On Covenants and the Common Good: Toward a Renewed Politics

[Originally posted Here at Mere O]

Only a few paragraphs into Genesis and the age-old tensions between the individual and society are already beginning to emerge. The story begins with one Individual formed in the image of God, with individual dignity and worth. Yet it is not good for man to be alone and the first community is formed. By the hand of God someone once singular was made plural, then joined right back together again by a covenant and a command to remain one and yet multiply. This beautiful, albeit enigmatic tension was born, then asked to birth more. And in one bite followed by another, individual choices were made that led not only to individual and immediate consequences, but societal and far-reaching ones. The very tension woven by its Maker, seemingly unraveling beyond repair. Yet it remained. Wrought with enmity, but commanded to carry on.

Society grew, and its birthing pains only increased. The tensions that began in marriage carried on through family then tribes then nations then humanity.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in “Individual and Collective Responsibility,” draws our attention to the Flood, brought about by the violence and anarchy that occurs when society is sacrificed on the altar of the individual, and the Tower of Babel disaster, brought about by the tyranny and oppression that occurs when individuals are sacrificed on the altar of society. He claims that “The Flood tells us what happens to civilisation when individuals rule and there is no collective. Babel tells us what happens when the collective rules and individuals are sacrificed to it.”

We seem destined to repeat this disastrous pendulum swing, ad infinitum, until God steps in. Out of the post-Babel wreckage of disunity and disarray, he calls upon an individual, Abram, to form a new community that revolved neither around the individual nor the collective, but what Sacks describes as “a new form of social order that would give equal honour to the individual and the collective, personal responsibility and the common good.”

And a covenant was “cut”—the Brit Bein Habetarim, or “ Covenant of Parts.” And Abram, like Adam, fell into a deep sleep as God walked through that which had been separated. Abram, like Adam, was told to multiply, yet this time God himself would take care of the math. Abram and Sarai stepped out of the darkness in faith, trading barren wombs and severed flesh for offspring like the stars, an everlasting land of promise, and the opportunity to share their blessings with all of humanity—the future restoration of the unity destroyed at Babel. God was throwing us a literal life-line: Give up your individual and collective toiling and striving that keeps breaking you, join my covenant, and Iwill accomplish great things through you, and for you. I will save you from yourselves.

This shows us how covenants can transform both the singular individual and the collective society. It can provide both with common values, purpose, identity, stability, and shared strength through shared sacrifice. They’re held together not by self-interest or force, but fidelity and faith.

As the Israelites passed from slavery through the waters of the Red Sea into a covenant of freedom through fidelity, so the believer passes from death through the waters of baptism into a covenant of life through faith. A covenant with the Trinity itself, culminating on the day of Pentecost when the curse of Babel was dissolved and rather than “one lip” united for evil there could now be one lip (one “pure lip” as prophesied by Zephaniah) united for good through the covenantal sign of the Spirit. Abraham’s far off promise of unity is now offered to the entire world.

A Covenantal God

Christianity must be understood covenantally because that’s how God has chosen to relate to humankind. Biblical scholar Thomas Schreiner defines a covenant as “a chosen relationship in which two parties make binding promises to each other.” Over and again, we see covenants as a means of God demonstrating who he is, binding himself to his people and creation, providing a means of flourishing, limiting and hedging in destruction, and forging paths of reconciliation between humanity and himself. Herman Bavinck reminds us that “God is the God of the covenant;” it’s what joins us through the infinite distance to God, not as a master and a slave but in comunion and friendship—it’s “the essence of true religion.”

Covenants Distorted and Broken

But we like to take what is covenantal and make it hierarchical. We reduce it to its lowest common denominator; to a contract riddled with loopholes giving us an out. But a covenant is freely chosen, not forced; relational, not contractual. By its very nature, it counteracts hierarchy, power grabs, hoarding, oppression, discrimination, and abuse. It fights fear.

In Os Guinness’s upcoming book, The Magna Carta of Humanity, he describes a covenant as, “promise keeping and trust writ large and made lasting. It is the trust that underlies all healthy families and all good relationships now expanded to become the foundation of an entire society, and even a nation. A covenant is a commitment that makes life worth living and enables life to be lived well. It is a word of honor given at a point in time that binds together past, present, and future, making possible lasting love, enduring freedom, flourishing lives, and a healthy community.”

When our world, our communities, our news feeds, our families, and our thoughts fill with fear, like frightened animals we fight and fly. We forget we are more than animals. We forget we have souls that can be eternally covenanted with the One whose words spoke us into being and whose very breath made us more than dust. Because dirt plus the breath of God, is a life intrinsically and individually valuable because it was breathed upon and imprinted with his very image—the face we cannot see. Imprinted in unique ways with the potential to be. To become an individual reflection of him, breathlessly magnified and intensified when covenanted together. The God who values and makes valuable, created us so that our worth is as an individual but our purpose is through a community.

The Greek root of “Devil” is derived from “dia-balein”: to throw apart, to scatter. Satan hates unity because he knows those beautiful reflections of God joined together in one voice and one accord would destroy him. He could never gaze upon the face of a unified Church, filled with the Spirit of God, and survive. It will end him.

Unity is the breath of the Church. We suffocate without it. Its necessity mirrors not just the glory, but the necessity of the Trinity. God is Unum, Bonum, Verum, Pulchrum—Unity, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty—and so must his Church be.

Covenants Absent, Forgotten, and Unseen

Reinhold Niebuhr argues that humans tend to lack the rationality and moral imagination to extend empathy beyond a certain point. So when we see fear, anger, death, destruction, and unmet needs further from us than our screens or our circles, we resort to tribalism and we throw platitudes. Well, “Jesus is the answer” we say. Maybe if others behaved better or worked harder or made better choices, we say. Vote differently, we say. Yet, here we are, nursing and feeding our babies, caring for our parents, fighting for our marriages, working our vocations, advocating for our child’s IEP or education, tending our gardens, or listening to a friend bare her soul. Why? Because whether we realize it or not, we are covenanted to those things and that leads us to action. We care about what we are bound to. Niebuhr suggests some form of “social coercion” to bridge the chasm between our circles and others, rather, I believe covenanting—freely offered—is the only way to effectively and lastingly graft the two.

We forget what Walter Brueggemann describes as our first tastes of “covenanting,” as infants experiencing the omnipotence of an other (in this case, mother) slowly developing a sense of self and learning the act of “othering” which requires the ability to both assert and surrender. We don’t see how our marriages, our deep friendships, our children, even our gardens, all providentially give us glimpses of what a covenantal relationship ought to look like. That far off promise whispered to Abram on that clear night, as brilliant as the stars, yet as touchable as his wife and his baby boy and the dirt beneath his feet.

We must look to our existing covenants to remember what covenant-keeping means and looks like. How the life of our marriage is dependent on the life of its entities. Unable to live if one dies. Unable to flourish against the atrophy of the other. How our children cannot grow to discover who they were created to be if we don’t feed them, and learn their struggles and gifts, and put them to bed, and keep them from dying.

Covenants Misunderstood

Covenants build bonds that run deeper than politics, denominations, race, or even kinship. They are the blueprints handed to us by our Creator and modeled by the Trinity. In fact, if our lines and points neatly match up with the outlines of any group or person who did not make us, we’re likely being unfaithful to the most important Covenant of all, and party to a dying contract that will never bring life and flourishing to our story or this world.

Here’s the thing that should strip us of excuses—we don’t even have to agree with what someone believes or does to covenant with them. It’s not unequally yoking, it’s not being of the world, it’s reflecting the God who was willing to covenant with us. It’s why Jesus loved his enemies, broke bread with sinners, and forgave those who killed him. It’s why we’ve been given so much and are told to give it away freely. It’s why every Christian should be able to say to each and every person before us: I see you, I care for you, I love you, I will hold what I’ve been given with an open hand so youdon’t have to be so fearful, because I have the best reason of all to never fear.

We worry it may bolster a political party not our own, Christians we don’t think are theologically sound, a cause we don’t want to advance. It seems messy and uncomfortable. It felt threatening to the world Jesus was born into as well. It didn’t mesh with how they pictured God’s kingdom being built. “Follow me,” he assured them. In doing so, we are led along the way that often looks like weakness and feels like a death of sorts, but it’s the strongest, most life-producing thing we could do. It’s not sitting still and it’s not conquering. It’s both surrendering and asserting. Covenanting with those around us allows them to taste and see the source of holiness, peace, justice, mercy, and love.

The Call of the Church

Where covenants are absent, fear is present; but where covenants are made and kept, faith and trust can grow.

We are tribal creatures. Tribalism kills, but it also protects. What if we were part of a tribe that anyone could find a home in? Be fed in, seen, protected, valued, and loved in? A tribe bound together by a covenant with the very One who created us each and sees us as who we could be both individually and collectively? We can be and it’s called the Church. And if our churches don’t look like that and we don’t look like that, we are not living by the Spirit and covenanting in the image of God. We must lament and repent.

Why We Lament

We lament because not one of us has kept our covenants perfectly—not our covenant that grafts us onto Life, our covenant that binds us to the Church, our covenant to serve and preserve the land, and especially not our covenants that connect us to others providing the conduits for that Life to spread and draw them to its source.

We lament because we have not cared for the whole body of the Church. We have forgotten that if one part suffers, every part suffers .

We lament because we have cared about property more than people and we’ve reduced people to property. We are unwilling to look others in the face or through our screens and see the unique fingerprints of God upon them.

We lament because we have not yet gone to the ends of the earth, bringing the source of life and flourishing to every corner. Carrying his breath to the dying. Bringing the temple to them.

We lament because we have broken our covenant to bless humanity through us, to be a city on a hill, the salt of the world, a light in the darkness. We have not lived out the very words God whispered to Abram on that starry night.

We lament because we respond to the weeping and gnashing of those broken by our broken or non-existent covenants, with “Go and be well fed.” “Choose peace” we say. “Choose life” we say. We offer words that cost us nothing; doing nothing to feed them, pursue peace, or help them imagine how to live and not feel so powerless. Nothing that would lead them to the well of peace, provision, and strength.

We lament because we make excuses to not do what’s right. We say justice and mercy are replacing the gospel, forgetting they’re intrinsically intertwined. That if justice and mercy aren’t pouring out, it’s not truly the gospel. If justice and mercy are built upon anything less, they will fail. One cannot live, while the other dies.

We lament because we’ve reduced the gospel to a few bullet points on how to get to heaven when we die, forgetting that it’s actually about a new way to live here—the offer of a covenant that grafts us to Life and severs us from Death.

How the Church Can Change the World

God’s kingdom was inaugurated with a covenant and it’s the act of covenanting that will build it and bring it. Here and now. There’s no other way. Jesus didn’t embrace death so he could dole out life, like individual stimulus handouts, enabling us to survive alone and build our own tiny little “saved” kingdoms. He chose to surrender to Death, going where it had no choice but to look upon his face—knowing it could never survive. Knowing we could never survive, much less flourish, if Death lived.

With not an “I do” but rather a barren soul that accepts his “I have done”—one breath, one body, one flesh—and our contract with Death is shattered. A new creation and a new covenant arise from the dust, and once again the breath of the Spirit gives us life. Life that Death no longer has claim to. This covenant finally resolves the tension between the individual and community. We are forever bound to something greater and bigger than ourselves that will finally allow us to become who we were created to be.

It seems these days more than ever, that the world is falling apart. And it is. But every cry and every failure of the world is a calling and a requirement for the Church to show them a better way. We are being given an opportunity to individually and corporately lament, repent, and seek the Spirit of the living God to do a work in us and through us, walking in the footsteps of Jesus. The Church, of whom every believer is bound to and part of, is called upon to change the world. Not because wecan, but because we are covenanted with and filled by the only one who is able. Because the God who made creation good, can and will redeem it, restore it, and make it good again, and he longs to begin his work through us.

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A Rambling Reader, and ‘What We’re Reading’

I’ve posted before about being a rabbit-trail-reader. You know, where one book leads to another and then another, a conversation leads to four new topics, a chapter leads to twelve new thoughts, a quote or foreword leads to another author, a book review leads to another addition, then repeat, ad infinitum. Though rabbit trails, imply going around in circles leading nowhere, so perhaps a “rambling reader” is more appropriate? I mean, I get to all sorts of places, but the expediency of arriving to the last page in a timely manner is certainly hindered! Every so often though, I try to take a good look at my random, seemingly disconnected stack, and think over how they got there (often providentially) and where they’ve taken me so far…

The Sun Also Rises, began a few months ago, because my husband, Kevin, loves Hemingway. Hemingway provides him with a nostalgic juxtaposition of prior hopelessness to our current hope. I started it at the beginning of winter during a hard season where I was struggling to grasp the closeness and personal love of God. Let’s just say, Hemingway may not be the best read during a winter depression, so it was temporarily shelved until warmer days.

Studying the galaxy with my kids around the same time, led me to Carl Sagan’s, Pale Blue Dot (it has one of my very favorite quotes I’ll have to do a whole post about one of these days). I’m telling you, one of the best ways to grasp the vastness of God is to read a brilliant atheist describe how unfathomably tiny we are in relation to the cosmos. It’s fascinating.

The next step, I figured, in filling the gap between a vast God and our tiny selves, is a study of the Holy Spirit. Forgotten God, by Francis Chan, is a great, quick read to start with, though not quite the depth I needed, which then led to a few weightier books on the topic. I already had Meredith Kline’s, Images of the Spirit on my shelf, so I dove in while awaiting a few more that are on the way. Any other recommendations on this topic?

A Room Called Remember, has been on my shelf forever, and so beautifully says things we need to hear. I pulled it out at the perfect time, because I’d be hard pressed to think of anyone better than Frederick Buechner to describe the hope that Hemingway and Sagan overlooked

A perfectly-timed, sunny trip in the middle of December resulted in a few more additions, including the raw, but beautiful, A Grief Observed. It may seem like an odd vacation read, but Kevin and I usually read Shelden Vanauken’s,  A Severe Mercy (our favorite book) on vacations together, and this seemed like a logical sequel in many ways. L’Engle did the foreword, which led me to, Circle of Quiet, and we quickly devoured her ramblings on writing, creativity, and ontological selves. So good. Andrew Peterson’s, Adorning the Dark, is a great complement to these topics as he discusses creativity and callings in a dark world (I’m only a few chapters in).

My 8th grader is reading my copy of Annie Dillard’s, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, for school, so I snagged, Teaching a Stone to Talk, for fifty-cents at a library sale, to fill the Dillard void in my stack until he’s done. I always try to have some poetry going, so I invested in Mary Oliver’s, Devotions, collection, because the way she humbly observes the stark beauty of creation reminds me of Dillard.

Last Call for Liberty, was from last year’s stack, but Os Guinness is working on somewhat of a sequel, and he shared the introduction with us spurring many discussions on freedom, liberty, and it’s relation to the Exodus of Israel, and I had to re-visit it. Os recommended Stefan Zweig’s, Messages from a Lost World. A Jewish writer who fled Germany during the rise of Hitler, and his chapter on, “The Secret of Artsitic Creation,” complements L’Engle in an interesting way. An atheist attempting to navigate the ugliness of war and the depressing future of humanity with the beauty of artistic creation is fascinating. I had just begun Reinhold Niebuhr’s book, The Children of Light an the Children of Darkness, based on a Trinity Forum recommendation (founded by Os in 1991), and only a few pages in, it already added to our discussions on democracy and freedom within the framework of order. This same idea was likewise wonderfully alluded to in L’Engle’s discussion of art (“we are a generation which is crying loudly to tear down all structure in order to find freedom, and discovering, when order is demolished, that instead of freedom we have death”).

Don’t you love when so many unrelated books you’re reading, by people of all different faiths and backgrounds and centuries, mirror such similar ideas? Truth transcends time and space.

The rest were our read-alouds. Kevin has been reading, Swallowdale, to our oldest who has already read all of Arthur Ransome’s, Swallows and Amazons series, but they’ve always enjoyed slowly re-reading them together. I don’t know why I had put off, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as a read-aloud for so long, but the girls and I read a large, beautifully illustrated (though unabridged) copy snagged from the same library sale, and they absolutely loved it. We’re in the middle of, A Little Princess, now and they are equally engaged. There’s just something about the way Frances Hodgson Burnett, gives them characters who so innocently exhibit goodness amongst badness, that provides them with an attainable, simple, and tangible “good vs evil” in a hard and dark world; in ways even the youngest can comfortably grasp and yearn for (her, Little Lord Fauntleroy, has long been a family favorite for this very reason).

Any other additions you’d recommend adding to our current rambling stack?

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“I am, I Can, I Ought, I Will”

[Trying to get this kid to come start school this morning/afternoon for the umpteenth time]:

N: “…but Mom, I just really can’t. I’m working on something SO important right now. I’M RE-DOING MODERN ART.”

It was a really tough day with this one in particular, who was fighting against Monday with all her might after a busy holiday week of traveling. But as I lay here now and think back on the day, I realized she was at her best when she was making.

…Mounds of construction paper snowflakes before I was even out of bed. Intricate train track towns slowly filling the room as I worked with the other kids. Pages of Mondrian-style artistic creations because a right-angled ruler and a tin of colored pencils caught her eye on her way to start math. Slowly and attentively tackling “Good King Wenceslas,” for the first time with her violin teacher, because even though she grumbled all the way to practice, she simply couldn’t stifle her desire to make music.

“I am, I can, I ought, I will,” is the Charlotte Mason student motto so often before me, and I’m struck by how even on days where our children get nowhere close to the end of that motto, the “I am” part of it never changes. It’s always there. And I’m convinced the only way they will ever truly make it to the whole “I will” part — at least in the way they ought — is by knowing who they are, whose they are, who they were created to be, and what they were created to do.

Even at her worst, my dear tired little girl, just couldn’t keep herself from making and creating.

Yes, we must do math. Yes, we must figure out how to teach her dyslexic little mind to decipher all the words she so loves to hear and speak. Yes, we must (all) learn to actually do what we ought because it’s how we do right by others and ourselves. …BUT every so often, if we have to spend an entire Monday just camping out on that tiny little, but eternally significant “I am,” and go to bed praying that grace will get us closer to the “I will” tomorrow, well gosh darn it, that’s just what we’re gonna do😂

#iwillbecauseiam

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In the Image of their Maker

”In our society, at the age of five, 90 percent of the population measures ‘high creativity.’ By the age of seven, the figure has dropped to 10 percent. The percentage of adults with high creativity is only two percent! …We are diminished, and we forget that we are more than we know. The child is aware of unlimited potential, and this munificence is one of the joys of creativity. Those of use who struggle in our own ways, small or great, trickles or rivers, to create, are constantly having to unlearn what the world would teach us” (Madeleine L’Engle, ‘Walking on Water‘).

I’m not a craft mom. My utilitarian bent drags me down & my creativity tends to manifest itself in necessary things… learning how to lay hardwood flooring because we need a floor, cooking a meal because we need to eat dinner, sewing because my kid has a hole in his pants. But crafts are messy and superfluous, and what do I do with it when it’s done??

Curiously though, I love art and music and poetry and so many beautiful things I no longer can find the time to do or learn or cultivate.

My kids though, they CREATE. With no clause of necessity attached. They do it because it brings them joy, and I’m struck by how beautifully that reflects their Creator

One of my sons interrupted me the other night, well past his bedtime, excitedly wanting to show me this ship he was stitching. I was frustrated then, but saw it sitting in the corner today, and it touched me. This is my kid who gravitates to all things facts and reason. He lives and breathes sports and history and facts. He’s not my imaginative or creative one, but he loves making and building and executing. No pattern or instruction from me, he just bummed some supplies off his Great-Grandma and ran with it.

And I realized the importance of this. Here is my child who happens to be struggling with the abstractness of faith, yet something in him still loves the abstract beauty of creating. Because whether we see it or grasp it, we were made in the image of our maker and the “creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught” (L’Engle).

There’s a flame there apart from me, that I could never ignite, but I can kill or kindle. Lord, help me kindle!

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Want to know what love looks like?

Take a look at that first picture. It’s not as much the beautiful photo on the left, but the even more beautiful photo on the right, taken over 70 years later. On this past Saturday—the evening before Easter morn.

…And all those nights and days in between that moment he held his bride—the pretty, smart, feisty Sicilian he’d known since they were 14—promising her, “in sickness and in health, ‘till death do us part,” and that moment he held his bride as she left his arms for those of her Savior—having lived out his promises to her, as she had for him.

Because while an “I do,” is always a lovely thing to hear, it’s the doing, and sacrificing, and holding, and protecting, and forgiving, and fighting for, and running with, and caring for, and one day letting go—it’s the “I have done,” that is so beautifully breathtaking.

They loved each other and their Lord so well. Our celebration of her life is so much a celebration of their love, because I never knew one without the other.

And while I mourn the loss of that “them” on this side of heaven, I rejoice that they so beautifully lived out and foreshadowed the even more glorious, never-ending, never-having-to-let-go “them,” we can experience on that side of heaven. The one our dear Zena is experiencing now, and her dear EJ, one day will with her.

What a beautiful thing it was for us to wake up the next morning on Easter Sunday, and be reminded that because of the words:

“It is finished.”

“He has risen!”

“I believe.”

…we can confidently proclaim, “We will see you again!”

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The Aim of Being Needed no Longer

“The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift. We feed children in order that they may soon be able to feed themselves; we teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching. Thus a heavy task is laid upon the Gift-love. It must work towards its own abdication. We must aim at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say ‘They need me no longer’ should be our reward” (C.S. Lewis, ‘The Four Loves’).

Few things in life, have proven harder for me than the act of parenting. It’s continually asking me to give more than I think I have. It empties me. 

In other realms, giving feels simpler. Even when motives aren’t borne out of selfishness, something is generally received back in response. Given to us because we gave. We give in our jobs and we are given recognition or at the very least, a paycheck. We give in academia and we are given knowledge and accolades and degrees. We give in our personal pursuits and we are given success and growth and satisfaction. Even when we give selflessly to our spouse, we are often given back a happier home or a sweeter love or a stronger marriage, of which we comprise half of.

But giving as a parent, rarely results in something being given back (if so, certainly not in correlation to the gift amount).

This is not to elevate the act of giving as a mother or parent above all others, in fact, it’s the one I most often see idolized. A selfish selflessness. In reality, it’s just a different kind of giving and a different kind of love, and it helps me to see that and understand that because unexpected and misunderstood things often breed bitterness and anger.

I know this, because at this very moment I’m sitting here after sending myself to my room because my giving was rooted in selfishness. Oh, I was giving alright—feeding and teaching and cleaning and pouring out—but it was bitter and angry giving. Giving that was angry at not getting back.

But we don’t give to our children to get back. We can’t give expecting a cleaner house or better behaved kids or quieter moments or a thankful heart in exchange. It’s a gift, not a barter. We require obedience and respect and kindness because it’s what we require of ourselves and what God requires of us, but it’s not in exchange for something.

We give of ourselves in order that our children grow and learn and become people no longer reliant on our giving. We give so they can one day give to others. We give because we were given.

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The Regression of Progress

“Now we are no longer primitive. Now the whole world seems not holy… We as a people have moved from pantheism to pan-atheism… It is difficult to undo our own damage and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it. We are lighting matches in vain under every green tree.

Did the wind used to cry and the hills shout forth praise? Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of the earth, and living things say very little to very few.

And yet it could be that wherever there is motion there is noise, as when a whale breaches and smacks the water, and wherever there is stillness there is a small, still voice, God’s speaking from the whirlwind, nature’s old song and dance, the show we drove from town…

What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn’t us?” (Annie Dillard, “Teaching a Stone to Talk).

I’ve been pondering lately, these reasonable and rational times we find ourselves in. On one hand we have learned much. So many great advancements in science and medicine and philosophy, a plethora of neat little theological boxes to choose from… I can’t help but feel at times though, that the more we think we know about this world, the smaller we make it.

I have no desire to harken back the Dark Ages, yet there are moments when all this knowledge feels anything but illuminating.

What are we losing in our race to prove and rationalize and exegete? What are we quenching in our striving to explain and define it all?

In the words of C.S. Lewis, “They err who say ‘the world is turning pagan again.’ Would that it were! The truth is that we are falling into a much worse state. ‘Post-Christian man’ is not the same as ‘pre-Christian man.’ He is as far removed as virgin is from widow.” And that was 1953.

The pagan world had the mystery and wonder and excitement that preceded the Incarnation. The modern, post-Christian world is bleak and dark in comparison. I rejoice the truth that can be attained, though I can’t help but lament the wonder that was lost.

I didn’t used to care about wonder, but the days have felt colder and shorter and louder lately.  Life can be hard and tiring, and while I often collapse into bed with a mind full of facts and reality, I can’t help but pray that I awake to a morning of hope that defies reason and miracles rather than answers.

I want to be proven wrong.

I want my lens of rationality to stop blinding me from the inexplicable works and beauty of God.

I’ve been handed truth undeserved, for which I am eternally grateful, but the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. The more I know God, the more I realize how incomprehensible he is. And the more I long for my deafened ears to hear him in the wind and my skeptical eyes to see the mountains praise him.

“He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth upon nothing. He wraps up the waters in His clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their own weight. He covers the face of the full moon, spreading His cloud over it. He has inscribed a horizon on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness. The foundations of heaven quake, astounded at His rebuke. By His power He stilled the sea, and by His understanding He shattered Rahab. By His breath the skies were cleared; His hand pierced the fleeing serpent. Indeed, these are but the fringes of His ways; how faint is the whisper we hear of Him!

Who then can understand the thunder of His power?” (Job 26:7-14).

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The Holiness of Beauty

“If you have been afraid that your love of beautiful flowers and the flickering flame of the candle is somehow less spiritual than living in starkness and ugliness, remember that He who created you to be creative gave you the things with which to make beauty and the sensitivity to appreciate and respond to His creation” (Edith Schaeffer, The Hidden Art of Homemaking).

The holiness of beauty is something I haven’t always grasped.

I spent my younger days chasing after beauty at the expense of truth. When truth was finally something I could no longer ignore, I assumed the righteous thing to do was forsake beauty. I was often discouraged that many of my interests seemed so unspiritual… art and literature and the sea and my love for making homes out of drab, old spaces.

The irony of it all, was that I don’t think I was able to truly grasp the beauty of truth until I learned to see the holiness of beauty. It brought theology to life for me.

And it’s one of the biggest things I yearn to teach my children. Because I want them to see God whether they’re singing a hymn in church, or watching the sun set, or enjoying life with a friend, or staring at a mountain, or sketching a lady bug, or walking through a museum full of masterpieces, or reading an excellently told story, or observing their granddad skillfully build a house or a table…

Because beauty always points to the One whom it reflects.

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The River of Waiting

These lovely old faucets came with the massive antique ironstone sink I found for the farmhouse kitchen we’re renovating. I’m not sure how practical they’d be, but I love the look of time-worn brass and I’ve been furiously experimenting with creating patina on new brass. It’s a ridiculous endeavor and the irony is not lost on me as I sit here, spending far too much of my day on something that time spent almost a century doing naturally and organically and wonderfully.

I stumbled over something I read in Acts this week and it’s had me thinking on the concept of waiting, and what it says about the God requiring it of us.

Waiting forces us to rely, in some way, on someone or something other than ourselves. On a child to grow, on a task to be completed, on time to move forward, on weather to pass, on anxiety or depression to lift, on people to change, on God to answer…

It does things to our soul like a river does to rock, and reminds us that we are not the one who breathes and loves and wills things into existence.

Though we yearn for the timelessness we were created for, for now, time relentlessly slips through our fingers and requires us to trust the only one who can hold it. Knowing that we wouldn’t be tethered to it, if it wasn’t preparing us and teaching us something that we couldn’t have learned as gloriously without it. 

Working on not wasting my time here, by wasting my waiting…

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Fighting Anxiety …Like A Child

[Originally published HERE at Servants of Grace]

I sunk into bed during one of those awful, pre-dawn hours of the night after a day where my required tasks had far outnumbered the minutes allotted to me. One of those “Come again, Lord Jesus” moments when you decide you’re utterly unable to wake up and take all the breaths and steps required to get you from one end of the day to the other. The mere thought of the sun coming up — brutishly forcing me to open my eyes and behold the whirlwind of problems and duties that would be there to greet me (in a far too short amount of time) — seemed to feed on my exhaustion and tension, convincing my sleepless-self that I hated the sun and its horrible inevitability and I had no desire to ever see it again.

But it rose anyways.

And after its arrival, one of those inevitable duties toddled into my room to greet me. While the rest of my children have developed varying degrees of self-sufficiency and self-awareness, this freshly-turned-three-year-old grasped my hand, pulled herself up, pressed my tired face between her palms, and candidly informed me of her wants and her needs for the moment. She wasn’t hesitant, or even demanding — but expectant. Because she knew she was incapable of getting through the morning and meeting her needs by herself. Yet she wasn’t troubled by it because she knew I was there, and I could. And my heart ached, because as I watched my sweet child I realized that though I know my God is there and is able, I can’t seem to figure out for the life of me, how to talk my heart into resting in this truth and my feet into walking that path of child-like reliance.

The Calmed and Quieted Soul

I longed to be able to proclaim Psalm 131:

“O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.”

Instead of a self-propelled soul that instinctively presses on, desperately trying not to forget those “oh yeah,” mental sticky notes to remember to seek the Spirit, I yearn for a childlike-soul that doesn’t even know how to take a step apart from him. Not out of fear, but out of a confidence so strong — in his strength, and goodness, and love — that I couldn’t even imagine trying to find my way through the day without clinging to him. O LORD, wean me of myself!

The Weaning Soul

I’ve raised enough babies to understand the difference between a weaned child and a weaning child. That one syllable is the difference between peace and anxiety, contentment and worry, rest and struggle, surrender and striving. …A weaning soul is a weary soul. One that needs to be stilled and soothed as it’s weaned from its desires and thoughts and ways, because something far better is being offered.

We need to follow the path of the psalmist as he seemingly describes his weaning of self, venturing from inward to outward — from heart, to eyes, to actions: “my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me…”(Psalm 131:2).

Until my heart is able to say that it trusts in Christ above all else, I will continue to be broken and betrayed.

Until my eyes can look to nothing above God to satiate my desires, I will continue to taste disappointment.

Until my actions are spurred by the Spirit and his strength alone, I will continue to trip and fall.

The road to that place can be long and trying, but rather than allow our anxiety to falsely prophesy hopelessness, let’s instead rightly proclaim the hope we have because we know who is leading us, and we know to whom we are being led.

“After a period of prolonged and painful struggle to have its longings answered, the little one gives over striving any more, and is at peace. …Like a weaned child, its tears over, its cries hushed, reposing upon the very bosom that a little ago excited its most tumultuous desires, his soul that once passionately strove to wring from God an answer to its eager questionings, now wearied, resigned, and submissive, just lays itself to rest in simple faith on that goodness of God… It is a picture of infinite repose and of touching beauty—the little one nestling close in the mother’s arms, its head reclining trustfully on her shoulder, the tears dried from its now quiet face, and the restful eyes, with just a lingering shadow of bygone sorrow in them still, peering out with a look of utter peace, contentment, and security. It is the peace of accepted pain, the victory of self-surrender” (Rev. James Vaughan, 1876).

The Sun Also Rises

Stressful days will come and go, and I doubt my nights will be forever absent of restlessly watching the clock advance as my brain mentally counts all the seconds I’m not sleeping and all the things I’m not doing. But every night when the darkness comes, I can remember that my sins and anxieties can die with it. And every morning as the sun faithfully rises, I can remember whose mercies for me are new—regardless of what the day brings — because death (and everything in between) was forever conquered.

Dear Lord,

Help me open my eyes in the morning and immediately seek you rather than the world and its worthless things. Make my weaknesses clear and your strength blindingly clearer. Help me rest in your hope rather than wallow in my fear. Thwart my feeble yet habitual attempts to rely on my own abilities. Burden my heart with what distresses you rather than what stresses me. Help me seek you more than answers, pray more than worry, and worship more than grumble. Be my peace in the chaos and my rest after sleepless nights. Help my mind wander to you when I’m weary and anxious. May I hope in the LORD, from this time forth and forevermore.

Amen.

 

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