Israel in the Womb

My quiet time this morning was focused on Genesis 40 and 41. As I read about the events that lead to what became Israel’s captivity, the devotional portion referred to this as a sort of a time in the womb of Egyptian confinement; first as survivors of the famine and then as slaves freed by God. The premise that this was a time intentionally used to let a nation be grown as a baby grows in his or her mother’s womb is an intriguing one. I believe that this was a purposeful time, but I have never thought of it as such a transformative period.

The concept has stayed with me throughout the day, of how a nation is formed and launched into the world is probably in some ways metaphorical to the process of an infant growing and then laboring to be born. However, it was the reference to approximately 400 hundred years of captivity being that womb, turning the people from an embryonic tribe into a full-fledged infant nation, this really sunk in 

We have news reports of captivity today, people fleeing their homes due to bombing raids, dictatorial leadership, waves of refugees on neighboring borders and extremely unsafe conditions. I would think it would be common, even normal, to rail against this type of captivity rather than to see it as a time of purposeful growth. In no ways are the behaviors causing the crisis to occur acceptable. But, as I listen to the news I wonder what I can do in the face of such strife to impact a life positively. This becomes a reassurance to me that God can use the disastrous, the actions that rend nations to their core, to bring good.

Whether your world is safe from civil war or being torn to its foundation, let this be a reminder that the times of captivity are used as the growth period before the start of something new and wondrous. 

Just a Sheep III – Life Giver of Abundance

A heavy rain just ended. The clouds carrying evaporative moisture experienced cooling and condensing, turning the vapor into rain. It is as if a cloud were like a towel, too heavy with moisture and it was wrung out. The soil received the rain, it seeped into the dirt and watered the roots of plants burrowed into the ground. With the rain the world turns shades of lovely lively greens; and from some of these green organic structures a harvest can be picked. This season of abundant harvest is shown in the multi-colored farmer’s market stands, as they hold a literal cornucopia of vegetables and fruits. From these harvestings, we are physically nourished for daily life. However, this is no lackluster nourishment. This harvest is rich with color, fragrance, texture and taste. It is abundant, abundance being a wave, a surge and an overflow. Late in the summer, the harvest is ample. But the life that the shepherd provides is more abundant than any a garden can produce.   

Listening to the words of Jesus at the beginning of John 10, it seems as though he might have received some blank stares and puzzled looks talking about sheep and shepherding. Picking up the subject again, Jesus draws a sharp contrast between himself and robbers. While the shepherd seeks the best for the flock to keep it safe and healthy, the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. No doubt some were pondering these words and felt their tempers rising, realizing that they – the spiritually favorable – had just been referred to as thieves. Thieves comes to rob us of joy, peace, hope, faith and to destroy the relationship with the shepherd.

I love this last contrast in verse ten. Watch the word I, “I have come.” The Lord has come, the Lord is come. And, he comes for a purpose! I have come to give life, a more abundant life. In other words, I am the shepherd and I will take care of my people. Not in a minimal way to just get them by; rather I will give of myself so that they have life more abundantly. This abundance is the kind that is measured, pressed down, shaken together and running over, (Luke 6:38). This is the abundance we cannot contain, it simply keeps overflowing from our hands, running down our arms and seeping into the ground below our feet. 

“Then Jesus said to them again, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.’”  John 10: 7-10

In a world of achieve more, faster, higher and better, I occasionally hear someone speak honestly of the desire for an abundance that they cannot make. It is an abundance of life, which has nothing to do with earthbound accomplishments. It is the more of eternity, the more of agape, the more of freedom that comes from reliances on the shepherd. This is the more that cannot be destroyed or taken. This is the more of Jesus, the giver of abundant life.

Sustaining Love

Writing is soothing for me. Choosing words and fitting them together like puzzle pieces to form a thought picture is enjoyable and at times rather cathartic. Some can use brushes to move paints across a surface and create an image that exists only in their mind; for me a pen applied to the page or in this case, fingers to the keyboard serve a similar purpose and allow me to share my thoughts. It’s been a long week, a hard week. After these days of tears and laughter, greetings and good-byes, sweet notes, kind words, photos from far away family and long comforting hugs, I find myself turning to words again to soothe and share. My hope is with the sharing that it will be a comfort for someone else as well.

We have returned home and started to unpack the bags. Part of me is still smiling after hearing for the umpteenth hundredth time that someone hasn’t seen me since I was “so” high. Apparently a lot of people knew me when I was somewhere between knee and waste height. Part of me is so tired and heavy hearted that I feel like if I were touched just a little too hard I would dissolve into the floor. I sit here tonight and try to slow down my brain, close my tired eyes, and trust that my fingers will know the location of the keys.

A song has been sitting in me, I feel like it’s melded into the lump of tears and love that feels stuck behind my rib cage. The song is “I Am Loved,” sung by the Gaither Vocal Band. It is a song with a chorus that seems simplistic on first hearing, but is really quite profound when givens some thought.

“I am loved, I am loved

I can risk loving you

For the One who knows me best

Loves me most

I am loved, you are loved

Won’t you please take my hand

We are free to love each other

We are loved”

Very gentle and deceptively simple words seem to me truly an anthem of willingness to take on complexity of other people with tender strength. I have seen the effects of love being present in homes, hospitals, and at the funeral home. I have seen it in events surrounding the paperwork and all of the things to do, at the cemetery, in the homes. Sustaining love, like a wholesome food or needed sleep, love provides its own sustenance. I watched it in the receiving line as there were more hugs than I could count. These people know each other, their strengths and weaknesses. And yet, here they are in the same room to offer wide open arms and support to one another and us.

So, what do I do with that? How does that impact my world? It seems that at these times we pause and reflect on how very precious our time is with each other, to care for and share with each other. I also know that as much as I focus on this as a priority, it will become much harder to keep that in the forefront as life returns to the normal patterns. It is a choice to love others as we are loved by Christ; loved as Jesus loves us, loved with great sacrifice and great hope. I hope the words to that song stay with me for a long time, right there, folded into that knot of grief as a sustaining love to appreciate and share.

Un-Bundled

   I am so grateful for a thick winter coat and warm snow pants when the snow is up to my knees. I can just sit right down in the fluffy white stuff and enjoy it. But, it is difficult to move, my freedom is restricted as the layers that are difficult to maneuver in. Just last night, I took the dog for a walk and enjoyed being outside in sweats and a t-shirt. It felt so good to have that freedom of movement!

   Imagine trying to stay that bundled in warmer temperatures. Not only would it still be bulky, but extremely uncomfortable! But, if that is what I am used to, it would feel strange not to be bundled. I would just think it was normal to feel that way, to feel like I couldn’t really move about. I think sin is something like that in our lives. We are born into sin, a thick blanket and coat of the familiar and the corrupt. When we are saved through grace, it is as if those layers have been stripped away and we are suddenly blessed with freedom of movement.
   It may feel strange, even fearful. But, we are blessed with freedom in God to be un-bundled from sin and instead provided freedom in grace.

Dropping the Cart and Walking Away

   Ever wonder why habits are hard to break or new ones are hard to get in place? I don’t know about you, but I think about and plan on making changes and then… well, I’ll be trying again tomorrow. These habits and choices, they can become things we pull along behind us and yoked to us. Ever seen a yoke or the cart that it can pull? It sits on the pulling animal, and they use their muscle power to pull the weight behind them.

   As you might imagine, the heavier the cart, the more it slows me down. Freedom is sought, bought, wanted, looked for, and many times given up. What kind of freedom? Freedom from our sins. The yuck we put in the cart. What is sin? Sin is something that goes against the law, a commitment of something against moral or ethical codes. So, that could be something relatively simple, like speeding, or more systemic, like lying. Imagine sin as being the dung, you know the animal droppings that fall and smell and are yucky. I don’t want to step in this stuff, let alone pull it!
   “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5) Standing firm, we make choices to break the tie to the dung cart. Stand firm! Don’t pull the yuck, and then don’t pick it back up again.

Dancer

   Degas used to make beautiful art of dancers. They are posed in such deceptively simple and graceful ways. Dancers on stage show themselves as confident in their choreography. The costumes, stage, and music are set.

   But, what about that sign dance as if no one were watching…
   A little girl stood under the fountain, a multi jet creation shooting water drops into the air thirty feet. She twirled in her brightly striped dress, doing a happy little jig with her feet. She didn’t care if others saw her, if others joined in or noticed. I loved her twirly freedom. I loved how she didn’t pause when people walked by or look sheepish and embarrassed. I loved the freedom of dancing as if no one were watching, and my own feet would have loved to be invited to twirl along with her.
   We each have a dance, an action in our life, that we can do with ease and freedom. But it really only reaches the ease of this moment when we forget to care if others find the dance what they are wanting or liking and just twirl to our own hearts music.
   If you find me at the fountain, twirling barefoot through the water, just come join me.

Pain of Freedom

   In our world of I can do it without any help, thank you very much, we often assume that freedom means a release of pain. Freedom seems to be seen as something which lets you be carefree and without any sticky and messy attachments. But freedom can be something that is quite painful. I heard the other day how Frederick Douglass seriously considered staying in a life of slavery because the transition to freedom was going to be so painful. He was going to have to say good-bye to dear friends and family and venture into a new life. Freedom awaited him, but so did pain, and this led him to put off the decision to leave a while longer. Imagine the world without Frederick Douglass, if he had not taken his place in the use of his gifts and been instrumental as an abolitionist. Douglass wrote upon leaving, “‘A new world had opened upon me.’ ‘Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted, but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil.’”

   We can learn from this that when we move from the slavery of sin to the freedom of righteousness that it may be a difficult, painful, and wonderful thing.

Loos’d Absolute and Imaginary

    I was at the Hallmark store on Sunday and admiring the Peanuts display when I saw a little snippet of a Walt Whitman poem. Peanuts caught my eye as I am a fan of the cartoon, and relate so well to different characters there. My hair is naturally curly when I let it grow out, I want to believe in the Great Pumpkin, and I have a blanket that a comfort. It was given by a friend and it’s super soft and warm. Anyway, amidst the Snoopy and Lucy displays, Walt Whitman made an appearance. It was just a morsel, a fragment of a larger poem. The words, scripted in blank ink italics, said “From this hour, freedom! From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines.” It’s from Song of the Open Road and continues on with the poem.

   I just loved the images in the words; they just popped in my brain like little kernels of ideas. Loos’d of limits and imaginary lines. Am I loos’d, do I see myself free? As much as I would probably like to say yes, I’m going to say no. I’m aware of the imaginary lines, most of us run into them every once in a while. The people goo we step in without being aware that it is there. Imaginary lines exist on maps, not just of the international variety but of the local as well. And what is freedom? Freedom is not going your own way and being completely heedless of everyone else. That is slavery to self and selfishness. Freedom is serving, is giving, and is consideration. It’s not being a door mat; it’s not being someone that people wipe their feet on.
     I think I need to pay closer attention to the imaginary lines and limits in my life. Some of those should probably be loos’d.

Shadows and Freedom

Have you ever noticed how two thoughts which seem unrelated can wind themselves together, twining this way and that to form a vine? I had two thoughts and over the last few days, they have sort of twined together.

I live in a small town; it’s a nice little town on the river and home to several large companies. It’s a typical small town with typical small town structures. There are restaurants and a fire department, homes and schools. I enjoy during the school year watching children walk to the elementary school as I drive to work. In the summer, it is replaced with afternoon skateboard and bicycles. An ice cream truck can be heard often during this hot time. I know my neighbors names and they are lovely neighbors. It’s not a perfect town; there are problems inherent in every area. There is crime and poverty which I wish wasn’t there. It is the longest I have ever lived anywhere, over 12 years! It is the longest by far (by over 8 years). So, I have lived here long enough to know that if I go straight at that one road and turn at another, that I will pass a patch of beautiful black-eyed-susans. And, it is an odd reassurance to know that my pharmacist, who knows my name, can also quote Shakespeare. I know that there are many who feel stifled here, they look around and see the limits. One such asked me not to long ago why I didn’t just take off and declare “freedom”. But, I’m not sure that that is what freedom looks like to me.
The other was just a moment, just a few seconds. On my way home from work, I needed to stop and run an errand. I drove up the street and the city jail was directly in front of me. I saw a shadow of a large bird move across the small high panes of glass in the jail. I wondered in that ephemeral moment if that was a sad reminder to the men and women in the jail. If that shadow passed through the window, the shadow of a bird epitomizing freedom, passed through the window, would it be something that rips their heart a bit?
The freedom of a bird, the freedom of choices, freedom to be and do and live and love – what is freedom? Is freedom the bird that flies from spot to spot? The sparrow which alights outside my window and splashes in the water with great abandon has a type of freedom. When my dog gets up she has a day full of naps and playtime and running, a different kind of freedom. I do have freedom. I have freedom to make a go of my job or not, to make a friend or not, to be pleasant or have an attitude, to work hard or hardly work. I also have a freedom to be what I was meant to be. Not the meant to be of romantic Victorian novels and the fates. But, meant to be as in the gifts and tasks and plans God has for me that are just for me, and those for you that are just for you. When I spurn those gifts, I feel more like the prisoner watching the bird out the window. Instead, I want to be more like the sparrow, splashing about with joy and abandon in the water. Thus, the two thoughts twine together and form something a bit more coherent, a bit stronger, as I define freedom for me.

Praying Dangerous Prayers

Isaiah 9:2    The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.

The doors that have clanged shut so many times now swing open.  The hallway, dark and dim with fears now has a brilliant glow coming from the exit.  The guards who had stood before the prisoner and freedom, between prison of everything into freedom are now gone.  Oh the glee, the joy, the fear and hope of the possibility of freedom. 

The first steps down the hall, gathering momentum and then the deciding moment comes.  The prisoner pushes the door open and walks into the light.  Freedom. 

Which of us would take the steps out of our prison cell?  Would we be brace ourselves and walk into the unknown, embracing the freedom that awaits us?

The people who walked in darkness, who have now received hope of a great light.  The hope of a light, the hope of freedom, of a release. How they, as we, must have prayed for that.  What a dangerous prayer, and yet no safer prayer.  A dangerous prayer because we don’t know what God will do with release.  Freedom is the freedom to serve, to act, to obey, and to move.  Freedom to go where we are sent.

Why would that be dangerous?  Have you ever heard anyone say, “oh, don’t pray for patience because God will give you something hard and you’ll learn to be patient the hard way.”  I think it might be bit like that, the prayer that could lead you anywhere.  Yet, it would be anywhere where God would like you to go, or what God would like you to do, listen, speak, obey, or wait. 

I’m going to try and venture out with this prayer.  Will you join me?