A Truly Rich Life

“Better a small serving of vegetables with love than a fattened calf with hatred.” – Proverbs 15:17

I love the proverbs in the Old Testament, because they’re short but bursting with meaning and application. And the more you take your time with them, like a fellow slowly, methodically sweeping the beach with his metal detector, the more you’re likely to find.

For instance, take a look at Proverbs 15:17. If we take this verse strictly at face value, it might sound a little quirky—but let’s stretch it a bit. The setting is the dinner table, but think about the whole household. And the example it uses is simple versus luxurious foods, but consider the bigger financial pictures those meals represent: a meager lifestyle on a measly budget, versus a lavish lifestyle with a silver spoon firmly planted in your mouth.

Now, imagine a life with everything you ever wanted—except love. Or, a life where loving, caring relationships were about the only things you had to your name. Wisdom is knowing which of those lives is truly rich. The central message of this quirky little verse is: the state of your relationships matters more than the state of your home or of your finances.

In other words: you’re better off in a rusty trailer with a lemon in the driveway outside and an affectionate family inside, than you’d be in a skyscraper penthouse with every amenity and a panorama view, plus resentment and hostility.

And, I think there’s an even more fundamental, unspoken message here about our priorities. Am I focused on the menus in my home, or the relationships? A fattened calf, or love? Sometimes we expend a lot of energy and make a big fuss over some of the window dressings of life, but those things can’t guarantee happiness and are no substitute for what matters most: your people, your calling, and your faith.

This little proverb leaves us with some significant questions to ponder:

• Are you working harder at putting food on your table or at nurturing love under your roof?
• Have any of the good things in your life (like comforts and conveniences) been distracting you from the best things in your life?
• Do the priorities you’re pursuing achieve enjoyable, pleasing results, or important results?
• Do your time and effort reflect the things you actually value the most, or do they reflect goals you’ve just inherited from the culture, or routines you’ve unintentionally fallen into over time?
• How intentional are you about resolving conflicts and fostering strong relationships in your home?

Reading chapter 15, you could easily zoom right past this proverb, but if you really chew on the words—stretching it, searching it, interrogating it—I think this small serving of vegetables turns out to be a fattened calf of wisdom.

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God Is in the Business of Hope

Last week I talked about how Easter is like a preview for a new movie—it lets you know what’s coming soon, gives you a sneak peek of this new world full of resurrection and life that God’s got in store.

But I want to take that analogy one step further. Why does Hollywood give us previews? Why did they release this look at Michael Keaton’s return as Batman and thrill my nerdy heart so?

They gave us a look at the movie to start building up our excitement and anticipation, so that we’ll start buying the action figures and posters and bedspreads for the kids (and certain grown-ups). The studio gave us this preview to get us ready, to get us anticipating the movie with our word-of-mouth and with our wallets. They wanted to affect our lives now, affect their profits now, so they gave us a preview now.

Mary Magdalene and Jesus’s disciples all hoped in the Lord and believed in a resurrection that was coming one day. Like Martha told Jesus: she was confident that her brother, Lazarus, would “rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” (John 11:24) All of their hopes and faith were fixed on the future, on something that would happen long after this life is over.

But then God raised the dead, healed the broken-hearted, and brought joy and victory right in the middle of an ordinary Sunday. They’d never dreamed of anything like this! They didn’t know that all of these promises about God’s future had anything to do with their lives in the here and now. They didn’t know until Mary encountered the risen Lord and got this Easter sneak peek. Just like with Hollywood, the preview doesn’t just give us something to look forward to in the future. It’s meant to affect our lives now. An encounter with the risen Jesus is meant to change how we go through life in the present, today.

How can Easter affect my life today, on an ordinary Wednesday?

Well, for one thing, when we encounter the living Lord, he wants us to see that the burdens and struggles of life don’t have to weigh us down or control us, because they aren’t final. The tragedy on Good Friday wasn’t the last word. God had something else in mind. And no situation in our lives—however bleak, however hopeless it seems—no situation can’t be redeemed. Even after Jesus has been dead in his grave for two days, hope is not gone. God can make something out of that, something new.

No matter where you are finding yourself these days, Easter shows us that a new beginning, a fresh start, a different kind of life is always possible. God is in the business of hope. Hope when we just don’t see the value in our lives or what good we can possibly be to anyone. Hope when we can’t keep going on at this pace, but we don’t see things changing anytime soon. Hope when we’ve lost someone. Jesus is standing in the garden, when he should be lying, cold, in the tomb—he’s standing there to give us hope right now.

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Coming Soon

My earliest memory in life is seeing Jack Nicholson play the Joker in the movie Batman from 1989.

I was 2. Probably shouldn’t have been there. I have this vague recollection of seeing the Joker, screaming, and hiding under my blanky.

Batman was huge back then. My brother and I had a big ole’ poster of the Dark Knight crashing through a skylight on the wall in our bedroom. We had all the action figures, the trading cards, the comics. When Michael Keaton played him again in 1992 in Batman Returns, we were there.

(I was 5—probably shouldn’t have been at that one, either.)

After that, Michael Keaton left, the role was recast, a new team of filmmakers put out a couple of awful Batman movies, and the franchise fizzled out.

But this year, on Super Bowl Sunday, something incredible happened. Warner Bros. released the first preview for their big, summer superhero flick, The Flash, and in that commercial, Michael Keaton smiled at the camera from behind a thick black mask and uttered two immortal words: “I’m Batman.” 31 years since we last saw him suit up, Batman, my Batman, will again take up his never-ending war on crime in Gotham City, and I (and my brother) will be there with popcorn to see every second of it. That commercial promised a new world that’s coming soon: a world with more Keaton Batman films.

We’re told that God has a future planned for his people and for this world. The book of Revelation calls it “a new heaven and a new earth” (21:1), where

the dwelling place of God is with men. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” (Rev 21:3-5)

Now, on the first Easter, something truly incredible happened: when Mary met Jesus—alive again!—the world got a preview of all the things that God’s supposed to do one day. We got a glimpse of God’s future, in the present, right in the middle of life. The wondrous Easter miracle that we celebrate, Jesus’s resurrection, is really just a foretaste. It’s a sneak peek of what God has planned for the world and our lives one day, coming soon.

We hear that God’s supposed to wipe every tear from every eye. Well, he started with Mary’s tears that morning. She was weeping for her dead teacher, until he walked up to her and said, “Woman, why are you crying?” Christ wiped the tears from her eyes. And our turn’s coming. Mourning and crying and pain, we’re told, will be no more, just like they were banished from that garden on Easter morning.

We hear that death will be no more. A tomb, of all places, should be drenched with death. But on Easter morning, Jesus’s tomb was empty and blazing with life. Death was “no more” in there. And our turn is coming. One day, our graves will be empty, and our death-drenched world will be blazing with life and resurrection.

So Easter, as wondrous as it is, is only a preview of coming attractions. It promises a new world that’s coming soon: a world where we can see Jesus face-to-face, a world where death no longer stalks us and the people we love, a world where pain is a distant memory. Jesus’s resurrection foretells a world where all those old things have passed away, where God’s made all things new.

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In the Valley of the Shadow of Death

Photo by Sven Pieren on Unsplash

Two weeks ago, over the course of 48 hours, I learned, on Facebook, from a call, and via text, about three deaths—a newborn boy, a young man, and an older woman—and each one hurt my heart. I prayed for their families. I cried. I thought about death. 

The first time you read about death in scripture, it’s a warning. “… Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Gen 2:17) Death is this unheard of but ominous-sounding consequence of eating the fruit, which God wants the man to avoid. The first time you see death in scripture, it’s murder: Cain killing his brother, Abel.

That pretty much sets the tone for death throughout the Bible. It’s regularly something you want to avoid (like Prov 9:13-18 and 14:12) or something to be rescued from (like Psalm 18:4-6 or 56:13). It’s an enemy, Paul says (1 Cor 15:26). The one who holds the power of death is the devil, Hebrews tells us (2:14). Ever since Eden, death has been an ugly, painful intruder in God’s world.

When death appears, in the second chapter of the Bible, it’s a warning about it’s coming, but in the second to last chapter of the Bible, we get a promise about it’s going. One day, we’re told, God “will wipe every tear from [our] eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.” (Rev 21:4)

This is a recurring theme, too. Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 15 was that death is an enemy that will be destroyed. Isaiah, foreshadowing Revelation 21, promises that God “will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces.” (25:8) In the end, God’s going to show this intruder to the door, and He will heal the wounds and repair the damage it inflicted on the world.

To me, the Bible is the story of God doing something about death.

And the climax of that story unfolds over the next few days. It comes when God faces death himself, is killed, is buried, and then rises again, overcoming death. That’s why, to quote the preacher and poet John Donne, “death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.” Jesus defeated it and shares that victory with his people (1 Cor 15:55-57).

When death intrudes in my world, I have to remind myself: God warned us this would happen; God sees the tears we cry; God’s plan is to eradicate death, mourning, crying, and pain. That’s what I see when I read scripture in the valley of the shadow of death. The Lord knows that it hurts, and the Lord is doing something about it.

If you’re grieving today—maybe because of one of the deaths that hurt my heart recently—I hope that the days ahead will be a balm for your soul. I hope that you’ll be able to hear the old, familiar story again with new ears. I hope that you’ll hear the promise of the cross and the empty tomb: “I am the living one. I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.” (Rev 1:18)

Jesus holds the keys now. And he is setting his people free.

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