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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A Recipe for Transformation

A hermit said, ‘We do not make progress because we do not realize how much we can do. We lose interest in the work we have begun, and we want to be good without even trying.’

Transformation has three ingredients, two of which are provided by you: time and effort. If you want to become a new person in Christ, you have to put in the work, and it’ll take a while. Thankfully, the third ingredient—the one we don’t have to provide—is the power of God’s Holy Spirit. Over time, the Spirit of God can use the efforts we make to bring about incredible change in our lives. That’s how I understand Paul’s words in Philippians chapter 2:

… work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (2:12-13)

You and I need to do the work of leaving our old ways behind, but, at the same time, the Lord is at work in us, through the Spirit, enabling us to become new people, people who desire the things God desires and pursue the things God pursues.

But that hermit out in the desert named two challenges: “We lose interest in the work we have begun, and we want to be good without even trying.” In other words, we lose interest and give up on the work we’ve begun too soon—we don’t give the Spirit time to cook—and we don’t try: we look for shortcuts, for transformation minus the effort.

I imagine that, many times, we give up too soon because we get discouraged. We aren’t seeing the results we want yet, so we throw in the towel. I heard author Jon Acuff share in an interview recently about someone who told him they weren’t losing the weight the wanted and were giving up on an exercise regimen. When he asked how long it took them to gain the weight and how long they tried the exercise, they said that they gained the weight over ten years and tried the exercise for ten days. Acuff was dumbfounded. “You gave the problem a decade to develop and the solution ten days??” Some of the bad habits and sinful attitudes we want to jettison took twenty or thirty years to develop. Forging new habits and new attitudes will take time. Don’t give up.

I also imagine that, often, we don’t want to try because we think that reading the Bible, praying, and going to church are all you need to be a growing disciple. But following Jesus is like anything you want to get good at: it takes practice. Patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, and the other fruit of the Spirit grow when we put in the work tilling the ground, sowing the seed, and watering the seedlings. Keeping your cool, for instance, is a virtue you develop incrementally, as you intentionally work on not losing your temper with that person, or in this situation. You can’t be good without trying.

And, on the flip side, if you want to make progress, you need to realize how much you can do. Your efforts make a difference. You hold in your hand the key to starting that new life. It might take it a while to crank up, but if you do your part, you’ll be amazed what the Holy Spirit can do with that.

Don’t give up. Don’t look for shortcuts. If you commit to this work, you’ll see just how much you, and God working in you, can do.

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Choose Your Armor

A hermit was asked why we are troubled by demons and he answered, 'Because we throw away our armor, that is, humility, poverty, patience and men's scorn.'

Roman general or emperor's armor

In scripture, a lot of things are described as “armor” for Christians. There’s a famous passage in Ephesians where Paul talks about putting on “the full armor of God”—including the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the helmet of salvation, and more (6:13-17). There’s a less famous passage in 1 Thessalonians where Paul says,

You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness… since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. (5:5, 8)

What’s all this protective gear for? Well, Paul mentions that shield of faith can “stop the fiery arrows of the devil.” (Eph 6:16) This spiritual armor guards us against the attacks of the tempter.

In that hermit’s case, he knew that monks were vulnerable to demonic schemes when they set aside their armor: humility, patience, and a disregard for worldly treasures and acclaim. Without that protection, they were susceptible to temptations from within (self-importance, faultfinding, anger, testiness) and from without (money, sex, status).

Each person has their unique struggles, the particular temptations that so easily hook us and reel us in. And for each specific temptation, there’s specific armor.

If you’re tempted to automatically return fire at every perceived criticism, highlight someone’s every mistake but none of their successes, or make any hurtful joke that pops into your mind, you may need to practice putting on the armor of quiet—being routinely slow to speak—and thoughtfulness—never opening your mouth without considering your words. If that’s my habit seven days a week, I’ll have holier impulses and reactions on the days when those temptations present themselves.

If you’re tempted to hurry anyone who’s interrupting your flow (“Can we get to the point?”), rage against every red light or slow driver stretching out your drive, or let your sighs or your facial expression communicate just how little time you have for this person right now, you may need to try on some armor: like humility—what I’m doing that doesn’t involve them isn’t any more valuable that what they’re doing that involves me—and love—instead of asking ‘how can I get out of this situation’, asking ‘how can I serve them in this moment?’ If I’m deliberately exercising those spiritual muscles day-in, day-out, they’ll be strong when temptation knocks.

Whatever your struggle is, there’s armor for that.

But putting on the armor you need requires some honest reflection: What temptations am I most vulnerable to? What are some habits of the heart and mind that could keep me protected when those temptations arise? Do I normally put that armor on, or do I usually throw it away?

Whatever it is—self-awareness, accountability, generosity, gratitude, intentionality, listening, apologizing, showing love to undeserving people—I hope you’ll spend some time choosing the right armor today and commit not to throw it away.

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Effort, Patience, and God's Help

One time, this monk who’d left everything to follow Jesus in the desert got fed up with the other monks living with him. The constant interruptions and chatter were so irritating that he decided to go live in a cave by himself. (Who hasn't been there?) Maybe then, he thought, he wouldn’t be angry all the time.

But one day he filled his jug with water and put it on the ground. Suddenly it happened to fall over. He filled it again, and it fell again. This happened a third time. In a rage he snatched up the jug and smashed it. Coming to his senses, he knew that the demon of anger had mocked him, and he said, ‘Here I am by myself, and he has beaten me. I will return to the community. Wherever you live, you need effort and patience and above all God’s help.’ So he got up, and went back.

Wherever you live, you need effort and patience and above all God’s help.

Sometimes we look at our circumstances or the people around us and think ‘If this or that would just change, my life would be so much better.’ But, whatever else is going on, whoever else is in your life, the common denominator through it all is the person in the mirror. A struggle with anger, for instance, isn’t a them problem, it’s a me problem. And I can’t change external factors to solve an internal problem. Wherever I live, whomever I live with, I'll need effort, patience, and God’s help.

Effort because love, forgiveness, kindness, selflessness—the things that life demands every day—aren’t easy. Paul encourages the Thessalonians not to “grow weary in doing good,” (1 Thess 3:13) because he knows that life is hard work and can wear you down.

Patience because you will screw up and let yourself and others down, and other people will disappoint or hurt you, too. “Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.” (Eph 4:2) That patience is just what Christianity looks like.

And God’s help because there will be days, months, even years, when you’ve hit your limit, and you are all out of patience or just don’t feel like making an effort. You can’t always sustain that kind of life yourself. Which is why the psalmist says, “Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me.” (Ps 54:4)

If your circumstances or the people in your life are starting to bring out the worst in you or making you daydream about entering the witness protection program, maybe you need to honestly ask: could I be more patient than I have been with this person, or in this situation? Could I make more of an effort to bring some peace or resolution to all of this friction and turmoil?

Or, if you’re just exhausted or coming up short, maybe it’s time to say: Okay, Holy Spirit. I need your help here. I need you to sustain me.

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The Power of Humility

Monk: 1, Demon: 0

We’re still doing Lent with the Desert Fathers, those ancient Christian monks who gave up everything to follow Jesus out in the desert. One thing that you’ll notice if you read much from or about these fellows is that spiritual warfare was very real for them. In these stories, they encounter and battle with demons in all kinds of literal ways that I’ve never experienced. And so you’ll find episodes like this one:

A demoniac, frothing terribly at the mouth, struck an old hermit on the jaw, and he turned the other cheek. This humility tortured the demon like flames, and drove him out there and then.

When I think about “turning the other cheek”—like Jesus challenges us to do in Matthew 5:39—I think immediately of self-control. You need enough restraint not to sock them right back in their jaw. It’s about having the self-control to resist that impulse to get payback. 

But here, turning the other cheek is described not as self-control but as humility. Because, to resist the urge to get even is to allow yourself to be treated as less than without making a fuss. It tells someone: ‘Yes, you can act like you matter more than I do, like you’re more valuable than I am’. It’s not true, but it takes great humbleness to accept that kind of treatment without protesting or seeking revenge.

And that humility shows much greater strength than any kind of retaliation. It takes a lot more effort to resist anger and indignation than to give in to them. Besides, if you try to hit that demon back, you’re about to get steamrolled. Just ask the seven sons of Sceva, who got into an altercation with a demon-possessed man in a wild scene in Acts 19:

Some… tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding. (9:13-16)

You can’t out-muscle evil and overcome it on its own terms—but you can overcome evil with good (Rom 12:21). Humility, what seems like weakness, overwhelms and drives away demonic, evil powers, for “when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).

The next time somebody gives you an opportunity to turn the other cheek—either literally, or more figuratively—before you decline and return fire, remember that refusing to hit back isn’t a failure, just ‘letting them walk all over you’, not standing up for yourself. Refusing to hit back is an act of humble obedience to Jesus, who turned the other cheek all the way to beatings and nails and death. And this act has the power to defuse situations and to stop evil and ill-will from multiplying.

Torture those demons like flames. Drive them out. Show them the power of humility.

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Wearing Away the Stone

Today I want to share another word from our friend Poemen, from last week. A monk named John went to see him, because he wanted to learn about hardness of heart. Poemen told John,

The nature of water is soft; the nature of stone is hard; but if a bottle is hung above a stone letting water drip down, it wears away the stone. It is like that with the word of God; it is soft and our heart is hard, but if a man hears the word of God often, it will break open his heart to the fear of God.

And the fear of God, Proverbs tells us, is the beginning of wisdom (9:10) and a fountain of life (14:27).

I love this picture of the slow drip of God’s word that erodes our hard hearts. When I think about the power of scripture to change our lives, Hebrews 4:12 comes to mind:

For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

The words of scripture will cut right through you, down deep, straight to the heart.

But, in my experience, the Bible doesn’t usually hit you like a bolt of lightning. It’s not as fast and clean as a blade slicing through something. Scripture is powerful, but often its impact unfolds slowly.

Maybe it’s a passage that you need to hear ten times before the application to your life becomes clear.

Maybe it’s an idea the Bible has to present ten different ways before the meaning really clicks for you.

Maybe it’s a teaching that you didn’t appreciate on paper until some experience out in the world brought it to life.

However it happens, it’s that drip, drip, drip of God’s word, the repeated encounters with the Holy Spirit through scripture, that finally reaches your heart and can transform its thoughts and intentions. It’s steady exposure to the Bible over time that molds us into the people we were created to be.

All kinds of situations can calcify our hearts. Sometimes for very understandable reasons! Lies, wounds, insults, and betrayals can leave our hearts rock hard where certain people are concerned. But your experiences, your history, and your upbringing can leave you hardened by prejudices, too. Likewise, the steady drip of news and social media can harden our hearts against particular groups of people or causes.

When this stony exterior prevents us from understanding and loving and serving our neighbors, we need that living and active word to get to work on us. When we’re hardened against people whom Jesus died for, we need the word of God to wear away the stone and break open our hearts.

Don’t put off opening your Bible today. Don’t let your phone distract you or your real busyness overwhelm you. Make time for a few drops. Do it again tomorrow. You may not see any immediate benefit, but give it time. Water carved the Grand Canyon. Eventually, this steady drip can make something incredible in your life, too.

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Fighting Reactivity

I hope you had fun yesterday, because today’s Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the forty days of fasting and repentance that we call Lent. I’m a bit of a killjoy during Lent—I’m all about the self-reflection and self-denial. Which is why I thought it'd be fun to listen to the words and stories of some ancient Christian monks in these devotionals for the next few weeks. Okay, maybe “fun” is too strong a word, but I think it'd be appropriate and good.

These monks are known as the Desert Fathers. They’re believers who literally left everything to follow Jesus in the desert (mostly in Egypt), living lives of humility, simplicity, and solitude. Their sayings and episodes from their lives have been studied by Christians for over 1500 years, because they led lives of extraordinary spirituality and commitment to Christ. To me, their discipline and devotion are beautiful examples to ponder during this season in particular, and their insights into faithful living can guide us any time of the year.

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Once, a monk asked another brother named Poemen about Paul’s words to the Thessalonians: “See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.” (1 Thess 5:15) In the King James Version, it’s “See that none render evil for evil…” So Poemen started to tell this monk about “the passions,” meaning some of our sinful inclinations and reactivity:

The passions work in four stages: first in the heart, then in the face, third in words, fourth in deeds – and it is in deeds that it is essential not to render evil for evil. If you purify your heart, passion will not show in your expression, but if it does, take care not to speak about it; if you do speak, cut the conversation short in case you render evil for evil.

Have you ever noticed that progression in yourself? A person wrongs you or someone you care about – maybe they said something hurtful or humiliating – and immediately you feel indignant and prickly.

Then your face shows it: your eyes tighten, or your jaw clenches.

Then you open your mouth and let your reactivity tell them exactly what you thought about what they did.

And if it escalates beyond words, then you’re really getting into trouble.

I’d say that repaying someone evil for evil begins even before deeds, with our words. After all, “the words of the reckless pierce like swords” (Prov 12:18).

Poemen’s real wisdom, though, is his strategy for combating our passions. He’s mapped out the terrain, and now you know where to engage. Make your reactivity fight for every inch of ground! First, try to smother it in your heart, maybe with some self-awareness or perspective. But if that doesn’t work, keep your face impassive. Don’t give any ground to the anger welling up in you. If you face betrays your feelings, you can still bite your tongue. If that doesn’t work, if you hear yourself telling them, “You know what?...”—it’s not too late! You can still zip those lips again, spit out a “Nevermind,” and walk away.

The payback we can easily dole out isn’t inevitable. There are points along the way where we can fight those sinful inclinations and stem the flow.

But it all starts with the heart. Like Jesus said, it’s from within, from the heart, that all kinds of evil thoughts come: murder, adultery, coveting, deceit, pride, and more. (Mark 7:21-23) What kinds of thoughts and feelings are you making room for in your heart? And what kinds of deeds have those led to?

If we want to become people who don’t “repay anyone evil for evil,” change has to start there. Your heart is where that holy rebellion really begins.

Which Spirit?

Did you know there are some disagreements about what should and shouldn’t be in your Bible?

That’s often because, if you look back at the oldest copies of scripture that we have, all of the crumbly, ancient scrolls and fragments, there are disagreements there about what should and shouldn’t be in your Bible.

These are usually small differences—a word or two changes, or maybe some spelling. That’s not surprising, since people wrote all of it by hand! On a rare occasion, though, there’ll be a much bigger discrepancy.

Take Luke 9:55-56, for instance. In the NIV, it reads: “But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village.” Most Bibles will have something similar.

But sometimes you also get a footnote between verses 55 and 56, like in the English Standard Version:

Some manuscripts add And he said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of; ⁵⁶for the Son of Man came not to destroy people's lives but to save them”

If you read an older translation, say, the King James Version, those extra lines are included. When the KJV was written, people were unaware that many old copies of Luke don’t contain that portion.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Well, for one thing, I think it’s helpful to understand why there are some differences like that in different versions of the Bible.

But I also told you that because, recently I was reading Luke 9 in a translation that includes those words, and I thought I don’t remember Jesus ever saying this! A couple disciples had just floated the idea of calling down fire from heaven to incinerate some people who’d refused to listen to Jesus. Christ, not surprisingly, vetoed that. In this translation, Jesus “spoke sharply to them, ‘You do not know what spirit you are listening to, for the True Human Being came to help people, not hurt them.’” (9:55-56 FNV) 

“You do not know what spirit you are listening to.”

The disciples assumed that their suggestion came from the Spirit of God. Jesus had to explain to them that their plan sprang from a very different spirit, the one Paul warned the Ephesians about: “the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” (Eph 2:2)

In my mind, this should have been obvious to them. Jesus, Mr. Love-your-neighbor-as-yourself, the notorious friend of sinners, didn’t want James and John to fry anyone. Yet, these men who walked with Christ and learned from him every day couldn’t see that.

I wonder what I’m not seeing.

I wonder what impulses or convictions of mine are, to someone else’s mind, obviously not from Jesus.

Because I don’t always stop to consider what spirit I’m listening to. I might assume it’s the Spirit of God, when, really, it’s just the preference of Nance, the opinion of the culture, the comfortable compromise, or the path of least resistance.

What about you?

Do you know what spirit you’re listening to?

You can listen to this week's devotional right here!

God's Farmers, God's Field

Did you know you’re one of God’s farmers?

This comes up in 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Paul’s talking about the different leaders who’ve impacted the church in Corinth, and who’ve unwittingly become the mascots for factions in that congregation. He writes, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” (3:6-7) He’s trying to redirect the Corinthians’ focus to the one Lord they all share.

Farming also comes up in Jesus’s parables, like in Matthew 13:24-30 and 36-43. A man plants wheat in a field, but while everyone’s sleeping his enemy sows weeds among the wheat. When everything starts to grow, the servants ask the master if they should pull up the enemy’s weeds. But he says, ‘No. If you did that, you’d uproot the wheat, too. Let them grow together until harvest time, then I’ll have the reapers separate it all out’. The farmer, Jesus tells the disciples, is God. The field is the world. The good and bad seed are children of the kingdom and of the evil one.

There’s a lot that you can say about these two passages, but what hit me recently is that both want to make clear what our role is as God’s farmers and what God’s role is.

In Paul’s picture, a Christian’s role is to plant seeds and water. In other words, you can create opportunities for the gospel to take root in someone’s life. You can tell a person something about Jesus they never knew or show them something about Christians they’ve never seen. Whereas God is the one who somehow takes your efforts and makes something new and lush and fruitful grow from that. The Lord takes your conversations and acts of love and brings about new beginnings and changed lives.

In Jesus’s parable, we actually learn what our role is not. It’s not your job to weed the field, to “cleanse” the church of people who haven’t got it all right in their minds or all together in their lives. (If that was the standard, you’d have to toss me out of the church, too!) It’s not your job to play the ethical or theological bouncer who refuses certain people entry and enforces the rules. It’s God’s job to decide who’s in and who’s out, who belongs or who doesn’t—and the Lord’s not in any rush to sort that out. That, as they say, will all come out in the wash.

The parable doesn’t get into what your and my jobs are, only what they aren’t. Earlier in the same chapter, though, Jesus gives us the parable of the sower, which ends with a farmer scattering seed that “fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (13:8) This, Jesus explains, represents “someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (13:23) You're a farmer, but you're also the field, the place where, if you hear and understand, the gospel can produce an incredible crop.

According to Jesus, then, your job isn’t to worry about “weeds” in your church but fruit in your own life.

What are your heart, your words, your actions, your relationships producing for God’s Kingdom? Paul reminds us that you can't cause growth in someone else’s life, but what are you doing to make the soil of your own life more fertile and more receptive to what Jesus wants to grow in you?

Plant seeds in others’ lives. Prepare the soil in your own. That is your job.

You can listen to this week's devotional right here!

Pursue Peace

In 1 Peter chapter 3, in the middle of some guidance for Christians facing situations of conflict, we get a quotation from Psalm 34: "let them turn away from evil and do good; let them seek peace and pursue it." (1 Pet 3:11/Ps 34:14)

He doesn't say "welcome peace whenever it happens to come along." 

He doesn't say "live in peace once the fighting is over, or in between fights." 

He says to pursue peace. Seek it. 

I've been deeply involved in the lives of several churches over the last 20 years. I've seen conflicts. I've seen peace. I've also seen that Christians often don't prioritize peace the way 1 Peter and Psalm 34 do. What these verses describe (and command) is an active pursuit. Peace is something we're called to work at and strive for. 

Peace is not something that's nice while it lasts or something that we should encourage and enjoy—until we have a good reason to dispense with it. That's how we begin to see peace when we're prioritizing other things. That's how I see peace when I'm busy seeking to be right, to get my way, to make them understand, to enforce conformity to my perspective. But Peter doesn't tell us to seek any of those things. He tells us to seek peace. To pursue it.

A couple weeks back, I said that if your "faithfulness" leads you to be quarrelsome, then it's not faithfulness at all. That's because there's a difference between being in agreement with scripture on principles or beliefs, and prioritizing the things that scripture prioritizes in practice. If you're willing to sacrifice peace on the altar of being faithful to scripture, what you've actually sacrificed is the faithfulness you professed. Attacking others, maligning them, encouraging divisions, bursting out in anger, these are the acts of the flesh (Gal 5:20), not the fruit of the Spirit. They're not indications that God is at work—just the opposite.

But so often, we don't care if we're bearing the fruit of the Spirit, or if we're fighting for the Bible in ways that are biblical. We only care about winning. Whether or not Jesus would consider that a "win" isn't a question we ask.

If we want to handle conflicts in a way that is faithful to scripture, we have to navigate them as people who are pursuing peace. Key to that are the things 1 Peter 3:8-9 mention: unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, tender hearts, humble minds, and a refusal to return fire or to try to get even.

What if, in situations of conflict in our churches, workplaces, or homes, we continually, deliberately sought to cultivate habits and attitudes like those? What if we championed what is true and what is right only and always in ways that pursue peace? I believe a commitment like that would revolutionize the way conflicts are addressed and radically transform the aftermath of our conflicts in churches and other areas of life. 

If we're willing to give it a try.

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How Can I Help?

“We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up.” – Romans 15:1-2 (NIV)

I was at a Bible study recently where someone shared the beginning of Romans 15 from Eugene Peterson’s The Message:

Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?”

Because The Message is a paraphrase and not a literal translation, Peterson was able to add layers of meaning to the Bible’s words—and I think this is one case where that really worked. To me, “Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up” doesn’t pack the same punch as “Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, ‘How can I help?’”

It’s completely natural to make decisions based on what would be most convenient or most pleasing to me. And yet, for Paul, following Jesus means taking the unnatural step of setting those considerations aside and, instead, asking ‘What would be best for the people around me’?

Maria Skobtsova

Maria Skobtsova was a Russian Orthodox missionary in France, who spent her life serving the poor, those with mental illnesses, addicts, and others in Paris, until the Nazis invaded and eventually murdered her in a concentration camp. “Mother Maria,” as people called her, knew a thing or two about caring for the people around her. She once wrote that, if we want to serve others, our attitude must be

… conscious renunciation of oneself, in a readiness always to follow the will of God, in a desire to become the fulfiller of God’s design in the world, a tool in His hands, a means and not an end.

This is what Paul’s talking about in Romans. A “conscious renunciation of oneself” means choosing not to pursue my own convenience or pleasure. A desire to become “a means and not an end” is a way of saying that my life—my words, my actions, my plans—my life is aimed at the good of others, rather than at myself.

When you do that, you become “the fulfiller of God’s design in the world.” In other words, you make the world look more like God always intended. Yes, you. Your selfless love makes, even just in small ways, the Kingdom come and God’s will be done on earth.

But that’s only possible when Jesus’s people begin to look at the world with new eyes, no longer asking “what’s most convenient for me?” but asking ourselves “How can I help?”

Listen to this week's devotional below!

A Part of the Solution

Do you know that really inconvenient line in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount about ‘turning the other cheek’? He says:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well… (Matt 5:38-40)

Paul says something similar in Romans chapter 12. He writes:

Do not repay anyone evil for evil… Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
    if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (12:17, 19-21)

Okay. We get it. When someone wrongs us, we aren’t supposed to try and get even or get payback. When we’re attacked, we don’t return fire or seek revenge. Message received.

But… why not? Clearly, that’s what Jesus expects from us, but why turn the other cheek instead of slapping theirs back?

I think that commands like this in scripture aren’t arbitrary. This isn’t just what Jesus expects from his followers, so deal with it. Our Lord actually has a good reason for saying something so seemingly crazy.

With Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this Monday, I thought I'd look back through Where Do We Go from Here, to see if Dr. King might have a word for us this week. And he, in a pretty famous passage, discusses this same topic. Only, he gets at the why: why on earth not slap back?

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it… Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. (64-65)

When you slap back, fire off that stinging retort, or somehow try to give them a taste of their own medicine, you’re only begetting more of the thing you sought to destroy. You’re contributing to the hurt and viciousness. Like Paul said, you’re adding to the evil: repaying more evil for the evil done to you.

But our aim as followers of Jesus is not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. Not to embrace hate, supposedly to drive out hatred, but to drive out hatred with love.

We’ll never heal the problems in our homes, churches, communities, or world by contributing to them. Christians should never be a part of the problem. We’re called to be a part of God’s solution.

Flee!

“Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace... Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.” - 2 Timothy 2:22-24

Two things occur to me as I read these verses from 2 Timothy.

First, he begins with an exhortation to flee the evil desires of youth or "youthful passions" (NRSV). Exactly what youthful desires and passions does he have in mind? At very least, the ones mentioned in the next verses: foolish and stupid arguments, quarrels. Flee these things.

What occurs to me when reading those verses is: We don’t flee this stuff. We actually invite it into our lives, every single day. You'd better cancel your cable subscription and delete your Facebook and Twitter accounts, if you don't want to have anything to do with "foolish and stupid arguments." Even if we're only watching, liking, or sharing those things we agree with, comfortably insulated from any other opinions by cable news biases and social media algorithms that feed us the content we prefer, we're still participating in those arguments. We're allowing one side to inform us and shape our perspectives (both of the topic and of any people who disagree), while we cheer them on in fighting the good fight. As long as we're interacting with partisan political or culture wars content online, we are very much having something to do with foolish and stupid arguments. And while some folks do their best to avoid that sort of content on social media, I imagine most of us join in with relish, running towards those youthful passions, rather than fleeing from them.

But there's something else I notice, while reading in 2 Timothy 2. He rejects, outright, any quarrelling among Christians. If your “faithfulness” leads you to be quarrelsome, it’s not faithfulness at all. Your convictions may be biblical and true, but the actions your convictions have resulted in are in defiance of scripture. If you find yourself getting into a heated argument anytime a certain topic comes up, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and rethink how your convictions need to be expressed and practiced in your life. That may be normal, acceptable behavior in our world today, but "it will not be so among you." (Matthew 20:26) Far from reflecting the normal, acceptable behaviors in our world, followers of Jesus are implored: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Rom 12:2) If we sound just like everyone else, that's a pretty good indicator that our minds have not been renewed.

Of course, it's one thing to read 2 Timothy or read my words and think 'Yeah! It's time to stop all the fighting and quarreling'. It's another thing to take concrete steps to remove quarrelsome voices from your life. After all, one compelling Bible verse usually can't stand up to the tidal wave of media influences that crashes into our brains every day.

So what step do you need to take? What app do you need to open less often—or delete entirely? What show should you probably skip tonight? Who should you mute on your Facebook feed, because their posts always leave you hankering for a fight? 

Flee those who know how to stir up "the evil desires of youth" in you. Instead, find another voice or pastime that encourages you in the pursuit of righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

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How to Wait for God

“But you! Return to your God
        with faithful love and justice,
        and wait continually for your God.” – Hosea 12:6 CEB

Hosea is probably my favorite of the minor prophets in the Old Testament, and when I reread it recently, this verse caught my attention. What does it mean to “return to your God with faithful love and justice, and wait continually for your God”?

Some other translations, like the NIV or the NASB, make the first half of that sentence a little clearer: return to your God, “maintain” love and justice, they tell us. This is a call for God’s people to observe and hold fast to love and justice in their communal life. To me, that is sort of the “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31) dimension of this call to “return to your God.”

Then comes the “love the Lord your God” (Mark 12:30) dimension: “wait continually for your God.”

But what exactly does that look like? How are you supposed to go about ‘waiting for God’?

This is why the verse jumped out at me. When I hear “wait for God,” I’m immediately reminded of something that John Wesley said in his classic sermon, “The Means of Grace.” A means of grace, according to Wesley, is some action ordained by God to be a regular, consistent means of receiving God’s grace in your life. Prayer, for instance, is a means of grace: when we pray, we can be confident that God has made this activity a reliable way of receiving his grace. If you’re searching for the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, go to prayer and you will find it.

What does this have to do with waiting? Wesley says, “all who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in the means which he hath ordained.” If you desire grace, God’s unearned, loving action in your life, then you wait for it by using the means of grace. If you wait for God by praying, by studying scripture, by fasting, by worshipping, by engaging in holy conversations, then your wait is going to pay off. God has ordained these practices as dependable sources of his life-changing grace, so if you actively wait by using them, eventually they will yield the grace you’re after.

When Hosea calls the people to “wait for your God continually,” I don’t think that means sit around and kill time until God shows up. I think ‘wait continually’ is a challenge to wait actively, not just anticipating God’s arrival, but inviting God’s arrival. And that is what the means of grace do. ‘Here I am, God. You said that when we receive communion, you are here. So, meet me here’. By steadily using these spiritual practices, you invite God into your life, ringing the doorbell to heaven that the Lord’s given us. And when you knock, the door will be opened to you. (Matt 7:7)

Today, let’s listen to Hosea (and Wesley): Return to your God. Observe faithful love and justice. Wait continually for your God in the means which he hath ordained.

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On the Incarnation

“And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.” – Luke 2:6-7

Kenda Creasy Dean, a United Methodist minister and professor at Princeton Seminary, once described God simply as “the One who made us, who loves us too much to lose us.”

God loves you too much to lose you.

If you are ever tempted to doubt that central gospel truth, all you have to do is look at the manger. God became a baby. How ridiculous. But love makes you do ridiculous things sometimes.

And God was going to do whatever it took. The Creator of heaven and earth would spend years producing nothing but poopy diapers. The Word of God (John 1:1) would strain his little developing brain to understand the words his Momma and Daddy were saying. The One destined to put an end to pain and wipe the tears from our eyes (Rev 21:4) would cling to his mother, crying over scraped knees and singed fingers. In him was life, and that life was the light of all people (John 1:4)—and yet, far too young, his life would be taken from him, and his body laid in a dark grave. In the words of Hark! the Herald Angels Sing, “Mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die.”

Because he would do whatever it took for us to be together, even live, even die. He just loves us too much to lose us.

That is the glorious message of the Incarnation, God's act of taking on humanity, becoming one of us to save all of us. Jesus, the Son of God, has eye lashes and ears, knuckles and two little toes, and all of it proclaims: “God so loved the world.”

This Sunday is Christmas, and I hope that your day is filled to the brim with joy and celebration. I hope you see loved ones you haven’t in a while. I hope you get some nice presents and eat something delicious. But more than anything, I hope you remember just how loved you are, that the sweet story of the child in the manger is the story of God’s powerful, relentless, bottomless love for you.

And may each of us respond to that love and be shaped by that love this Christmas and all the days of our lives.

The Gospel According to Hark!

The other day, I read (in one of Noah’s Christmas picture books, of all places) a verse from “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing” that I don’t think I’ve ever heard before. Like so many of Charles Wesley’s lyrics, it’s dense with scriptural echoes and theological meaning:

Charles Wesley (1707-1788)

Come, Desire of nations, come!
  Fix in us Thy humble home:
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring seed,
  Bruise in us the serpent’s head;
Adam’s likeness now efface,
  Stamp Thine image in its place:
Final Adam from above,
  Reinstate us in Thy love.

What is Wesley talking about? And what does it have to do with the birth of Christ?

This verse opens with a phrase from Haggai 2:7, which speaks of a day when “the desire of all nations will come.” The rest of the lines all connect to the story of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis and the way St. Paul applies that story to our lives in his letters.

First, Wesley alludes to Genesis 3:15. Immediately after discovering the deception that led humanity to sin, the Lord tells the serpent:

I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
    and you will strike his heel.

You can take that as a general statement about how much people hate snakes, but this verse has often been read as a reference to Jesus. He is the woman’s seed, her offspring, who will bruise the serpent’s head “in us,” who will conquer the devil’s influence in our lives.

Because of that influence, we need “Adam’s likeness,” the sin-wrecked inclinations and impulses that all humanity shares, to be ousted from our lives and replaced by the likeness of Jesus. He is the perfect image of God (Col 1:15), and he modeled for us what it would look like for human beings to reflect that image in our lives—like we were originally created to do (Gen 1:27). Jesus is the “Final Adam” (or, “last Adam,” 1 Cor 15:45) who established an alternative way to be descendants of Adam, trailblazing a new, holy path for humanity.

So, Mary’s baby boy came to stomp heads, to defeat the power of the devil, creating a chance for us to be the people we were created to be, the image of God. If we—to quote the United Methodist Church’s baptismal vows—accept the freedom and power that God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression, then we can step out of the first Adam’s shadow, and begin new lives reflecting the Final Adam. We can abide in his love (John 15:9-10).

Wesley crammed all of that into a verse of a Christmas carol because he understood that Christmas, the Son of God becoming the Son of Mary, human like us, is the linchpin of all of these incredible, gospel promises of deliverance and new life. Jesus didn’t only come to die. He came to break the mold and reshape humanity. It’s because God became a man that we can hope to overcome sin. It’s because of the baby in the manger that we can “walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4).

Christmas means you can be free from sin’s power.

Christmas means your life can be different.

“Adam’s likeness now efface, Stamp Thine image in its place."

The Doubting Prophet

Every year it’s a little surprising when gospel readings in Advent (the season leading up to Christmas) focus on John the Baptist, who’s basically the antithesis of holly and jolly. But Advent isn’t Christmas, and who better to read about during this time of preparation than “one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord’”? (Matt 3:3)

Besides, in Luke’s gospel, John’s story overlaps with the story of Christ’s birth. In Luke 1, a pregnant Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, also pregnant, with John. When Mary arrives, Elizabeth tells her, “as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.” (1:44) John is already so attuned to the Holy Spirit that he recognizes the presence of Jesus in utero! Years later, John would have those feelings about Jesus confirmed emphatically when he baptized his cousin, and God the Father announced to everyone there: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matt 3:16-17)

To me, this history with Jesus adds some weight to a question John asks in Matthew chapter 11. He’s been arrested by King Herod, and he sends messengers to Jesus from his prison cell with a single question: “Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?” (11:3 NLT)

John, who called Jesus “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) and said he wasn’t worthy to untie Jesus’s sandals (1:27), is now not so sure. Is this really the king we’ve been waiting for, God’s anointed one?

The John the Baptist you meet in the gospels was a radically devoted servant of God, witnessed incredible things, and understood who Jesus was literally from the time he was in his mother’s womb. Yet, he still had questions and doubts in hard times, when reality didn’t match his expectations.

And Jesus doesn’t criticize him for that.

Jesus doesn’t express any exasperation or disappointment. He simply tries to answer John’s question and help him understand. “Go and tell John…” (11:4-6)

When I hear the Advent story of the bouncing baby in Luke 1, I think about the man that child grows into, and his skepticism and misgivings. And Jesus’s response reminds me that it’s okay to have doubts and questions. Almost everyone does at some point! But doubt isn’t the opposite of faith. Unbelief is the opposite of faith. If John no longer believed, he wouldn’t have bothered to ask his question. We want to know more and want to understand better because we want to keep holding on to Jesus, not because we’ve given up.

If you’re wrestling with questions right now, don’t think that Jesus is disappointed or angry. Jesus doesn’t want you to ‘just get over it’ or ‘just have more faith’. What Jesus wants is to try and answer your questions and help you understand who is he and what he’s up to, so that y’all can keep holding on to each other and doing this life together.