It’s all over the Old Testament: the people of God are hardhearted, and it’s a big problem.
This is what the Lord says to the people of Judah and Jerusalem: “Plow up the hard ground of your hearts! Do not waste your good seed among thorns.” Jeremiah 4:3
I said, ‘Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.’ Hosea 10:12
They made their hearts as hard as stone, so they could not hear the instructions or the messages that the Lord of Heaven’s Armies had sent them by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. That is why the Lord of Heaven’s Armies was so angry with them. Zechariah 7:12
It leaks over into the New Testament, too.
For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes— so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.’ Matthew 13:15
Hard hearts are associated with empty worship, allowing or perpetrating injustice for the oppressed, and lack of mercy in business and other interpersonal dealings. It doesn’t have to do with whether emotions are sufficiently mushy. It’s a spiritual condition.
I bring this up because this is what I’m working on in the new year: the stubborn nub of hard heartedness in me. That part of me that not only needs to be right, but needs for you to acknowledge my rightness and punish yourself accordingly. This is not a helpful need. It has blocked progress in our attempts at beating back our marital Big Nagging Issue. Not to mention the stupid bickering about some nothing item.
That part of me that keeps me safe in my pharisaical bubble of sureness that “I’d never do that,” whenever I see some that that annoys me.
The part of me that retreats into hermit-ness way, way too often.
The part of me that became so disappointed at the struggle of life this past year that it interrupted my spiritual habits, my gratitude for what I have, my ability to recognize solutions. I wasted way too much time in “It wasn’t supposed to be like this” land.
So there it is. I’ll be working on becoming more spiritually soft hearted, which encompasses listening better, watching deeper, loosening the packed soil of my heart for God to work in. Other than praying for it (and being on the lookout for what God will show me), one of the practical things I’m doing is getting help for my depression — I’ve been clutching it to me like a bad friend for too long.
I have a feeling this year is going to be a doozy.
Today we’re going to talk about one of my favorite Bible verses, but first, we’re going to talk about this.
What can we do with a mandarin orange? We can eat it. We can make it into juice. We can put that juice into muffins. Maybe we can even toss it in the air and catch it. Really talented people might even be able to juggle a bunch of them at the same time. Can you imagine anything else we can do with it?
How about this … can you imagine it as a lamp?
First, cut the peel around the equator and loosen it all the way around.
When you peel the halves away, try to keep the center thingy attached to one of the halves, but if you can’t manage it, you can pluck it out and stick it back onto one of the halves.
Now, mostly fill the half with the “wick” with oil (olive oil, canola oil, any household oil) and light the wick. It might take a few tries, especially if the wick is too high above the surface of the oil.
Look at that. I made a mandarin orange into a lamp. Did you think I could do it? Is this what you imagined it would look like?
This orange lamp reminds me of … me. When I was your age, I was really, really shy. I would’ve been too shy to come up in front of church in front of everyone to listen to a children’s message — just like some of you have been, just like some kids who are sitting with their grownups right now.
But here I am. Up front. Not just listening, but talking. And sometimes dancing. And doing it happily. I couldn’t have imagined that when I was a kid. I don’t know that I ever even asked God to help me be better at being in front of people. But God kept giving me gifts and passions and starting me out small and building me up until here I am.
So here’s the Bible verse, from Ephesians 3, verse 20 (from The Message):
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
That was true for me. And I know it’ll be true for you.
Because I could turn this mandarin orange into a lamp and I’m not very amazing, but God is totally amazing. I wonder what amazing things he’s going to do with you as you grow up….
I have one more thing to show you. First, I have to cut a hole in the other half of the mandarin orange to make a lid.
Look what happens when I put the lid on.
Did you know that the peel had all these little circles? They were invisible before, but now we can see them.
That reminds me of me again. When I was your age, I had no idea I could dance. I didn’t even want to dance. I wasn’t taking lessons or anything. But as I got older, that changed, and I discovered I loved dancing and I could to it and I did it more and more, in classes and then in church, until it became a big part of how I serve and worship God. I didn’t know it was there … but God did.
I wonder what’s already inside of you that you have no idea about … but God does.
I wonder what God imagines for you.
I can’t wait to see.
This is the text of the children’s message I gave at my church on January 5, 2014.
And Moses entered into the deep darkness where God was. (Exodus 20:21, NLT)
In the few months before this moment, the Israelites had experienced the 10 plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the daily gifts of manna and quail, water pouring from a rock, and a miraculous defeat of the Amalekites. They were camped at the base of Mount Sinai. Moses was getting a workout, climbing the mountain to talk to God, going back down to tell the people what God said, taking what the people said back up the mountain to God, and then back down, etc.
It didn’t take much of this before God decided to speak to the people directly. He became present on the top of Mount Sinai in a thick cloud accompanied by thunder, lightning, earth shaking, and fire.
What was so important that God wanted to thunder it to the people directly? The Ten Commandments, with their four ways to love God and six ways to love people. The Israelites hadn’t been in charge of themselves for many, many generations, and they needed guidance at the most basic of levels, but they were too terrified to hear anything straight from the Lord Himself, so Moses went into the deep darkness where God was to listen to the rest of what God wanted to say.
Deep darkness. Where God already was.
Biblical darkness is usually a metaphor for the sin or death or evil that God’s light illuminates. Over and over, the Bible tells us that God is the light, that God brings light, that what God illuminates itself becomes a light. Later in Exodus, we learn that Moses’ face glowed so much from all the time he spent in God’s presence that he had to wear a veil so as not to freak the people out.
But here, God is in the deep darkness. And Moses joined Him there. God didn’t need to make the darkness light to be present there.
Sometimes we enter times and places of darkness, whether emotional or physical. And we feel like God can’t be there because we feel no light penetrating. But God can be present in the deepest darkness – already waiting for you. He may bring His light, or He may just be with you. But God is there.
I apologize ahead of time to my families: my favorite Thanksgiving was not with you. While I’ve had some lovely 4th Thursdays in November with you — eaten great food (including my triumph of a turkey last year), laughed, and even heard some good lines that have lived on (“You’re not my uncle, you’re just a random person,” and “Dong Wong’s thongs,” among others) — the Thanksgiving that shines the warmest in my memory was one from our early married, New York City, days.
It was our second non-family Thanksgiving. After we got married, the plan had been to spend Thanksgiving with one side and then Christmas with the other. It took only one season of that for us to realize how nuts that was, and we spent the November holiday in New York, with our friends. I know it was the second one, because I was working for a college textbook company, not the sexual-harrassing-stockbroker I worked for after quitting grad school.
On Wednesday, at the very end of the day, after everyone with clout was already gone and it was just recently-hired assistants and other down-in-the-pecking-order folks left, one of my co-workers approached my low wall. I don’t remember his name (because I’m a terrible person*), so let’s call him Guy. Let’s say it in our heads in the French pronunciation so it sounds less generic: Gee (still hard-g, people).
He spoke quietly, so I had to lean across my desk to hear him. His Thanksgiving plans had fallen through so he was wondering whether I had room at my celebration. We were friendly, but not particularly friends. What he had done was so vulnerable, so risky, that I immediately said there was room, even though the meal was not at my house and none of the other people knew him. A few minutes later, a mutual work friend told me the real deal: he’d planned to go to one of the editor’s houses, but the editor’s spouse had just found out/figured out that said editor had been having an affair with a co-worker (not Guy); Thanksgiving was no longer going to be a cozy, welcoming affair, and Guy was disinvited.
The place was in Williamsburg before it was gentrified, in a warehouse just a couple of blocks from the East River, in a neighborhood of warehouses. There was often a semi-truck rig idling outside. This was not a fancy converted warehouse, so get the visions from Dwell Magazine out of your heads. I was the only female person there. There were old rock-and-roll-band friends of my husband, one of the first friends I’d made after moving to NY for grad school, possibly another guy who lived there and maybe a friend of his, my husband, me, and Guy. The guys were in charge of all the food except for the pumpkin chiffon pie (a pie I bring every year, wherever I am; it is a ridiculous amount of work, but it is that good).
I may have had a moment or two of horror at how little cooking had been done when I got there, but, for once, I went with the flow. I believe I drank enough wine that I didn’t get too hangry (so hungry I was angry). One friend had recently bought a lovely and simple mezzaluna in Chinatown, and I happily rolled it back and forth over bunches of herbs. I tried really, really hard not to get all take-over-y in the kitchen. Not sure how successful I was, but I tried.
And laughed. My main memory of that day was of warmth and of laughter. We’d been at it awhile when Guy arrived (probably with more wine), so he got a good welcome. Not sure if we actively commiserated with his sucky situation or just folded him into the festivities, but the cooking and snacking and drinking went on for hours. This group of guys sometimes had some tension (anyone who’s been a band can probably relate), but I think having Guy there diffused all that; we were all our best selves, coming together for him.
Then we ate. And ate. It was all so delicious. After dinner we played the dictionary game — someone chose a word out of the actual dictionary and we all came up with definitions, which we shared and voted on before finding out what the real def. was. It was raucous. At the end of the evening we went for a walk by the East River. Happily, the molasses smell from the nearby sugar factory overwhelmed any other East River odors. We stayed until the frigid wind blew through our remaining alcohol haze.
I smiled the whole way home on the subway. Actually, probably not. It took 45-60 minutes to get to Astoria from Williamsburg. But it was still good.
* It should be noted that my husband’s memory for names is so awesome that it’s almost a superpower, yet he can’t remember this guy’s name, either.
If things aren’t too hectic where you are, I’d love to know about your favorite Thanksgiving.
It started Thanksgiving 2012. My parents-in-law’s best friend was dying; he died, too soon, shortly thereafter. My father was diagnosed with cancer on my birthday. My daughter had a mysterious hand infection that puffed her hand way out no matter what medication we gave her, and we wound up in the E.R. for overnight antibiotics, while one of my dear friends was in the hospital next door struggling for breath. She died a month later, way, way, way too soon. And that was only early January.
There were 3 more E.R. visits for my daughter. Two back surgeries and resulting recovery times before my father could get treatment for his cancer. Both are doing well now, but there was persistent worry in a corner of my mind all year.
There was complete lack of movement in getting my David and Saul novel closer to being published: no requests for a full manuscript from any agent I queried. None. No professional interest in the picture book project I’m working on with a friend. I was turned down for a job I would’ve been really good at. I didn’t get enough volunteers for a church thing, so had to scrap some plans that would’ve been good for the kids. I’ve never been rejected so many times for so many things in my life.
My children each had struggles where they haven’t before, some of which are ongoing. My husband’s heavy work schedule continues to wear us down. I’ve read maybe half the number of books I normally do; after my friend died, I just didn’t have the urge. Insomnia. Anxiety. As the year went on, my hermit tendencies have become even more entrenched.
But this has also been a great year.
When you’ve cried with people, and you’ve shared grief, you’re closer to them, so I’m closer to a lot more people than I was a year ago, even some I’ve known for a long time. We made some real friends at the new church. I’ve given some good encouragement to dear friends. I got through the Old Testament in my devotional reading (finally!) and done some good struggling with and resting in God’s promises. My faith is deeper than it was a year ago.
My children have had also triumphed, and I’ve gotten to stand up and cheer for them. My husband is doing really good work, both for pay and for fun — and he’s writing songs again! I’m taking a dance class again. A class for which I will get to perform in a recital (a phrase that makes me giggle).
The fine folks at One Faith Many Faces gave me paid work and thought enough of my writing here to want to rerun it on their site. I went to a small writer’s retreat, where I met some fine writers, reconnected with an old friend, and got some much-needed encouragement. There has been some other paid work, some guest posts on other blogs (on prayer and dance), and some wonderful conversations here. I am grateful for every person who’s read my writing — that means you. Thank you.
I’m grateful, but also deeply frustrated and sad, often about the same things. So I wrote something about Thanksgiving for my friends at One Faith Many Faces (they’re the ones who gave the post it’s awesome title) that I needed to hear — something all of us who are feeling both gratitude and grief this year.
Some years, you’re so full of gratitude that it seeps out of your pores and suffuses everything you do.
Other years, the idea of spouting words of gratitude seems so wrong as to almost feel offensive.
Sometimes, those are the same year.
A tough year can bring out your gratitude to God for being with you through it all – but lurking behind every item of thanksgiving is a great big but. The Psalmist knows what that’s like:
Please continue here to read the rest of Thanksgiving is a great big but.
Jesse had seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to him, “The Lord has not chosen these.” So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”
“There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered. “He is tending the sheep.” (1 Samuel 16:10-11, NLT)
Samuel was in Bethlehem on a secret mission to anoint the next king of Israel. All he knew was that it was one of Jesse’s sons. When Samuel asked to see them, Jesse proudly paraded his sons before the prophet.
Except he didn’t.
One son didn’t even get called in. It could’ve be funny; after all, a man with 8 sons could be forgiven for forgetting one. It could’ve been that Jesse thought David was too far away.
Or it could’ve been an indication of David’s low value to his father.
Imagine you’re David. You’re working alone in the hills when two of your brothers arrive and tell you to go to town because the prophet is asking for you, and is making everyone wait for you. It’s amazing, confusing, wonderful, terrifying. On the way to town, your brother sneers. “Father almost forgot about you.”
Was it a surprise? Or was it just one more time you’d been passed over?
And then God said, “This is the one” (1 Sam 16:12). Samuel anointed David.
David’s beginning is not so promising, but as king, he united Judah and Israel, established Jerusalem as the political and religious capital, and expanded Israel’s borders with his more organized military. But knowing how things end doesn’t negate how much it hurts to be habitually passed over.
How is the beginning of your story? Have you been passed over? Forgotten? Discounted?
“The Lord does not look at the things people look at… the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). God sees you. He does not forget you, or discount you, or pass you over because of your external packaging. God looks at you and thinks, “This is the one.”
That sounds lovely, but what about David’s brothers? God saw their hearts and rejected them, didn’t He?
Yes — for a job so difficult it was almost impossible. Whether you get a big, impressive job in the kingdom or not, God always chooses you to do what’s right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8). You are always the right one to do that.
God Appears to Moses in Burning Bush. Painting from Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Saint Petersburg.
“But Moses pleaded with the Lord, ‘Oh Lord, I’m just not a good speaker. I never have been, and I’m not now, even after you have spoken to me. I’m clumsy with words.’” (Exodus 4:10, NLT)
You’d think it would be amazing to hear directly from God that He’d chosen you to lead His people, that it’d instantly erase all your doubts about yourself — but it didn’t work that way for Moses.
This was his fourth objection to the job. God tried pointing out that, since He was the one who made mouths and made people so they could speak, He’d tell Moses what to say and help him say it, but Moses still begged God to send someone else. God was angry, but He caved. Moses’ big brother Aaron became the public speaker, with Moses feeding Aaron the words God fed him. It was a little convoluted, but it worked.
Until, after about six weeks in the desert, Moses didn’t need it anymore.
The Bible is silent about this transition. Did Moses just get used to public speaking? Did watching God come through with the unimaginable over and over get through to him?
Or did Moses maybe never really have a problem?
The Israelites weren’t shy about criticizing Moses and complaining about other things, but we have no record of the people jeering at Moses for how he talked or blaming his halting speech for their failures.
It’s at least possible that Moses believed something about himself that wasn’t true, and that kept him from accepting that he was the kind of person God would call – even as God was right there, calling him a leader. Even as God was right there, promising to help Moses lead.
Do you believe something about yourself that might not be true? Do you believe that something basic about yourself (shyness, hyperness, age, gender, poverty, physical or intellectual ability, etc.) disqualifies you from serving God? Do you ever think, “Someone like me could never…”?
God is always choosing you, and constantly offering His help. Sometimes, that’s enough to dissolve your insecurities. Sometimes, it isn’t, and, like Moses, you need time — but it’s time to learn while serving. Moses didn’t figure out his issue by practicing alone with his sheep. You don’t need to have yourself all straightened out first. Get moving, work some modifications … until, one day, you won’t need them anymore.
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Why are you crying out to me? Tell the people to get moving!'” (Exodus 14:15, NLT)
The Israelites had no practice being hopeful.
They’d been slaves in Egypt for enough generations that nobody remembered being free. After the 80-year-old Moses showed up and told them God would save them, their slaveholders got even more brutal. Not to mention their anxiety during each of the ten plagues – Will Pharaoh let us go this time? What is he going to do when he figures out that we aren’t just praying in the desert for three days?
So when they stood on the edge of the Red Sea, stuck between the deep water and Pharaoh’s fast-approaching army, they panicked. Even knowing that God kept them safe while the Egyptians’ food supply disappeared via disease, insect swarm, and hail, while the Egyptians were tormented by frogs, gnats, flies, boils, darkness, and death – even knowing all that, they had a crisis of imagination. They couldn’t see how God might get them out of this, so they turned on Moses, blaming him for getting them in worse trouble than they’d been in as slaves.
What does God do in response? He tells them to get moving.
God tells them to get moving before He tells Moses the plan.
Who among them could’ve imagined that God would move the pillar of cloud to hide them from the Egyptians, shift the Red Sea to form a path they could walk through to freedom, and then collapse the water to drown the Egyptian army? Nobody. But God wanted them to take a step in faith, in hope, in trust before they knew how He’d save them.
Sometimes you are stuck. Anxious. Panicky. In a crisis of imagination. Crying out to God and blaming everyone you can think of.
Instead of waiting until you know exactly how it’s all going to play out or which path is clear, try taking a step. You don’t have to feel hopeful. You don’t have to know how God is going to work it out. You don’t even have to be less afraid. But whatever situation you feel stuck about, there’s always a small step you can take, a way to get moving. Take it. And watch God run with it.
John the Baptist Preaching, by Giambattista Tiepolo
I’ve been telling the Baptism of Jesus story in children’s worship for years. It’s one of my favorites, with the cool flap in the blue felt river that lets you dunk Jesus and have him come up in the middle of the water. But until recently, it had been years since I read the actual biblical account.
There was something unexpected in the “grown-up version” in Matthew (3:7, NLT): Pharisees and Sadducees came to John the Baptist to be baptized.*
Not to interview him to complete their committee report on New Religious Movements. Or to hang back and gather evidence to convince their colleagues to start a committee to investigate religious extremism.
To be baptized. Why?
The Pharisees and Sadducees, as we know them from the New Testament, are debaters of minute differences in the law and purveyors of punitive interpretations. John the Baptist certainly lays into them when he sees them in his crowd:
“You brood of snakes!” he exclaimed, “Who warned you to flee God’s coming judgment? Prove by the way you live that you have really turned from your sins and turned to God. Don’t just say, ‘We’re safe — we’re the descendants of Abraham.’ That proves nothing. God can change these stones here into children of Abraham. Even now the ax of God’s judgment is poised, ready to sever your roots. Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire.” (Matt. 3:7-10, NLT, my emphasis)
So why would those Pharisees and Sadducees come to be baptized by this man who eats bugs and lives out in the wilderness? We think of them as so sure of their own righteousness that they are bossy about everyone else’s. Why would they heed the call? Wouldn’t they be more likely to be suspicious of such an extreme character as John the Baptist?
As an average reader of the Bible, I pretty much equated them. But to each other, they had deep theological disputes. General consensus seems to be that Sadducees were upperclass political and religious conservatives. They only took as authoritative the laws written in the Torah and they took them literally. They focused on maintaining Temple rituals and serving in the Grand Sanhedrin, the group that interpreted civil and religious law for the Israelites.
The Pharisees also served in the Grand Sanhedrin, but were theologically looser than the Sadducees (even writing that seems funny). They took not only the written law as authoritative, but also oral law — things they believed God said to Moses about how to apply the Torah (these were later written down and form the Talmud). Unlike the Sadducees, they believed in an after-life that rewarded the good and punished the wicked, and in a messiah who would bring about world peace.
The main thing that connects them, and connects their negative treatment in the New Testament, is their obsession with the law, as if keeping the law in and of itself would make them right with God. It reminds me a little of when a person hears about something bad happening to someone else (robbery, cancer, physical attack) and they want to know all the details of how it happened — mostly so they can determine that they don’t do any of those things, and can therefore believe they are “safe.” As if doing X and avoiding Y or being a child of Abraham is guaranteed to keep you “safe.”
So what would draw these legalists to the waters?
Did they think John the Baptist was one of them? That he was a fellow strict applier of the law who was taking the rules about the need for ritual purification in fresh/running water more seriously than even they did? That what he was doing was one layer of conscientiousness above praying loudly on the street corners, so they needed to step up their game and come out to be baptized? Did they come out of fear, thinking that if they didn’t cover this base, they wouldn’t be right with God? Or was going to get baptized by John the 30s equivalent of slapping on a WWJD wrist band (1990s) or talking about “back-masking” and burning your rock and roll albums (1980s)?
But wait, there’s more. There was a third group around at this time, the Essenes. Here’s how the Jewish Virtual Library characterizes them:
A third faction, the Essenes, emerged out of disgust with the other two. This sect believed the others had corrupted the city and the Temple. They moved out of Jerusalem and lived a monastic life in the desert, adopting strict dietary laws and a commitment to celibacy.
We don’t know whether John the Baptist was an Essene at any point, but there are enough similarities between them that the Pharisees and Sadducees may have associated him with the sect. So why would a Pharisee or Sadducee come penitently to a Essene-like person?
I think the simplest answer is the most plausible: they were not all the same.
While the cultures of the Pharisees and Sadducees each seem homogeneous, some individuals probably knew that God wanted obedience more than sacrifices, knew that the wise person was the teachable person, and could recognize God nudging them to change, even if that nudge came in an unexpected package. These keepers of the law could not all be religious bullies.
Think for a moment of any group that espouses a doctrine you disagree with hot-heartedly. Are all the members of that group the same? Is there anything redeeming about a particular individual you can think of in that group? Is there something you can learn from anyone in that group? I think of a minister who, in the early 1990s, published a number of articles and letters against women holding all church offices in the Christian Reformed Church. I was saying unflattering things about him one night when one of my friends noted that her parents either knew him or went to his church, and that this man had a powerful prayer ministry. She had specific examples that are lost in the sands of time, but I remember having to stop on a dime and realize that someone I vehemently disagreed with could have something to teach me.
So what can we learn from the Pharisees and Sadducees?
My humble suggestion: that it’s important to know the Word of God and to let it permeate your life. After all, Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17-20). Knowledge of the Word is not sufficient to keep us right with God, but there’s a world of richness in the Bible that even a life-long believer can be continually discovering and being changed by. I’m certainly finding that.
Without wanting to seek knowledge of the Word for myself, I never would have read that some Pharisees and Sadducees came to the water to be baptized. I’m glad I know that. I find it hopeful that the urge to listen to and to follow God goes deeper than our theological arguments, deeper than our theological assumptions, and did even way back then.
* Matthew is the only one to identify those men as coming to be baptized. Luke records the same “You brood of snakes” speech that Matthew does, but says that it was given to “the crowds.” I should also note that my print version of the New Living Translation is one of few translations that makes this positive claim. The Biblegateway.com NLT has the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to watch John baptize; the NIV has them coming to where he was baptizing; the NRSV has them coming for baptism; The Message has them coming to be baptized because it was the popular thing to do. Fascinating, the difference word choice makes.
I am gaining new appreciation for how painful it is to be my heavenly parent.
The vast majority of the time, it is truly not that difficult to make righteous choices. Yet, so often I choose my own vortex of fears, needs, obsessions, shames, distractions, and irritations over the peace, love, comfort, and challenge my heavenly parent offers and promises. Mine is not an utterly hopeless case. I often manage to act in accord with that peace and love. I do. But the chaos of my vortex is always spinning, beckoning me. I’m always fighting the pull. With varying degrees of success.
I’m appreciating how difficult this is for my heavenly parent to watch because I’m an earthly parent who is watching one of her children struggling. Making the same mistakes. Over and over. Getting it together in fits and starts, only to lose the thread again. It hurts. Physically and emotionally. Partially because I sense my child’s frustration, lostness, confusion. Partially because I can’t snap my fingers and make it all better. Partially because it isn’t all that hard to do what needs to be done. I am doing everything I can to point in the right direction. In every way I know how, I’m letting the child know I will give whatever support and encouragement necessary. But I can’t make change happen. As hard as I try, and as many systems as I might set up, and as loving and accepting as I may be, it’s not up to me: it’s up to my child.
Do I cause this much anguish in my heavenly parent?
Oh, how deaf and blind you are to me! Why won’t you listen? Why do you refuse to see? Who in all the world is as blind as my own people, my servant? Who is as blind as my chosen people, the servant of the Lord? You see and understand what is right but refuse to act on it. You hear, but you don’t really listen….Will not even one of you apply these lessons from the past and see the ruin that awaits you? (Isaiah 42:18-20, 23)
The prophets are full of God’s frustration with his people: he’s given them everything, yet they still cheat their neighbors and break their vows. They do not give justice to the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the debtor, let alone give them mercy. All this while they continue with their feasts and sacrifices as if that’s all that was required. Which are all symptoms of the real problem: their hearts are hard. They are stiff-necked, refusing to turn their head to see that they’re on the wrong path.
Even so, and in almost the same breath (Is. 43:1-2):
But now, O Israel, the Lord who created you says: “Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you.”
They are God’s beloved, his special treasure who he delights to show mercy to.
We are hard-hearted, stiff-necked people, God’s beloved, his special treasure who he delights to show mercy to.
We are God’s children.
They say, “Who does the Lord think we are? Why does he speak to us like this? Are we little children, barely old enough to talk? He tells us everything over and over again, a line at a time, in very simple words!” … God’s people could have rest in their own land if they would only obey him, but they will not listen. So the Lord will spell out his message for them again, repeating it over and over, a line at a time, in very simple words. Yet they will stumble over this simple, straightforward message. (Isaiah 23: 9-10, 12-13)
Yes. I’d say God gets the anguish of watching a child struggle with the same things over and over.
Speaking of which, did I somehow think that my own fabulous/dubious parenting of my children would somehow exempt them from having a set of issues (based on personality and brain chemistry) they’d struggle against repeatedly, possibly their whole lives?
You know, like I do.
Not even God gets that deal, and he offers perfect love and redemption.
So what do I do with this reminder that God is my anguished parent?
Apologize more often and more easily, to God and to others.
Take the long view. My job is not necessarily to help my children overcome their various tendencies once and for all. It’s to work with them to find tools that will help them identify and deal with their personality and brain chemistry issues, to hold them accountable for their choices, to embrace them through both failure and success, to let them know how deeply loved they are. As is.
Waste less time and emotional energy on “we have to deal with this … again!?!” Of course we do.
Have morecompassion — for myself, my children, the others in my sphere. I am not the Expert on Overcoming. I am not the Maker of Pronouncements of What Must Be Done. We are strugglers together, helping each other, figuring this out as we go, loving each other through it all.
At least that’s my hope. After all, thinking I know What Must Be Done is one of my perennial issues.
