The Sacred Ground of Barren Landscapes

 

















During the early months of sheltering in place, I daily escaped lock-down by going out on a run on country roads. The countless hills and pastures around me seemed frozen in time like sepia photographs taken centuries ago. The motionless fields were covered in the remains of last year’s unidentifiable crop, rows upon rows of dead stalks, like neglected headstones in an old cemetery. It was a bleak reminder of the statistics day after day of disease, death, and an economy on life support, as tragic and lifeless as that field. It was not anything we saw coming or expected.

What good can come of this?

Amidst the din of news reports, I listened to the quiet voices of people I trusted, ordinary prophets who said this is not going away tomorrow, this is not the end of the story, nor of our careers, nor life as we have known it, but perhaps only a change of direction, a change of plans that were not ever our own, a different path through the chaos of the world, behold something beyond our myopic vision. “Actually, it is liberating to have your plans shattered,” remarked author Andy Crouch. Something different is about to emerge.

And I heard over and over again: Take advantage of this time. Not waiting for “normal” to return on the southbound train, but instead, to seize this in-between time on a different patch of unaltered soil, a place of becoming. Not a time to bury, but to plant, to nurture, to grasp the profound significance of the ordinary, not to just make the most of the time but the most of the now we don’t yet understand, not solely focusing on what comes of it next.

Even now, months and months later, as Covid-19 rages on, that which unfolds is not a mindless flipping through a chronicle of wasted time, but that every day is an ongoing story of God's faithfulness.

I ran alongside barren fields on miles of rural asphalt that seemed forgotten and lonely. But never without hope, not running away, but running toward. Spring is coming, I reminded myself, just as it always has. It is not just meaningless fallow dirt around me or gravel crunching beneath my feet on the edges of the road, but sacred ground.

And through those endless days, I wondered, what will the children remember about this? (“Back when I was a little kid, we used to get on a bus and go to school every day.”) What will we remember? Are the “good old days” really how we lived so naively five or six months ago? And we complained about it then?

We have been so overtaken by the pandemic, that one morning, even the wild flowers began hilariously looking like the virus.

Early into the quarantine in March, sheltering alone in her apartment, my mother in law exclaimed, “They are saying this could last until July or August!”

 Well, here we are.

When our grey cheerless spring, with its cool days and forecasts of rain, slipped suddenly into summer’s suffocating blanket of heat and humidity, I changed my running routine, heading out even earlier, before the blazing heat of the day, and seeking out paths with any possible suggestion of shade.

Several weeks passed before I returned to my old rural route, where I am greeted by cows and horses and an occasional pickup. As I crossed the bridge over the slow muddy river and came around the bend, there was hope thriving in that same field, the old having been plowed under and forgiven, the new growth in a thousand shades of fresh green, that which had been planted and that which had come up on its own.

It just needed time to grow.

It still needs time to ripen.

Will we be surprised in the seasons and years and even weeks from now to see what we have nurtured, what we have pursued, choosing what to plant in those moments through the valley of deep darkness, choosing what to let go, choosing what to let grow, choosing to follow God into this?

And to see the first fruits of what hope in God looks like, not dependent on appearances or circumstances, but that on which we can stake our lives.

God is at work in a million different ways in our lives. Probably more.

God still knows what He is doing. And there, in those fields I observed what had been already growing below the surface, not anything we saw coming or expected.

“The great stories are those about redemption,” says Don Hahn, creator and master storyteller of such Disney classics as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, “the coming out of a dark place.”

And indeed, God brings the redemption. Visible accomplishments are not the point, but faithfulness to God in what is at hand. To take one step and then another into His redeeming.

To know Him more.

Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet
I will rejoice in the LORD;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
He makes my feet like the deer’s;
He makes me tread on my high places.

 Habakkuk 3. 17-19

Yet
is one of my favorite words in the Bible.
Because this is not
            the end of the story.

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