The Immutability of Love

I have been plugging along in 1 Corinthians the last month, moving slow, as typical.  In the past, 1 Corinthians has been a high point for me, but this time through I've had fewer highs.  Maybe it's where I am in my own life, maybe it's that I am understanding the book more accurately and less subjectively or emotionally.hodgepodge of things that it's impressed me as being a catch all of sorts...a letter Paul perhaps knew was necessary but didn't look forward to writing.  It's a "your kids need to snap back into shape what are you going to do?" kind of moment.

The church at Corinth was behaving badly--disorderly.  The city of Corinth was a mess to begin with, characterized by sexual liberty, rudeness, division, arguments, and pride.  We don't have the other half--what the church said to Paul--but from the context, we can hope that they were earnestly seeking His will, how to resolve and address some rather complex but common issues.

Whether in 1st century AD or now, these types of issues may change in particulars but not in nature.  There is still division within the Church--some divisions petty in nature and others worth delineating. Regardless of the specific issues or seriousness of those issues, Paul's overarching lens is love.  It's that basic:

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn't love others, I would be nothing.
If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing.  1 Corinthians 13:1-3 NLT

Now, basic is different than easy.  Love is not easy, it's the most difficult of things.  It necessitates all of the qualities that follow this passage in the famous "love chapter."  But, love is the North Star to it all, the abiding piece, the one thing among all the rest that is solid, good as gold, even better than gold.  A few verses later, Paul clarifies that other qualities and giftings are incomplete and will be done away with, but love will not:

Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!
Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture!
But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
1 Corinthians 13:8-10, NLT

Different Seasons

We switched our beach timeshare week this year so that Grace could join us.  Last year her AB Tech class conflicted, and our beach week just wasn't the same.   So here we are at Atlantic Beach, NC in May as opposed to September.  After 20 years of vacationing in this exact spot each September, it's striking to see the differences in May.

Usually the season is ending, the businesses are weary of the tourist grind and looking forward to the rest that comes with cooler weather and the slower paced off-season life.  At the stores, beach accessories are well picked through with many on clearance.  The mosquitoes and other insects are ubiquitous at dusk and dawn.  The ocean air is breezy but consistently hot.

A rainy morning at the beach, good for contemplation...

May beach air is still breezy but cooler.  The rain we are experiencing this morning is certainly not one of the hurricane-season fronts that settle in solidly each September.  This rain is more like a friendly acquaintance stopping by for a spell without wearing you out.  Grace, our rain lover, and Rose, her reluctant companion, are out walking the shore in the misty rain.  Good for them.  A rainy beach holds its own kind of beauty.

The stores are bursting-- glutted with every category of shiny beach merchandise, ready to roll, gearing up instead of down as Memorial Day approaches.  The local business community reminds me of teachers in the fall--with everything before them, re-energized, friendly, prepared and willing.

We all have the rhythm of our seasons, don't we?  Some communities, like college towns and beach spots, move to the rhythms of the school season or the waves of passing tourists.  In Asheville, we particularly feel the migration of the Floridians arrive in the spring and the leaf tourists in the fall, but more and more, it feels busy, especially downtown, more often than not.

Individually, each month, the majority of women are pulled by biological rhythms, their hormonal cycles affecting not just their physical comfort and mood, but often ushering in days of vulnerability and uncertainty.  At least for me, I feel as if my walls are broken down each month during this time. Small things pierce deeper.  I have to "talk to myself" more, remind myself that my cycle is "just a passing season" too.

If we have school-aged children, we dance to the rhythms of the school year.  Homeschool rhythms may be slightly more flexible, but they determine the pace of things too.  Many businesses have yearly rhythms as well---retail stores gaining power as they peak before Christmas, accountants busy in the spring, each trade has its own seasons.

Then, there are the seasons of life--birth, young children, teenage years, then college into adulthood, early family, empty nester, retirement age, and the age of renewed increasing dependence.  We feel life particularly unjust when these seasons are prematurely rattled or disrupted.  We lament the fast passage of time, the relentless march of one season into the next.  If only the seasons would linger, we say...

So we move through these many seasons, most of the time only lightly aware of them.  We feel them most at their edges.  We notice the sometimes striking transitions from one to the next.  Sometimes the transitions are blurrier: when was the last time I picked up Rose?   When was the last time I nursed?  When did they stop calling me mommy and start calling me mom?  Perhaps we are happiest when least aware of the seasons, just getting about enjoying whatever season we find ourselves in.

Some of us are clearly better at adjusting to new seasons than others.  Some feel every bump as they shift, while others are more even-keeled as they plod on.  Some of us can even get stuck in a particular season; life moves on, but we continue to live in whatever season felt most comfortable, most like home.

Sometimes I wonder about seasons in Heaven.  I think of Isaiah 11--the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and goat, cow and bear...the disruption of the "natural cycle" of food webs and the end of sorrow and death.  I'm glad our cat will no longer be bringing us baby birds, but I'm not sure what the new creation will mean for plant life and and the four seasons.  In Narnia it was "always winter and never Christmas," and I can't image being stuck in one season in Heaven feeling healthy either.  All seasons bring their beauty, each making the next sweeter and building up each other.  I can't imagine the seasons being complete without such progression.

CS Lewis and his brother Warren delighted in the small pleasures and charm of each season. After reading many of C.S. Lewis' letters which often speak of the seasons and nature, I found the same love and attention to nature running through his brother Major Warren Lewis' diaries.

They walked often and enjoyed the changing landscapes.

Some of my favorite writings in this regard reveal keen observations of the weather and the detailed nuances of each season.

Here are two particularly special passages from Warren Lewis' diaries:

"I enjoyed the walk in gentle steady autumn rain, smoke curling up slowing from the cottages, and the patter of the rain on the still brown trees: some people find this sort of thing depressing, but I don't:  the fact of the matter is that unless one's liver is out of order, no sort of weather is depressing unless it is physically uncomfortable; and (though few people agree with me here) the country is beautiful at all seasons of the year."  -Major Warren Lewis, Brothers and Friends, Tuesday, 7th October 1930

And another while he was based at Aldershot, a town in Hampshire England known as "Home of the British Army":

"But when I was passing just such a place the other evening I took shelter under a bush from a flurry of snow; as it passed over a low gleam of setting sun flashed out across a little level heath and lit a row of tall beech trunks dazzling white against background of dull green.  The beauty of it took my breath away, and as I walked on it occurred to me that the real asset of life is that beauty never dies, and is to be found anywhere and under any circumstances--even in Aldershot."  -Sunday March 1st, 1931 

You are God's Field

Christopher Lloyd's Great Dixter, front meadow, Northiam, UK

The Bible is rich with agricultural imagery.  Often I think of the images while out in the garden, pulling this or planting that.   The Parable of the Sower is a particularly deep well that comes to mind again and again, but there are many others as well.

Currently, I'm reading 1 Corinthians, one of my favorite books of the Bible--and not because of "the love chapter" (1 Cor 13) either which I feel has been mangled and waved around until it feels limp and lifeless to me.

But, here, at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, Paul addresses division and jealousy within this church, a congregation beset by man-centered factions and petty distinctions.  Paul strives to put their focus back on God.  Why is this such a hard focus to maintain?  We lose our way so easily....

For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not being merely human?
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.
For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.                              -1 Corinthians 3:4-9

We are God's field.  Note that it's a collective concept.  Often, I'm tempted to diminish the corporate aspects of His Church, but clearly that's the vision here---not individual plants but the field.  Also, the focus is not on who does what.

We struggle with these principles in our household daily:

"That's not my dish.  Why should I have to pick it up?"

"I didn't leave that towel on the floor."

The trashcan is over-flowing, the rug remains crooked, the clean dishwasher sits there, unless I empty and straighten, or directly direct...which is tiring and adds a sense of weariness to the atmosphere.  

Is this a whisp of Paul's frustration--always having to redirect, refocus, reframe the larger goal as they became distracted with the pieces?

Dividing Out Seedlings

Every time I set out seedlings, I feel sorry for the weak ones.  I long to be a Darwinian-minded spirit who has no trouble with "survival of the fittest," quickly tossing aside the stragglers, the weak-necked, the limp.  But instead, I find a spot in the corner for them.  I tuck them in and wish them well.

Whether right or wrong, I've always had this sensitivity.  Sometimes I hope it's a sign of compassion for the weak.  Other times, it feels like indecisiveness, a wishy-washy inability to make "hard" decisions.

I have this same problem with the semi-invasive plants.  Why pull the mint so ruthlessly?  They make great tabolui, tea, and salads--who doesn't love mint?  But mint is a bully my mind argues back.  And why remove every last clump of the sedum--nothing else grows so well in the crooks of rocks.  So, I let a few stay...

I wouldn't have made the cut with Joshua conquering the Promised Land---there would have been far too many stragglers.

I am a first-world wanna be farmer at best---feeling sad for weak seedlings and such. When your dinner table depends primarily upon the output of your garden, I think the seedlings fall easily to the wayside.  I've worked the land next to a local farmer, and she has no such issues.  It's just routine.

You can tell that 48 weeks out of the year, I buy my tomatoes at the store.

John 4:34

Driving down Patton yesterday, I saw John 4:34 on a license plate.  David noticed it first, then looked it up out of curiosity:

Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work." -John 4:34

Intrigued, I caught a glimpse of an older man with a ball cap before the car pulled ahead and was gone.  Nice, I thought. Common man.  Straightforward verse.  I'm typically not a fan of Christianease and bumper stickers, but I liked his choice.

I like the plate because it shines a light on Jesus and his mission.  And it speaks of our role, our mission too.

First line of the Westminster Catechism:

What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and fully enjoy him forever.

Flowers and vegetables

One goal of my 2016 garden is to blur the boundaries between the flower garden and the vegetable garden.  Thus, I've planted broccoli starts next to the snapdragons and bachelors buttons.  But, I'm finding it's easier to work vegetables into flowers than flowers into vegetable spaces.  Vegetables like beans and tomatoes beg for rows--its seems an artistic shame to sacrifice flowers to such a linear approach.  They end up feeling like an add-on, an afterthought.

Yes, I know marigolds deter insects, but such a calculating relationship seems a disgrace to both ends.  I'm prejudice against marigolds for exactly this season--they are always approached very practically, planted sequentially along the rows.  So sad.  Last summer when walking, I saw a majestic sweep of marigolds in a huge bed, all by themselves.  That's the way they meant to be---beautiful in their own right.

In contrast, the vegetables sneak into the flower beds quite nicely--broccoli is so obviously a flower, lettuce softens garden edges, and wispy herbs like dill round out the coneflowers and pansies.  I've planted romaine along the front path and carrots next to the daisies.

I think the fancy term for this is "polyculture," meanwhile I'm just drawn to the mixture of texture, shape, and color.

Taking God at His Word

A quick entry here--I have been mulling this observation from the devotional Streams in the Desert:

"Miss Havergal has said: "Every year, I might almost say every day, that I live, I seem to see more clearly how all the rest and gladness and power of our Christian life hinges on one thing; and that is, taking God at His word, believing that He really means exactly what He says, and accepting the very words in which He reveals His goodness and grace, without substituting others or altering the precise modes and tenses which He has seen fit to use."  -March 24th

Taking God at His word--how often do I truly do this?  How much more often do I substitute others or alter the precise modes and tense as she suggests?

What does it mean to take God at His word?  It's a heady concept, but I do have some initial thoughts:

1.  I think it means trusting that whatever He is doing in my life today---though seemingly inconvenient, trivial, or unfair---is exactly what is necessary.  It is what I need, not something other.

2. It requires faith that He will work through my circumstances, not just in spite of them (though He may chose to do that too.)

3. It requires that I lean into my spirit and The Spirit.

The Ocean of Things Past

I've been delving into the family genealogy again, which is always a huge time sucker.  People seem to be either fascinated by their family history or largely indifferent.  It's one way or the other. Depending upon how you perceive the past and family, our heritage can either be inconsequential or profoundly significant.

The view from my 2nd great-grandparent's home looking toward the massive grain elevators that line the Buffalo waterfront.

The indifferent line of reasoning goes something like this: Why bother so deeply with the details of those who lived before us?  What's past is past. Their particulars don't impact my life and who I am today. Plus, it's kind of morbid. Ultimately, I am related to everyone if we go far back enough.  If I am descended from person A or B, so what?  Why does it matter?

Then I think about our present culture---how masses of us make a pastime of following the minutest details of celebrity lives or the various waves of pop culture that wash over us.  Is that fascination more relevant? Is the trajectory of our ancestor's lives less? If you are a person of the Christian faith, the first chapter of Matthew would argue no, as Matthew carefully traces generation after generation after generation unto Christ.

 But, that's just one voice in a larger historical choir. One of my favorite quotes hangs from our kitchen cabinets:

“Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses his past and is dead for the future."     -Euripides 480-406BC

Like Euripides, I believe there is a critical bond between the past, the present and the future. To neglect or forsake the individual links is to lose the story and scope of the whole.  And, in sharp contrast to celebrity voyeurism, genealogical voyeurism helps us gain perspective on our present lives.

Norris family immigration: NY Passenger Lists, 20 September 1851, Empire Queen, Liverpool to New York

Admittedly, I sometimes question the relevance of the work too--especially when my children swirl around me doing this or that, wondering how I can sustain such intense interest in obscure details--so many dates and graves--1865 not 1867, Leathy or Letha Geer, Spiers/Spires/Spyres, who cares? It can be tedious and seemingly insignificant work--kind of like pursuing my writing--ha!

David asked me yesterday casually, "So is this your hobby?"  I told him "I suppose so," though to categorize it as a hobby makes it seem light.  I find it anything but light.

For me, the process is emotionally heavy--at least if you are sensitive to the details of so many lives that pass before you.  I feel the heft of the real people I'm sifting through.   They are not abstract details, but flesh and blood people, just like you and me-people that lived, breathed, loved, and ultimately passed from this earth.  Repeatedly, it strikes me that there are so many many people, many more of them than us.  It's easy to minimize them because they wait silently beneath the ground, but make no mistake, we are vastly outnumbered.

Once you push into the generations, it's amazing how fast the names move--once past the surf of the first and second generations, it becomes less about one specific name or line, less about particular people you remember from childhood and more about the sweeping passage of times and lives.  The ocean of family history opens wide at times and calls.  The farther out you sail, the more thrilling the adventure, but the more necessary it becomes to document the journey and chart a stable course back to the shore.  Otherwise you are just lost at sea.

The research becomes a study in people, in lives, in choices and consequences, in unexpected twists, the tale of bad genes or of good ones, of loose commitments and failed ventures, of difficult roads and hard labor.  The lessons? Some acquiesce, others endure.  The choice is sometimes theirs and sometimes not.

Parenting Teens

Vivian Maier, September 18, 1962

Years ago I remember reading a parenting book that concluded that the teenage years are like the unwinding of a yo-yo. Everything that the parents have "wound" for the first ten or so years unravels for better or worse during this time.

The principle: there is a window of maximum investment for maximum impact.

This is true in the plant world as well--yes, you can grow basil in a sunroom through winter, and you can plant lettuce in July, but there is an ideal season--a range of temperature, precipitation, and growing conditions when things are easier, when your plants are most receptive. Although you can grow a plant outside of these parameters, the work will be harder and your efforts ultimately less successful.

There is an ideal season for gardening and an ideal season of influence in the lives of our children.

With our children now 11, 14, and 16, I suspect most of the foundational growing is past. Don't misunderstand, there is still much more work ahead--much unknown that humbles me, but I suspect most of the "winding" has passed.

The season has shifted, requiring a different kind of work, a more subtle type of tending. We continue to water and stake, we ward off the invasive insects and pluck out weeds, but much of the work must transfer to the plant itself now.   The root systems should be mostly established, and the plant needs to bear weight, to take on height and heft.

It's a different kind of tending---one I'm not sure I'm good at.  Wiping noses and giving time-outs seems straightforward and inviting in retrospect.  This teenage work is muddier, not as cute.  And I feel my growing age--I am all-at-once wearier, my edges and limitations clearer.

And what will grow from what's been planted? God alone knows. I can only hope.

I do know that what grows is somewhat different than my early hopes from their childhood days: not all bad, not all good, certainly less ideal, more real--yes, just different.  Very human. They are surprisingly turning out to be imperfect creatures like the rest of us.  Why is this even remotely surprising?  As if my children would not bear the same frailties and frustrations of those who conceived them?

Unfolding, unraveling, unwinding...

We watch and pray. We listen and guide. We advise and remind. We encourage and gently admonish. We point to Him and His ways.  The need is more and more apparent...

It is a mostly a long-suffering, gradual kind of letting go. Some days, I long to completely release all at once, like a balloon released to the sky, to be free of the responsibility entirely, to call an end to the work, free to embrace whatever season comes next.  But this is just more romantic idealism-- an illusion---we never will or can let go entirely.  My father was fond of noting, "Your children are always your children, no matter how old..."

Other days I find myself grabbing on with full force, tenderly winding whatever string is left on the yoyo, embracing the tension, wishing for more string, holding tight to Indian summer of their childhood...

Admittedly, I'm not so great at "in-betweens," months like March that are neither here nor there--half spring, half winter, with weather that can't make up its mind--a gently sunny day, followed by one of cold winds and even flurries.  I much prefer the consistency of May weather...I feel variable and vulnerable enough without help from the elements, from the emotional storms of teenage life.

I suspect women feel this tugging more than men, and perhaps even more particularly mothers who homeschool, as we have chosen to make an entire career out of this growing....

Grace shared this Steinbeck quote with me awhile back:

“Women can change better’n a man,” Ma said soothingly. “Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.”“Man, he lives in jerks-baby born an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a jerk-gets a farm and looses his farm, an’ that’s a jerk. Woman, its all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain’t gonna die out. People is goin’ on-changin’ a little, maybe, but goin’ right on.” -Ma Joad, Grapes of Wrath

So, women adapt. Sometimes the adapting results in a train-wreck. Sometimes it goes better and feels right. I adapt to their growing independence, to stepping back a bit, to trusting in what has been sown, to fostering and facilitating whatever will grow...

In the final analysis, it's all His seed anyway.  I didn't knit them together, He did.  At my very best, I am a hopeful handmaiden, a diligent garden tender.  At my worst, I'm yet another imperfect human, frustrated by myself, birthed by another imperfect human, frustrated with themselves.

We remain frustrated and limited--there's no changing that, at least not in this world. But, the good piece is that this frustration can lead us to the foothills of His immovable mountains of mercy.  His mercy and love toward both us and our children is infinite.

He's doesn't demand perfection from us or our children, just relationship. He loves us while we are imperfect---as we love our limping children--but with an even higher love.

Yesterday was a bad day...

Yesterday was a bad day.  Though I know bad days will come, I hate when they ambush me so completely.

Because afterwards, I am a double fool---a fool for the sin and a fool for not knowing the signs, preventing the overflow, for not initiating damage control.

Yesterday was one of those days when all the yucky pieces of me spilled out everywhere, with abandon.  It's never pretty.  Tim Keller suggests that most of us would rather be exposed physically, running down the street naked, than have God see our rotten naked hearts.

My naked heart is a great discouragement to me.

Paul told it like it was, is, will be...until I made made complete in Him:

"For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 

For I do not understand my own actions. 

For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate."   -Romans 7:14-15 

I do the very thing I hate. And, I hate that I do the very thing I hate.  But I still do it.

Square one.  I am right back at it.

Walking in early spring--consider the marsh marigolds

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin..."                       -Matthew 6:28

As with the rest of Asheville, Rose and I have been getting out more this week with the warmer weather.  Yesterday I walked and she roller skated one of our favorites--Reed Creek Greenway which runs alongside Broadway and Montford.  We cross Broadway, skirt UNCA's Botanical Gardens and then connect up with their Glen's Creek Greenway to Merrimon at Luella's Barbecue then back.  I think it's about three miles total, a nice jaunt.

Rose is learning to use the rollerskates she got for Christmas, so yesterday we stopped often.  Along the bank of Glen's Greek, there was a particularly picturesque section scattered with what we initially thought were dandelions.  But, we quickly realized they were something else.   There were also clumps of daffodils sprinkled through; we've recently begun to call these "Daffo-down-dillys" after reading Secret Garden.  We love fun names. Perhaps the daffodil clusters were remnants of old homesteading activity.  I've read that they last generation after generation, long after homes are gone.  Or maybe the bulbs relocated after washing down the creek during a storm.

I remember reading in some local history that Glen's Creek was once very polluted and smelly.  Now this creek and the greenway are mostly well-maintained.  It's particularly inviting where it runs through the Botanical Gardens.  Here it is shallow and wide, with large rocks to rest and linger.   We often see parents with young children wading there.  Yesterday there was an enclave of hippy-mamas picnicking on the grass nearby.
Ah, Asheville, ever keeps things interesting.

On the return leg, we stopped by the Botanical Gardens Gift Store in hopes of identifying the shiny yellow flower growing all along Glen Creek's length.  Ever the shopper,  Rose was motivated more by the "gift store" aspect than the identification, but you catch more flies with honey.

Unfortunately, the woman at the Botanical Gardens gift store had no clue or interest in the flower (ironic, but sadly unsurprising).  Instead, she awkwardly directed us to a series of large posters that catalog the various flowers in the garden family by family.   Asters, orchids, fascinating to me--not so much Rose--in the end, no matches.

Rose found a pencil made out of a twig, and I eventually tracked down the correct identification in one of the field guide books there.  For the record, I believe it to be a variant of a marsh marigold---caltha palustius L.  As often happens, Rose and I waged battle over her latest hope of purchase, the twig pencil.  I won the skirmish, but the fallout was covert sulking.  I stopped to enthusiastically inform the gift shop lady that we had finally figured out the flower--marsh marigold--but she still had no interest, just polite but blank eyes, a pat "oh, good."

I've thought through this before---are my expectations too high?  Does it really matter if we know the flower's name?  Why are some humans so eager to categorize and label and others could care less.  Is it some kind of latent desire of dominion (Adam named the animals) or the beginning of a journey to better understand something?

Certainly, we can enjoy a nameless flower or bird. Often these finds are more intriguing for the not-knowing.   They lend an air of discovery to things, as if we are among the first to notice.

There is also an enormous educational lesson in teaching curiosity---teaching children and ourselves to slow down, ask questions, and wonder about the world around us--in this case, a flower.  It forces us to notice the details: kidney leaf shape, nine petals not five, shiny petals, fuzzy center thing, and what's that part called again?  It initiates a mental and sometimes literal dialogue.

Next we were thinking more precisely about the time of year (early spring) and growing conditions (sandy soil, near a stream). Quick research this morning even brought a wisp of Latin into things as "palustris" translates to "swampy, marshy, or of wet places."  Yes, they flourish happily by the stream.

This morning, I learned that if I were a bee, I would see the yellow marsh marigold as purple and yellow because the upper portions of the petals appear as ultraviolet "bee purple" to them. This could lead us into a study of the light spectrum, of the differences in color and color perception.  Because I read an article about dandelions as important early spring pollinators last week, I could also teach that the marsh marigold is important to insects in this regard.

Some people find this type of teaching too unquantifiable, messy, or even sideways energy.  But, I've found many of our brightest educational moments in stopping to wonder, in following the muddy path of serendipitous curiosity.  I often remind myself that I am modeling a way of  seeing, of learning,  of being curious and engaged.  The best learning is not isolated chunks of processed knowledge distributed in a classroom and regurgitated for a test, but is interconnected to the larger world and stems from a sense of wonder---that leads to a question---that leads to research---that leads to more questions, more wonder:

To see what is in very front of us--to be present today, to not have blank eyes.

Job

Briggs has been reading the book of Job, so it's wandered into our conversations lately.  This morning he commented how full of himself Job was in chapter 29 when he finally vents his frustration and grief upon his friends and God.  He referenced this passage:

"When I went out to the gate of the city, when I prepared my seat in the square, the young men saw me and withdrew, and the aged rose and stood; the princes refrained from talking and laid their hand on their mouth; the voice of the nobles was hushed, and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth.  -Job 29:7-10

As sometimes (perhaps even often) happens, Briggs and I see a passage differently.  In this case, I agree more with the perspective that Job's reminiscences are yes, perhaps slightly inflated, but mainly a romantic longing for the better, sweeter days of his past.  I don't think he's full of hubris as much as nostalgia. To me, this fits Job's stellar character--a man described as upright in the best ways, a man who made the hard choices and generally held strong.

In contrast, Briggs feels Job is spewing out a stew of pent up vanity---the vanity and self-accolation all men are capable of when pushed to their limit, even the best.  And maybe it doesn't have to be one or the other; surely, man is full of conflicting aims and perceptions--a hot mess of good intentions and bad executions.  If we are honest with ourselves, even our intentions are suspect at times.

On another Job musing, I came across a great quote this week that noted that Job held his own until his friends showed up.  Ha!  I thought that funny, sad, and unfortunately at times, true.  I suspect we all are guilty of saying stupid things when trying to relate to our friends in their sufferings. Walk a mile first, as they say.  It's much easier to be a bad friend than a good one.  For the above reasons, I like this too:

A wise word, though I hesitate to propagate LDS sources.

The bottom line is although I hate the suffering of Job, I'm thankful for his faithful account. I'm thankful for the record of his troubles, his obtuse friends, his outbursts, his raw outrage at the hand God dealt him.   In one sense, it's true--we are all dealt seemingly uneven hands--some appear much better than others. Some strike us as particularly unjust.  And yes, we know that in the final estimation, God doesn't owe any of us anything.  He's God after all.

All the same, I find great comfort in knowing that God can handle my temper tantrums---that He's strong and present in the thick of the thickest difficulties.  That He's God.  Somehow that's enough.

Knowing more...seeing farther

O Jerusalem, Greg Olsen, oil on canvas

Entering into John 13 and the subsequent tumble of Christ's final days, I'm fascinated by the fixed purposefulness of his actions.  Earlier on, Luke tells us that  Jesus "steadfastly set his face toward Jerusalem." (Luke 9:51)  He knows the path before him.  He's ready.  In striking contrast, his disciples are not---working in the dark, oblivious, trying to make sense of the events in medias res, in the very moment.  It's such a handicap.

Our role as parents is strangely similar in that the adult knowledge that we possess--ours won from hard-edged experience rather than omniscience---always trumps our children's finite experiences and youthful idealism.  The very limited scope of their lives is delightful specifically because it is limited.  It suffers not from the caution and cynicism that results from navigating the many twists and turns that we know lie ahead.  Of course we don't know the particulars of their journey, but boy can we testify that the road will be wild and unexpected at times.  It's rarely true to our expectations.

Our children's joys are charming and familiar because we've looked at life through their eyes. Like Wendy in Peter Pan, childhood echos yet.  Ironically, their very joy is a key source of our frustration when counseling and teaching them.  We hold some of their answers, have seen more of the answer key, yet our children don't listen well; they don't even want to look carefully at the questions sometimes.  And when they do, they tend to figure the problem in their strength, to "do the math" by their own method.  It's maddening.

It's the burden of the mantle of each generation---casting off the wisdom of the previous generation, remaking the mantle in their own fashion, and after some success and much failure, realizing that the old mantle wasn't so badly wrought--- their elders were indeed right about many, many things.

And Christ was right.  He knew what had to be done.  He was willing to do it.

May His grace be on all of us: on parents in our still limited knowledge, failing in our own ways, though trying to do better by our children; on children, blissfully unaware of the fixed nature of certain things, of their eventually diminishing ability to confront them in their own might.

I am thankful that He steadfastly set his face toward the difficult choice, that He went before us, that He still goes before us all.

Pondering this verse this morning...  When I was a young Christian, I resisted John and his sweeping declarations which struck me as over the top.  But, as I've grown older, the simplicity and profundity of his observations have grown on me too.   What a way to lead into the washing of the disciples feet (an event only recorded in John), all of this a prelude into the Upper Room discourse and last supper.

I've been ruminating on Psalm 16 this week--such solid images to grasp and turn back to Him in petition, pleading.  Here are some of the images I've created in this process:

        

The Psalms Project Band has a song for this psalm here.   I particularly love this bridge:

"You will not leave my soul in the grave,

You will raise me up and I'll fly away.

You did not leave Jesus in the grave.

You will raise me up and we'll fly away."

One more for good measure: here is an image from Psalm 17:5 I created after exploring the definition/sense of preserve from Psalm 16:1.

Preserve (from Strongs)
shâmar
shaw-mar'
A primitive root; properly to hedge about (as with thorns), that is, guard; generally to protect, attend to, etc.: - beware, be circumspect, take heed (to self), keep (-er, self), mark, look narrowly, observe, preserve, regard, reserve, save (self), sure, (that lay) wait (for), watch (-man)

Another use of preserve from Job:

William Blake, Job's Comforters

from Spurgeon's Treasury of David:

“Preserve me,” keep, or save me, or as Horsley thinks, “guard me,” even as bodyguards surround their monarch, or as shepherds protect their flocks. Tempted in all points like as we are, the manhood of Jesus needed to be preserved from the power of evil; and though in itself pure, the Lord Jesus did not confide in that purity of nature, but as an example to his followers, looked to the Lord, his God, for preservation. One of the great names of God is “the Preserver of men,” (Job_7:20), and this gracious office the Father exercised towards our Mediator and Representative. It had been promised to the Lord Jesus in express word.

from the Biblical Illustrator:

The Psalmist will be “preserved”; he will not only be created. There is a cold deism which says, “Having been created, that is enough; the rest belongs to myself; I must attend to the details of life; creation may have been a Divine act, but all education, culture, “progress, preservation must fall under my own personal care..... It is, then, not enough to have been created; even that Divine act becomes deteriorated and spoiled, impoverished, utterly depleted of all ennobling purpose and inspiration, unless it be followed by continual husbandry or shepherdliness, nursing or culture—for the figure admits of every variety of change; the end being growth, strength, fruitfulness. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)

This sense of continual trust and growth in God seems right---much greater than believing that a God set our lives in motion--is the truth that He preserves us each day, continually.  Also that His preservation is so much greater than sparing us from harm but growing us up in Him.