The Stump

Our yearning: Peace on Earth (Read Isaiah 11:1-9)

As Spoken by the Prophet . . .
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a branch will bear fruit (Isaiah 11:1).

As seen in Jesus . . .
So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David (Luke 2:4).

Now given to you . . .
As we begin our reflections on “peace on earth” this week, we need to get honest about our hopes for peace – or, better said perhaps, our lack of hope. When it comes to our desires, peace is easily at the top of our wish list. When it comes to our expectations, peace barely makes the list at all.

We are not the first to have felt this way, yearning for peace and despairing of its reality. The words of the prophet were spoken into an ominous setting; the landscape would eventually be charred by violence and warfare. Judah would become a forest that had been plowed down, “as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be a stump in the land” (Isaiah 6:13). But among the stumps one would put forth life; a tiny sprig of green, bearing hope. A shoot would come from the stump of Jesse. This frail beginning is the source of all hopes for peace.

The tender shoot seen so long ago by Isaiah finally emerged when a man named Joseph took his pregnant wife to the town of Bethlehem. The sovereign work of God and the decree of the government mingled in a single moment that confirmed the prophet’s words: the line of Jesse, father of David; Bethlehem, the town of David; Joseph, of the line and house of David. And then Jesus – the source of life and hope and peace.

The peace we yearn for is often found in the wastelands of our lives where it seems that nothing of worth is happening. There may be such a place in your life today. Ponder it for a moment; peace isn’t very compelling unless we see with clarity those places where we need it most. The yearning for peace isn’t generic, it’s specific. Specific relationships need mending, specific resentments need to be let go of, specific nations with people who have names and families need security in their borders. The wastelands are vast. Can you identify such a place in your life? And can you see the promise of life and peace restored?

Prayer:
God of peace, you take what seems lifeless and hopeless and you bring forth more than we dreamed could ever be. We don’t see much peace in our world and we don’t experience it in our lives nearly as much as we’d like. We yearn for peace, and we look to you as the only one who can make it real, even from the stumps of our broken world. Hear us in these moments as we lift the barren places of our lives and our world to you. Amen.

The Holy Wild

Our yearning: A sense of wonder (Read Isaiah 6:1-8).

As spoken by the prophet . . .
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6:1-2).

As seen in Jesus . . .
Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!”
(Mark 1:23-24)

Now given to you . . .
Holiness is recognized by both demons and angels. In heaven, holiness calls forth songs and shouts of celebration. In hell, holiness calls forth derision and curses. And here, in the place and time in which we live, the same is true. We are drawn in or distanced by what is holy.

The one reaction which seems absent from the biblical stories, and far too common in our day, is casual disregard. Holiness isn’t boring in the scriptures; it is either embraced with adoration or rejected with disdain. No one gets around the Holy and yawns. Isaiah’s temple vision and Jesus’ confrontation with the demon possessed man both reflect the power of holiness. It’s a power to either attract or repel – but it is power any way you look at it.

Our capacity to recognize holiness will determine, to some degree, whether we live with a sense of wonder. Sadly, holiness is a shriveled word in our time. It suggests prudery, a life defined by avoidance strategies: avoiding the wrong movies, avoiding the wrong people, avoiding the wrong neckline on the blouse and the wrong word when you hit your finger with a hammer. The avoidance strategies bear little resemblance to biblical holiness. Holiness – the kind that evokes wonder – is the presence of God laid bare, seen in all things; a world inundated with God. You inhabit a Holy world, and by faith a Holy God (Spirit) inhabits you

Prayer:
Gracious God, we ask you for many things. On our list of needs and wants, holiness shows up near the bottom if it shows up at all. But today we ask you to make us holy – not by what we avoid, but by what we behold. Help us to see that the whole earth is full of your glory. Help us then to reflect to others what we have seen. Amen.

("The Holy Wild" is a phrase borrowed fom the Mark Buchanan's book by the same title)

Partial Eclipse

Our Yearning: A sense of wonder (Read Isaiah 6:1-8)

As spoken by the prophet . . .
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple” (Isaiah 6:1).

As seen in Jesus . . .
After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:14-15)

Now given to you . . .
God’s revelation comes to us in the middle of life’s mundane and even unsightly realities. This is never truer than during the Advent and Christmas season. These are days filled with glorious language about God: “God with us” and “glory to God in the highest,” on and on. And these same days are also filled with relentless demands on your time, the reality of a drought, jobs that don’t stop and bills that keep coming. The most ordinary aspects of your life will continue unabated over the next month, and that fact alone easily eclipses our sense of wonder.

But God was revealed to Isaiah in the midst of a political crisis, the death of King Uzziah. Jesus appeared in a setting of civil unrest, Herod having thrown John in prison. Glorious things were happening; God was on the move, history was being shaped, not by Kings and governors, but by the words of a prophet and the presence of the Messiah. Uzziah and Herod probably got the headlines. Isaiah and Jesus did not.

We will not live with wonder by trying to escape the ordinary. We don’t get a clearer look at God by rising above the life we’ve been given. Wonder and Awe do not demand that we rinse away the grime of the daily. Rather we find God deep in the heart of the life we’re living this very moment. Political events, major news stories, dental appointments and dance recitals – there’s wonder to be found in all of it.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, aside from the glittering decorations, our world barely takes notice of your coming to us. History keeps unfolding and the redundant details of life don’t take a vacation. How easily these things eclipse our vision of your presence among us; how easily we lose our sense of wonder. We yearn to see your glory in the things we see every day. Help us to see afresh in this wonder-filled season of the year. Amen.

Yearnings: A Series of Advent Reflections from Isaiah

“My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:2)

“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” (From “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” Phillips Brooks, 1867)

Everywhere you look the trappings of the season are on full display. Retailers know we’re shopping for Christmas and they won’t lose a day in helping us complete the task. The Starbucks cups have been seasonal red for weeks already. It’s here, ready or not.

At our house it’s more “not” than “ready.” I’m sure it’ll be a few days yet before I venture into the attic and pull down the tired boxes marked “Christmas.” The boxes will be emptied and we’ll soon give our home the look of being ready for Christmas; our own inner readiness will catch up eventually.

Of all the things we set out around our home to get ready for Christmas, the most treasured for me is a set of pictures. Starting with my son’s first Christmas, when he was our only child, we have a picture of the kids and Santa from every Christmas. I can look at that set of pictures and see their growth, the way they slightly morphed over a twelve month period; I see my babies becoming “kids.” I’m not sure how long we’ll keep doing this, but I don’t plan on stopping this year.

That image – children on Santa’s knees – captures in 5x7 color how this season of the year stirs up desire. Something about the days leading to Christmas nudges yearnings deep within us. In fact, as those pictures of my children remind me, from our earliest years we have been asked over and over again, “What do you want for Christmas?” Christmas invites us to desire, to want, to wish and dream.

Some of our desires are trivial and change every year, from action figures and dolls to iPods and gift cards. But some of our wants, our truest desires, are far more enduring. Those deep yearnings will provide the focus of Dr. Vic Pentz’s sermon series during the weeks of Advent. Each week the message will complete this sentence: “All I Want for Christmas is . . .”

Once again, these daily reflections will follow the sermon series. They will assume a very simple and straightforward format. Each week will focus on a deep yearning of soul. Each day will provide you with a scripture text from the prophet Isaiah, as well as a scripture from the gospels that shows how Jesus answers and meets our deepest longings. The reflection will conclude with a brief application of the scripture and a prayer.

With each day of the coming Advent season you will be reminded of this simple truth: Every yearning of the heart is answered in Jesus Christ. Those yearnings of soul are not there to drive us in a frenetic search for something to buy or accumulate that will make us “happy.” Our yearnings are there to tell us that we were made for God. In his book, Yearning: Living Between How it Is and How It Ought to Be, Craig Barnes states that

"Our creation story does not call us to roam through life in the pursuit of happiness. In fact, that is the very thing from which we are saved. Our story portrays the great journey of God into his limited and needy creation." (Yearning, p. 21)

“The great journey of God into his limited and needy creation.” That is the story of the incarnation. That is the story of Christmas. Our culture speaks to our yearnings by telling us to chase happiness. Our faith speaks to our yearnings by inviting us to follow the Savior, to live the Jesus life and walk the Jesus way. Listening to Isaiah and Jesus, that’s what we’ll do in the weeks ahead.

So . . . what is the deepest yearning of your heart right now? What do you really want for Christmas?

Prayer:
Walk with us, O Christ, into this wonderful season of the year. Help our bleary and dulled eyes to see true wonder; help our heavy hearts to find comfort. Above all, help us to find you – the answer to our deepest yearnings. Amen.

God's Name, Our Delight

O Lord, let you ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name . . . I was cupbearer to the King (Nehemiah 1:11a).

Atlantans love their decals. Around here, decals are one of the ways that people tell you who they are; little bits and pieces of their identity are stuck to the back window of the SUV. If you spend any time in a car-pool line you are likely to learn where people vacation, what other schools they’ve attended or attend, how many years they gave money to that school, what sports their kids play and in what program. It’s a mini-resume on adhesive. We have a school decal on both of our vehicles, so I write this as confession, not criticism.

The decals make me wonder about how we understand our identity. What is it about our life that most truly captures who we are? What are we most eager for someone else to know about us? What would help a person truly “get” us? If it’s not the decals on our car, then often it’s the job we wake up to every morning, or the neighborhood we live in, or the friends we run with, or the clothes we wear, or the degrees we’ve earned.

The real action of Nehemiah begins in chapter two with his journey back to Jerusalem and his midnight inspection of the city’s walls. But everything that Nehemiah does is grounded in who Nehemiah is; his own deep sense of identity defines his commitments, the task to which he gives himself. To understand who Nehemiah is, we need to hang out a little longer in chapter one.

There is something distinctive about how Nehemiah understands himself, his life, his identity. He only makes one reference to his job. “I was cupbearer to the King.” Plenty of folks would have killed for that job – prestige, access to the King, authority over a large staff. It was a decent job, to be sure. But Nehemiah only mentions it once – almost a throw-away comment. When it comes to his identity, Nehemiah’s word of choice is “servant.” He is a servant of God. The English word “servant” (NIV) shows up seven times in Nehemiah’s prayer. At the end of the prayer he gives the word a definition: servants are those who “delight in revering [God’s] name.”

What would change about this day and your plans for the weekend if above all else you saw yourself as God’s servant? That means that today in the office, tomorrow at the game, next week on the business trip – whatever and wherever you are - you are God’s servant. This is who you are, and it shapes what you do and how you do it.

When Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem’s walls it his aim was not merely well constructed and fully repaired walls around the city. Nehemiah’s aim was to honor God and God’s name. Because of that – because he defined himself as a servant of God, he went to work restoring order to the city. More than anything, God calls you to serve him. The great news is that you don’t need a special assignment to do that. You can start today, right where you are.

Prayer:
There are days, O Lord, when I forget who I am. I define myself in ways and with words that come from the world around me. These leave me unsatisfied, restless. Remind me today of who you created me to be and teach me to be your servant in all that I do. Amen.

God is Still Great

“When I heard these things I sat down and wept . . . then I said: “O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God . . . let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night . . .” (Nehemiah 1:4-5)

“God is great, God is good.” For many of us, these were the first words of prayer we ever learned. Before we could adequately pronounce those simple words, and long before we could ever grasp the meaning of what we were saying, we learned to fold our hands and affirm the goodness and greatness of God.

And then we got older. As we got older life happened, and those happenings sometimes challenged the words of that prayer. Sure, we may still teach the words to our children, but silently we have some objections – or at least some questions. We’ve seen things, or experienced things, or learned some things that make us wonder about the goodness and greatness of God.

Those six little words we learned as toddlers are joined by a maturing vocabulary: death and divorce, breakups and bankruptcy, I.E.Ds and M.I.As. The list is long. Our sentences become more complicated, the verbs more harsh and the adjectives more grim. We begin to wonder about the greatness of God. In our wondering we come across a book title that bluntly rejects what we’ve always believed, or tried to believe – “God is Not Great” sneers at us from the cover of Christopher Hitchens’s recent volume. Part of us resents the book, and part of us wonders.

After learning of the wretched conditions in Jerusalem, Nehemiah prays. The opening words of the prayer are remarkable, stunning even. In his grief and anguish over Jerusalem we might excuse Nehemiah for railing against God. The NIV bible uses an English word to describe the state of the city: “disgraced.” Grace removed, undone, taken away. Jerusalem is dis-graced, and when grace is nullified God’s character may likely be vilified. But that’s not what we get from Nehemiah. Instead, what we hear from this heartbroken man is the kind of thing that flows naturally from the lips of children. God is great. Great and awesome.

We might think of Nehemiah as a “visionary” because he was able to see what the walls of Jerusalem could become. Not so. Nehemiah was a visionary because he saw the true character of God: great and awesome. Once he grasped the reality of God he began to see what God wanted for the city.

You may find yourself in your own season of mourning and weeping. Something you care deeply about is damaged; it seems that grace is absent. The good news this morning is that God is still great. Don’t simply ask God to fix a situation. Ask for a restored vision of who God is; the kind of vision you might have had a long time ago when you learned the words of that simple prayer. The prayer words you learned when you could barely talk may be the prayer you need to pray today. Learn from Nehemiah. There is a foundational truth that will not be changed by bad news and dis-grace. God is still great.

Prayer:
Great and awesome God, when I look at the trouble and devastation of the world around me I get things backwards. You seem distant and small. The problems of the world seem enormous. Help me to see things rightly. Restore to me a vision of your great power and love, reminding me that the whole world is held in your mighty and tender hand. Amen.

Broken, then Busy

When I heard these things I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven (Nehemiah 1:4)

“For some days . . .”

These three words from Nehemiah 1:4 are misleading. We are likely to read right over them; blow right by in our rush to get to the real drama of the book – the work of rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls. Our failure to grasp what’s happening in this little phrase is only reinforced when we read the words of Nehemiah’s prayer as recorded in verses 5-11. I just finished reading the prayer out loud at a deliberate pace. It took me one minute and twenty seconds. You could easily get through it faster.

What only takes eighty seconds to read is given to us as a sample of what Nehemiah did “for some days.” And what’s more, the “some days” is actually closer to four months. Nehemiah learns of Jerusalem’s condition in the month of Kislev (1:1). He finally presents a plan and request to King Artaxerxes in the month of Nisan (2:1). That means Nehemiah’s prayer is no meager “Please help us God” offered up in an eighty second interlude before getting down to business. No, Nehemiah’s weeping and fasting and praying covered a period of four months.

This was said a couple of days ago, but it’s worth repeating: before Nehemiah presents a plan to the King he offers prayer to God. Lingering prayer: repetitive, passionate, heart wrenching petition. Brokenness precedes busyness. Those who are broken before God will be used by God to change the world.

I am particularly challenged by Nehemiah’s example at this point. I never fast. I see plenty in the world to weep over, but my tears are slow to come. And then there’s the praying. I wish I were better at it, more consistent. I’m afraid I give up on prayer to easily, or I’m quickly satisfied that I’ve said all that needs to be said to God. No need to go on for four months, or a year, or four years. God knows my heart. Make the request clear to God a few times and then let it go at that. Mine is not a problem of belief, but a problem of will. I believe in prayer, but I don’t wrestle with God for as long as it takes.

Getting our arms around the city begins with kneeling before the God who loves the city far more than we do. In fact, getting a handle on anything that matters deeply to us starts with prayer. Prayer is not a substitute for action. It is the soil out of which meaningful action grows. Maybe you’re facing something today that confronts you with two temptations. On one hand, you may be tempted to despair and you’ve stopped talking to God about whatever it might be. On the other hand, your fear may be driving you to take immediate action, to get busy and get busy now.

Maybe this morning God is simply inviting you to linger in his presence; to linger and to listen. In his presence you may weep, you may complain, you may question. Our confidence to pray, and keep on praying, comes from knowing that God gladly hears it all and is already at work in those things that concern us.

Prayer:
Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my sighing. Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray. In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation (Psalm 5:1-3).

Escape or Engage

In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men . . . I was cupbearer to the King (Nehemiah 1:1, 11b).

On Mondays I leave the house early to get to church for a 7:00 men’s Bible study. Two left turn lanes funnel traffic from the south Marietta loop to I-75 southbound to Atlanta. Typically I avoid this route, but the early hour on Mondays usually works in my favor. While waiting for the green arrow that will allow me to take my place in the stampeding herd, I strain to look over the bridge railing to the south. In the early morning darkness red taillights provide an indicator of what awaits me. When the glowing red is well spaced and moving swiftly, that’s a good sign. Thick red that creeps like sludge means I should have gone another way.

Funny thing about the morning commute: thousands of people get up every day and make their way into the city . . . for the purpose of being able to avoid the city. The work that brings them into the city makes it possible for them to create a citadel to which they will escape at day’s end. The fortress they take refuge in may be a gated apartment complex, a home surrounded by spiked wrought iron, or a house on a quiet street with garage doors that can be opened safely from the car and closed upon entering the citadel . . . uh, house. Of course, there is nothing wrong with pursuing the American dream. But in the pursuit we may one day discover that we’re actually running from something; running from the God who pursues us and wants to use us in the world.

The thing that draws those thousands of taillights onto I-75 every morning was something that Nehemiah had obtained. Nehemiah had a comfortable place and a respectable position. As his story opens, he is in the Citadel of Susa. Susa was the winter residence of the King of Persia. There in the fortress Nehemiah was highly trusted as the King’s cupbearer. This position meant that Nehemiah was more than a royal official; he was intimately acquainted with the King’s household, practically a member of the family. Who could ask for more? A comfortable dwelling (citadel) and a prestigious job (cupbearer) – millions chase that dream every day.

And who would ever want to leave that kind arrangement for the poverty and rubble of a wrecked city like Jerusalem? We work hard to protect ourselves from poverty and trash. But here’s the thing: You can’t put your arms around the city if you won’t leave the citadel. Every day we are confronted with a choice about how we’ll live life. The direction of our life’s energies will be aimed either at escape or engagement. You can work hard to escape the brokenness and shield yourself from it, or you can work hard to engage the brokenness and bring about transformation.

How are you living life today? Did God put you here and place his gifts in your life so that you can hunker down in your citadel, collecting comforts, distancing yourself from pain? Nehemiah, highly esteemed and very comfortable, ached to get back to the shattered remains of Jerusalem. What are you aching to do with your life? Where does God want to use you today?

Prayer:
Gracious God, send me into the world today intent on engaging those you love, ready to bring your grace wherever it is needed. Don’t let my energies be spent avoiding what you are doing in the city around me. Give me courage to step outside the gates of the fortresses I’ve so carefully built, and help me to put my arms around the city. Amen.

Never Too Far Gone

They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.” (Nehemiah 1:3)

When my cell phone rang, disturbing the relative quiet of the Border’s bookstore, the caller i.d. displayed “Al’s Automotive.” I was eager to hear from Al – or his guys. Our not-often-trusty family vehicle had been leaving a spotty trail for some time. Seems that wherever we parked we would leave the world an oily reminder of our presence there. The left side floor of our garage was a mess. Time to get that fixed, and so to Al’s. When the call came in I found a secluded place between some tall bookshelves and answered.

Al – or whoever actually called me – didn’t have good news. With language that escapes me now, he detailed the parts of the engine that were loosing oil; this was done with a pleasant and helpful tone, as if he were giving me directions to the Georgia Aquarium. The report concluded with a grand total figure, a figure that easily exceeded the value of the vehicle. Reality began to set in as I realized that toddler-hood along with nine years of wear and tear had taken its toll. This time things were simply too far gone.

Nehemiah’s story is slightly different. When Nehemiah learned from Hanani about the condition of Jerusalem, he was not learning something new or unheard of. In fact, roughly 140 years before this event, long before Nehemiah’s birth, Jerusalem had been destroyed by Babylon (587 BC). To some extent, the destruction of Jerusalem had been a persistent problem throughout Nehemiah’s lifetime. He could have written Jerusalem off as too far gone . . . but he didn’t. One of the first remarkable things we notice about Nehemiah is the absence of a resigned fatalism. Nehemiah is deeply stirred by the plight of Jerusalem – even with its long standing and deeply entrenched problems. The city is not beyond hope and help; things are not too far gone.

The fact that Nehemiah can still weep is significant. Typically, long-term persistent problems that never change leave us numb. We wake up to the same thing every morning just as we have for a thousand mornings, bracing ourselves for a thousand more. Whatever it is, God seems to have forgotten it and we’re left to live with it. We stop weeping. Sure, we want to believe that God is still around, somehow tending the shop, but the realities we see mock that kind of thinking as escapist or childish; wishful thinking, not faith. When the world we see appears to be beyond repair, we don’t know what to believe. We don’t know how to believe. Nehemiah’s example emboldens us because he insists on dealing with God about an intractable issue that won’t go away and can’t be fixed, or so it seems.

Like Nehemiah, we bring before God those issues that have dogged us for years; a marriage that’s long been on the brink of collapse, an addicted family member who can’t get on top of their illness, a persistent health problem, relentless financial crises that won’t stop coming. Nehemiah reminds us that things are never too far gone, never beyond the scope of God’s reach, never outside the sphere of God’s grace. It was true of Jerusalem, it is true of Atlanta, and it’s true of your life.

But before Nehemiah formulates a plan he offers a prayer. His brokenness precedes his busyness. Maybe before we work with God we’ll need to deal honestly and directly with God. We’ll be thinking this week about what that means. With Nehemiah we go to our knees, and we start right now.

Prayer:
Merciful God, when I think about the problems that confront our city, I am tempted to see the place as beyond help, or at least beyond my help. The same is true of the wreckage I see in people’s lives and even in my own life. Give me a new vision for what you are doing in me and around me. I bring my city, my very life, before you today in Jesus’ name. Amen.

What I'm Learning This Summer: Faith "in" or Faith "of"

“They say the same creed but do they share the same faith?”

With that question I was hooked. The teacher was John Ortberg, pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. The setting was the Christian Life Conference at Montreat, North Carolina, the opening plenary session on Saturday night.

The question came after an exercise in imagining two people who attend the same church every week where they regularly recite the same statement of faith, “The Apostles Creed.” One person is easily irritated, often caustic and unkind in their speech, a bit self absorbed, rarely generous with what they have, rarely evidencing joy in life, often proud and careful about impression management.

The other person is experienced as kind in both manner and speech, patient with others, frequently an encourager, genuinely interested in things and people beyond themselves, always eager to give or serve, always laughing or making others laugh.

They say the same creed, but do they share the same faith?

Ortberg eventually made this distinction:

There is faith “in” Jesus: usually presented as what one must believe about Jesus in order to be saved and go to heaven.

And then there is the faith “of” Jesus: this is the faith that Jesus himself had; it means believing as he believed so that we live the kind of life he lived.

The gist of the message that night was that the Christian life is really about living as Jesus lived; it is just that – a life. A way of being in the world. This life comes from having the faith of Jesus. It comes from believing and living in communion with God in such way that we internalize the life Jesus lived. What Ortberg called our “mental map.”

The Christian life is not about meeting the bare minimal entrance requirements to get to heaven. Here Ortberg acknowledges his indebtedness to the work of Dallas Willard. Simply giving assent to statements about Jesus (it was implied) will not produce the kind of life that Jesus lived. That’s why two people can state the same creed but have a different faith.

I agree with that. I am drawn to the distinction between “faith in” and “faith of.” And yet, now at a distance of more than a week from the conference, I sense some anxieties about this. My anxiety boils down to this: too many churches do not do a good job of teaching doctrine. In fact, too many churches don’t teach doctrine at all. While Ortberg would not intend this, his distinction feeds our proclivity to be dismissive of doctrinal language and ideas.

What would it take to present doctrine in such a way that it produced transformed lives that increasingly resemble Jesus? That’s what doctrine ought to do. In canonical scripture, the gospels are neighbor to Romans and Hebrews. The didactic voice harmonizes with the narrative voice. Teacher and story-teller, thinker and exemplar live side by side in the pages of the Bible.

Yes – there is a difference between “faith in” and “faith of.” And yes, I’ve heard far more in my lifetime about having faith in Jesus than I’ve heard abut having the faith of Jesus. And yes, my personal shortcomings have more to do with my life than with my knowledge.

But in my calling to live the Jesus way, I’m almost certain I’ll continually struggle with getting it right. The Christian life then becomes an exercise in frustration . . . unless we know some good doctrine that makes sense of it all.

test, test

Learning to post pictures . . . These are "my girls."

Zeal and Affliction

Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline (Revelation 3:19).

More than once this week this point has been made: self-satisfaction kills spiritual zeal. A passion for God will not grow from the soil of boasting. A preacher from an earlier century (whose name escapes me now) has been quoted as saying that we cannot demonstrate that we are clever and that God is mighty to save at the same time. The church of Laodicea has been introduced as exhibit ‘A’ for this truth all week long.

It seems clear that self-satisfaction kills zeal, but what about affliction? What about suffering? I’ve wondered from time to time this week about readers who are reading these reflections, seeing passion and zeal exalted and encouraged while lukewarm faith is rebuked. I’ve wondered about anyone who might be feeling that lukewarm is about the best they can do right now.

Is there anyone who reads these reflections in the morning having not slept at night, having wept from grief and the memories that come with it, having received abusive words from a child or spouse or parent, having fought the nausea of a medication or the loss of appetite it brings? As James asked “is any among you sick?” (James 5:14) The answer, it seems to me, has to be yes. And if so, what does zeal look like? If the answer is yes, are the wounded among us consigned to a lukewarm faith?

The answer to that final question is a resounding and clarion “no.” There are some good scriptural reasons to support the answer and I’d like to enumerate them clearly and briefly.

1. It is possible to be zealous in the midst of affliction.

Job sat on the ash heap, using a piece of broken pottery to scrape the dripping sores that mottled his flesh. Things couldn’t be worse. He could not get any lower. His children had been killed by the kind of senseless tragedy that natural disasters inflict. He had lost his wealth, his assets. He had lost his health, gripped in excruciating anguish but not able to die. Things were so bad that his own wife counseled him to curse God. Curse God and die.

At one point Job processed the whole experience with these words: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” This is zeal.

Zeal isn’t always an enthusiastic charge forward. Sometimes it’s a deeply rooted stance that will not be moved; faith that doesn’t fold or whither. Sometimes zeal means we turn up the heat. Sometimes it means we take the heat. Zeal allows Paul and Silas to sit on the floor of the jail, shackled and beaten and bruised, singing hymns of praise. This is zeal, and occasionally we find it in the midst of affliction.

2. It is possible to forge zeal from affliction.

The words of Christ to Laodicea need to be read along with the words written to the Hebrews (see Hebrews 12:7-10). Listening carefully, here’s what we discover: we are to endure hardship as discipline. God disciplines those whom he loves. The hardships have a purpose, namely, that we may share in God’s holiness.

We suffer affliction as a means of participating in the holiness of God. God is at work, using our afflictions to forge his own character, his holiness in us. That holiness is sometimes pictured in scripture as a consuming fire, white hot holiness . . . zeal. Zeal can be forged from the experience of affliction.

If we were to travel to some of the most difficult places on the globe, places of deprivation and disease, places of war and persecution, we would likely find there Christians who are zealous for Christ, bold and passionate disciples of Jesus. They might tell us that their passion grows in the midst of affliction; that it is forged from their afflictions. And what is true for them can be true for us as well.

Is any among you sick? You need not settle for a lukewarm walk with Christ. The closing prayer is a prayer for all who suffer today. If you suffer, pray it for yourself if you wish, but know that many are praying it for you. May your heart be encouraged and strengthened in zeal, even in the midst of affliction.

Prayer: Almighty God, we pray today for the afflicted among us; for friends and co-workers, for our neighbors and loved ones, for people we know well and for those with whom we are barely acquainted. Lord Jesus, strengthen their hearts and use their hardships to form your character in them. In their suffering, make them zealous – and prepare us all for the day of trial and testing, that we may stand fast in passionate faith. Amen.

Free to Dance

Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might . . . (2 Samuel 6:14)

Were it not for my wife I’m not sure I would ever dance. My wife has exuberance built into her DNA. She brings a certain energy and delight to everything she does – and she shares that energy with me and it permeates our home. But at wedding receptions my range of motion takes place between the table at which I’m seated and the mashed-potato bar. Marnie gravitates to the dance floor, and eventually I find myself out there too. But it’s a stretch for me. I’m not sure why, but something about dancing makes me self-conscious. I feel dorky – and self-conscious people don’t dance well, not nearly as well as they could were they more self-forgetful.

There’s a wonderful story in 2 Samuel 6 about David bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. For twenty years the Ark had been kept at Kiriath Jearim. At one point there was an effort to move the Ark, but it was done carelessly and God foiled the entire parade. When a priest dropped dead in the middle of the festivities everything came to a grinding halt and the ark went nowhere. After a while, it seemed right to try again. A celebratory processional escorted the Ark, and at the front was King David. And the King was dancing. What’s more, he was dancing in a rather exposed state, a bit like jumping around in your boxers in a public place (2 Samuel 6:20).

David’s wife was horrified, and later when the party had wrapped up and they were back home she lit into him. Her basic grievance reveals her high level of self-consciousness and impression management. “You’re the King . . . and you made a fool of yourself today. You’re the King . . . act like it!”

David answered her with the words of a God-centered zeal, a passion for the holy. “I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this and I will be humiliated in my own eyes” (2 Samuel 6:22). David was zealous, and if others thought him foolish – or a dork – it mattered to him not at all.

Earlier this week we noted that the lukewarm Christians of Laodicea were quite self-satisfied. What’s more, the self-satisfied are often self-absorbed. The Laodiceans sound that way. They are highly aware of their wealth, of their productivity, of their resources for the production of goods and their skills in the healing arts. They are so aware of themselves, proud even, that they relate to Christ without urgency and without intensity. They have concluded that they have need of nothing. Thus they are lukewarm.

Zeal is stirred as the focus shifts away from us and toward Jesus. Christ invites us to shift our focus as he stands at the door and says, “Behold” or “Here I am.” We move our gaze Christ-ward as we come to him for what we most need. Christ is the source of true wealth that cannot be devalued with a bad market. Christ covers us with his purity – white garments better than anything we could make on our own. Christ gives us wisdom and insight and allows us to see things clearly, things our eyes cannot perceive. What we need comes from Jesus, not from ourselves.

David’s self-forgetfulness reminds us that zeal for God will not be too careful about remaining dignified. Zeal does not constantly measure public opinion. It’s not unusual for us to regulate our zeal depending upon our setting. We may be more zealous about our faith with this group, less zealous with that group – and then some groups may quench our zeal entirely. David’s example encourages us to be God aware no matter where we are or who’s around. How will you live his example today?

Living with passion will likely require us to get over ourselves . . . and get into God. As we look to Christ we get a passion for the holy. Christ breathes into us a sacred zeal. Christ sets us free to dance.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, I am easily preoccupied with myself – my successes and failures, my connections and reputation. I sometimes treat you as my assistant in the life-management program I’ve devised. Forgive me – and draw the focus of my life ever toward you. Be the center of my work, my home, my relationships. As you take center stage, breathe the zeal of your Spirit into my life. Amen.

Do Open Doors Let Out the Heat? A Meditation on Revelation 3:20

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20)

Christ stands at the door knocking. It is he who extends the first invitation as he asks us to open the door. Typically those on the inside invite the one knocking to come in. But our invitation is always a response to his.

I remember very well the day I opened the door. The tradition that nurtured my young faith was very clear and specific about how the door was opened. There were even a series of questions to be answered that would help one open the door (if you were to die tonight . . . etc.). Of course, there were variations on the theme, but generally the time for door opening came every week at the end of a worship service. A hymn was sung, and in one way or another, the invitation to open the door to Christ was extended.

Now, even in our reformed tradition invitations are still offered. At Peachtree we endeavor to do this every week. But in the church of my childhood the invitation assumed a specific action that constituted opening the door. One who was answering the door would walk forward and basically say to the pastor “I’m here to get the door.”

I was eight years old when I slipped out my pew and went forward to get the door. The preacher standing at the front to receive me was my uncle Earl. The pastor seated on the platform who had just preached the message was my dad. So I was walking toward my uncle and my dad . . . and I was still nervous, petrified actually. It was April of 1970 as I recall. I don’t remember exactly what I said. I think my desire to avoid hell was in there somehow – but whatever it was, the door was opened.

To read the words of Christ to Laodicea might leave you with the impression that the way to take care of a lukewarm faith is to open the door to Jesus who patiently knocks and waits and wants to have fellowship with us. No doubt, that’s part of the solution. But when I think about that I realize that I opened the door long ago . . . and I’ve been lukewarm; long stretches of lukewarmness.

As a kid I’d sometimes run into the house after being outside, and I’d leave the door open. This would evoke a short lesson from one of my parents about the science of indoor refrigeration and / or heating. In the summer, open doors let out the cool air. In the winter, open doors let out the heat. Those lessons sunk in. Just last week I pulled into my own garage to see the door to the house standing open. “That’ll be great for our heating bill,” I said to myself - the voices of my parents channeled through my own.

As with houses, so with the soul. The open door sometimes lets the heat out. After we’ve invited Christ to come in, after we’ve given him a seat at the table, eventually the conversation lags. Some of you who are reading this have walked with Jesus for a long time. You too opened the door years ago.

It may be that your parents turned the knob and left the door cracked slightly when you were an infant; you opened it wide at your confirmation. And what’s more, it may be that you too know of a dulling familiarity in your walk with Jesus. Perhaps you’ve told yourself that you are “seasoned” in the faith. The truth of the matter may be more Laodicean. You’re lukewarm.

For those of us who opened the door only to let the heat out, we may do well to focus carefully on the image in Revelation 3:20. Christ comes in; we give him a place at the table. This is good – but being at the table gets old if nothing is served. Jesus says he comes in for a reason. He comes to eat or “to sup” with us. What we need is a regular, continual feeding on food that nourishes our life with Christ. Passion grows as we feed on the word of God, on worship with God’s people, on service for God’s glory. Apart from these things there’s not much on the table. Soon we find ourselves fiddling with the utensils in our awkward lukewarm silences.

I guess what I’m writing today is a confession. I opened the door years ago. And I still battle a lukewarm soul, a lack of zeal, the absence of spiritual passion. The question I know I need to answer every day is this: what’s on the table. Maybe that’s the question for you today as well. How will you keep company with Jesus and feed your soul today?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, the doors of my life are open to you, and yet somehow the heat escapes and my zeal fades. As you meet me at the table today, feed me by your Holy Spirit. Give me insight into your word, move my heart to worship, lead me to avenues of service – and in all this kindle a growing passion for you. Amen.

Zeal: A Meditation on Revelation 3:19

“Zeal for your house will consume me.” (John 2:17)

“. . . be zealous and repent. Behold I stand at the door and knock. (Rev. 3:19-20)

John tells us that Jesus made a whip. He made a whip out of cords. I imagine him having to braid the cords together, a task that took a little time. All the while he’s thinking, praying. As his fingers weave and wrap he’s pondering what he’s just seen, and as he ponders he burns. He can feel it in his face. It’s anger, yes – but not petulant anger. The sight of money-changers in the temple, the shouts of sleazy opportunists selling animals for sacrifice to pilgrims at a jacked-up price, this he would not bear. So he made a whip, deliberately, patiently, with steely resolve. And he walked back to the temple courts.

As he overturned tables, as the coins jangled and bounced across the stone floors, as the small-time hacks ducked or scattered, grabbing their goods and shouting back their curses, as all of this was happening the disciples of Jesus watched and remembered. They remembered a line of scripture from the “Tehelim,” the book of praises or Psalms. We know it as Psalm 69:9. “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

It’s interesting that the Greek word for “zeal” used in this line from John 2:17 is the same word that shows up in the words of Christ to the church at Laodicea; words also written by John’s hand. In Revelation 3:19 Jesus calls upon the Laodiceans to “be zealous and repent.”

If we ponder that word from John 2 and the same word in Revelation 3:19, we gain some insight into the nature of both zeal and repentance. We get an idea of where zeal comes from, and what it means to repent of our lukewarm condition.

Jesus cleared the temple of money changers because he saw something about the holiness of God and the sacredness of worship that was being defamed by the carnival-like bazaar that had been set up in the temple courts. His vision of God gave birth to his zeal. His braiding of the whip, his shouting of Jeremiah’s words – these were not a temper tantrum. This was a God-drenched zeal, a zeal that the Psalmist described as consuming.

This kind of vision and the zeal that it exudes will never be had as long as Jesus is left standing at the door, outside the intimacies of the home and heart. That’s exactly what had happened in Laodicea, and that partially explains their lukewarm state. Christ, standing on the outside or in the margins, appeals to them with words that convey a kind of longing. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” As long as Christ as left at the door our vision of him will be stunted and our zeal will be, well, lukewarm.

I can’t help but think of a recent ad campaign for Domino’s pizza. The brand line on the commercials says “Get the door . . . it’s Domino’s.” At the risk of irreverence, “Get the door . . . it’s Jesus.”

What does it take to be done with a lukewarm faith and to be consumed with zeal? Nothing less than a vision of God, revealed to us in Jesus Christ, and as close to us as a friend across the table. Do you see him that way? Do you know him that way? Until you do your zeal will be short-lived, sporadic. So get the door.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, I yearn to be consumed with zeal – not the kind of zeal the world offers me, but the kind that comes from seeing you in a fresh and powerful and compelling way. So many things in my life, in my daily routine, eclipse that vision of you. Come today and restore it; I gladly invite you in. Amen.

Reality Check: A meditation on Revelation 3:14-22

You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. (Revelation 3:17)

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. (Romans 12:11)

When my children were a few years younger, Marnie and I realized that their experience of dining out almost always included fried chicken tenders and a placemat that came with crayons. This was not good. My imagination got away with me when I pictured them at their wedding rehearsal dinner . . . coloring at the table. It was time for some parental intervention. Time to school them in the experience of eating at a “real” restaurant. Time to help them identify a salad fork and a butter knife. I was further convinced that the time was right because I happened to have in my possession a treasured gift: the much-loved Buckhead Life card.

With the card tucked safely in my wallet I made reservations at Chops. We put on dressier clothes – the kind you wear when you don’t plan to romp in the play room at Chik-fil-a.

It was a great time with the kids, and the meal was fantastic; not carrying our trays to the trash can afterwards. . . this was living! The Buckhead Life card emboldened me. We felt free to order whatever we wanted and we even did dessert. Then came the check.

Having given my card the server, he very politely returned to our table and handed me the elegant black folder into which the record of our damage for the evening had been tastefully placed. “This can’t be right,” I said (not out loud – not yet). But a murmured conversation with our server confirmed the dreaded truth. The card I had placed in my wallet was an old card with a balance left on it of $15.00. That meal stung more than I had thought it might. My dinner check had become a reality check.

The letter to Laodicea is a reality check. They are primarily rebuked for being lukewarm, but their lukewarm condition is simply a consequence of a deeper problem. Their real problem is that they think they are one way (wealthy, sufficient) – but in reality they are not.

It might help us to understand that being lukewarm is not a feeling; it is not an emotional state in which we dangle between eager excitement on one hand and bored disinterest on the other. Lukewarm is a condition, a reality. It is a reality rooted in a false sense of satisfaction; a false security with how we’re doing. It’s a reality rooted in a deception that has us thinking we’re bringing far more to the table than we really are. Spiritually speaking, we find we’ve only got $15.00 credit when we thought we we’re bringing far more to our relationship with Jesus Christ.

And here’s the real kicker. Not only is the lukewarm state not an emotion, most of those bogged down in it do not perceive it at all. Most lukewarm followers of Jesus are actually quite content in their lukewarmness. Lukewarmness is masked by satisfaction.

This connection quickly becomes apparent. Where there is no sense of need, there will be no passion. If we want to get zeal, we had better get real.

As we begin our reflections on the words of Christ to Laodicea, perhaps the place to begin is with a reality check. As you spend some time in prayer today, invite the Spirit to show you where you need to be restless, dissatisfied. Be honest about the gradual complacency that might have taken up residence in your soul. Ask the Spirit to do a reality check. And know this: whatever is lacking, Christ will gladly and abundantly supply.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, create within me a restless desire to know you better. Let that desire become a passion. Free me from any sense of satisfaction or complacency that makes me lethargic and lukewarm in my walk with you. Amen.

Not Quite Right

O.K. . . .so I need to check my references to scripture before posting statements about biblical content or attempting to quote passages that I haven't memorized.

I said in my last post that Paul repeatedly states in Philippians 2 that he wants to know Christ. That's not quite right. If you're interestred in reading what the apostle actually said, you'll need to go to Philippians 3. There are a couple of places there where Paul speaks of knowing Christ. In v. 3 he speaks of the "surpassing worth" of knowing Christ as compared with a life of rule keeping and points earned for good behavior. In v. 10 Paul says his aim is to "know him and the power of his resurrection."

I was off a little: one chapter and a few turns of phrase. Still, knowing Christ was a big deal for Paul. May it be likewise for us.

New on the iPod

Some of the best bible teaching in the country is available via podcasting. In addition to our own Dr. Vic Pentz here at Peachtree Presbyterian (link on right of this page) I'm enjoying a new podcast from Ken Myers and the folks who do the Mars Hill audio journal. It's called "Audition" and you can subscribe by going to the Mars Hill website. The Catalyst podcast is great and you'll find good stuff from Melo Park Presbyterian Church, Rob Bell at Mars Hill Church (not connected to Mars Hill audio journal in any way), and Mark Batterson at NCC in Washington, D.C.

On the way to the church this morning I heard part of a song that caught my attention for it's vocals and lyrics. I never actually listen to the country-western stations in Atlanta, so this was a random find while scanning for something else. The group is Sugarland and the song is "Want To" from their CD Enjoy the Ride.

I can't say exactly why I like this song beyond obvious things like the tune and the singer, etc. The song captures a moment between two people - a moment of decision, the precipice of something new between them. This is not an unspoken love from a distance, and it's not a declaration of commitment. It's the moment of what's next. There is mingling of clear desire and hesitant, tentative living.

"We could keep things just the same
Leave here the way we came, with nothing to lose
But I don't want to, if you don't want to."

I'll confess to being somewhat averse to risk, to the unknown. As far as I'm concerned you can never have enough clarity and certainty. This presents a problem when it comes to living by grace. I've got much to learn.

So the song expresses something that for me has significance in the life of faith. In this regard "Want To"is a modern day Song of Songs. It says something about devotion to and love for Jesus. There is always an inclination to settle in to something safe and familiar - even years into the Christian life. We want more, we know there's something more to be known of Jesus and the life he offers us - but there's this tentative stutter step we take before jumping in.

And the bottom line is I don't want to be that way. Paul says over and over in Philippians 2 "I want to know Christ." That's what I want too.

A Bad Week for Tires

We replaced three tires this week. Two on Wednesday, one on Friday.

On Wednesday I hit a hole in the road that should have been covered by a thick steel plate where construction was being done. I drive over those plates and past that construction site every day - but on Wednesday I was careless,not paying attention to the road. Honestly, I don't know what I was doing that allowed me to hit the open space just perfectly, the impact busting two tires and bending my front wheel.

On Friday my wife was in our Honda Accord and barely out of our driveway when she knew something was wrong. I came to the rescue, changed the tire and took it to a local auto repair shop where two small nails were found in the tread. The tire was plugged and I was back on the road within an hour.

Idolatry shows itself in some peculiar ways in my life. I've been teaching on the Ten commandments this Fall, and I'm forced to reflect on the "no other Gods" mandate given to the Israelites through Moses. I never consciously create or craft another God; they have a way of simply showing up in my life and in my mind, in my behavior and in my thinking. They are there without my knowing it . . . until something happens.

Like two flat tires and a bent wheel that costs me a good chunk of change and eats up hours in my schedule. Then I sense that something inside of me has been kneeling at the altar of control where I manage the details of my life. I regularly worship in the temple of modern machinery that allows me to come and go as I wish. I sense the anxiety that creeps into my heart when money is suddently re-directed and taken from me. Plenty of little idols, a menu of gods.

We're back on wheels - a must in Atlanta. We have to drive to live in this place. I'd gladly drive less than we do, given the horendous traffic. What I know I've also got to do less of is depend on driving and tires for my sense of well being. Time to repent of some little idolatries.

Missed Encounter

“To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools . . .” (Ecc. 5:1 ESV)

“You can do church and not do God.” I heard my wife say that recently and when I read the opening verses of Ecclesiastes 5 the same idea seeps through the text. Offering the sacrifice of fools is contrasted with drawing near to listen. The fool is the person who made it to the place of worship, but rushed through the familiar practices of the sacrificial act, saying the right words in the right place, but never truly encountering God. A genuine connection with the Holy was neither sought nor anticipated.

In contrast, the one who draws near to listen is after something more, something risky and potentially life changing. God is speaking and the one who listens is open to being addressed by those words; open to an encounter that could lead to God-knows-where.

After a late shift at the hospital during my chaplaincy days I was eager to get home. I had done my eight hours, the midnight chaplain had arrived to take over for the deep night shift, and I was getting to the parking lot as fast as I could go without actually running. I was carrying a small cooler in which I had packed my less than satisfying dinner. Down the hall in front of me a bath-robed patient was walking slowly. My strategy was to blow by on the opposite side of the hall. Without the slightest glance in his direction I passed him, only to hear him say, “You don’t have a liver I there do you?”

Moment of decision; I could laugh that off with a quip and barely lose a step, or I could listen. Transplant patients waiting on an organ know that organs usually arrive in something that looks like a cooler. That robed and unhurried person wasn’t really asking me a question. He was telling me something about himself and in doing so was inviting me to an encounter. By grace I managed to stop, to ask a few questions, to learn that Bill was from Florida waiting on a liver, waiting on a visit from his wife and daughter. It didn’t take too long. But the choice to listen opened up things that I would have missed entirely by refusing to be interrupted in my power walk to the parking lot.

God invites us to an encounter. Perhaps the single most significant factor in whether the encounter will take place is our capacity to listen. It’s so easy to come before God planning our next stop, obsessing over things left undone, our heads full of conversations we need to finish. But this is the way of fools. The invitation to encounter is the invitation to listen. God addresses you today; will your pace permit a response?

Prayer: God, my mind is so full of things that feel urgent to me and all of them seem to keep me from hearing you. As I make my way through this day, help me to hear your invitation, to vary my pace, to encounter you in the details of my life. Amen.

Uprooted

A time to plant and a time to uproot . . . (Ecclesiastes 3: 2b)

My Dad is a pastor. I remember well being in the car with him one day during my junior year of high school and telling him, “I’ll never do what you do.” The remark was not intended as a criticism. I wasn’t arguing with him. I wasn’t making a statement of rebellion and asserting my independence. I just didn’t want to be a pastor – because growing up in a pastor’s home I had come to associate ministry with moving. Leaving one place and going to another, leaving friends and making new ones, leaving the school I knew and going to one that I didn’t know, leaving the familiar for the strange.

When Solomon said there is a time to plant and a time to uproot, he probably had something agricultural in mind. But for me, to “uproot” isn’t something you do to a plant. It’s something you live; you may choose to do it or it may be done to you. It’s a life experience in which you are pulled away from your source of nourishment, strength, even life. This may be a move to new city, the loss of a job, the loss of memory, a death or a divorce. It can happen in so many ways, but what they all have in common is this: being ripped up from anything hurts.

God is a gentle gardener. He doesn’t tear us from the life-giving soil only to let us dry up or languish. Being uprooted means being planted again. The two belong together. The interesting thing about these seasons is their interdependence. You can’t get planted one place without being removed from another. Saying yes to one thing always means saying no to something else. As Frost’s famous poem reminds us, to take one road means another will not be traveled.

Some of you this morning are in a season of being planted, putting down roots as you work hard at your career, raise your family, remodel the kitchen. Others of you are uprooted, not sure what’s next. Like a trapeze artist, you’re in that split second of being totally airborne, letting go of one thing, reaching for the next. It may feel like an eternity, but it’s only a season.

I’ve heard this line attributed to theologian Karl Barth: “Shall we never allow our hands to empty so that we can receive what only empty hands can receive?” That’s a great question to ponder in the “uprooted” season. We don’t like empty hands, but deprivation is a prelude to more grace.

Prayer: God, I will gladly put down roots where I am today, knowing that there may be a season when life is uprooted. In all seasons teach me to live before you open-handed, ready to receive grace in whatever form you choose to give it. Amen.

This Season and the Next

To everything there is a season . . . (Ecc. 3:1)

If you live in North Carolina for very long you quickly realize that life is defined by two seasons. The first is basketball season. To be more precise, ACC basketball season. The second of the two seasons – at least where I lived in Wake County – is tobacco season. As Ecclesiastes says, there is a time to plant and a time to uproot. For four years I marked the season by seeing Richard Jenks on his John Deere tractor, plowing the field across the street from my house.

To my distant and citified observations, tobacco farming was a seasonal endeavor marked by planting (settin’ out) and harvest (putin’ in). I assumed that tobacco growers worked hard in spring and late summer /fall, recuperating from their labor in the cold months. I learned differently when Donny Olive showed me the greenhouse on his farm that sheltered thousands of tiny tobacco plants and supplied growers throughout the state.

Beneath a massive canopy was an expansive array of small plastic trays with little square compartments like the ones you used in the days before ice makers in your freezer. Each little compartment held a tiny tobacco plant, no bigger than the end of my little finger. These plants were carefully nurtured, watered on a schedule, never allowed to get too cold. It became clear to me that the success of what happened in the spring and summer depended upon the success of preparations made in winter. One season was integrally connected to the other and the “tobacco season” was actually happening all the time.

Chances are, the season you’re in right now doesn’t stand alone. If you know joy now, you may know it well because you’ve tasted sorrow. If you’re feeling smothered by sorrow now, past joy may be what you cling to as a source of hope for your future. What’s more – God works year ‘round, and the season you’re in today may well be preparation for a season yet to come, a season not yet available to your imagination.

Here are two questions for you to ponder today: can you identify a past season that somehow prepared you for where you are today? Further, can you see that the present season may in fact be God’s way of preparing you for a season yet to come?

Prayer: Merciful God, I’m thankful that you are always working and that you are faithful in every season of my life. Work in me today by your Spirit to prepare me for whatever you have for me in the coming seasons of my life. Amen.

This Season and the Next

To everything there is a season . . . (Ecc. 3:1)

If you live in North Carolina for very long you quickly realize that life is defined by two seasons. The first is basketball season. To be more precise, ACC basketball season. The second of the two seasons – at least where I lived in Wake County – is tobacco season. As Ecclesiastes says, there is a time to plant and a time to uproot. For four years I marked the season by seeing Richard Jenks on his John Deere tractor, plowing the field across the street from my house.

To my distant and citified observations, tobacco farming was a seasonal endeavor marked by planting (settin’ out) and harvest (putin’ in). I assumed that tobacco growers worked hard in spring and late summer /fall, recuperating from their labor in the cold months. I learned differently when Donny Olive showed me the greenhouse on his farm that sheltered thousands of tiny tobacco plants and supplied growers throughout the state.

Beneath a massive canopy was an expansive array of small plastic trays with little square compartments like the ones you used in the days before ice makers in your freezer. Each little compartment held a tiny tobacco plant, no bigger than the end of my little finger. These plants were carefully nurtured, watered on a schedule, never allowed to get too cold. It became clear to me that the success of what happened in the spring and summer depended upon the success of preparations made in winter. One season was integrally connected to the other and the “tobacco season” was actually happening all the time.

Chances are, the season you’re in right now doesn’t stand alone. If you know joy now, you may know it well because you’ve tasted sorrow. If you’re feeling smothered by sorrow now, past joy may be what you cling to as a source of hope for your future. What’s more – God works year ‘round, and the season you’re in today may well be preparation for a season yet to come, a season not yet available to your imagination.

Here are two questions for you to ponder today: can you identify a past season that somehow prepared you for where you are today? Further, can you see that the present season may in fact be God’s way of preparing you for a season yet to come?

Prayer: Merciful God, I’m thankful that you are always working and that you are faithful in every season of my life. Work in me today by your Spirit to prepare me for whatever you have for me in the coming seasons of my life. Amen.

Mingled Seasons

To everything there is a season . . . (Ecc. 3:1)

For three years I served on the chaplaincy staff of Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. In the first six months of my work there I was the chaplain to the maternity area of the hospital. Whenever I would mention this to people, it usually evoked a smile along with a comment that went something like this: “How nice that you get to work in the happy part of the hospital!”

The comment was understandable. Birth is a miracle, and for most couples it ranks near the top of joy-filled, awe-inspiring moments of life. But it isn’t always this way. Sometimes the miracle of birth is mingled with financial anxieties; the presence of the new baby sometimes presses against an already fragile marriage; the celebration that brings in the entire family also opens the door to stressful dynamics that crop up when the entire family gathers in one place.

Even in the hospital, maternity involves more than a much welcomed and prayed for birth. On the sixth floor of Hoblitzelle Hospital I passed out little white New Testaments and prayed prayers of thanks for healthy babies. Down on the lowest floor of the same building was the special care nursery. There I walked into rooms where couples were reeling from words like “stillborn” or septic phrases like “failure to thrive.” Words came easier upstairs. Silence was often most fitting downstairs.

While Ecclesiastes 3 moves back and forth rhythmically between the varied seasons of life, life’s seasons don’t actually come to us that neatly. The joys and blessings are often mingled. The lines blur between birth and death, between weeping and laughing. It isn’t uncommon to be with a grieving family as they cry one moment and then laugh out loud at some memory or story. The tears call forth the laughter that in turn gives rise to more tears.

The seasons of life do not define life. If they did we’d join Solomon and conclude that life doesn’t make sense. We’re whipsawed between different kinds of experience that bring joy and sorrow. But there is a center, an anchor. The Psalmist used words like fortress, rock, foundation, stronghold. This is God. God transcends the seasons. Remember, every season is under heaven.

Prayer: “Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being praise his Holy name . . . praise the Lord all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the Lord, O my soul” (Psalm 103: 1, 22)

The Poem I Left at Home: For Marnie on Our Tenth Wedding Anniversary

Marnie,

Earlier this morning I was trying to think about what I might write, what one thing begs to be said on this our tenth wedding anniversary. Something about the occasion seems to raise the stakes and put pressure on me and my words. I do this to myself, I know. I’m tempted to think it might be best not to write anything at all. Would silence be preferable to a failed attempt at being profound and poignant? It might be, but I know that such thoughts are wrong because they mean I’m more concerned about being seen as “good” at this, rather than concerned with saying something true to you on this day.

I opted not to write a poem – but I found one that started me thinking about our decade of marriage and the love we’ve nurtured across three states and among two other little people who demand their share of what we need to be giving each other.

The poem was by Wendell Berry (yes, the only poet I’ve actually read) and it was called “The Mad Farmer’s Love Song.” Romantic title, yes? It was a short poem and my intent was to reproduce it here for you. That plan went south once I left the house without the book – a fact that itself has meaning for me; meaning which I hope to share with you in a moment.

The poem basically said that when there is peace in the world and all the work has been done "then I will go down unto my love." And then it added a line that said that said something like, “and I might just go down several times before then.”

Love doesn’t wait for perfect conditions: peace in the world, all the work done, plenty of money in the bank, perfect health. There is something in us that wants all the pieces neatly in place, and then we can give ourselves to the business of loving another person.

But the last line of the poem seems to embrace reality and in doing so it embraces the way love and marriage truly are; we don’t wait for peace in the world and tidy conclusions to all the lose ends and complexities of life. We love now. We love in the midst of laundry and meetings and practices and home-repair. Just this morning you spoke to me of how complicated our days can be. Most of them are – but they are the setting into which the diamond is placed, the gift of life and love that God allows us to share.

On this day that marks our tenth year of marriage I know there is no time for waiting. I also know myself well enough to know how inclined I am to wait and anticipate the turns in life that will free me up to love you better. Maybe that means the kids being older, maybe that means being less distracted by my ambitions. I fear that too often over the past ten years I’ve waited and lost time in loving you as I should.

Leaving the poem at home was probably a good thing. The conditions for writing my thoughts were not what I had planned – not as smooth as I wanted to sound.

But I write for you anyway. This day is moving by quickly, as all the others have since we made our vows; days that have not slowed in the least since we welcomed our Son and moved to North Carolina and welcomed our daughter and moved again to Atlanta and bought our first home and continued to make a life together. Knowing how quickly ten years has passed, there is no time for waiting.

Today I am the “Mad Farmer.” I will not wait for peace in the world and finished tasks and all just right. I will go to you my love several times, often even, before then. I will speak my love to you at the risk of sounding plain. With these words I do so now.

Everything

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1 ESV)

“I haven’t got time for this.”

That’s a reflex line when some inconvenience manages to stick its foot into the door of my plans. I use it for choice moments - when the sound of flapping rubber accompanies the violent shimmy in my car while I’m on the highway; when I wake up with that feeling in my throat that tells me I’m well on my way to a full blown head cold; when my best intentions to be careful with my cup of morning-drive coffee don’t hold up against sudden braking and the subsequent sloshing on my tie. These annoyances, minor though they are, usually get the line: “I don’t have time for this.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1 is one of the most familiar and beautiful lines of poetry in the Old Testament. The rhythm of the language and the profundity of thought endear it to us. But it is a disturbing verse of scripture. In our coziness with the words, the offense of what it says is lost on us. The uneasiness can be attributed to one word: Everything. For everything there is a season. “Everything” encompasses some aspects of life that I typically regard as a mistake or an aberration from God’s plan and purposes.

I can accept that God wills my joy and laughter, my efforts to build up and to plant, my embracing others and making peace - but are my grieving and weeping, my casting away and losses also included in God’s economy? The scripture answers “yes.” There is a season for everything. And everything includes all of those things of which I would readily say, “I don’t have time for this.”

But God has time for them. What’s more, God has reasons for them. This is a hard truth, but one which brings us good news if we’ll hear it. It means that nothing in your life is wasted. Nothing. The realities you woke up to this morning may be a source of joy for you; they may be a source of anguish. Whatever they are, whatever they feel like – they aren’t wasted. To say there is a season for everything means that God ignores nothing.

Prayer: I thank you God that nothing in my life is wasted – even the circumstances that seem like a total waste to me. Teach me to trust you in every season of life. Amen

Satisfaction

A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? (Ecclesiastes 2:24-25).

Some time ago I was to attend a Monday meeting at the church that would include lunch. I’d been to these meetings before and knew that the lunch would be good. Usually we had a sandwich on whole wheat bread along with a serving of fruit.

On this particular Monday I was running a mid-morning errand that took me right by a Krystal. My wife doesn’t care to eat at Krystal, so being alone in the car at this place and at this time presented a rare opportunity for me. It was, as Presbyterians are fond of saying, divine providence. The meeting would not convene for more than an hour and besides, Krystal burgers are so small. This wouldn’t really be a lunch, but a mid-morning “snack.”

I pulled into line at the drive-thru, making my way with great anticipation to the raspy little speaker where I ordered my snack – four Krystals, fries, and a medium diet Coke. The aroma of those warm little burgers was like incense, turning my car into a chapel for junk food lovers. I ate my snack as I drove back to the church.

By the time my lunch meeting rolled around, the fruit and whole wheat bread sandwiches looked pretty lame in light of my mid-morning snack. A perfectly good and healthy lunch was being offered to me, but I didn’t want it. I was full. I had traded a good meal with Christian friends for the greasy processed stuff eaten in the lonely confines of my car. Having filled myself with fast-food, I wasn’t able to enjoy a truly decent meal.

What the world calls “satisfaction” is really more like being full of junk food. It’s a kind of fullness that takes away our appetite for what is best and good. C. S. Lewis is often quoted as saying that God faults us not for wanting too much, but for being satisfied with so little. We glut ourselves on what the world offers, and then find that we have no appetite for God. When we are Solomon-like in obtaining possessions and pleasures, denying ourselves nothing, our hunger for the Holy is quenched.

Real satisfaction comes from God and involves God. Solomon rightly knew that it is good to eat and work and be satisfied – but without God it isn’t possible. So how’s your appetite?

Prayer: God, in my own search for satisfaction, the options around me are so alluring. Cause me to hunger for you today and help me to seek you as the source of true satisfaction in my life.

Restless

. . . My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind (Ecclesiastes 2:10-11).

What we delight in one day, we despise the next. Go figure.

We put in the time and get the degree only to realize that our study earned us a piece of framed gothic script. The real world grades on a different scale. We’re not through with hustling to stay at the head of the class.

We get the dream job and find it’s not so dreamy. After a while we start to look longingly at a different place or a different title. We toy with the resume, casually scan journals and papers for “the next chapter” of our lives. Tuition and mortgage keep us anchored, but a part of us envies Tom Hanks’ character in Cast Away.

The same happens with the things we own. We grow tired of what we have because we’re convinced there’s something better, faster, more improved, better located. Sadly, relationships are not immune. We interpret well worn familiarities as incompatibility. We start believing the lie that someone else is out there who can truly understand and love us. We are restless, literally without rest. Like Solomon, we’re fickle. We take delight in “all that our hands have done” on one day, and then finding those very same things meaningless the next.

The rest we seek, the rest that seems so absent in Ecclesiastes, isn’t found externally. We don’t obtain it by doing something different or going somewhere different or meeting someone new. It’s worth noting that when Jesus said “come to me all who are weary and I will give you rest,” he went on to say clearly that in coming to him we would find rest for the soul (Matt. 11:29).

Rest is a spiritual reality before it is a physical reality. It is an inward condition that manifests itself outwardly – in our demeanor, in our work, in our families. Maybe successful people aren’t the ones who work hard, but the ones who can work hard and all the while be at rest.

Prayer: Gracious God, remind me that nothing will happen today that will catch you by surprise. I praise you that are sufficient for my every need and every yearning. Teach me to rest in you. Amen.

The iPod Universe

“I acquired male and female singers . . . “ (Ecclesiastes 2:8b).

I’ve not found much about Solomon’s life that I share in common with him. That is, until I came across a phrase in Ecc. 2:8. Solomon writes that he acquired male and female singers. I’ve done that too. I don’t buy them or hire them. I download them. You see, this past April I became an inhabitant of the iPod universe.

For my birthday Marnie gave me a sleek, black video iPod. It’s an amazing piece of technology. This narrow, flat metallic box will hold thousands of songs. It not only holds songs, it plays feature length movies and allows me to download episodes of TV shows I might have missed. I literally hold a world of entertainment in my hand. With a click on iTunes, I can acquire male and female singers – thousands of them!

But here’s the thing about my iPod: I’ve noticed that it cuts me off from some of the greatest things that happen in my life. I like my iPod, I just can’t find the best time to use it. I can’t listen to my iPod and read a book. I can’t listen to my iPod and study my Bible or write devotionals. I can’t listen to my iPod and be a decent member of my family. I thought about taking my iPod to one of John’s baseball games – but then I felt a little uneasy about appearing aloof, sitting with the other parents with my ears plugged up as if to say, “please don’t bother me.”

The solitary nature of the iPod universe comes close to replicating Solomon’s life experience. Having a world of entertainment in the palm of my hand isn’t as great as it sounds. Being cocooned in a world of self-selected music and entertainment quickly looses its appeal when enjoying the music keeps me from enjoying my life. I imagine Solomon with his own choir and orchestra. He quickly found out that the best music falls flat when the sound of applause comes from only one set of hands.

Solomon says he denied himself nothing that his eyes desired – and that precisely was his problem. When nothing is denied nothing is truly possessed. Having 7000 songs in your hand doesn’t match the joy of hearing the handful of songs that are truly special to you. You can be King in your iPod universe, but the collection of singers means little when your universe has a population of one.

Prayer: God, for your good gifts of music and dance, of food and laughter, make me truly thankful. Teach me to receive these gifts in order to share them with others. Amen.

You Look Like You Could Use A Vocation

“I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards . . . I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me.” (Ecclesiastes 2:4, 9)

Our culture assumes that work has curative powers. It’s good for what ails us, especially if what ails us is an inner emptiness or some kind of invisible bruise on the soul. When we grieve, we throw ourselves into our work. When things aren’t going so well at home, we throw ourselves into our work, creating longer hours at the office. When we feel anxiety that others are advancing while we’re marking time, we throw ourselves into our work in the hope that our time will come and we will one day become greater than all those who came before us.

Solomon, in his own quest for meaning in life, coupled his no-holds-barred pleasure seeking with an intense work ethic. He built structures, acquired land and managed an expansive staff (2:4-7). These are worthy endeavors. Hard work is valued in scripture. In the New Testament, Paul urged that those who won’t work shouldn’t be allowed to eat.

But work for work’s sake, or for the sake of wealth and accomplishment, proves empty. After reflecting on his impressive career, all that his hands had done, Solomon himself comes back to his familiar refrain. It was meaningless, a chasing after the wind (2:11).

This is when someone needed to say to Solomon, “you look like you could use a vocation.” He had plenty of work, plenty of wealth, and name recognition that could have landed any endorsement contract in the known world. But the work lacked meaning because it had somehow become disconnected from God. Like Solomon, we don’t crave work as much as we do meaningful work - a vocation.

The most significant truth about our work is that before we go to a job, any job, God is already working. God works in the world and chooses to use us in that work. God works through us in offices and schools, in courtrooms and labs, in retail stores and restaurants. All over Atlanta God is at work – and today, as you do your work, you are invited to be a part of the work God is doing.

Prayer: Gracious God, throughout this day, as I do my work, remind me of my vocation. Use me and the tasks I’m involved in as a means of reflecting your character to those around me. Amen.

The Limits of Pleasure

“I said in my heart, ‘come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” (Ecc. 2:1).

“The happiest place on earth.” That’s the line Disney wants you to know by heart when you think of their theme parks and resorts. Since 2004 my family has made three trips to Disney. Yes, we like it. But “happiest place on earth?” I beg to differ.

The first trip we took was in July. I know . . . not an optimal time of year for walking all over the magic kingdom (what were we thinking?). The July heat literally seared an image into my memory. As I stood in line with my own tired and sometimes complaining children, I looked at the mass of humanity waiting in line with me. Remarkably, given that we were all there at the happiest place on earth, no one looked particularly happy. I saw plenty of folks who looked exhausted and mildly irritated. Fanning themselves or holding those water bottles with little motorized fans mounted on top, far too many of them (us!) looked miserable.

What I saw in the lines at Disney shouldn’t surprise anyone. It’s a truth that we’ve known for a very long time. The deliberate pursuit of pleasure rarely yields true pleasure. It is possible to be surrounded by a vast menu of amusements and stimulants and attractions provided for our enjoyment – and yet never experience joy. Sure, we can manufacture an occasional adrenaline rush, a moment of jolting surprise or outright fear, but soon the ride ends and we get in another line with our fans and water bottles and our quickly eroding patience.

Amusement isn’t joy and pleasure won’t lead us to purpose. That’s what Solomon learned as he indulged in wine and laughter. This doesn’t mean we avoid or despise life’s pleasures, never cracking a smile, never going to the party. It simply means we will not expect more of those things than they can deliver. We see amusement as a shadow of real joy, pointing us to something deeper and further in.

Maybe we can hear Solomon pointing us far beyond his time to Jesus, the one who came that our joy might be full and complete. Even a day that doesn’t look very fun can still bring you joy. What would it mean for you to truly “enjoy” this day?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, fill me with your Spirit today so that I may know your joy in the details of my own life. Make me truly and deeply thankful for the pleasures that this day might bring. Amen.

Lifestorming

I wanted to see what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of their lives (Ecc. 2:3b NIV).

Tom Kelley is the general manager of IDEO – a design company specializing in product development and innovation. In his book, The Art of Innovation, Kelley devotes a chapter to “the perfect brainstorm.” Brainstorming is a chance for teams to “blue sky” ideas in the quest for the solutions or new direction. Among the several characteristics of “the perfect brainstorm” is the physicality of brainstorming. Kelley explains that the best brainstormers often practice “bodystorming.” This means that “we act out certain current behavior / usage patterns and see how they might be altered.”

That’s what Solomon seems to be doing in chapter 2 of Ecclesiastes. He’s ransacking his life experience, looking for something enduring satisfaction and meaning. Solomon is “lifestorming.” The words of Ecclesiastes 2 do not come to us from a mere philosopher who anguishes over abstract questions and debates answers with other philosophers. No, this book is life-tested, physical and tactile. Solomon runs after life like children chase fireflies at summer dusk. He collects one experience after another, savors it and examines it, extracts from it whatever he can discover.

The quest for meaning isn’t something that we figure out first and then live into. Usually, in life’s classroom, we have to raise our hands without being certain we’ve got the right answers. Every single day we have to get out of bed and live. Our confusion or boredom will not exempt us from this daily requirement. Sometimes our “lifestorming” yields wrong answers and dead-ends.

But sometimes – as with a perfect brainstorm – something clicks. The grab-bag of ideas sparks one thought that becomes transformational. In “lifestorming” the lived experiences may lead to that same kind of moment. It’s a moment we often call conversion.

Prayer: God, today I want to embrace my life eagerly and thankfully. In every lived experience of this day, work by your Spirit to teach me and guide me to the life you intend for me to have. Amen.

Your Legacy

“The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come” (Ecc. 1:11 NRSV)

A couple of years ago my grandmother came down from Greensboro N.C. for a summer visit. On an August afternoon we spent time driving around Atlanta – the city of her birth – and she pointed out sites of significance in our family. It was a typical oven-like August, and under most circumstances I would have eagerly sought any excuse to avoid short car trips, interrupted by walking around in the heat, followed by another short car trip that never allowed the AC to get chilly. But these were not normal circumstances. My grandmother, aging and weakening, knows things about my family that I don’t know. She remembers things I’ve never heard about. It was a day of new insights and revelations. I loved every thick hot moment of it.

Not far from Peachtree Presbyterian there’s a little Methodist church on Powers Ferry Road, Sardis Methodist Church. One of the stops that afternoon was in the cemetery that occupies significant acreage next to the small building. That day my grandmother showed me a gravestone marked ROSSER. That’s her name, my mother’s maiden name. My maternal great-grandfather was a member there and was involved in paying off the note on the building that currently stands on Powers Ferry Road.

The writer of Ecclesiastes laments that “there is no remembrance of men of old.” In a way he’s right. How is it that I managed to drive by that church for years without guessing that I had even the remotest connection to the place? Three short generations had rinsed my great grandfather from the canvass of my consciousness.

And yet, there has been all along a legacy. Though unrecognized, it is no less real or formative. The generation of ROSSER that established a little church on Powers Ferry road is not remembered by me in the truest sense, but that generation is by no means escaped or truly forgotten. Our lives are cabled by unseen continuities and connections. The “men of old” are always with us.

By someone, in some way, you will be remembered. Your name and accomplishments may not belong to the ages, but the life you live now will somehow be wielded like a sculptors hammer, shaping another life. What will your legacy be?

Prayer: God of all ages, work in me as you see fit shaping a life worthy of being remembered, if only for a short while. Whatever there may be in my life that lasts into another generation, may it bring you glory. Amen.

More of the Same

All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecc. 1:8-9).

To those of us who are not kings, that a king could be bored is hard to believe.

The words of Solomon strike me in much the same way my children’s words do when they say to me “I’m bored.” I usually reply, “you’ve got to be kidding; how can you be bored?” And yet, kids with computers and cable TV and Nintendo play stations get bored. Grown ups with comfortable homes and beautiful families and well paying jobs get bored. Nothing new here; Kings get bored. That’s what we learn from Ecclesiastes.

Leo Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina, wrote that boredom is “the desire for desires.” That captures something of the inner deadness that boredom is. The heart beats but never races. The eyes see but never dance in what they behold. The mouth speaks words but rarely to truly say anything.

Thus was Solomon afflicted, as are so many today. In Ecclesiastes the boredom is described as a numbing repetition. What has been will be again. Solomon observed the movements of the sun, the wind, the streams that flow to the ocean. We observe the same traffic patterns in our morning commute, the same scheduled meetings, the routines of carpool and laundry.

Our first response is a change of pace, a new variable in the equation of our lives. This might mean a vacation or a career move. But over time even the new element becomes familiar and well worn. What we need is the capacity to see into the ordinary repeated parts of life and discern the presence and purposes of God. Boredom is what we get when God is bleached out of an otherwise wonderful life. Absent God, the gift of ordinary things, of routines and practices, becomes burdensome.

Try this: Look for God in something familiar. Identify a person in your world with whom you interact every day or every week. Determine to learn one new thing about that person’s life.

Prayer: God, through this day and all of its familiar routines, help me to detect your presence. Remind me that you are at work in the most ordinary details of the most ordinary day. Help me to live this day in eager expectation. Amen.