The Squiggles of Fate

A few years ago, when I was still teaching English, I always wanted a good example of punctuation's importance in the grand scheme of life. After all, using a comma rather than a semicolon to join a two sentences into one, or adding an erroneous apostrophe to the possessive pronoun 'its' just didn't seem very important to students. I knew, though, that I could prove punctuation's grave implications with the right example, if I could ever find one. Eventually, I did.

To my delight, the example in question involved one of the most memorable of Bible verses:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.--Isaiah 9:6, Thompson Chain Reference NIV

These words bring with them some of the most beautiful truths of Christianity: the existence of the Trinity as three distinctive parts of one almighty entity, and the prediction of Savior and Christ born as a baby human being. They exalt God with both their meaning and their beauty.

I also have a Hebrew Tanach that I often read and I find the same passage there with essentially only three differences: changed tenses of two verbs and the location of three, and.....wait for it.....punctuation. These almost inconsequential changes transform this verse from prophetic to historic.

For a child has been born to us, a son has been given to us, and the dominion will rest on his shoulder; the Wondrous Adviser, Mighty God, Eternal Father, called his name Prince of Peace.--Isaiah 9:6, Stone Tanach

The punctuation change occurs after the word 'shoulder' where the translators replace a period with a semicolon, turning the phrase that follows into a corollary of the first rather than a continuation. The effect is that the four titles no longer belong to the same almighty being, but the Wondrous Advisor, Mighty God, and Eternal Father refer to God, and Prince of Peace refers to a man, in this case according to the commentary, Hezekiah, whom God will some day honor with dominion. Suddenly, the Messiah whom the NIV's Isaiah so clearly prophesied vanishes like smoke.

Neither translator erred regarding the original punctuation; Hebrew has none. Each, therefore, brought prejudice along with expertise to their table in this work. I will not argue which is right and which wrong, but at least allow that those little punctuation marks can carry momentous worldviews on their small shoulders.

A Rock and a Hard Place

Therefore, as we have the opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers--Matthew 22:39

I do so want to get along with everyone, to be kind and considerate, to put others' needs before my own. But, darn, why is it so HARD? I have good intentions every day. Part of my morning prayer is to find a way to bless someone else, and I rise from it with hope and a smile, and then something happens. The phone rings. The cat throws up. The first person I contact has a burr under their saddle. Either my mood erodes or theirs does. Somebody asks me to do something that I didn't plan for or, worse yet, something that I shouldn't do. I want to live in friendly communion and end up in conflict. I don't like it one bit. Then I remember the part of the Lord's Prayer I just said:

Love your neighbor as yourself.--Matthew 22:39

This helps. Whether I delight in God's assignment, or disagree, or am unprepared, or tired, or compromised, this covers everything. With this in mind, I can always act correctly. I can welcome a situation with joy and open arms or I can disagree with the kind of love that comes with plain speaking. Either way, if I handle a situation with as much care as I would like to be dealt, I am safe.

The brotherhood I share with others is a gift from God just as much as practical gifts like preaching and teaching and evangelizing. My ability to walk alongside my brothers and sisters in Christ without punching or poking them builds us all up. We will have disagreements, of course, because everybody goes off course once in a while, but I can exhort, correct, even argue in the interest of defending God's holy Word as long as I do it with the same love with which I would like to be exhorted, corrected, and argued.

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.--John 4:11-12
How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity.--Psalm 133:1

We can live in unity even when we do not agree as long as our differences recall our common ground, our own sins, and the hope we share.

Bread in the Desert

The desert. Hot, dry, desolate, stretching in seemingly endless, shifting dunes. Hunger and thirst in a sad place offering neither food nor water. A metaphor for times of trouble, but how much of a metaphor is it really?

It is true that, when life takes a difficult turn, when problems or illness or disappointment loom large, I feel like I am alone in a vast place of desolation, a place much like I imagine the Sahara. My throat dries, my skin burns, and panic can begin to descend. You call these times of testing.

Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands.--Deuteronomy 8:2

But then You did something else...

He humbled you, causing you to hunger, then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.--Deuteronomy 8:3

You fed your children. You rained down food they had never seen, sweet flakes of bread like honey. You took them to a place that bore no food of its own and gave them food they could not mistake for something they had made themselves. No sweat from their own brows planted or gathered it. No scythe reaped it and no mill ground it. Manna just fell and lay there for them. And you didn't drop it in great hunks, to pick up in a moment, but tiny flakes, like snow, so that the gathering took time, time to think about its source. Manna was food, but it also brought humility.

And all of this happened in the desert. Flakes fell like sweet words from Your mouth. "Gather me," You were telling them. "Eat and know that I am God." The heat and desolation never relented, but You came as morsels of sustenance every day. The desert magnified Your people's perpetual condition, a condition I share. The unadorned landscapes of desert or strife bring you into crisp focus. They hold nothing beautiful but You, no comfort but Your company.

My sustenance still falls from heaven. When I prop up my world with what I seem to have made or have done, it falls onto hot sand and disintegrates. Then You again drop your perfect manna. The bread is real. I eat it I am humbled, but restored.

Why I'm Not Bothering to be Good Anymore...

Kindness. Goodness. Generosity. Patience. Compassion. I look for virtues like these in friends, and value them in family. They define nice people, people I want around me, and the kind of person I want to be. Most people do, I think. Hardly anyone wants to spend most of their time with someone crabby and mean. So I try to be nice and so does most everyone I know. Sometimes, though, I wonder why.

After all, what's the point? Life doesn't last all that long, and I have spent much of it either growing up or growing old. Out of the eighty years I will most likely live, only forty of them encompass my strength. Why not spend them doing exactly as I please? Of course, laws prevent me from doing some things. I can't physically hurt anyone and I have to pay my taxes, but no law says I have to understand or help or be pleasant in the WalMart checkout line. Because, frankly, sometimes I just don't want to. So why bother?

If life ends at death, and many say it does, then many virtues fade into irrelevancy. Honesty prevents the immediate ease that lies often allow. Patience causes me to lose precious moments of my all-too-fleeting life. Perseverance causes me to suffer longer than I might have to. Self-control delays satisfaction. Goodness often means I put someone else's needs ahead of my own. Kindness causes me to stuff down my own feelings. Generosity demands I give to someone else something I could use for myself.

Virtues, then, cause me to waste my life. If this life is all I get, why in the world would I want to do that? Just forget it. Give them up. Crassness, unkindness, selfishness, deceit mean nothing because I am on my own and everybody else is, too. If nothing I do lasts, then it doesn't matter whether I do good or evil. I will disappear like smoke anyway and leave no trace behind. I do not care what people think of me because none of it matters.

I do care, however, and so does most everybody else, but in the context of a temporal world, denying my own comfort or desires makes no sense because I do it for no reason. I have nothing to gain. But what if I did have something to gain, something so important that achieving it makes all the difference?

In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,...In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.--1Peter 1:3, 6-7

I do have something to gain, then. If You exist, God, if you died and rose, then virtues make sense and my suffering through them bring me hope for a life that never dies. You provide the only answer to the impossible contradiction of suffering to live a good life that dies with me. Anyone who believes it right to live a good life believes in You whether they admit it or not.

The Dichotomy of the Holy Place: Terror and Rest

Five or six years ago, a local summer camp erected a replica of the tabernacle, the wood and animal skin structure that the Israelites carried around during their forty-year wanderings, erecting and dismantling it at each stopping place. In it, Moses' people sacrificed and worshiped. It served as the center of their communal lives, and God visited them there.

Our local tabernacle replica started out as an attraction, I think. School and tour groups came to it, touching the bells on the priests' robes, handling the instruments of sacrifice, tasting shewbread. The structure stood in a open field away from the camp's main cabins and kitchen and meeting rooms, past a small woods and a stream filled with watercress, into a sun-filled clearing that may once have been a farmer's field. It rose against the distant hills as improbably as one of Frank Lloyd Wright's angular homes against fragrant forests and waterfalls. But after all the school groups got back on their bus, the tabernacle had a hush about it.

Its door faced east, and the sun rose beyond it, drawing all the courtyard structures into morning shadow. Entering in expectant silence, I lingered over the altars and basins, remembering that these places washed with blood most of the time. The hangings of the courtyard closed in. Within their high walls, hills and forest disappeared. The Holy Place, silent and covered with rich brocades and hairy pelts, stood at the far end. Like Moby Dick to Ahab, it beckoned.

Its draped door was heavy and moved aside reluctantly. Inside, the lampstand flickered in deep gloom. Incense burned lazily. Loaves waited for a priest or a hungry David that never came. At its far end hung another curtain. I knew what waited beyond: the Holy of Holies, the Arc, and the place where God met men.

I knew that the Israelites feared this inner chamber. They tied a rope around the priest's ankle when he entered in case God struck him dead when he approached. Even in this make-believe place, I sensed that fear. The Holy of Holies had no light and, although the sun had risen high in the outside sky, no ray of light, no breeze penetrated its thick coverings. No light, no sound, no motion. Like a sensory deprivation chamber, this inner sanctum allowed for only once presence: God's. The cherubim topping the arc bowed to one another in expectation, their wings almost touching in homage to the God who did not come that day. I found that I was relieved. The place itself brought pause enough.

The Israelites' God was awesome and terrible. Their tabernacle, awash with blood outside and with terror inside, drove this home. But God wants me to know him this way:

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of His wings.--Psalm 91:1
How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of Your wings.--Psalm 36:7

God wants to shelter me under the same wings beneath which the Israelites so feared Him. He wants me to approach. He wants to protect me, not slay me, in His tabernacle. He wants to be my refuge. What changed? Why the shift from trepidation and suspicion to reassurance?

Moses' Jews could not approach God, but I can. In fact, He has invited me by name. Their sacrifices did not provide entry. Jesus' sacrifice, however, did. Today, I enter the tabernacle behind Jesus and because He has full access, so do I. God called me, God chose me, God drew me to this, and once there, offers the only true rest known to any man.

One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple. For in the day of trouble, He will keep me safe in His dwelling. He will hide me in the shelter of His tabernacle and set me high on a rock.--Psalm 27:4-5

Finding My Way

A constant battle wages in my life. Its front line stretches across the corner of my desk where my calendar and my reminders usually rest. Its combatants are those written urgings on one side and Your whispered confidence on the other: "Trust me."

How much to plan and how much to trust? On one hand, I can't sashay through life without any goals in mind, can I? Yet, I know that my future is already written in the palm of your hand. This goes way beyond theoretical doctrinal issues about free will. This has to do with whether I should do the laundry and go to the grocery store today or just sit and pray for direction.

God went ahead of you in your journey, in fire by night and in cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go.--Deuteronomy 1:33

Hmmm. Fire by night and cloud by day. Pretty easy to see, wasn't it? And big. Very big. So what does that have to say to me? First, that You already know where I am supposed to go. You have already planned my proper, safe, and holy course. Second, You have given me clear signals regarding how to get there.

Now, I know that the days of cloud and fire have passed, so what are my signposts today? I think that, for me, You have again provided two: Your Word, and my circumstance. Your Word points and my circumstances dictate. Sure, there are choices, but only one way shows Your clear marks. In this, You do not come behind or beside, but lead. Christ said simply, "Follow Me."

I have to look where you might be found, then go there. That is my job, my to-do list, this day and every day. So where does that leave the dirty laundry and the sink full of dishes? They call for attention, but do not really matter. These tasks need doing, but You mark the way to a higher road.

This is why my plans diminish in Your sight--they lack eternal imagination. With Your knowledge of the end from the beginning, with Your vision for the highest and the best, You can lead me to I place I can't even imagine. Your way may take me through some plain tasks like dishes or groceries, but it always goes far beyond. Your way may ignore those things, too, and only You know when it must.

So, I can fill up my calendar and my to-do list as long as I remember that they take a back seat to yours. In the end, all I have to do every day is wake up and look for You.

I have placed before you an open door no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.--Revelation 3:8

Bruised but Still Sweet

Part of my daily morning prayer is that I might imitate Your example. You lived in the same world as I do, and equipped Yourself with the same senses and feelings and even the same basic abilities to act and think. And yet, you used them differently. You were, as the prayer details, mild, humble, chaste, zealous, charitable, and resigned. I am not.

Some days I know this more emphatically than others. Today, I know it well. Today, as I take yesterday's actions back into my arms and turn them over, I see all their imperfections as easily as I see bruises on apples. All my failings, marring what You designed using Your perfect self as a pattern, render a sweet, juicy, and deeply satisfying fruit into one full of soft spots destined for the compost heap.

I recall the prayer of repentance I learned as a child that included a sad litany of responsibility, "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault..." The prayer speaks truly, and when You reveal my sin, I must thoroughly know it. However, some of today's melancholy curls up through my feelings, and, as I have become fond of reminding students, feelings are not facts.

I need to know this today as completely as I tried to teach them when writing a research paper. Then, they could not use opinion words like "wonderful" or "disgusting" or "boring" or especially "awesome." I made them step out of themselves long enough to discover what experts in their subject thought about it. In my case, the only expert in holiness is You.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come.--2Corinthians 5:17
You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into wonderful light.--1Peter 2:9

I do have to look honestly and soberly at my failures, but I also have to remember what you made me to be and do. I am bruised today, but not yet ready for the compost bin.