The Wild Places

Last week, as I was working my way through a box of old papers, notes, and clippings, I came across a single sheet torn from a journal, dated almost exactly 23 years ago.  We were camping with our four daughters, driving endless hours on a state highway. Stunned by what was before me, I jotted down my thoughts, not imagining I’d find these words again someday.

                                            

                         Montana 7-14-1997

In this desolate land

  of endless miles of scrub grass,

           a patchwork of dust and rocks,

the shadows of clouds

                  passing overhead.

Hill after hill, a barren place,

the only signs of life

   are fences of barbed wire,

lining the asphalt two-lane.

                         No speed limit.

And suddenly,

           from a far-off view,

a line of green drawn erratically 

    as by the hand of a two year old.

There is no question 

            where the water is.

The trees flourish 

with a sharp contrast of color

                     in a place so pale.

Should not our lives too

    point the way to hope

like trees planted 

              by rivers of water,

    laughing and singing 

       and clapping their hands?

A mirage does not 

                  produce life

     visible from miles around.

Hope does.

Songs of Lamentation

My generation has seen this all before.  The protests, the marches, the rioting, the violence, the police and National Guard standing in a line behind their shields and moving forward towards rock-throwing crowds of people.  I cringe when I see these familiar images in the news. Back in the turbulence of the 1960s, people took notice. Heads were turned, legislation established, and then, pretty much back to normal.

What has changed in these past fifty-plus years?  What will be different now?

The headlines will move on as quickly as they shifted from the pandemic to the protests – and already, it seems, back to the pandemic again.  Crowds will disperse, a few laws will be passed to protect and reform.  But the crucial issue on the table is not a legislative one.   Will people’s hearts change?

Lament is a sorrow which does not just recognize the mess we’re in –that injustice and oppression and corruption are wrong --but what can be made right.  Lament does not leave us in despair, but points us to hope, that which should be, that which God intended all along.

This world is not the way it is supposed to be.  God created each person in His image, the mark of sacredness on every life.  Every life.  The dignity of every person comes from God, not from social status, nationality, education, job, accent, abilities, achievements, family history, or ethnicity.  Dignity and identity are far deeper than that.  Life itself is rooted on holy ground.  That is why death so shocks us.

Somehow, we still don’t get it.  And injustice has dwelt among us for far too long. 

  

People are angry, and rightly so, for what has happened and for what should be. 

This is exactly why, way back in the garden of Eden, God said, “Don’t touch that tree.  Don’t go there.  Don’t stand in its shade.  Don’t even look at its fruit.”  Because God knew what would happen.  God knew the vast destruction of what sin would do. Sin is an old-fashioned word that basically means the massive outcropping of selfishness in all its ugliness.  

The domination of self over the welfare of others resounds in the deep darkness of Eve’s chorus, “I want to be God!”  In some way, every one of us has succumbed to the terrible deceit of selfishness or suffered because of it.  

And when selfishness takes God’s rightful place, injustice prevails.  Every time.

I grieve for the utter atrocity of George Floyd’s death.  I am appalled.  But I also grieve for all the other George Floyd’s through the centuries who have suffered injustice without an 8.46 minute video, without headlines, body-cams, without anyone knowing the truth about it, silent killings, human trafficking, coverups, defamation of character, slammed doors, demeaning murderous words on the playground, the classroom, on the street, and at work. 

What’s wrong with the world?  That is a question that every worldview must answer.  And the response so often invokes finger-pointing, casting stones, and blaming everyone else, except ourselves. 

These songs of lament are not just about our culture, a call for political reform or overthrow, police reform, but a call for personal repentance.  What is in my heart? 

This is nothing new.  If you want to know about justice and injustice, slavery and corruption, oppression and restoration, wrong paths and right choices, suffering, this broken world and its restoration, that is what the Bible is all about, cover to cover.

We lament, we cry out, we are dismayed at unrighteousness, we grieve.  And that is good.  Because lament is finally feeling the tears of God.  By lamenting, we recognize that something is terribly wrong.  And if we recognize that something is wrong, there must be something enormously right that compels us, not just to hope, but to do something about it.  

Deep down inside, we all know that something is not right.  We know that God is just and right and good.  And because of God, there is hope and rightness.  God never intended for us to live in a broken down, falling apart world.  And we yearn for what should be.

O God, do something about it!  And He replies, “That is why I put you there.” 

Cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.  Isaiah 1. 16-17

What can we do in response?

As author Steven Garber says, “I can’t do everything, but I can do something.”  Right where I am. 

In the midst of oppression and injustice and suffering, the prophet Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations from a place of hardship and persecution in 550 B.C., where he was beaten and jailed and thrown into the nasty muddy bottom of a cistern, and yet said:

But seek the welfare of the city

where I have sent you into exile,

and pray to the LORD on its behalf,

for in its welfare, you will find your welfare.

                                Jeremiah 29. 7

The word “welfare” in ancient Hebrew is shalom – completeness, soundness, peace, prosperity, contentment, friendship, human relationships, and flourishing.  Seeking my own flourishing only makes me arrogant and insatiably selfish.  Seeking the flourishing of others changes the world.

Redeeming, restoration and relationship are the most profound forms of protest.  If things are going to be different, something has to change.  That means each one of us, not just in our own little way, but in His profound purposes.

When it comes down to it, it is not about laws, political issues, and the biggest protest marches, not about new and improved programs, organizations and the loudest noise in the room, not about vast social projects, but about loving people.

God always works through relationships – walking with Him and interacting with others.  He always has. Love God. Love each other, neighbors, strangers, sojourners, and even those who don’t like us, agree with us, or look like us.  

Our songs of lament are not about despair, but all about hope, and making things right. 

He has told you, O man, what is good;

and what does the LORD require of you

but to do justice,

      and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God.

                              Micah 6. 8

Bird by Bird

In her iconic 1994 chronicle Bird by Bird, Anne LaMott narrates a story from her childhood about her brother who had procrastinated starting his huge school report about birds.  As in any act of putting off the inevitable, suddenly it was the night before it was due.  He sat slumped at the table, defeated and overwhelmed by the immensity of the work now before him.

He was ready to give up all together.  It was an impossible task.  Her father came up beside him.  How in the world can I do this? her brother lamented.

"Bird by bird," her father replied.

Over the years, I have heard that story repeated in a variety of situations when drowning beneath a massive impenetrable load of work.  Just take it one bird at a time.  Take one step and then another.

In this time of covid, many are overwhelmed by the hard labor at hand, working from home, logging uncountable hours in essential tasks in hospitals, or taking care of young kids and balancing instruction and homework for schoolchildren.  Too much.  Where do I even start?  Bird by bird.

But others are hunkered down at home, overwhelmed as well, not by the immensity of work but by the lack of it.  Little personal interaction, unemployed, empty days fading from one into another. What day is it?   There is nothing to do.

And again, the best approach is bird by bird.  Take one step and then another.  Do one thing, just one tiny step, and another will rise to take its place.  And in my experience, one step guides me to the next.

...do what your hand finds to do,
     for God is with you.

                   1 Samuel 10. 7

It may not be what we particularly want to do, but there is always something within reach, a starting point, even what appears just a necessary action.  What is nearest, what is proximate, what is immediate, and what can we be working toward?  Those steps and tasks may not be deemed significant, but they may indeed be worthy of attention.  God never intends for waiting to be a passive verb, but a time of preparing, equipping, and pulling weeds long neglected.  The next thing is already here today.

What new thing should I do?  What should I do differently?  What should I do faithfully?

"Beware of allowing yourself to think that the shallow concerns of life are not ordained of God;  they are as much of God as the profound."  (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest)

As we respond to God's leading, He changes our hearts and enlarges our vision.  Perhaps this is not such an empty wasteland after all, but a new canvas appearing in the ordinary, a place of His faithfulness and redeeming.  God changes the landscape, even right where we are.

Step by step.  Task by task.
    Obedience by obedience.
    Even in the hard stuff
        that seems daunting.
God reveals His glory,
       but not just at the end of this.
Because every day is a story of God's faithfulness.
And we are surrounded by His grace.

Bird by bird.

A Twinkle in Her Eye

My mom and my grandmother Mammy made their living as musicians, finding cracks in solid concrete walls to literally at times put food on the table.  I could list the hard stuff in their lives that would have brought defeat in most people's lives.  But I am also very aware of how they navigated the difficult passages.

I had a front row seat for their actions and reactions, since my grandmother lived with us from before I was born.  I can remember when things got tough, Mammy would get a familiar twinkle in her eye.  When I saw that look on her face, it was like she was declaring out loud, "Now let's see what God does with this."  She had seen too much in life to question God in her latest momentary affliction.  It was hard.  But there was always hope.  And she knew her strength was not her own, but in the God she loved.  Mom was like that too.  Mom was born during the Spanish influenza, struggled through the Great Depression, lost both her father as a teenager and her husband not too many years later in the war.

It was never the circumstances that dictated their action.  It was their response to it.

I learned personally from the two of them that crisis can either bring you down or nurture great creativity.  I actually think the two of them were energized and drew great delight in turning hardship into new creative ways of thinking about something.

How can we approach this differently?

In a single-parent household, having no money was a way of life, but for them, never an excuse.  "You want to go to college?" my widowed grandmother asked my mom in the economically-ravaged years of the mid-1930s.  "How can we make that happen" was not a question, but a plan for action.

Neither one of them was afraid of hard work.  They expected it.  They were not dismayed by what they did not have, or by barriers erected in the way, but they looked for possibilities in the scraps at hand.  As Jesus asked the disciples in the face of 5000 hungry men, "How many loaves do you have?"  (Matthew 16. 34) 

Things rarely turned out the way they expected.  But that was not a bad thing in their eyes.  They found God's wonder increasingly come into view.  Not just enough to squeak by, but more than enough to share, baskets full of leftovers.  And along the way, the two of them blessed more people than can be counted, more than they were ever to know.

In the face of trouble or storm or need, they knew to bring what they had to Jesus.  And adding to their praying, some divinely appointed perseverance, long hard hours, a heaping scoop of imagination, and as Mammy always said, "a little elbow grease." 

In its extremes, creativity emerges from crisis.  There are different ways of doing things after all, different paths of which we are totally unaware, a whole universe we have not known.  Doing new things -- or even the ordinary or mundane in different ways -- physically, relationally, and tangibly changes us by establishing new neural pathways in the brain and strengthening the chambers of our hearts.

Do we recognize the sacredness of the ordinary? Do we embrace the opportunity in the radical changes before us?

Dwelling not on "What should I do this afternoon?"
      but "What should I do differently this afternoon?"
What is right before me,
what is waiting
           ...and has been waiting a long time
    in the hallway
    and at the front door,
out of my direct view
            or clinging to the edges?

Not just how to navigate through this,
nor how to walk around it
           or thinking beyond it,
but how to respond,
      how to respond in a different way,
following not just His direction
                  but seeking God Himself.
And He whispers in our ears,
"I am going with you.
                  Do not be afraid."

These things are what I am contemplating this Mother's Day in such strange and turbulent times.  I was blessed by my mom and grandmother, by the twinkle in their eyes, how to navigate this, not in despair but in wonder, to show me who God is, and make known what God's faithfulness looks like in real time.

Getting back to normal

With the economy beginning to sneak open again, conversations are now buzzing about what was BC (before covid) and what is to be AQ (after quarantine).  I am hearing a lot of "I can't wait to get back to normal."

I don't think God has any intention for us to go back to what was normal, ordinary, mundane, routine, exactly alike, unchanged, common, average, and business as usual.  Or should I say busy-ness as usual.

In the sudden shut-down of our economy and sheltering in our homes, we sounded a lot like the Israelites just three days after the monumental life-altering parting of the Red Sea, grumbling for what they left in Egypt.  It was so much better before than this wilderness, this disruption, this quarantine.  "If we had only known, we would not have complained so much about what we had before."

Normal again?  That sets the bar pretty low.  Is that what we really want?

In many dimensions, as drastically hard as it has been for so many, this lockdown has actually been a release, providing a different season, a new way of looking at things, the shedding of rigid schedules and self-imposed regulations that keep us from seeing anything different or even contemplating what could be.

God does not say:  "Behold, I make all things normal again."

But He does promise:  "Behold, I make all things new."  (Revelation 21. 5)

Circumstances may alter radically -- or not at all -- but if we come out of this monumental shake-up unchanged, then we have missed the newness that God brings to any situation.  And we'll miss His faithfulness that continues to surround us, not just through this, not just in what we understand --or cannot fathom-- but all along the way.

And even very familiar words of Scripture take on deeper meaning, the heartfelt rhythms, songs and prayers by David, the singer/songwriter and poet laureate of the Bible, written in the 10th century BC.  And those psalms remind us --yet again-- that God's faithfulness and steadfast love endures forever, true and manifest three thousand years ago when David penned these words....and even now.  Even in this.

Even though I walk through
    the valley of deep darkness,
I will fear no evil,
for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff,
       they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
  in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
              my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy
shall follow me
all the days of my life.
And I will dwell
in the house of the LORD
                  forever.

                  Psalm 23. 4-6

Dwelling in His Presence,
walking with Him,
surrounded by
        His steadfast love.

Not just squeaking by,
    not just surviving,
but thriving
      in impossible places.
Live in such a way
   by walking with Him.