In the acrostic of the year
the “P” for Pentecost
is mainly for patience,
or persevering in the practice
of being “empty, open, choiceless
as a beach waiting
for a gift from the sea.”
The waves beat, “Patience…patience.”
But I seem to have dug up sand
and acquired treasure,
or it has been delivered to my door
to make me full, fenced, fretful
as a wedding planner waiting
for the bride to arrive.
In the history of God’s gifting,
the patience is primary;
the fretting follows,
or apostles would have only written
stories of retreating, listening, staying,
and Jesus would not set his face
like flint toward Jerusalem.
It is the digging that can stop.
And most deliveries
can be refused,
lest the gifts become grandiosity:
looking to be affirmed, notable, effective,
and the lovely spring day of Pentecost
is no beach day at all.
But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop. Luke 8:15
The Lord’s parable of the sower is a hopeful story. But no more hopeful than creation itself, in which a single seed actually does result in many more seeds, even hundreds of seeds.
But the parable is also a starkly truthful story, and that can feel very discouraging. Because some seeds don’t take root, some are eaten by birds, and some, even when they take root, can die from lack of water or by being choked out by weeds.
I’m thinking about seeds that are getting nowhere this morning. I’m the kind of farmer to whom every seed counts.
Parable of the Sower Lisa Snow Lady Acrylic on canvas 2010
I am especially thinking of the much-loved friends I have who have been effectively choked out by weeds, or, by now, have faith that has been so ill-watered for so long that it is about dried up. Even more specifically, I am thinking about my friends who have what I call a “principle faith”. They received “the seed” of the word of the kingdom of God as a set of thoughts, a system of belief, even as oral tradition from their parents. When they took their faith on the road, when it encountered a world hungry for their allegiance, when it was surrounded by the jungle of desire and demand, it did not have the stuff to withstand the weeds of opposition.
A faith based on principle alone has a hard time standing up against other forces demanding allegiance on a more visceral level. But many people were persuaded to rely on principles at an early age. I’m not sure why Christian parents and teachers did this, but they sat their children in classes to get their training for a life of faith. I know, I went through some of these. Among the first things a child learns from such classes is that Christianity is about learning things in a class! In our classes, we were taught stories from the Bible which all had morals — sometimes more like Aesop’s fables than the Bible. We learned principles of faith, which were extracted from scripture. For instance, from the parable of the sower the following principle might be derived, “It is God’s will that I should be good, productive soil and bear a very fruitful crop for the storehouses of the kingdom.” Advanced students might argue that they had a more accurate principle to propose. And so it started. Every paragraph, even every clause, in the Bible had a secret meaning that correlated with all the other meanings in a rather intricate system of right thinking that one needed to master to be a good Christian.
Do we really need to be better students?
As most children in school do, a lot of the students of Christianity didn’t listen too well. They were like most of the of the students of 11th grade math who never mastered higher math skills and certainly never used them after 11th grade! Hopefully, they aren’t all like me, but I became much more adept at cheating than at higher math skills as a result of trigonometry. If the principles of math are hard to convey, the “principles” of life in Christ are much harder! Math can be reduced to some principles, perhaps. But life in Christ needs to grow among weeds. The inorganic approach to teaching about Jesus needs a classroom to live in, not real life. So there are many problems with the teaching that a lot of my friends received. They ended up with a smattering of good thinking (or disputable theology) and that’s about all they have of the word when they are facing the weighty issues of their lives.
Does everything happen for a reason?
The friends I am praying for this morning have a “principle faith” that took them quite a distance on the pilgrimage of faith, but eventually it got them lost. For instance, a couple of these friends had very disheartening break-ups with people with whom they had been having sex for a year or so (and so the break-up was a no-marriage divorce and felt like one). The only faith they could apply to the situation was the common, unshakeable assurance a mother or teacher had taught them that, “Everything happens for a reason,“ which is an application of a faulty principle based on an interpretation of Romans 8:28 among other things. It wasn’t enough. Their faith started to wither.
People are more compelling than principles
Another main thing that I’ve seen choking out the weak little seedlings of principle faith in many people is the demand for allegiance from an unbelieving mate (usually one they are prospectively marrying). That demand is a virulent weed. Once you have sex with someone, it is hard to have what is always an intimate discussion about faith based merely on a set of morals or principles and not on a relationship with God that is as intimate as a sexual one with your lover. But in the cases of the dear people I am remembering, their relationship with God never got that intimate — it was all on paper, it was all in their head, it was all a theory they were applying and not a life growing in their redeemed heart.
They were never good soil. “Good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.” One can’t hear the word of Jesus like it is more classroom material to be boiled down to the couple of things one can remember — not if it is supposed to withstand robust competition. Noble hearts hear the word from the Word in an ongoing, well-developed, Spirit to spirit relationship that is rooted in eternity — deeper than any human relationship. One has to retain the word of the kingdom of God like good soil retains water – much more than one strains to maintain a relationship with a mate, even. One must hear the word like a call from a master to direct one’s energy to the task of the day – it can’t be the background philosophy that lightly colors what one is really doing.
What does God think?
My friends did not have the faith they needed to stand up to their circumstances. They still have the same thoughts their mother or a well-meaning teacher taught them, but whatever they needed to hear in their heart got choked out by whoever they finally hooked up with. That connection was probably the noblest aim they could come up with, since their faith was merely theoretical and their love/sex relationship quite real. If they were married to the job, instead, as so many are, the job likely parched their scrawny thoughts about God, and the world at large rewarded them with something tangible for that. They may end up great parents and co-workers. But they are not going to be Jesus-followers unless something drastically changes.
Well, they may think they are Jesus followers. But if they don’t open their heart to hear with their heart, if they don’t retain what the Spirit of God implants, and if they don’t doggedly produce the crop of faith, hope and love that their master bought the farm to produce, will God think they are Jesus followers? What would make Jesus think that?
One of my friends told me, last night (at the public meeting), that he wasn’t at a meeting we had mutually agreed to attend because he’d “had enough Circle of Hope meetings” that week. I thought his decision seemed pretty realistic. But it was also true that he had also counted a birthday party, a personal conversation with someone with whom he was working out conflict and dinner with friends one night as “meetings,” as well.
It can be pretty discouraging when your life turns into a series of meetings! When a toddler’s birthday party turns into a “church meeting” and puts you over your meeting ration for the week, I think a new conception might be in order.
The syndrome called “meeting fatigue”
Perhaps we need a new psychological term for this syndrome (maybe there is one — yep, found a lot a few years later): meeting fatigue. The symptoms might be:
the inability to say no to a social event,
the inability to talk to your loved ones about why it is you are not going to attend the first-birthday party or the game night,
the inability to find one’s date book and strategize the use of one’s time.
I think I know quite a few people with meeting fatigue among Circle of Hope. If it weren’t for being part of the church, they would not feel obligated to spend so much time in marginally useful or satisfying meetings. The basic meeting structure of our church is pretty simple: 1) connect and worship on Sunday, 2) be part of a more intimate cell. That’s it. The rest is purely voluntary. But once people get connected, they can be included in many other social and missional enterprises. Incrementally, they can end up attending brunch every weekend, countless birthday parties, baby showers, weddings, move-ins, protests, team meetings, concerts, and who knows what else? One’s function in the body can seem like it is happening in an endless series of meetings.
There is a way out: change your mind
Like many psychological issues, change can happen when one’s mind changes. I am not a picture of mental health, but I don’t feel obligated to attend my life as if it were a meeting. For instance, I am going to see the Phillies whup the Cardinals tonight with Jacob. It is not a meeting. I was actually at the public meeting in Camden last night, but I saw it more as an opportunity to connect and serve, not as a mere meeting I was obligated to attend, lest I get into trouble (I suppose there would have been some kind of trouble if I’d stayed home to watch my Netflix and didn’t offer the speech I’d prepared, but you get my meaning).
I often want to say to someone (and sometimes I do say to someone) who feels burned out on meetings, “Get over yourself. The world is not revolving around you. You are not being spread too thin or stretched in a million directions, like you are a finite piece of wonder everyone wants a piece of.” But that sounds kind of mean, doesn’t it? And I don’t always have the right to be so blunt. More often I say, “If you are that worn out, I give you personal permission to not come to any meeting I’ve organized. You’ll probably just be a drain on it anyway because you’ll feel rebellious about sharing our love the whole time we are giving it to you.” But that’s kind of angry sounding and I don’t always feel it will be heard in the right spirit. So I have most often said, “Let’s go over your schedule together and see what can be adjusted. It looks like you have too much to do.” That isn’t always so well-received, either, but it might be the most useful help I can offer.
I think we rarely have a time issue as much as we have a strategy issue. We don’t know why we are doing what we are doing. And if we do know why, our issue might be a lack of courage to organize ourselves and do what we’ve decided. It is a lot easier to be mad at someone else for making us do something we don’t feel good about than doing what we think we ought to do and letting the results be what they are. It is worth considering: What toddler needs you at their party if you are contributing your “obligation” to them? Spare them.
Suggestions for what to do about your apparent fatigue
When I am done being angry and reactive to people who are in meetings with me with their love hidden under their resentment and their passion muted by their rebellion, I can have more sympathy for the psychological state they are in. They need a new conception. If one sees their life as 50-60 hours of work with night classes tagged on, getting kids to school, being at their mother’s birthday party and then “going to” church, it can begin to feel like an unmanageable mess, like I must have “meeting fatigue.” When does one mow the lawn? Much more, when does one sit down to plan the schedule? My father used to call it a “rat race.”
I have one small suggestion for anyone with meeting fatigue. Forget all the other meetings until you get the most important one set. Have a daily meeting with God at the beginning of the day. Get up as early as it takes to do this, even you are tired for the rest of the day, until you get used to having this “meeting.” Learn how the Lord sees your day ahead. Take your planner with you and let Him start sorting it out with you. I think God can offer a conception for what is happening that will work for you. Plus, I think He’ll build up the strength you need to do what makes sense rather than being pushed around by nonsense. Most of all, I think he’ll deepen your love so, no matter what is going on, you’ll be bringing something from Him to it.
I have been pondering a quote from Gene Edwards in Celtic Daily Prayer for the last few days. It is about being broken. I took the word “broken” to mean being “useless,” like being broken down at the side of the road, or being broken off from the vine, like Jesus warns us not to be.
Is it possible to know if there is true brokenness in a man? [sic – sorry women] I think so.
Such a man is not in rebellion toward anything:
1) nothing in his circumstances,
2) nothing that has to do with what other people inflict upon him,
3) and certainly not anything that God chooses to lay within his life.
He is at peace in all three circumstances.
Not rebellious?
Edwards says that the broken man is not rebellious. He is at peace with his circumstances, not rebelling against what other people do to him and certainly not rebelling against what God has brought to him.
As a result of pondering this, I have been feeling more rebellious.
I recognize that I have felt constrained by those who have adapted to my appalling circumstances to be as quiet as they are about what is appalling: gun proliferation, casinos, unbridled greed, the unjust justice system, horrible school leadership, rampant immorality, weak Christian leaders, my own laziness and lack of humble service, the list goes on.
I have been pondering what I have not dared to rebel against in what other people are teaching me through what they do or don’t do as my friend or comrade in covenant — when the price of their love is faithlessness, I need to rebel.
I also realized that I really need to listen to what God is asking of me. I don’t think I am really listening unless something in me needs to change, which inevitably causes me to rebel, at least initially. I have been reminded of James 4:4 – “Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”
If something in us is not rebelling against the oppression of sin and death in the world, in our relationships, between us and God, we must be broken. If we are alive and operating, we are inevitably struggling against something.
Or needing brokenness?
At least that is how I was reading Edwards quote until I went back to revisit it again. I think I actually may have read it the opposite way from what was intended!
Is it possible to know if there is true brokenness in a man? [sic – sorry women] I think so.
Such a man is not in rebellion toward anything:
1) nothing in his circumstances,
2) nothing that has to do with what other people inflict upon him,
3) and certainly not anything that God chooses to lay within his life.
He is at peace in all three circumstances.
I think I have never really understood seeking “brokenness.” I suppose I understand the feeling of brokenness so innately that I don’t relate to being rebellious against God and needing to be broken. This may be a spiritual disadvantage, since it seems that so many people are having a perpetual negotiation with God about whether they want to be saved! One of our teams often offers a song during worship about “longing” for brokenness because they need it. Or maybe I don’t know this brokenness as well as I think I do, and I am hanging on to a lot of rebellion I need to get rid of!
What Edwards was really trying to say is that a person who has accepted his or her life from God and has chosen to trust the Lord in every circumstance no longer needs to fight what is going on as if they need to conquer it and control it. For a broken person, rebellion against the circumstances has lost its importance. Such rebellion no longer creates an identity or demonstrates value. Rebellion no longer means survival or shows power. A former rebel has inner peace, even if the world is raging in rebellion around her.
Or is it both?
As it turns out I think my original and my more accurate interpretations are “right.” In my case, I think the truth Edwards really meant to convey is the place to start. The love of Christ has broken our resistance. Resistance is futile. A life of trust is the only true option. To a large degree, I think I am experiencing the brokenness he prescribes; that’s where I met Jesus. But I hardly think a person can stay in a perpetual aspiration for brokenness.
If followers live in such peace with God, it means they will become well-known rebels in the world. Jesus has peace in his circumstances — he is peace; but everyone knows he is a rebel. He was killed as one. Jesus is at peace in any social setting, but when he shows up in one, his peace upends them. Even when Jesus is absorbing what people inflict on him, it is to the end of utter transformation. And though he ultimately does whatever his Father asks, it is not without exasperation and struggle. The peace that comes with our brokenness is, by its nature, a rebellion against what is broken.
It is always a little shocking to find out you saw something completely different than what was intended. But then, maybe not.
This morning, I woke up to one of those dreams with a cast of thousands. Gwen and I were going to some show at some stadium and I had a part in it. But I had forgotten my script in the room, so I went dashing back to get it. Halfway to the room I realized I had no keys and no time to get back to Gwen and no cell phone to call her and no idea where I was and no one would help me for various reasons, etc. It was a good, frustrating dream about anxieties and inabilities trying to find a way to the surface to be redeemed. It was a good post-Lent dream about facing the possibilities that were uncovered during the long season of turning toward death and leaning into life.
Pray with abandon
As I meditated on the dream, I remembered a blog post I wrote last September about being reminded to “Pray and not faint” (Luke 18:1 KJV). I translated the word of the Lord to me as, “If you come up against the impossible, my friends, pray with abandon.”
Generally, I have been pretty successful at listening to that word and doing it since then. I not only did not faint, I think I got better at praying. The most immediate results were that I grew up some more, I faced some more fears, I reconciled more relationships, I withstood some major meltdowns among my intimates and God built some new capacity in me and the church.
Now, as my dream seems to indicate, it is back to square one – time to face the next big things and the big societal things (that did not pray with me) and not faint…again. It is time to take a few more little chunks out of the hide of the monsters that we are all facing. Joshua and I were talking about a few of them yesterday when we met, and they are still much like what I was noting last year…
Faced with fainting again
“Some days I feel surrounded by a spirit of disengagement. It’ s not that everyone is possessed by it, of course, but so many of us seem to be trying to survive by keeping away from threatening or even challenging people, by hiding from the overwhelming facts of gigantic governments and corporations fighting for power, by avoiding enormous info machines dominating communication, incomprehensible food production and invasive medical care turning us into things we can’t imagine. In my neighborhood, people try to turn a blind eye to the constant threat that the thousands of guns littering the zip code will be used when the thin fabric of community finally tears.”
Post Lent, it is always tempting to keep eating chocolate, to return to the bad habits we gave up for Jesus (or at least for Lent), to let our spiritual belts out a few notches and to re-insulate ourselves with the fat of the false promises which dissipation offers us as a substitute for being truly safe and happy. It is tempting to go back into some numbing habit that puts us into a stupor of avoidance rather than pray.
I feel blessed today that my interpretation of my dream is like an alarm bell – a stupor alert. Jesus ended his word to his disciples with,
“Will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:7-8)
Rather than sinking into the frustrations of my inabilities churning around in my unconscious or cowering in the face of the monstrosities of my time, I need to pray with abandon. I need to trust the Lord and be found trustworthy. I need to pray and not faint…again.
And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.”… Genesis 16:8ff
I am moved to take Circle of Hope’s reading for this day of Lent another direction. I am tempted to run away from my “mistress.” Maybe you are too.
My “mistress” this week is the past. I am going to California at the end of the week to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Riverside Brethren/Madison Street Church. The Sierra St. Household planted it, and I was the pastor. It is not that I don’t want to go, don’t want to see people, or don’t think it will be a lot of fun. It’s just that I am sort of a “right now” person and I am faced with the need to look into the past. Like Hagar, I am getting asked “Where have you come from?”
Today, it is like that question has finally caught up with me, and I don’t have a much better answer than Hagar: “Well, I guess I am running away.” Hagar actually had a pretty good reason to take off. My reasons for moving on were more developmental than because someone was abusing me. I felt a call to move into what I needed to do next. I’m generally better with the question, “And where are you going?”
But pondering the past has merit, if for no other reason than because the Lord has used it as a field in which to plant the present. Generally, my memories of my 20’s and 30’s in Riverside come mostly in golden tones. I learned a lot and did a lot with people who loved me and loved God. That’s enough. But taking a good look again, as I am doing today as I prepare to go, also digs up the seeds that never sprouted, causes me to run into the stumps that weren’t removed and threatens me with a couple of leftover land mines, too.
Go back to your mistress and submit to her.
Right now, I am hearing God’s command and promise to Hagar as something relevant for me, too.
“Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The past doesn’t own me, but running away from it gives whatever might be harmful in it even more power. It will do me good to submit to it. Even the parts I might like to get away from, I can fearlessly look at with Jesus by my side. How about you?
I think the promise is true for me, too: “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” I don’t think that means literal grandchildren for me – I have enough to keep up with, as it is! But I do think it means I have some fruitfulness that will come from being submissive to my past, in the sense that I need to listen to what it teaches me, and celebrate what God has grown from it. Is the angel moving you that way too?
From today’s reading: I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. (Jesus in John 12)
A seed “dying”
Lent is good for uncovering our untrusting death-prevention techniques. Unless we want them exposed, it is better to ignore the whole season. If we don’t ignore the season, Jesus is going to say something like he does in John 12, above. He is going to keep saying it is best to go ahead and die and rise instead of just trying not to die. We should stop just trying not to die, which we have been perfecting since we were born, and stop neglecting our meditation on rising, as we usually do.
Death-prevention is the preoccupation of humankind. I think the world’s outpouring of love for Haiti recently is an example of the instinct working for good. Our country’s astounding investment in national defense and offense is the more common expression. Generally, people do not trust God for their lives, so they are quite preoccupied with preventing their deaths. I say “generally” because quite a few people practice death-by-anesthesia with excess calories, smoking, and other addictions, and with all the other inventive ways we use to avoid the subject of death altogether.
Holy dying
As Lent draws our eyes toward the cross again, we are reminded again about holy dying. Some people even give up their anesthesia for a while so they can feel what Jesus is talking about. During Lent we heed the call to try on death. We need to heed the call because trying not to die is what one does until she comes to understand that she will live forever. Death-prevention is logical until one realizes that staying alive does not produce love or cause transformation so well (the logic of “capitalism” notwithstanding).
It is better to be a seed. These examples of what being the seed that dies might mean all came up in the last thirty minutes:
Better to be a single seed than to make sure we don’t compromise about anything with our mates.
Better to be a single seed than to shrink back from asking gunshop owners to follow a minimal code of conduct.
Better to be a single seed than to make sure my hurt feelings are of paramount importance.
Better to be a single seed than to resist what Jesus teaches or turn his teaching into something controllable and relative.
Better to be a single seed than just keep doing whatever slavish thing the master requires.
Better to be a single seed than be accepted by those who have another god.
There are good ways to die ahead. That’s why Jesus’ metaphor is so important. If italics been available he might have said, “If a seed dies it produces many seeds.” Because he knew that even if they killed him, he would rise again.
If you are like me, a lot of things seem like they just might kill me. I can get kicked into death-prevention very easily. Lent is good for getting to the deep fears and desires that make us run for our lives or fight for them. It is in those very places Jesus has planted his spiritual seed so that everlasting life can spring up. I pray for our courage to nurture the seedlings struggling for light in the darkness.
Lent begins on Wednesday. I have this horrible feeling that it will be overshadowed by further snow removal. I hope I am not unsympathetic to people who have been overwhelmed by the double blizzard of 2010. But I am moved even more by the realization that we might “survive” rather than live.
I got thinking about this as I read about the Lt. Gov. of South Carolina’s quote. He’s been all over the news for saying that feeding the poor is like feeding stray animals. It just encourages them to breed. When the economy goes poorly, people often hunker down and stop caring for the poor. They will support a politician who blames the poor for their poverty and tells people they need to protect their own share of the pie. The added cliché goes something like, “We certainly should not give more pie to the government to waste on stray people – it’ll breed more of them!”
This defensiveness is a basic instinct of fearful people. When the big snow comes (or the big economic avalanche) we go into survival mode — and survival mode is generally not reaching out to connect or reaching out to help. Survival is hunkering down and conserving — hide your stuff from thieves; protect what you’ve got.
I experienced a small example of this over our own snow removal. We have four garages that share a common driveway behind our house. One of my neighbors did not shovel out the area in front of his garage door after the first big now. This was not too surprising, since he does not own a car. When we and the other neighbors were shoveling out after the second snow, we piled shovelfuls in front of the car-less neighbor’s door. He was upset when he saw the pile, since he wanted to park a rental car in the driveway. One of the neighbors was upset back – “You didn’t help shovel the whole driveway! Get involved and we’ll apologize.” It was the language of survival. She blamed him for his own poverty. His poor health and other issues didn’t change her mind. He didn’t do his share and now he wanted pie!
I was honestly in a dilemma. I thought I would get in trouble if I shoveled off the snow we’d piled up — it was the principle of the thing! I let it go overnight and then thought the Lord wanted me to make him a spot. It took me a half an hour of secret digging. It was not much effort, but it was not effort required by neighborhood justice. I had to risk getting into trouble.
All this makes me wonder if Lent will be ignored this year because we’re too busy surviving the way we do when we are not living. The poor will be too busy fighting for a parking space and the hard-working people will be making sure their pie is not stolen and the rich will be doing whatever the rich do. Nothing will require us to reach out and connect with God or reach out to love like Jesus. And the Lord’s promise of something else will slip onto the calendar without much notice.
I bought a best-selling children’s book the other day called Bubble Trouble. It has an intricate rhyme that entertains me. Upon first-reading, it proved to be a bit over Josiah’s head. He had trouble figuring out the plot. The first question upon turning a page, several times, was “Where is the baby’s mother?” We needed to establish that, because, I discovered, this was sort of a scary book about a baby who floats away in a bubble until the townfolk rescue him. When we were finished, Josiah’s first comment was, “I am too big for a bubble to take me,” followed by a hopeful look at my face.
How do we ever learn to deal with our fears? I am still learning. It helped that I had a grandmother who read to me. I got to experience some of the scary things about the big world while snuggled in her rocking chair. It also helped that I was sent to church as a little child to snuggle up with Jesus.
For some reason, a song that was 80 years old by the time my Sunday school teachers taught it to me as a child has kept rising to the surface lately. I think it has always helped me walk with God and resist fear.
Can a little child like me
Thank the Father fittingly?
Yes, oh yes! be good and true,
Faithful, kind, in all you do;
Love the Lord, and do your part;
Learn to say with all your heart,
Father, we thank Thee,
Father, we thank Thee,
Father in Heaven, we thank Thee.
The fact that I, through some great blessing, retained that song through the onslaught of all the info that started piling up in my lifetime seems kind of miraculous. Every verse is a winner. They all take children seriously and respect them for who they are, according to their capacity. Each calls us to be honorable and good. “Don’t be afraid! You can do it!” I think Monster’s Inc. is trying to do something like that. But there is an awful lot of plot that muddles up the teaching these days.
Mary Mapes Dodge
Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905), who is buried up the road just south of Newark, included “Can a Little Child Like Me” in her book Baby Days: A Selection of Songs, Stories, and Pictures, for Very Little Folks in 1877. It was a follow-up to her best seller Hans Brinker (which you can still enjoy on Disney reruns).
When people write about Mary Mapes Dodge, she receives the treatment so many Christians of her era receive these days. Her faith is extracted and her work is treated like she was not a Christian. She becomes one more purveyor of plot lines for the plot machines churning out material. But I am pretty sure that in her mind Jesus and Hans Brinker went together. Hans had learned to be like Jesus. She most likely hoped children would learn to love the Lord by sitting in a chair with her or singing her song in church. She had learned to face her own fears, along with her children, after her husband killed himself and left her a widow. Her faith fueled her second life as an author and editor.
You’ve probably got a child in your life somewhere. They are undoubtedly facing the same fears you are still facing. Take a good look at them and love them. It is better that they learn from you than they are left alone with their fears to extract whatever random thing they latch on to from the tsunami of info that keeps washing over them, and which will keep flooding them the rest of their days, no doubt.
I think my meditation today should center on retrieving the good things God has given me via all the good people who loved and spoke for him throughout my childhood – and thank him. The visions we shared in various rocking chairs and song times during my baby days opened my mind and heart to imagine fearlessly walking with God.
We are saturating ourselves with 1 Thessalonians and I am fixated with one phrase of verse 5:14: “Be patient with everyone.”
I think many people are called and are good at being patient in a “passive” way. They can really wait! They are good at being quiet and receptive. So they can wait for what God is going to bring to them.
I am becoming better at that, but I am still more of an “active” patience kind of guy. I have to be patient in my impatience. That’s why I was so glad to see that the word translated patience in 5:14 has the sense of letting your feelings embrace others, being “far feeling” — “Don’t keep your heart closed off; be patient.” It is an active kind of patience that trusts God to be present in a difficult relationship or circumstance. Patience is like a corral one builds for unbroken relational broncos; it is the best atmosphere for spiritual domestication.
Far feeling is hope-filled
I happened to run across James talking about patience today, as well, and he encouraged the idea I had about patient impatience. In his chapter five, James ponders what it feels like to wait for the Lord’s return to set things right in the midst of difficulties: “Be patient, then, beloved, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.”
A farmer does not just sit around doing nothing while the Lord plants and tills the field. He can’t make it rain, but he can’t resist looking at the sky to see if there is going to be enough rain to bring in a reasonable harvest. He can’t resist digging ditches and cisterns in expectation. He is impatient, but patient. Being a spiritual farmer, a church planter and cell tiller, I relate. When the crop needs rain, I want it to fall. When we’re dry, I feel desperate. I’ve got to trust God, but crying out to God to get on with it and getting on with it myself is part of the process. If we don’t have any impatience with what is and what could be, I’m not sure we’re paying attention.
But of course we are all paying attention. We’re feeling anxious right now about how messed up we are, about how our relationships are not working, about how the world at large seems hell-bent. Today is probably full of stuff that could push us right to the edge.
The edge of untrusting anxiety
I know that this week, apart from my own personal development lag, I am impatient for reconciliation. Pen was enlightening me about further reasons Christian church buildings are attacked in Malaysia last night. Harry Reid is on the hot seat for saying stupid things about President Obama’s electability and highlighting how we can’t talk about race in this country. The very idea of “race” imposed on us bothers me. The domestication of Martin Luther King bothers me. There is a lot to be downright, properly angry about!
I don’t think I am going to get passive and quiet about all that very soon. Some things don’t deserve that kind of patience. What to do? I won’t be perfectly patient, any time soon. I will have to trust God to be who God is, coming to me in Jesus as a demonstration of his own great far-feeling, walking with me in my small turmoil and settling me down in him. My breath prayer for today is: patient impatience yes, untrusting anxiety, no.
Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905), who is buried up the road just south of Newark, included “Can a Little Child Like Me” in her book Baby Days: A Selection of Songs, Stories, and Pictures, for Very Little Folks in 1877. It was a follow-up to her best seller Hans Brinker (which you can still enjoy on Disney reruns).
We are saturating ourselves with 1 Thessalonians and I am fixated with one phrase of verse 5:14: “Be patient with everyone.”