Strengthening Ourselves in the Lord

And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep. David's two wives also had been taken captive, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. (1 Samuel 30:3-6)

Give ear to my prayer, O God,

    and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy!

Attend to me, and answer me;

    I am restless in my complaint and I moan,

because of the noise of the enemy,

    because of the oppression of the wicked.

For they drop trouble upon me,

    and in anger they bear a grudge against me.

(Psalm 55:1-3)

Two Roads

All too often weeping and grieving turn into bitterness.  Bitterness turns into blame and blame into abuse.  Abuse often begins with the leadership.  This is the road that David's people took.

Quite simply the story shows something entirely different in David from his people.  The words "but David" is the story of a good leader, but even more importantly, a good person.  "But David" indicates that something else was at work in David that moved him from weeping and distress to strength and encouragement.  "But David" most remarkably shows that he was prepared in the midst of trial and trouble and persecution to do what his people were not prepared to do: seek God.  David was ready; his people were not.

David found his strength in God.  He did not have a series of religious activites that he would drop when he got stressed or when difficulties came.  He found encouragement in what he did.  Whatever practices David had were not stressful or "just one more thing to do";  they were life-giving.  They relieved his stress.  Spiritual practices when rightly practiced provide strength, encouragement, and relief.  They open up a pressure relief valve in a life well-trained in them.

Because of the many different influences around us, the idea of David strengthening himself probably brings up the wrong sort of picture.  If it's like most movies, David got mad and powerful enough to get even.  If it's like most self-help, David found his own truth and was "himself" in spite of everyone else.  If it's like most workplaces, David found someone to complain about or blame.  Such actions seem to bring a certain sort of strength from anger, but lead down a more dangerous road: pride and self-justification.

The Easier Way

David did strengthen himself, though.  Plainly, he could not deal with his situation on his own or in his own way, but he did have to take action.  He could not get pulled down into bitterness with his people.  Here is where soul-strengthening practices come in.  David strengthened himself because he knew he was weak and vulnerable and through practice knew what to do about it.  David strengthened himself because he knew no one would do it for him.  The easy yoke of life with God is not easy because it takes no effort, but because God always lifts the heavier load.

David's strengthening was "in the Lord."  He needed to reorient his focus to the Lord.  The beginning of David's practice is not with making the situation better, but refraining from making it worse.  Before he did something, he did nothing.  He retreated to God.  He knew that in the Lord he was safe and strong because he knew the Lord, so he pulled away from the situation and drew near to God.  David was warrior enough to know when he was threatened with defeat, so he found refuge in the Lord.  Such knowledge and ability does not usually come during trouble without some level of training.  Battle is not the time to learn to use your sword.  Prayers for help and guidance are important, but without the context of an interactive relationship with God, they are often abandoned.

Finally, David did not just find strength in the Lord, but "in the Lord his God."  It was not in the Lord Abraham's God, or in the Lord the priest's God or in the Lord Israel's God.  On this all spiritual practice stands.  Fundamentally, we cannot approach or depend on the Lord as someone else's God.  Perhaps the people wanted to stone David because they had come to rely too much on him and he failed them.  Perhaps they idolized him too much, so they sought their strength in David rather than God.  Perhaps one way of knowing who we have as our God is watching ourselves when we go for strength and encouragement in the midst of trouble and persecution.

David's Practice

We find a lot of information about the right practice of soul-building exercises in this little phrase about David: "But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God."  We find that such exercises prepare us to face grief and distress without falling into bitterness and blame.  We find them to be relief and strength rather than more stress in out lives.  We find them to be necessary effort we put out in response to God's ever-present grace

and strength.  We find them to be based in the knowledge of the Lord as a refuge and the source of our strength.  We find them to be effective only in the context of a personal relationship with the Lord our God.

We wonder what David actually did to strengthen himself.  Quite likely, he did what he had practiced so often.  He sang and worshiped and prayed.  What calmed Saul in his madness may have also calmed David in his own distress.  No wonder we are encouraged to do the same.  "Let the word of Christ dwell richly in you. . . as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God." (Colossians 3:16)  Perhaps the word of Christ is not only what we might read in our Bibles, but also the praise of God we find coming from our own mouths, truly dwelling richly in us and breaking out in gratitude from us as we daily practice our trust in the Lord.

Hallowed

It is your name

Your name alone

that calls out to me

even as I call it out.

Not to me, not to me,

but to your name

be all the eyes and ears,

cries of joy, thankful tears.

Let the burden roll off my back

Into an empty tomb:

that weight off my frame,

that drudgery of my empty name.

When the sound of your name

fills my breath, passes my lips,

It is not just words, but your heart,

that entrances me into self-forgetfulness.

Your name, your name,

never the same.

Always teaching, always healing

always commanding, always walking beside.

Let it be your name,

your name alone,

that haunts my house

with its unseen presence 

of joy.

I dropped my name.

I let it fall,

when yours came by

and filled my sky 

with hope.

It is not the syllables, the sounds,

the tunes, the rhymes that make it live,

but finding you never more 

than a breath away

in your name.

I bury my face in your robes,

I touch the hand that touches me.

Can I say it without shame?

Can I speak it with truth and love?

Your name.

Life According to Jesus

Faith is not " believing in spite of evidence," nor "believing what you know isn't true," as some have cynically suggested.  Rather it is an open-eyed adventurous affirmation that in and through things is a Good Will, and that Good Will is God.  Therefore faith relates itself to that Good Will by betting its life on it.  (E. Stanley Jones, Is the Kingdom of God Realism?)

WORRISOME STORIES ABOUT LIFE

Two false stories about life cause a great deal of worry.  The first is that life is about sowing and reaping.  Planning and results.  Doing and getting.  Although we do know that life has definite cause/effect chains, this is not what life is about; it is not the whole story.  "Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy."  (Ps. 126)  There is an incongruency about life.  We do not always get what we deserve.  We thank God for it.

Another false story is that life can be "stored away in barns."  Somehow we can save up for later.  We work so we can retire.  We save so we can spend.  We do good so that good will be done to us.  Although we are encouraged to "store up our treasures in heaven," the reason is not so we can get to them later, but because where our treasures are, that's where our heart is.  "I said to the Lord, 'You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing."  (Ps. 16:2)  Life must be lived and cannot be kept for later.  Many things are best left behind anyway.

THE BIRDS' STORY

The birds live the true story of life by instinct.  "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them."  (Mt. 6:26)  Life is about being fed.  The birds are not fed if they remain still, but they do not worry.  They do not live the "sowing/reaping" story nor the "storing away in barns" story.  They live the story of being fed.  What the birds do naturally, we must do by faith and choice.

Life is more important than eating and drinking.  It is more important than sowing and reaping and storing away in barns.  Life is about hungering, but not for food.  Life is about thirsting, but not for drink.  "I am the bread of life." (Jn, 6:35)  "The water I give to him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."  (Jn. 4:14)  Life is about hungering and thirsting for Christ and being satisfied by him.  Not just by what he said or what he did, but by him.  It is about our daily bread.  It is about the heavenly manna that spoils if it is not eaten that day.  (Ex. 6:13-23; Jn. 6:32-33)

The systems of human life set up against Christ promote sowing and storing up.  Both stories are about a world of scarcity.  In such a world the first thing we think in the morning is how we didn't get enough sleep and the last thing is how we didn't get enough done.  Shame is the whip that keeps us going.  (Brene Brown, The Power of Vulnerability)  Conversely, life according to Jesus is set up on trust (faith).  We trust that there is enough time to finish what God has given us.  We trust that he will give us the resources to do so as we ask him.  Massive systems of propaganda speak against such trust.  Part of us rebels at the thought of such trust.  But it is before us, as plain at the birds in the air.

The Authentic God

I like the description "authentic" for good relationships.  They are not false or merely copied from somewhere else, but genuine and real.  Authentic relationships begin with authentic people.  And yet, authentic people begin with authentic relationships as well.  It is something caught and taught, not inherited.

Parents and family can help us on that path or set up barriers.  Usually, it is a bit of both.  They can only give what they have.  Often, they are not so bad as they are limited.  They are fallen, but they are also human.

This is where God comes in.  Authenticity begins with him.  "I am that I am."  He is the only completely self-reliant, self-initiating, self-directing being.  He is real and genuine without qualification.

Even more amazing is that God has in himself authentic relationship: Trinity.  He *is* loving community.  In that sense, the revelation that "God is love" in Christianity is so remarkable.  He is not merely loving toward people, but also can be called them - the persons of the Trinity - loving each other.

As "heady" as all this is, it provides the only safe starting point for authentic relationships.  Without first being included in the loving community of Trinity through Jesus, we will find loving each other impossible.  We will be drawn to other people in order to use or idolize them.  Even our marriages need a focal point other than just the other person - a mediator, if you will.

Biblically, we see this played out in the qualifiers to the "one another" passages:  "Love one another as I have loved you",  "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ", ans so on.  The reason and motivation for our love is a relationship with God.  It fuels and informs all of our relationships.

Because of our love for God is the reason, if our relationships are not authentic, then it reflects back on our relationship with God.  "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us" is not so much of a threat as a fact.  As we live in the forgiveness of God, so we learn how to forgive each other.  Conversely, if we do not live with a forgiving God, we will not find ourselves particularly forgiving toward other people.

How we conceive of God affects our relationship with other people.  So much so that we can find our relationships with others as an indicator of how we are relating to God.  We start with those closest and often dearest, our neighbors, that is, the one who is "nigh" or near.  These relationships will inevitably give us a picture of how we are relating to God.

We become grounded in what is most real, genuine, and true by entering a relationship with Jesus, the doorway to the Trinity.  Authenticity is then caught and taught.  Such authenticity then begins to flavor our relationships, like salt.  It begins to shine out of our words and deeds, like light.

Confession, encouragement, service, true community worship, mutual guidance and other practices start off with practice, but then begin to naturally occur in our relationships with others because we want what is best for them, we actually love them.  Our "left hand does not know what our right hand is doing" because they have become thoroughly ingrained in our character instead of just practiced for religious purposes.

Then we are authentic.  Then we can be authentic with others.  Then authentic relationships become possible.

A Jealous God?

Our God.  A jealous God.

Something wrong with that.  When I think of a jealous husband, I think of one who is controlling and possessive of his wife.  I think of one who expects more love than he gives.  I think of a jerk.

So, maybe our translation of Exodus 20:5 needs a little help.  I do not think this is what was intended by our God being "jealous."

The original sense of qahnah' is "zeal."  The jealous part come from being "zealous for one's own possessions."  God is zealous for the love of his beloved, his people, each one of them.

Certainly, unfaithfulness brings about anger and pain in him.  Such is the form of jealousy we are most familiar with.  But there is something else.  For this jealous anger to make sense, something must be understood about "cheating" on God.

God is not zealous for us because we belong to him, but because he wants us to belong to him.  This is not a controlling, possessive God, but a wooing God who calls out to us.  The anger and punishment are not the focus here, but the great desire he has for each person.

Although idolatry is serious, it is not as serious as God's zealous love.  Exodus 20:5-6 explains that his love is expressed 250-333 times more than his anger and pain.  That is the point.

Just think, if we could even show our loved ones love 2-3 times more love, kindness, and respect than our anger, worry, and disappointment the world would be an entirely different place.

Maybe before we spend too much time on God's wrath, significant and important as it is, perhaps we should focus on his zealous love a little more.  Otherwise, God's wrath will be misunderstood.

What if we re-translated, well, paraphrased Exodus 20:4-6:

"Don't be mastered by your desires for things around you.  Don't kneel, wallow, or crawl merely trying to get what you want.  You have me, the God you know by name, who deeply loves you and wants you to love me.  For their own good and the good of those around them, I briefly punish those who abandon me for such empty desires and even their grandchildren will feel it.  Those who return to me and joyfully obey me out of love will find such love deeply affects and encourages as many as 25 generations of their family and friends by my loving grace."

What a legacy that would be!  But even more, what a merciful and kind God whose rewards so far outweigh his punishments.

I think I might exchange the jealous God for the God who desperately wants me to be his.  Such a commandment would not be burdensome at all.

Eternal Life: One Vine

One Vine.
One garden.
One Gardner.

Jesus tells us how it is
more than what we should do.

One True Vine.
The universe is just the garden
made by the Gardner
to house the Vine.

Reality unfolds.
We are branches
connected to the True Vine
or not.

Jesus's words go out
pruning some branches
for fruition,
cutting others off.

How so?

For some, his teaching draws them
into friendship,
into familial intimacy,
into joyful obedience,
bringing the sap of life.

For others, just hearing about him
makes them harder,
withered,
dry,
bringing resentment
against him
and those who follow him.

The Gardner
prunes back the branches
to produce the fruit
of joyful obedience.

Without joy
obedience is mean
hypocrisy.
Without obedience
joy is empty
sentiment.

We are the branches,
connected to Christ
in friendship
more than servitude.
Without such friendship
there can be no fruit,
no joyful obedience.

The Father's words
ring true in him,
showing us what
he has meant to say
all along:
"I love my Son.
He loves me.
Join our family."

This family,
these intimate friends,
gather around the vine,
connected
through their connection,
loving
as they are loved.
All life
and resources
and growth
coming from the Vine
planted by the Gardner.

One True Vine.
One Gardner.
One garden.

(Mediation on John 15)

Eternal Life: Becoming a Part of Christ's Life

When you fail or fear,
do not be alarmed that the foundations of your life are shaken.
Instead, trust in God
and also trust in who he sent - me.
Even when you fail,
especially when you fail,
remember God has a place for you.
His house is open wide to you.
I am not just saying that.
Actually, I am going to prepare your room for you.
So now you know when I go,
it is not in order to leave you,
but to go ahead of you
and make a place for you.
I am coming back for you so you can be where I am.
You know the place I am going to,
the one I'm always talking about.

You cry out, "Lord, I don't know where you are going
so how can I know the way?"

The way is in front of you, right before you.

Make my ways your ways,
Hold the same truth I hold,
Live as I have lived.
Do all this with me and you are on the way.
There is no other way to that place I am going to
- my Father's side.
When you really come to know me
you will find my Father near and know him too.
So, as you know me even now,
you know and see our Father God
and find your place with him.

You say, "Just show me the Father.  Show me my place.  I will get there."

What do you think I've been trying to do?
I want you to see the Father.
I want you to see the Father in me.
Now you want to get to him on your own.
Trust me.  I live and work in his presence
and he lives and works through my presence.
Look, these words I am speaking even now are not merely my own.
They also are his work, his very being expressed through me.
Trust me when I tell you that
you will find our Father God where I am living and working
and where he is at work you will find me.
If my word is not enough to inspire your trust,
then at least trust the miracles he does through me.
Here's the truth:
If anyone really believes what I am telling you,,
that person will start doing the miracles I have done.
Actually, that person will do even greater things,
because I will be with our Father,
leading and cheering him on to the very end,
a place I have prepared for him.
I will do anything that person asks
because of his complete confidence in me.
Such trust in me shows our Father's goodness and shining beauty.
So you may always ask me for anything
and such utter confidence in who I am and all I've done
will not disappoint you.
You'll get what you ask for.
This kind of request comes from loving me.
And such love always obeys me.
You will want what I want.

Now, I will be sending someone else to be with you from our Father God:
the Spirit who is always true.
The world caught up in doing its own thing in its own way find this One unacceptable,
because they can't see him or know him enough to manipulate him.
For you it's different.
You've already been introduced to the Spirit who is with you.
He lives with and even inside those who are with me.
Now, although I am leaving, I will not leave you alone
like a child who has no parents.
By this Spirit I will come to you.
Soon after I go, the world obsessed with what it wants will not be able to see me.
You, however, will still see me.
The life I live will continue.
You will be included in that life with me.
On the day, even though the self-centered world can't see me anymore,
you will find me where my Father is living and working.
I am in his life, a part of his life.
Then you will see you are a part of my life,
and finally you will discover how I am in your life.
Such a life as this comes to those who love me.
Those who love me hold my instructions as dear and follow them closely.
Yes, such love for me brings my Father's adoration
and my deep affection.  I will show myself to that person.

(Meditation on John 14:1-21)

Funny how failure and fear can bring me to trust in God or to cling even more tightly to my idols.  When I sense that abandonment, I can think Christ has left me or has gone on ahead to prepare for me.  The sense of being left can either make me look for him or make me distrust him.

The way is as it has always been: discipleship.  It is to take his life as my life, hoping that I will gain what he has and go where he goes.  Jesus leaves no room for worry.  By his grace, my efforts will indeed make his way my way, his truth my truth, and his life my life.

Unfortunately, after receiving instructions, I am prone to say, "Just let me see the map to God.  Let me see what it's like and I'll take from here, Jesus."  Then I end up in the same boat with his disciples that night - betraying and denying.  I am saying my efforts are enough.  They aren't.  However, they are necessary.  So Jesus goes on carefully explaining how he intends to get me to where he is going.  I am going to need to take his word on that.  I will need to be immersed in his helping, strengthening Spirit.  I will need to actually do what he did.  The effort is mine.  He will take care of the results and the completion of those efforts.

When I say, "I'll take it from here" to Jesus, I am saying my life is my own.  It isn't.  Jesus carefully describes how I become a part of his life instead of merely having him as part of my life.  How would I become part of my wife's or my kid's lives?  I hang around and do what they do.  Being a loving part of their lives is what makes my involvement a blessing rather than a curse.  With Jesus, only after I see how I am part of his life and learn to love him for including me, will I be able to deal with how he is in my life.  My life will truly become my own because I will receive it as a gift from him.

Perhaps this will be how I see Jesus most clearly.  My hope will not be disappointed as I see Jesus in my very own limbs and words and grow to understand his truth in love and sense his presence through his pleasure in the life we share.  Perhaps Jesus will show himself mostly by being in me.

Lord, teach me how to be a part of your life instead of trying to make you a part of my life.  Amen.