Sacrifice that Costs us Nothing is no Sacrifice at all - Part Three

In which Christianity misunderstands King David for millenia, to our detriment
Lessons on kingship from 2 Samuel 23-24

Shepherd, King…Writer?

Reading the Psalms, it’s easy to see why someone would want to emulate David. He poured out his heart to God, pleaded for mercy, longed for Your friendship. Side by side with 2 Samuel, however, the tension of his life comes into sharp relief: 

He could not be what he wanted to be. 

I understand David’s dilemma; Paul captured it so well in Romans 7: 

“...I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good…for I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:15-16, 18-19) 

The difference is, whereas Paul could add, as he does in verses 17 and 20, “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me” because he lived secure under the new covenant, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, David had no such confidence. He lived in the age of the perpetual slaughtering of animal sacrifices for sin. There was not, yet, that better sacrifice that the author of the Book of Hebrews writes about so beautifully in chapter 10, in such tight logic it is difficult to quote a fragment without laying out the entire passage: 

"For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,

 "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
  in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
  Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.' "

When he said above, 'You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings' (these are offered according to the law), then he added, 'Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." (Hebrews 10:1-13)

*

We writers are our best selves - often imagined, idealized - when we are writing. Many times, this is to the detriment of our lives off the page. We can see where we want to be, how we want to live, what we know will honor God and bring Him glory…so clearly, there on the page. But the moment we stand up and set down the pen, it’s all gone. 

I remember, early on, asking the Lord to give me a heart like David’s. Now I can see the shadow of the double-edged sword I was demanding that He hang over my head. I can also see that before I asked, before I understood that I wanted a heart that would always pursue Him, He also had this similarity between us in mind: a compulsion to write, to think and pray things out on the page to my audience of One.

Our writing is how and where we make sense of these tensions, of our lives, of scripture, of God. If we did not write, we would not grow, and He would not use us, however unwittingly we serve. 

I wonder when David started writing psalms. Was it during his shepherd days, filling the long hours of listening to sheep bleating and steering them out of marshes and lions’ teeth with songs of praise? Or was it in King Saul’s court, desperately composing pleas for help alongside songs to amuse the tortured king? 

Whenever it was, it must have been early: this sort of writing habit is only established once it becomes clear to the writer that not to write would be to die. 

It must have hurt him, thinking about the passion he poured out for the musicians to play before the people, knowing that his life did not reflect the holy intentions of his writing. I wonder if he was surprised to learn, when he entered eternity, that he had been hearing Your voice and doing Your will, that again and again, he had penned words that the Messiah Himself would take as His own - were His own all along - even some of the precious few words He uttered while hanging on the cross, as He completed His most sacred, precious task, the one that David could not complete: self-sacrificial death for His people. 

After all the battles he fought, his greatest achievement in life came out of those lonely, desperate, dark hours spent in doubt, shame, and repentance, as he penned his thoughts, confessions, desires and praise to his Shepherd and his King.

[See Part 1 and Part 2]

Sacrifice that Costs us Nothing is no Sacrifice at all - Part Two

In which Christianity misunderstands King David for millenia, to our detriment
Lessons on kingship from 2 Samuel 23-24

Taking credit for God’s provision

In the closing story of 2 Samuel, David takes a census of the fighting men in his kingdom.  As a refresher, in Exodus 30:12, God told Moses, “When you take a census of the Israelites to count them, each one must pay the LORD a ransom for his life at the time he is counted. Then no plague will come on them when you number them.” 

Bible scholars have made much of this event, in part because in 2 Samuel 24:1, God Himself incited David to count the people, whereas in 1 Chronicles 21:1, it says that Satan incited David to take the census. 

In 2 Samuel 24:10, we learn that “David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, Lord, take away the guilt of Your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.”

What are readers supposed to think about the tension between God’s injunction in Exodus and the implication that He prompted David to commit this act? 

The census took nine months and twenty days (2 Samuel 24:8). Did David really only realize his error nearly a year after he started counting? Does that mean he had all that time to reconsider his action, to turn back, to stop counting? How could a man of such deep prayers and thoughts of God go such a long time ignorant of the consequences he was bringing to bear on his country?

I have a feeling that the answer has something to do with the exploits of David’s mighty men, and with other seemingly impossible victories throughout Israel’s relationship with God, like Samson’s, like the defeat of Jericho by marching around the walls, and Gideon’s defeat of Moab with only 300 men. In every instance, it was not the strength of the army nor the number that won the day, but the Lord. With Him, what appears to be necessary isn’t actually necessary at all. He can wipe out an army with a song, as in 2 Kings 19:35 when He wipes out 85,000 Assyrians without a single soldier of Israel lifting his weapon.

So for David to count his fighting men was an act of pride in his resources rather than in the Lord to protect his kingdom: a forgetting of the ways in which God had protected him in the past, when his resources were few. 

Three options: Choose one

My next question has to do with the word of the Lord that comes to David after he prays for the removal of his guilt, in the form of Gad the prophet, David’s personal seer. The Lord tells Gad, “Go and tell David, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for Me to carry out against you.”

At the start of chapter 24, it says that the Lord was angry with Israel. The Lord has caused David to act in a way that has brought down a punishment against Israel, as its kingly representative. He will take away David’s guilt, but He will do so at Israel’s expense. And what is more, He gives David the choice as to the nature of the punishment. 

It is only as I ask, ‘what does it mean for God to give David the choice of discipline?’ that I understand that God has hidden a personal test of David the King within the bigger narrative. 

Sacrifice that Costs us Nothing is No Sacrifice at all - Part One

Lessons on kingship from 2 Samuel 23-24
In which Christianity misunderstands King David for millenia, to our detriment

What exactly does it mean to be a person after God’s own heart?

I’ve been overtired and disgruntled after weeks of schedule disruption and uncertainty as we deal with my three year old son’s development and sleep regression. So as I came to 2 Samuel 23 in my Bible reading the other day, I was not expecting anything particularly rich. I was disheartened by the thought of the long slog of disappointing kings on the road to exile, waiting for me after 2 Samuel comes to a close. But since it was the first morning in a long while that I’ve had a solid bit of time to devote to God, I asked Him to open His Word to my understanding, and tucked in.

When I started to read, it didn’t take long for me to remember that the Spirit of God is the One who brings the Word of God to life, and He has an infinite number of things to show us. 

The arc of the books of Samuel is an intimate account of the establishment of the monarchy in Israel, beginning with Hannah’s dedication of her yet-to-be-conceived son to God, and followed by God’s call to the dedicated boy, Samuel, to be His prophet: the man by whom He selected first Saul, then David, to be king. 

It is hard to imagine another character in the Bible who is better known than David, with so many of his thoughts, actions, and words laid bare in the books of 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 Chronicles, and the Psalms. He is a shadow of Christ, and His ancestor, to whom the Messiah is promised to come out of his lineage. Of him it is said that he is “a man after God’s own heart” - an often repeated phrase in Protestant Christianity, usually used to imply that we should aspire to be like David, as though there is something inherent in him that warrants admiration. He has been memorialized in marble by Michaelangelo, idolized in Sunday school, and emulated by the writers of worship songs to this day. 

However, I wonder if it is not that he has a heart like God’s, but rather that he is after God’s heart - in a constant state of pursuing Him, going after Him and His will - that we need to understand and strive for in our own lives. No matter how much we may want a heart like God’s - or David’s - we cannot simply make it so. But we can go after Him. We can commit to pursuing His heart and His will no matter what happens in our lives. 

That we can do.

*

From a forgotten shepherd boy to God’s anointed, to unlikely war hero, to favored court musician, to unjustly hunted man, 1 Samuel follows David’s young manhood, as the Lord prepares him to take on the responsibilities of kingship. 2 Samuel opens on David’s established reign as king, and goes on to describe unflinchingly the good, the bad, and the truly horrific acts of his kingship. 

To be honest, by the time I get to the end of 2 Samuel, I am getting tired of David. It is hard for me to watch him transform from a tender young man hungry to know God and committed to justice and righteousness, to a privileged king who murders and rapes, who ignores and covers up the sins of his sons at the expense of his daughter and his people. 

As his kingdom falls apart, it is hard to remember that David loves the Lord totally, knows him better and more roundly than nearly anyone who ever lived, save for a handful of other notables (like Enoch, Abraham, Moses, and Elijah). He never loses faith in his God, and he runs to Him when he sinned, rather than hiding from him. He is also a prophet of the Lord. 

In chapter 22, we are given a brief respite from the mayhem of David’s latter years; we are reminded of the man who still exists underneath the degradations of power. The reminder comes by his own words, for 2 Samuel 22 is Psalm 18 repeated in its entirety: one of the Messianic Psalms that points to the sacrifice of Jesus to come, and of His complete and eternal triumph for His people.

It is no random chance to find a Psalm - this Psalm in particular - at the end of 2 Samuel. David’s heart is laid bare in the Psalms that he wrote; in these prayerful poems, we can see that David understands his humble place under God. Without them, with only his recorded actions to go on, we might come to a very different conclusion about this king. The thing about David is that, while he gets catastrophically distracted by his good fortune again and again, he never completely loses sight of the One Who has made it all possible, the One Who is the true king over Israel. 

And the writer of 2 Samuel wants to make sure that we don’t lose sight of Him, either.

A Toddler-sized Saudade

 

I find myself wrestling with a specific sort of sadness, one I haven’t experienced in a long while.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I may never live in the US again, and therefore rarely be in close proximity to family and old friends. I’ve given up my longing for the cold, for deciduous trees, for a whole host of things. I’m starting to be familiar with the simultaneous tug of joy and sorrow, at least as it is proscribed in the walk with Christ.

But over a period of couple months, I’ve found myself increasingly wrung out over an extended goodbye, in such a way that it almost feels like it portends something. (In my long sojourn in the prophets, I’ve come to have a wary understanding of symbolic actions and scenarios. I’ve learned that the Lord is accustomed to using strange and repetitive things to get our attention and cause us to think outside our usual patterns. This is what fuels prophetic thought and speech: a heightened awareness of what the Lord is doing in the present that foreshadows what He will do in the future, by relating what is happening in the present to what He has done in the past.)

Sometime in late summer, my little son Ernesto, who had just turned two, started playing with some neighborhood babies his age, facilitated by their nannies/grandmothers, etc. I didn’t notice right away, because I dislike spending time outside in peak Hanoi heat, but I did notice when Nen began talking about ‘Cay’ and ‘Ahreen’. Nen’s nanny Nga explained that “Cay” was a little Vietnamese boy and “Ahreen” a Korean girl. As the weather began to cool, I joined him outside sometimes and observed this tiny toddler friendship. 

Cay is an energetic, acrobatic little guy who likes to pretend he’s a superhero, and climbs and zooms around with an ease that is far advanced of Nen’s abilities. But Ahreen (we later learned that her name is actually Ayun; her nanny could not pronounce it) is a quiet girl who likes to swing and paddle calmly around on a seated scooter. Without any words between them, she and Nen would get on the scooter together and roll around the circular drive-around that connects our 4-building apartment complex, in our quiet suburb. Their little hands casually resting on each other, they spent their outside time in peace that seemed, to my unaccustomed eyes, unusual for toddlers.

When Nen was inside for the day, he talked about Ayun. When I began working part time at HIF, I always make sure to ask how his day was when I returned home. “Did you have fun? What did you do today, Nen?” His response invariably was “Cay” and “Ahreen” – even if he hadn’t seen them that day. I learned from Nga that Ayun also talked about Ernesto.

He and Ayun have a special connection. They make each other laugh. They are gentle together, never making each other unhappy. Watching them together became one of the highlights of my day, a great joy – what mother does not delight in watching her son grow in kindness and gentleness?

So it was with some dismay when I learned in December that Ayun’s family was returning to Korea, with no plans of returning to Hanoi. As the children are so young, it seemed very unlikely that they will see one another again. So young, in fact, that they are equally unlikely to carry any personal memories of this early, precious friendship with them into their childhoods.

I was, and am, heartbroken by this thought. I suppose in some unspoken part of my brain, I had been imagining a lengthier friendship, one that grew as they did, shaping their lives and ours in its sweetness.

* 

Due to a language barrier compounded by my lack of either Viet or Korean, and Ayun’s Vietnamese nanny’s limited English, we did not know when exactly the final parting would come. Each time they played became more charged with this impending final farewell. Was this the last time? The babies’ sweet tendency to have drawn out goodbyes, with both of them yelling, ‘BYE BYYYYYYYYYE’ over and over at each other before being removed by their respective caregivers, only exacerbated the knowledge of their soon to be final goodbye. 

I held up my sadness to the Lord, asking for Him to keep both children physically and emotionally and, if possible, to protect and preserve their memories of one another.

A strange thing began to happen. We learned the family would leave for Korea before Tet, the lunar holiday. They would move into temporary housing, outside our complex, before their flight. Before that, they would vacation for a week at the beach.  As January ticked closer to February, we had a series of goodbyes we thought were final, and I would return home deeply saddened; Ernesto’s every mention of her name was a small lance of pain.

I added her name to our prayers at night; he woke every morning with her name in his mouth.

And then the next day we would see her again. A series of strange delays and mishaps contributed to ‘just one more’ playdate. Every single one was a delightful surprise.

Even COVID lent itself to another day, as their travel plans were delayed due to the most recent outbreak, which came conspicuously timed just before Tet after months of zero cases in Vietnam.

Every toddler in the neighborhood seemed to be out, as all elementary school children had the day off, an early start to Tet in an attempt by the government to slow the spread of the virus. It became an impromptu sendoff for Ayun. Nen and his Ahreen swung side by side, took turns on the slide, and watched the other kids. 

They seemed to hug more than usual, and I wondered whether it was possible that they understood, somehow, that this was the last time they would play together. One more day of sweetness. As we all rode the elevator in our building for the last time, Ayun and her nanny to the 4^th floor, Nen and Nga and I to the 16^th, their sweet BYE BYYYYYYEEEEs brought tears to my eyes.

The next day, she was gone.

I don’t know how long Ernesto will talk about her, how often he will ask to go outside to play with his Ahreen, whose real name he isn’t even conscious of. How many naps and nights he will include her in his list of people he loves.

This long farewell has gone on long enough, however, to rise into my consciousness as conspicuous. I begin to suspect that the Lord has more in mind than simply responding to my heart-prayers and vicarious sadness over the loss of my son’s little friend.

On one level, I believe that these unexpected “just one more” encounters were gracious gifts from my Lord to both my son and to me. He loves children far more than I ever could, and I know deep in every cell that He has enjoyed watching them together – and watching me experience such a sweet development in my son’s life and personality. I have learned so much from their camaraderie – about Ernesto as a person, about the rich blessing of living in Vietnam with a small pre-bilingual child in a COVID world, and about myself as a mother. 

On another level, I believe that He also has intended this painfully extended farewell to embed itself in my heart. There is something here, or many somethings, that I must not forget – just as I hope Ernesto will not forget Ayun.

Partings are common in the Bible, many of them permanent. At the Lord’s direction, Abram left his family and his home and never looked back. Rebekah did the same to marry Isaac, sight unseen - a picture of post-resurrection believers 'betrothed' to Christ. Joseph. Moses. Rahab. Ruth. The remnant of the Lord’s people carried off to Babylon, like Daniel, Esther, Nehemiah. All of these partings came with bitter tears of separation, an uncertain future without hope of reunion, and the fading voices and memories of lost people and places.

Even Jesus Himself was forced to flee His homeland to escape the murder of little children very close in age to Ernesto, Cay and Ayun.

As Christians, our most common identity is that of the exile – a people without a homeland, without a permanent residence, traveling toward a destination, a God we have not seen but have been promised will be ours in the end: Christ.

We can trust that promise because He alone experienced the ultimate undoable separation – death – and by His resurrection tore a hole in it, making it a journey and not a destination, making Himself the gateway between the temporal world and eternity.

Over the past year and a half, I have been on a journey with my emotions. They used to rule me, sadness, depression and anger bottomless, hopeless, aimless. The Lord has been teaching me, softly, patiently, how to feel in obedience to Him – the Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, Who has born our sorrows and burdens and uncertainties. He has been teaching me how not to fear sadness and grief, but to feel it from within the strong, unbreakable comfort of His hands and His heart, where I abide. To let Him guide me in it and through it to do His will, for the good of those around me. I can do this because the scarred hands and heart that built the universe will also, without fail, knit it all back together again better than before, removing every sorrow, undoing every separation, wiping every tear from our eyes.

The great tentmaking traveler Paul, who I think must be the man most well-versed in goodbyes in the Bible, was the one who captured the tension we must live with, those of us in Christ who are still subject to the physical laws of this earth: “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).

*

As I was pressing into this toddler-sized grief, feeling pain for the loss of Ayun on Ernesto’s behalf, this tension of “both sorrowful and full of joy” reminded me of something. One of my favorite words in any language also happens to be one that isn’t easily translated into English: the Portuguese Saudade.

The concept has many definitions, including a melancholy nostalgia for something that perhaps has not even happened. It often carries an assurance that this thing you feel nostalgic for will never happen again. Portuguese writer Manuel de Melo called it "a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy."

Supposedly it came about in the early days of Portuguese sea-exploration, when a ship setting sail to seek out new worlds meant, for the crew, near-certain permanent separation from everything and everyone they had ever known.

A handful of other attempts to grapple with saudade include:

- a mixture of melancholic longing or yearning coupled with a sense of loneliness and incompleteness

- a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future

- a nostalgic longing to be near again to something or someone that is distant, or that has been loved and then lost; ‘the love that remains’.

It occurs to me that saudade is the naked state of every individual human soul. This ‘vague and constant desire’, this longing and loneliness and incompleteness, this feeling of having lost something very dear, just out of sight in space and time, reminds me of Ecclesiastes 3:11, which says that God “has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

I’m not the only one to connect with this.

Philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”

“Humans are searchers, desperately looking for the right measure of worldly desires to fill the hole in their heart. It may be work, or pleasure, or drink. It might even be your husband, or food, or Kentucky basketball. When Adam committed that first sin, we became estranged from God, and the hole was opened, a hole we have been trying to fill with everything but the One who is perfectly designed to satisfy.” - Anonymous

C S Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

There is so much truth in this. It is as complex and difficult to be contained – or explained - as so many of our experiences throughout our lifetimes. I long for Ayun to stay, for she and Ernesto to somehow remain friends, lifelong friends, to remember and reunite in all their adorable camaraderie. Ultimately, at the bottom of it all, I long for Christ to return for us and make all this right, to end the exile and the parting of friends forever.  

                           

The Lord is my worship leader

[Note: I was thinking about how I started this blog initially as a way to log my relationship with Jesus. I think I got away from that idea a bit, but I’ve been wanting to go back to that. After I began thinking about it, a friend came up to me at church and commented on how much she enjoyed my blog (one of my 3 readers, haha). So here I am, back at the keyboard for an update. I'm thinking that I'll post little bits as they come, rather than gear up for big posts for awhile.]

So, I have a terrible untrained voice, and I can’t hold a tune or note, so singing has always brought out some self-conscious anxiety that I have to determine to get over for the Lord in worship. It seems that the Lord has been encouraging me to sing, to give myself up to it. From time to time during worship, I sense Him guiding my voice, sometimes for a whole song, sometimes only a line or two. I can barely hear myself over the worship team, but I sense that my voice lifts into some harmony (rarely the melody). 

The point is, He works unaided by my musical ignorance or vocal cords.

I have a recurring sense that the Lord is singing with me. He lifts my voice to meet others’ in what becomes, for a moment, a tiny microcosm of harmony within the greater medley. I’ve begun to hunger for these moments and feel His delight in them. I feel my face beaming in genuine smile when it happens. It’s exciting to realize the Lord’s presence in this way. When I’m chasing His voice, I lose self-consciousness in my desire for our harmony.

It occurs to me that this is how He works as our Head, bringing us together in every area of our lives and in our work for Him. It is just like Him to pick an area of my life that I haven’t even considered working on, that is ‘hopeless’ to me – so hopeless that I don’t bother about it – to demonstrate how He is in complete control. If He wants me to worship Him with my voice, then by golly, I will, even despite myself. He even makes it sound good from time to time!

If I was the only one singing, it would be a sad and possibly scary worship time! But in step with my brothers and sisters and the Spirit, He draws a symphony out of us. That's something worth singing about. 

At one time: the precious reality of our very physical Savior

There are many times when I simply long to be in Jesus' physical presence. I know He's always with me, but oh, for that day when I will see Him as He is! Whenever I let this thought linger, it invariably starts to ache. 

I wonder what it will be like. Once this world has passed away, and we are forever with our Lord, doing and being in His presence, what will the concrete details of our life consist of? Sometimes I try to imagine, but I never get far, because my primary concern always boils down to this thought: 

Will I personally get to walk alongside Jesus? Will He always be right by my side, like He is now, only fully fleshed out and visible? 

The questions make me feel vaguely guilty for even asking. But I can't wrap my head around it. Who am I, that I would ever be able to get close enough to Him, with all the other saints in existence around? 

Before I put much thought into it, I always just sort of imagined an innumerable crowd swarming around Him, and me somewhere at the back, trying to see Him. Or going about whatever work I will be doing for Him, in some distant land, wistfully thinking about Him.

My unglorified, finite mind simply cannot imagine a reality beyond this one, where my God is not only present but visible. A place where I won't ever be wistfully longing, unable to lay my head against my Savior's heart. It seems impossible for me to imagine.

But lately, a few fragments of scripture have been coming together in my mind. They seem to be pointing toward an answer to my hesitant questions. I desperately want to believe that my Father is patiently trying to show me, to coax me to believe what I hope I'm seeing there. 

The first is, strangely, in the Book of Revelation. At the start of chapter 14, there is a brief paragraph about 144,000 people "who had been redeemed from the earth....They follow the Lamb wherever He goes. They were purchased from among mankind and offered as firstfruits to God and the Lamb" (Rev. 14:1-4).

I'm very hesitant to do much interpretation in Revelation, for many reasons. I do, however, try to read it the way I read the rest of the Bible: looking for how God is relating to His chosen people through Christ. And I'm reasonably sure that there have been many more redeemed from the earth than 144,000. The word "firstfruits" is really key here. Studying where it is used throughout the Bible leads me to believe that the number 144,000 is being used as a representative of all believers. 

They follow Him wherever He goes. 

That's the part that's been coming to mind. It seems to speak to this ache that I have, this-- I don't want to call it 'anxiety', but I can't think of a better word-- concern that maybe that reality isn't for me. What if I barely get to see Him in eternity, let alone walk and talk with Him? 

But why would that ever be? Does that sound our Lord to you? It doesn't to me. If the whole Bible is rich with passages declaring God's desire for intense intimacy with His children, why would that desire end the moment we are fully with Him? It won't. That doesn't make sense.

But then, HOW? How will it be that each saint will get to be with our Lord FOREVER? We all crave this personal attention, this companionship, this heart-to-heart love. He literally built it into us, this feeling that we are made for one other, who understands us and loves us more than anyone else. Most of the time, our very physical need seeks fulfillment in other humans, particularly in romance and marriage. But that's only a shadow, not the real thing. 

It's why Jesus said that there will be no marriage in heaven. We are all made for HIM. He is our One. And each of us, as impossible as it feels in this fallen existence, are His one.

Somehow, He wants each of us, all of us, as if we were the only person in the world. Somehow, each one of His people are the shepherd girl in Song of Songs, leaning on her Beloved. Somehow, each of us are the little tribe of Benjamin, the one the Lord loves resting between His shoulders. Somehow, we are all the beloved disciple, leaning on Jesus' breast. 

I don't know how this is possible, but my whole heart cries out that it is somehow the case. 

Another passage has been creeping into my thoughts and lending credence to this belief. I hadn't stopped to consider it until today, and when I did, I had to marvel again at the way the Holy Spirit opens Scripture: a little bit at a time, over an extended period, until He chooses to reveal the bigger picture. The Bible fits together, often in ways I don't expect. Every word speaks, and He often puts passages together in ways I never would think to do. It's so comforting to realize, over and over, that it is the Living Word of God, and that He will never stop speaking through it in new ways, to every part of our lives, in every season, in every trial, circumstance, to every feeling, hope, dream, pain, and joy. 

Anyway, the passage. Whenever I start thinking about wanting to be hand in hand with Jesus, and getting a little discouraged with the limitations of my imagination, lately what comes to mind is the phrase "five hundred at once." I finally looked it up. It's in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul is writing about the resurrection of Christ, with what becomes obvious as the specific goal to talk about our own resurrection and glorification later. He says, "After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time.." (15:6a).

I don't know why, but for some reason, I always just imagined a large crowd of people hanging around and Jesus appearing to them...much the way I keep imagining life after death, struggling to see Him over the heads of the crowd. (And oh, this is a theme throughout the Bible, too. Remember the diminutive Zaccheus? We might have trouble seeing Him, and think that we've missed our chance to be with Him. But He never fails to spot us, recognize us, call us by name, and invite us into His company. Whether we're sitting in a tree, or under it.)

But back to 1 Corinthians and my idea of an impenetrable crowd between me and Jesus That's not what Paul is saying. He wouldn't need to specify that they all saw Him at the same time if they were all together. 

At the same time.

Maybe it's just the way Paul casually throws this statement into a book already dense and rich with theological concepts and truths about our life in Christ that are flashier, take up more of our thoughts, have more to do with our daily lives. Amidst all the other treasure, I missed it, the importance and tenderness of it. The personal, earnest care of our Shepherd, who leaves the ninety-nine to go after the one. And we are all, each of us, somehow, the one. 

He was with each of them at the same moment...wherever they happened to be. At home, like His mother probably was. On the road, like the disciples headed to Emmaus. He was really physically there with all of them, one on one, exactly the way I am hoping to be some day. 

As I let this miracle wash over me, the block in my imagination started to dissipate. I started thinking about the innumerable details that lay behind this small, simple statement. The details of over five hundred individual stories, each one cherished by the teller, told and retold, each one full of personal love and communication between one child of God and his or her Creator, Savior, and Friend. 

How much time passed after Jesus returned to heaven before the saints began to understand what Jesus had done, the magnitude of all these individual visitations? Who first noticed these stories going around and began to tally them up? Did the apostles get everyone together and do a head count, or did they just add a name to their list whenever they came across another one? 

I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if some of the five hundred included each one of the people mentioned in the gospels who had some personal encounter with the Lord during His ministry. The woman at the well. The woman with an issue of blood, who crawled through a crowd to touch His robe. The couple at whose wedding He turned water into wine. The leper who turned back to thank Him. Joseph of Arimathea. The group of fellows who lowered their sick friend through a ceiling to get to Him. The many, many people He rescued from demonic possession. 

This is a miracle that, like that of the loaves and fishes, kept giving. Slowly, over a period of time, it kept revealing itself to be greater, more mysterious, more precious than previously realized. Like the Bible. Like Christ. It's still giving.

Why don't we have any of those details? Didn't someone write them down? Probably this is one of those things that caused John to remark, in one of my favorite verses to consider, "And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." (John 21:25). And they don't really matter, because we ourselves will be supplying those details someday. 

Remember "firstfruits"? One of those passages occurs just a few verses after Paul mentions the five hundred. 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 says, "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him." 

Those who belong to Him. We belong to Him. Let that thought comfort you today. No one takes better care of His possessions than Jesus. 

At the close of that chapter (1 Cor. 15:48-54), Paul explains that we will be physically changed when Christ returns, whether we are alive or dead at that time. He says that we will "bear the image of the heavenly man." 

John, too, in his first epistle, talks about this very physical transition: "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (1 John 3:2)

This is another one of those passages that I've heard so many times, but never stopped to consider the implications. When we think about the process of sanctification in our lives, "becoming more like Christ," we're primarily thinking about the fruits of the Spirit. As we draw near to God and obey His commandments, we love more deeply, we find our joy in Him, we have peace amid the hardships on earth, we become more patient and gentle and good and meek and disciplined, and so on. 

But we will also, quite literally, be like Him in a physical sense, the glorified Him, which means things like having the ability to pass through locked doors, calm storms, and appear to five hundred people at once. Clearly, the laws of earthly physics do not apply to the kinds of bodies we will have. If He could appear to five hundred of His beloveds at the same time on Earth, how much more so can He be with each of us at once in heaven? I suspect that this doesn't even scratch the surface of what will be possible with Him.

We know that Christ is our heavenly reward, our treasure stored up for us. So maybe it's time to start thinking of heaven as simply the very real, glorious state of walking hand in hand with Jesus, unceasingly, for eternity.

Oh, come quickly, Lord Jesus!

The moment between moments, or do not despise the small things

“For who has despised the day of small things? But these seven eyes of the LORD, which scan the whole earth, will rejoice when they see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.” (Zechariah 4:10)

“The decision is announced by messengers, the holy ones declare the verdict, so that the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of people.” (Daniel 4:17)

I’ve been thinking about small things lately.

Life is about to change for the Fitzsimmons here in ol’ Vietnam. While the global pandemic – alongside massive, unusual storms of various consistencies – continues to keep humans and systems in upheaval, our quiet lives have remained mostly that: quiet. Netters is now two, with all the emotional surges and defiance and vocabulary growth that brings. He knows just enough of both English and Vietnamese to be confusing, rebellious, dangerous, and utterly adorable. Chad has returned to work at the school, which is preparing to open next week with masks and social distancing in place. Many of our teachers and their families are still on route, and two weeks of quarantine await them; their classes will begin the year with substitute teachers. Among which I, until recently, planned to be.

But the Lord has had another plan for me, one that I am joyfully embracing. On Tuesday, I will be joining the staff of my church, filling in for a friend who needs to return to the United States for an indeterminate length of time. I could amaze you with the Lord’s providential timing for all involved, but that isn’t what I wanted to talk about today. Suffice to say, He has been very good to our little local family of believers here, and we are all excited to watch Him move in our lives and increase our fellowship.

My life for the past year, since meeting Christ on September 10, 2019, has been rich in study and quiet. My Lord has been my patient and brilliant Teacher, guiding me into His Word, giving me insight and deepening my ability to think carefully and slowly, not only about His teachings, but about the state of the world today. He has slowly but surely established me in His family here, providing for me many, many spiritual mentors and friends. And last week, in a beautifully prepared and poignantly-timed workshop, He revealed some of the spiritual gifts with which He graciously blessed me. My heart is full!

*

“I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; apart from You I have no good thing.”
I say of the holy people who are in the land, “They are the nobles ones in whom is all my delight.” (Psalm 16:2-3)

Some time back the Holy Spirit, as He tends to do, put a phrase on my heart and mind, and it has been following me around for a few months. It continues to come up in sermons, in book after book, and in my notes as I look back through them to write this post.

The phrase is “Moment by moment.”

Just like Him to begin seeding my mind with the meditation that I would need going into this new season. My Father knows what I need before I ask Him.

I marvel at the precarious brevity of life here on earth. But in this marveling, I am tempted toward anxiety. How will I have time to drink deeply of the Lord, to learn from Him, to serve Him well as I serve His church, and to be present and loving to my husband and son? I find myself worrying that I will be unable to adjust to this transition, this new season, and that I will fail everyone He has placed in my care. 

I will need to be purposeful, diligent, and conscientious about my time in a way that defies my natural tendencies and abilities.

Defies my natural tendencies and abilities.

This is very much in line with what I am learning about my God. He loves to place His people into situations and positions that are contrary to their strengths, so that we must rely completely and openly on Him for all we need. This glorifies Him! I have no confidence in my abilities to be what He has positioned me to be; it is only in Him and through Him that His purposes will be carried out.

So I take this concern to my Lord, perhaps with a more plaintive tone than I should have, and He reminds me that He is in control. He has chosen this path for me, in part because I have insisted to Him that I wish to submit to His will in all things, and it is His will to equip me “with everything good for doing His will,” for it is God who works in us "to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose." (Hebrews 13:21; Philippians 2:13)

Hence, the marvelous providence of His giving me a simple phrase like, “moment by moment” to hold onto. It has become a life-preserver, a fly-fisher's reel, a battle cry.

Through it, He says, “Come back to Me! Ground yourself, again, on the Rock of My Person, My Salvation, My Sovereignty, My Fatherhood.” He says, “This task that you are doing for Me presently is no less important than any other. I have put this one in front of you; worship Me in it, here, now. Ask Me to help you, again, now.”

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." (Isaiah 41:10)  

Moment by moment.

He is helping me to train myself, you see, to invite Him into every moment of my day: every decision, thought, conversation, action, no matter how small. He has been urging me to cultivate my awareness of His presence. To realize the miraculous truth: He is my life.

The key to living in constant awareness of the Lord’s presence, moment by moment, I think has something to do with the moment of transition. The moment BETWEEN moments. It’s in that split-second where everything can go wrong, sour, when we can slide out of worship, appreciation, trust in Him, and respond to the new moment, the unexpected stimuli, out of our flesh.

Satan is aware of this. I suspect that this is why there are some days that seem to blindside us over and over again. Broken air conditioner. Flooded floor. Unexpected bill. Injury or illness that requires a doctor’s trip. Relentless transitions that wear away our desire and awareness of God.

Transitions, large or small, expected or abrupt, are crucial.

This is why we must read His Word, meditate on it, as often as we can. We must sacrifice other things in favor of it, reduce our interests to a few. The Word is the most consistent thing that the Holy Spirit will use to counter the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is in the split-second transition between moments that He will bring a word to our minds, so encouraging and sweet and perfectly applicable, that we remember Whose child we are, Who is in control.

And before we know it, we are worshiping again, joyful in crisis, settled in chaos.

This is surrender to God’s will. And here’s another thing: I have reason to believe that this is the power behind the message of the Book of James: be doers of the Word, and not hearers only.

With God, the work and the ‘doing’ of His people is so rarely about them taking the initiative, striving to accomplish things for Him. Rather, the ‘doing’ of the Word throughout the Bible often entails His people stepping aside to watch in awed stillness as God does their doing and fighting for them. Doing for us what we obviously cannot do, so that only He gets the glory.

“Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when I show My holiness in you before their eyes.” (Ezekiel 36:23)

The action verbs belong to God!

How much more so now, in the age of grace?

“But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.” (James 1:25)

God has done something, and He calls us to rely upon it. The perfect law that gives freedom is the news that Jesus Christ fulfilled the law on the cross, and He continues to fulfill it in our lives through His shed blood and His glorious resurrection to glory!

Everything we do here on earth is in light of His work, enabled by it, and given meaning in it. He is the context of our lives. He IS life itself! Nothing exists without Him, therefore everything that we do for Him after being awakened to His Truth, no matter how menial, has eternal import in His kingdom!

Let that truth reorganize our priority list.

*

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33)

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7)

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

As I have wrestled in prayer about this new season, I gradually have come to a new understanding of how the Lord transforms our desires. So many of my prayers center on me: grant me more faith, more intimacy with You, more wisdom, more power to walk in Your Spirit. And lately, I’ve become aware that the Holy Spirit has been quietly asking me a question: “Why? Why are you asking Me for these things?”

We are supposed to be looking at Jesus and what He has done already, and this looking fills us with the desire to be like Him, to be transformed. He ever wants us to be servants, and to serve in everything as though Christ is the only recipient of our service. To pour ourselves out, as He poured Himself out for us. To follow Him, we must follow His example in sacrificial love. Willingly.

By that, I mean that it must be our will. This is not something that we can make ourselves feel in the heart. Only He can replace our selfishness with true, from the heart self-sacrifice.

The Holy Spirit’s “Why?” wasn’t a rejection of my requests, but a gentle, Socratic nudge for me to think more deeply about my motives. To observe and realize how faithfully He has been answering my prayers, as I have pursued Him over this past year.

To my surprise, I realize that I am, in fact, changing. He has been working in me all this time, in my seemingly self-indulgent studying and solitude. He has made me aware of how I fit into the lives of the people He has placed in my purview. If I am to live for Him, I must live for them.

All along, He has been equipping me for loving action. I long to see what He will do.

Far from resulting in a cessation of my spiritual growth and understanding in my Lord, I am confident that this new season is going to draw me into new heights of intimacy and strength in His Spirit, as He moves me from a life of study and contemplation, to one of practical application of His education, His love, and His gifts for the good of the body of Christ. Everything He has given me, He expects me to use for and give to others: time, money, wisdom, and love.

We must never forget that He is both the Giver and the Gift, the One Who answers, and the Answer.

And so my prayer for this time:

Lord, Father, empty me of self and fill me with Your Holy Spirit - so that I can serve. Equip me, enable me, and energize me to channel all You give me in a way that fills the needs of everyone You put in my life.

*

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31)

As I struggle against the knowledge that there will be days ahead that feel so hectic, catapulting helplessly from sleep to wake to work to family to sleep again, I remind myself that I am where God has placed me. Motives are important. The Lord is more concerned with our hearts than anything. If we are catapulting helplessly in His strength and for His glory, then as AW Tozer said, “There won’t be a common, profane deed that you will ever do. The most menial task can become a priestly ministration when the Holy Ghost takes over and Christ becomes your all in all.”

Take a breath – for Him.
Hold your tongue – for Him.
Write a meal plan for the week – for Him.
Get up earlier – for Him.

Small things.

When I think of small things, I think of the millions of details, decisions, thoughts, seconds, interactions, and possibilities that make up one single day. But day by day and detail by detail, these insignificant moments add up to a lifetime, add up to centuries of history, prophecies fulfilled, and divine purposes coming to pass in a spectacular, perfect symphony.

My child is a small thing. So is my faith.

What does childlike faith look like? I think of my toddler son, again realizing the Lord’s perfect wisdom in granting me saving faith at such a crucial point in his development. I see him running to us whenever he has a toy, a question, a boo-boo. He is always looking up at us. It has never crossed his mind that we would not respond to him and give him what he needs.

What does childlike faith sound like? “Dada!”

I don’t know what is in store for us all. My prayer for myself, and for all of us, is that we will accustom ourselves more and more to turning to our Lord in every moment, every transition, from day to night, from meal to work to recreation, from interruption to interruption, from snafu to solution. Let us offer our weakness into His hands in total dependence and willing submission that becomes Spirit-powered obedience.

Only consciously weak souls ever lean hard enough on the Lord to walk straight in His risen power!

“That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)

Christian, are you like me, small and unimportant? Our God delights to use small things to do His great works. Whatever small things we did in His name today, He can use. The Lord of all the earth has called our lives for Himself. We each have a place in His purposes. -Anonymous