in the end the Lord is reigning in Jerusalem.

This morning I’m mulling over these things in my  mind. I’m pondering how I see the world and weighing what I read in God’s Message. I’m watching the news of the day and trying to see them both in context of my personal world view while understanding how those same events are perceived by those who see the world differently than I.

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Chapter-a-Day

Embrace the Mystery of the Moment

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Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
John 13:7 (NRSV)

There was a lot that Jesus’ followers did not understand. It is a subtle, but recurring theme in John’s biography of Jesus:

  • Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
  • They did not understand that he was speaking to them about the Father.
  • Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word.
  • Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
  • His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.

Along my life journey I’ve discovered that I almost always desire clarity and understanding, but it quite regularly eludes me in the moment and in my immediate circumstances. It is only when I reach a waypoint down the road that I look back and perceive with clarity and understanding how God was at work around me, in me, and through me. I have come to accept that there are some things that will continue to elude me until my journey is over and I am safe at home.

At least I’m not alone. I take heart today in the realization that Jesus’ best friends and closest followers on this earth were perplexed in the moment, too. Being physically present with Jesus and hearing His every word, they still didn’t get it until further on down the road. Maybe it’s time for me to cut myself a little slack.

I’m reminded that this life journey is, for me, a faith journey. I will rarely have clarity and understanding in the moment. I am, however, assured of the hope that God will complete His good work in me. Having looked back at how He has brought me to this point, and all that He has faithfully accomplished thus far, it is evident that I can trust that my present circumstances are part of the plan.

“You do not know now what I am doing,” Jesus says to His followers, “but later you will understand.”

Indeed.

So, go with it. Trust. Have faith.

Embrace the mystery of the moment.

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Chapter-a-Day

Life is Messy

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Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his town, in Ophrah; and all Israel prostituted themselves to it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family.
Judges 8:27 (NRSV)

Life is messy. We generally like things to be black and white and believe that things would be so much easier if they were. We like our movies to provide us with simple delineations between the people who wear white hats and those who wear black hats. We like the ending of our movies to wrap up neatly. The bad guy is dead. The good guy rides off into the sunset.

But life is rarely that way. We would like a simple choice for President. We want the person who is fully qualified, looks the part, has no moral flaws, is void of skeletons in the closet, inspires us, communicates clearly, and unites a diverse citizenship. That person, however, does not exist.

Even the great heroes of the faith, whom God raised up as leaders in ancient days, were sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. They were flawed the same as me and you. God raised up Gideon to defeat the Midianites, but in today’s chapter we find that Gideon was far from perfect. He defeated an idolatrous oppressor only to create a golden ephod (generally, a garment woven with gold) that became an idol itself. Gideon, for all of his leadership qualities, had his flaws. With his power and prestige he amassed for himself many wives and concubines. With 70 sons on record, the total number of his children had to be well over a hundred. Talk about messy.

Today, I am reminded that on this life journey East of Eden we rarely get the storylines of our lives to work out how we like them in our movies. Despite our perceptions, people rarely fit into simple black hats or white hats. Most all of us wear shades of gray. We all make mistakes along the way; Some of them tragic. We have messy lives, messy relationships, and mortal flaws. Riding off into the sunset is often just the view we choose to see through our rose colored glasses.

I do not believe, however, that this is cause for pessimism or cynicism. Rather, it is an opportunity for grace, forgiveness, and understanding. Just as Jesus taught, if I can be honest about the log in my own eye, I can learn to have grace for the speck in the eye of my brother, my sister, my friend, and my neighbor.

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