Rock and a Hard Place

Around the 850s BC, one of Israel's enemies laid siege to Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. After a while the siege caused a famine and things became so desperate that people in the city resorted to cannabilism (2 Kgs 6.26ff). 

But not all the Israelites were stuck inside the city. Four guys with leprosy sat outside the city wall, outcast because of their disease (Lev 13.46). Without the traffic in and out of the city though, they found themselves starving as well. 

So they said to themselves, "If we enter the city, we die. If we sit here we die. If we go to the enemy's camp, they may spare us, and if they kill us, well, we were gonna die anyway!"

So they get up and go to the enemy's camp and find it completely deserted. The story tells us that God had convinced the enemy that the Israelites had hired two of the most powerful nations in the world to fight with them. Fearing their now guaranteed demise, the enemy left their camp and fled for their lives. 

The four guys end up saving the entire city by delivering the news that the enemy is gone and there is food in their camp. 

The thing I like most about the story is the desperation of the four guys. They picked the best of three rotten options and committed. There may be some application here for those of us who find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, barely hanging on. 

We weigh our options, pick the best of them, and commit. The important thing is taking action. Coming up with a plan and being willing to see it through.

Things Change

The Ten Commandments, which are literally the "Ten Words," are a list of laws that epitomize all the other laws in Torah. All of them are fascinating, but the fourth "word" is particularly interesting. 

It includes the charge to set aside one day a week to do no work. God actually told his people to "keep it holy," which means to set it apart, make it different. 

In including this command, God set in place a principle that served to protect the entire world from overdoing it: from overworking, over-producing, and over-consuming. 

The Ten Words appear in two places in the Bible: the first is in Exodus 20, after the Israelites have been delivered out of slavery. The second is in Deuteronomy 5, forty years later, as the Israelites were about to enter the Promised Land.

The reason God gives for obeying the "word" is different in the two versions. Exodus tells us to follow the example of God found in the creation poem of Genesis. There God worked for six days creating, and on the seventh he rested. We are to do the same. 

But in Deuteronomy things had changed and so the law was re-contextualized. This time God's saving act in the Exodus is cited as the reason to stop working one day a week. 

God acted in history and people's lives were changed on a personal level, and while the command stayed the same, the reason for following it changed.

This might be how a relationship with God works. At first we are presented with principles that seem abstract, but as God shows up in our lives, the reason for listening to what he has to say changes. It is the relationship that becomes the motivation for change.

Mercy Is Underrated

The thought did cross my mind

A while back my wife and I flew to Europe and as we were taking our seats, we noticed an adorable little girl around the age of four. 

She was being doted on by the stewardess. You know the type, absolutely precious. 

I had recently listened to a medical lecture on child abuse and so I said to my wife, "How could anyone even think of hurting someone like her?"

Well let me tell you, by the end the flight I had my answer. This precious little girl, who sat directly behind us, and despite her mom's feeble attempts to stop her, kicked our chairs for the entire flight! 

And I am not talking about the gentle, "I'm fascinated by this strange thing in front of me" foot tap, I am talking about repeated MMA roundhouse kicks for 11 hours straight!

I tried my best to remain kind as I repeatedly asked the child to cease and desist, but neither the child nor her incompetent mother took any meaningful action to end the assault.  

It was everything in me not to handle the situation myself, as thoughts of delivering a roundhouse kick of my own to the pint sized monster floated through my head.

It's moments like those that remind me of this annoying line Jesus has, where he urges us to, "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." No thanks. I'm not interested. I would rather be critical and bitterly frustrated.

But I know that's not the better way. I know that all judgment is really self judgment and the faults I so easily see in others, are those with which I am all too familiar. 

As you start a new week, maybe take time to think on whether or not mercy permeates your life. And if it doesn't, should it? 

Would You Stop?

Would you go to a free concert if one of the world's most talented musicians was playing? What if he was playing a famous violin valued at $3.5 million? Most of us with a taste for such music would say, "Yes."

But what if you took the musician out of the concert hall and placed him in a D.C. subway station, would you stop and listen?

The Washington Post staged the above experiment, where Joshua Bell played for 45 minutes. In that time, only seven people stopped to take in the performance for more than a minute. Twenty-seven gave money for a total of $32. The other 1,070 people hurried by, oblivious, with few even turning to look.

According to the article, "Bell noted, 'At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change.' This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute."

What are we missing on a daily basis that is equally, if not more special than this? Maybe it's an extra moment embracing a loved one before work? Or taking time to watch your children perform? Or pulling over to watch a sunset? Or actually listening to people when they talk to us instead of checking our cell phones?

Beauty comes to us in all shapes and sizes - the question is, are we taking the time to see it?

Rhyming Thought

Vineyard, better than a cucumber field!

Hebrew poetry is different than English poetry. Where English poetry often rhymes sound, Hebrew poetry rhymes thought. 

It does this in three different ways. Using parallel lines, Hebrew poetry either: communicates the same thought, opposes a thought, or builds on a thought. 

Take these examples from Isaiah chapter 1. First the same thought:

             

                                    The ox knows its owner, 

                                    and the donkey its master's crib; v.3

Same idea in both lines, animals know where their source of life comes from.

Now opposing:

                                   but Israel does not know,
                                   my people do not understand. v.3

On their own these lines convey the same idea, Israel doesn't get it. But they stand in opposition to the first two lines of verse 3, where the ox and donkey do get it.

The most striking examples of this last style are found in Proverbs, where the wise and the foolish are contrasted over and over again. 

Finally building:

                                   And daughter Zion is left

                                   like a booth in a vineyard,
                                   like a shelter in a cucumber field,
                                   like a besieged city. v.8

Each line gives new info, building on the last: Jerusalem (Zion) is as vulnerable as a hut in the middle of a vineyard. No it's worse! A cucumber field, where even less of the shelter is hidden. She is surrounded and her fall is immanent.

It's good to have an idea of how Hebrew poetry works as 2/3 of the Bible is filled with it! 

Next time you encounter the parallel lines of poetry, don't just race through it like it's prose. Dwell on each line and ask what the author is trying to say. You'll be amazed at how much you can squeeze out of a couple lines!

Catching Thoughts

What are you thinking? There is a great line in Paul's letter to the community in Corinth, where he notes that, "we take every thought captive to obey Christ" 2 Cor 10.5. 

The Greek word for thought, noema, means "facility of reasoning," and the one for captive, aichmalotizo, means "to get control of." 

So another way of saying it would be, "get control of your thought process."

How many of us are burdened by thoughts of self-doubt and insecurity? Of lies that we have been told about our bodies or our talents (or lack thereof)? 

How many of us entertain thoughts that objectify other human beings, dehumanizing them to feed lust? 

How many of us are constantly thinking about how much more important we are than everyone else?

How many of us give free reign to thoughts of anger and bitterness? 

How many of us spend far too much time trying to be someone we are not because somewhere along the way we were told we weren't good enough?

We all know the thoughts that tear us down and rob us of life, or build us up and rob us of life. Maybe a passage like this could become our mantra. 

Seizing the destructive thoughts that run through our minds is key to experiencing the life we are meant to live. And in the end, we all know we are so much better without them (Jn 8.32).

How Long God?

How long O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

These are the opening words of Psalm 13, a desperate prayer for help, to a God that doesn't seem to be there. 

The psalmist is undergoing intense pain and sorrow and has come to the end of the road. We are not given the source of the author's trials, but it is the silence that is the most devastating.

So the psalmist cries out, "Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!" daring to believe that God has a personal interest in his or her plight, begging God to answer before it's too late; before his or her "eyes sleep the sleep of death...and the enemy prevails."

The psalmist in the end turns to Yahweh's hesed, his steadfast love, promising praise in recognition of God's deliverance.

But this Psalm is not formulaic, and does not promise that if we start at one end of the prayer and come out at the other, all doubt and pain will be replaced by trust and joy.

That is not the intention of the prayer, nor the reality of life. The Psalm is a voice for our deepest fears and our most painful moments and breaks us from the illusion that faith solves all of our problems.

It gives us permission to exist in the "in between," allowing us to embrace the tension of speaking to God both in language of lament and praise, of being abandoned and delivered, of hope and despair. 

For a scholarly treatment of Ps 13 see, Mays, J.L. Interpretation, 34 no 3 Jl 1980, 279-83.