Out of Bethlehem

You’ve probably heard of Bethlehem. Whether from singing the famous Christmas hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem” or from hearing the story of Jesus’ birth, chances are if you grew up in America or in a Christian community, you’ve at least heard of the place. But how much do you really know about it? Have you ever wondered why of all the places Jesus could have been born, He was born there? If you know your Bible, you might think, “Well, He was born there because that’s where it was prophesied that He would be born.” True, but why was Bethlehem the place that was prophesied? Was it just some random town?

Like many of you, I’ve known of Bethlehem’s existence for practically my whole life, but in 2019 I finally got to visit, and now I’m living a mere 14 miles from there, as the crow flies. Living in the Holy Land somehow makes things in Scripture jump out more—“little” things that we tend to glance over because of our unfamiliarity with their meaning or context, things like where various events happened. After visiting Capernaum in 2019, I realized just how many of the familiar New Testament accounts happened there. Similarly, this Christmas season, I’ve been noticing a lot about Bethlehem.

For instance, did you realize that Ruth met Boaz in Bethlehem? That fact just sunk in for me earlier this month as I was reading the book of Ruth for the who-knows-how-many-th time. And that fact, which is super cool for reasons I’d be getting ahead of myself to explain here, started me on a hunt to see what else happened in Bethlehem. As it turns out, a lot did.

My first discovery is actually thanks to one of our pastor’s recent sermons in which he mentioned that the name Bethlehem in Hebrew is the combination of the words beth + lechem, which literally means “house of bread.” Names typically were significant in ancient times and weren’t just randomly assigned, so it is reasonable to assume that Bethlehem was known for or at least associated with bread in some way. Thus, we can say, out of Bethlehem came bread.

The first time we hear of Bethlehem in the Bible is in Genesis 35 when Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel, the mother of Joseph and Benjamin (who would represent three of the twelve tribes of Israel), dies in childbirth and is buried “on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem)” (v. 19, ESV). Thus, with the very first mention of Bethlehem, we find that it is a place associated with grief, a very particular kind of grief that is tied to the Fall: death from difficulty in childbirth.

The next reference to “Bethlehem” comes in Joshua 19, when the land is being divided among the tribes. The Bethlehem mentioned here, however, is a different place. It’s not the Ephrath Bethlehem, it’s a Bethlehem in Galilee (the north) which was part of the tribe of Zebulun’s allotment. The next mention of Bethlehem is also believed to refer to the Bethlehem of Zebulun rather than of Judah. This occurs in Judges 12 when it is identified as the hometown of the judge Ibzan.

The Bethlehem of Jesus’ birth shows up again, though, in Judges 17 as the origin of the Levite who became a priest for a man named Micah who had made a shrine for an idol. The Levites were the one tribe who were scattered throughout the other tribes of Israel to serve as priests of the Lord, so it’s not unusual that this Levite was coming from the territory of the tribe of Judah. What is unusual, though, is that he had left Judah and was “sojourning” in Ephraim, a central tribe, for some unknown reason. Furthermore, he ends up disobeying God’s commandment two-fold. First, he becomes an accessory to possessing graven images, disobeying God’s general command not to worship idols. But he also forsakes God’s specific calling on his life as a Levite to facilitate worship of the one, true God and instead starts serving a false god and facilitating worship of it. Thus, out of Bethlehem came an unfaithful priest.

A couple of chapters later, in Judges 19, we’re met with another disturbing account related to Bethlehem. The Levite in this chapter is described in much the same way as the one in chapter 17, although it is unclear whether or not they are the same person. Regardless, the Levite takes a wife/concubine from Bethlehem in Judah and brings her to where he is sojourning in Ephraim. She becomes unfaithful and leaves him to return to Bethlehem, at which point, after a few months, he goes “to speak kindly to her and bring her back.” He is welcomed into his father-in-law’s home and stays for several days before leaving with his wife to journey back to Ephraim. On the way, they stop to spend the night in a town called Gibeah where, long story short, the woman is raped and murdered while her husband does nothing to stop it. Upon finding her dead in the morning, he carries her body back to Ephraim where he proceeds to cut it in twelve pieces to send throughout the nation to make it known what a terrible thing the people of Gibeah had done, leading to their punishment. Thus, out of Bethlehem came an unfaithful wife, an unprotective husband, and another story of grief.

Then comes Ruth. Bethlehem in Judah is identified as the hometown of yet another man who sojourns elsewhere, Elimelech, the husband of Naomi. When Elimelech and his two sons die in Moab (modern-day Jordan), Naomi and one daughter-in-law Ruth return to Bethlehem where Boaz, the family’s kinsman redeemer, is also from. He marries Ruth to carry on the family name, and at the end of the book we learn that Ruth and Boaz of Bethlehem become the great-grandparents of David. David is introduced in 1 Samuel 16 as the youngest son of his father who is working as a shepherd and who is chosen by the Lord to be king of Israel. Thus, out of Bethlehem came a shepherd king.  

The next several mentions of Bethlehem are not specified as the Bethlehem in Judah, although it is likely that the Judean town is the one referenced. Asahel, who is David’s nephew, the brother of David’s army commander Joab, and one of David’s mighty men himself, is killed by an enemy of David’s and is buried in his father’s tomb in Bethlehem (1 Chronicles 2:16; 2 Samuel 2). Two men named Elhanan who were also among David’s most valiant military supporters are tied to Bethlehem as well (2 Samuel 23:24; 2 Samuel 21:19). Thus, out of Bethlehem came strong warriors.

In 2 Samuel 23 and 1 Chronicles 11, we find the account of David in conflict with the ancient Canaanite people, the Philistines, who had a garrison at Bethlehem. David yearns for water from the well in Bethlehem (presumably, the one in Judah that is his hometown), and three of his mighty men break through the Philistine lines and get the water for him, which he then pours out before the Lord out of respect for the lives of his men. Thus, out of Bethlehem came water from a well.

When David’s grandson Rehoboam became king, leading to a split in the kingdom with Judah and Benjamin on one side and the rest of the tribes on the other, he built fortifications at several existing towns, one of which was Bethlehem. These weren’t just minor enhancements; 2 Chronicles 11:11 says, “He made the fortresses strong, and put commanders in them, and stores of food, oil, and wine.” Thus, Bethlehem became a strong fortress.

But all the fortresses in Judah weren’t strong enough to keep Babylon from conquering the kingdom. After a few hundred years of progressive rebelliousness against God, the people of Judah were conquered by the Babylonians and many were taken into exile, where they remained for several decades. In the meantime, the remnant who was left in the land became afraid of retribution from Babylon after someone killed the Babylonian-appointed governor and those with him. They decided to flee to Egypt, but before they went, they stopped at a village by Bethlehem to inquire of the Lord through the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 41:17). After being commanded by God not to go to Egypt, the people blatantly disobeyed and went anyway, setting themselves up for destruction. Thus, near Bethlehem the people rebelled against God.  

When a group of the exiles was allowed to return from Babylon, Nehemiah made a point to list the different groups of people who made the journey home. Among those who returned were “The men of Bethlehem” (Nehemiah 7:26). Thus, Bethlehem’s population returned, showing God’s mercy even in judgment and setting up the conditions for the fulfilment of a prophecy that had been made by Micah (a different Micah from the one mentioned earlier) a couple of hundred years before the exiles’ return.

That prophecy was specifically concerning Bethlehem: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. […] And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. And he shall be their peace.” (Micah 5:2, 4-5a, ESV). Thus, out of Bethlehem was to come a strong shepherd king who would be a strong fortress and put an end to war and destruction, bringing peace.

Some four hundred years would pass after the exiles returned to Judah before the town of Bethlehem would show up again. Luke tells us that, because Joseph was a descendant of David, Bethlehem of Judah was his and Mary’s destination when the emperor called for a census. It was there that Mary gave birth to Jesus, there that the shepherds visited Him, there that the magi from the east found Him, and there that Herod went on his jealous, murderous rampage against all boys two-years-old and younger trying to kill Him (Luke 2 and Matthew 2).

Throughout Scripture, Bethlehem is shown as a microcosm of all that is wrong with the world as a result of the Fall, and from rebellion to restoration, it tells the story of the relationship between man and God. It begins as a place of death, of unfaithfulness, of neglect, of war, of exile, of fear, of rebellion, of covetousness, of murder. But it also a microcosm of all the Fall-reversing promises that are fulfilled in the Promised One, Jesus. From the house of bread, came the Bread of Life. From the town with a desirable well, came the Living Water. From the hometown of warriors came the Mighty Victor. From the home of a shepherd king came the King of Kings who is our Good Shepherd. From the strong fortress came the strongest Fortress of all. Instead of an unfaithful priest came the Great High Priest, Faithful and True. Instead of an unprotective husband came the Bridegroom, protective and loving.

Because of Jesus there will be no more murder, no more covetousness, no more rebellion, no more fear, no more exile, no more war, no more neglect, no more unfaithfulness, no more death. Because of Him, the process of reversing the Fall has started and one day will be fully complete. The One born in Bethlehem has lived the perfect life no one else could; He has broken the curse; He has defeated the Enemy; He has conquered death. Out of Bethlehem has come the Savior of the world.

And that, my friends, makes for a very Merry Christmas!

PC: Eric Eanes. Used with permission.

God, the Lord of Language

I’ve been thinking a lot about language lately. Trying to learn a new one will do that to you, I guess. As I’m learning Arabic, I’m currently at the stage where I generally can read words, but I have no idea what they mean most of the time. I can sing (some of) the songs in church, but I have no idea what exactly I’m singing. I know I’m communicating meaning, but I’m in the dark as to what that meaning actually is.

Language in general is really a strange concept when you pause to ponder it. Various sounds are put together in numerous ways to form words to which we attribute meaning, and those words are arranged in things we call sentences to communicate more complex meanings. And those sounds and words and sentences can be represented by symbols, which we call letters that make up alphabets that are the tools of “written language.” And somehow we are able to understand one another—at least partially, at least enough to work together toward shared endeavors.

Such was the case for the ancient people of Babel, whom we read about in Genesis 11. Moses tells us that “the whole earth had one language and the same words” (Gen. 11:1, ESV). That would have been a pretty remarkable time to be alive. No matter whom you talked to, you could understand them and be understood by them. Nothing would get lost in translation. This single language made it possible for the people to band together and decide to build a city with a huge tower.

Why would they want to do that? For two reasons, which can be found in verse 4: “and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” First of all, they started to get a big head. Look at us! We’re so intelligent and resourceful, and if we all work together, there’s nothing we can’t do! We can even reach to the heavens! In other words, pride filled their hearts, and that’s a problem. But secondly, they wanted to build a city, so they wouldn’t be scattered across the globe. That reason might not seem like that much of a problem—until we remember Genesis 9, that is.  

After the Flood, there were only eight human beings alive on the earth—Noah and his three sons and their four wives. When God established His covenant with Noah and his sons, He explicitly commanded them to “fill the earth” as they obeyed the command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 9:1). All the people at Babel were descendants of these four couples, so for them to do something intentionally to prevent people from “dispersing” (a.k.a. filling the earth), was in direct disobedience to God.

So what were the consequences of their pride and disobedience? God “confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth” (Gen. 11:9, ESV). He took away their ability to understand one another, thereby making it necessary for them to go their separate ways and fulfill His command. In essence, He created multiple languages instantaneously. We often think of God as Creator in general terms, or perhaps in more specific terms related to the creation of the earth, plants, animals, humans, etc. But think about the implications of a God who created language.

The fact that God created language in general means He is communicative and therefore relational. He desires to communicate with us, and He has created us to be able to communicate with Him and with each other. And even though He created multiple languages, their overall similarity is a testament to His organization and logic. Stephen R. Anderson writes for the Linguistic Society of America:

Human language differs from the communicative behavior of every other known organism in a number of fundamental ways, all shared across languages. By comparison with the communicative devices of herring gulls, honey bees, dolphins or any other non-human animal, language provides us with a system that is not stimulus bound and ranges over an infinity of possible distinct messages. It achieves this with a limited, finite system of units that combine hierarchically and recursively into larger units. The words themselves are structured from a small inventory of sounds basic to the language, individually meaningless elements combined according to a system completely independent of the way words combine into phrases and sentences. […] And the principles governing these systems of sounds, words and meanings are largely common across languages, with only limited possibilities for difference (the parameters described above).[i]

 

So even with the many languages in existence, they are similar at the core, and this reflects how they all came from the same place—or rather, from the same Person—a Person whose infinite creativity and ordered constancy express themselves in the creation of humans and their languages as distinct from the rest of creation yet fundamentally the same amongst each other.

But the fact that God created multiple languages also reminds us of another aspect of His nature—His omniscience. He designed language itself, so He knows all there is to know about each and every language in existence—past, present, and future. This means that even if no one else can understand us, God can and does. Any meaning that we create from words, He already knows. He is the one who Created us with the capability to craft meaning and, in doing so, to reflect His image as Creator. And even when words fail us, God tells us that His Spirit understands our thoughts and feelings (see Romans 8:26-27). There is great comfort in knowing that there is Someone who will never misunderstand us.

So the next time you hear someone speak a language different from your own, remember the people of Babel, but more importantly, remember the one and only God, the Lord of language, whose power and grace even in disciplining His creatures, gave us the beauty of similar yet diverse languages all across the world. Remember that this God, the Lord of language, sees, hears, and understands your very heart. And remember that this very same God, the Lord of language, has spoken to you through the written word and through sending the Word Himself, Jesus Christ, to communicate to you the best message of all—that God has taken on flesh and made it possible for you to be in right relationship with Him now and forevermore.  

 

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[i] Stephen R. Anderson, “How many languages are there in the world?” Linguistic Society of America, https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/how-many-languages-are-there-world : accessed 2 December 2021.

Sing a Song of Thankfulness

What do you think of when you think of giving thanks? I’m not talking about Thanksgiving as a holiday; I’m talking about the actual act of giving thanks to someone for something. Perhaps you think of prayer, writing a thank-you note, or using spoken words. Those things are what first come to my mind. But recently, I’ve started noticing a different approach to thankfulness pop up in Scripture.

This month I’ve been participating in a guided exercise where every day I write a passage from the Bible that focuses on thankfulness. As I’ve been writing, I’ve noticed a pattern. Of the thirty passages selected to transcribe, thirteen of them explicitly mention something else in addition to giving thanks, even tying it directly to thankfulness. Any ideas what it might be? It’s singing. Let’s take a look, and you’ll see what I mean: 

“I will give to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High.” Psalm 7:17 (all verses ESV, emphasis added)

“I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.” Psalm 9:1-2

“Blessed be the LORD! For he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy. The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.” Psalm 28:6-7

“Sing praises to the LORD, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.” Psalm 30:4

“You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!” Psalm 30:11-12

“I will give thanks to you, O LORD, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations.” Psalm 57:9

“It is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre. For you, O LORD, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy.” Psalm 92:1-4

“Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!” Psalm 95:1-2

“Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth! Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!” Psalm 100:1-4

“I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise;” Psalm 138:1

“All the kings of the earth shall give you thanks, O LORD, for they have heard the words of your mouth, and they shall sing of the ways of the LORD, for great is the glory of the LORD.” Psalm 138:4-5

“Oh give thanks to the LORD; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples! Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works!” 1 Chronicles 16:8-9

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Colossians 3:16

Seems like we need to pay attention to the idea of singing and how it’s connected to gratitude. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that time and time again singing is mentioned in close proximity to giving thanks. You might have noticed that “give thanks” is sometimes accompanied by “sing praise,” and while praise and thanks are technically two different things (I’ve heard it explained that we thank God for what He does and praise Him for who He is), we can see by the way the psalms in particular are structured that the psalmist is essentially reiterating the same thing in a different way, a common lyrical structure in Hebrew poetry. For example, Psalm 57:9 basically says the same thing in parts A and B, using different words in each: “I will give thanks to you, O LORD, among the peoples [A]; I will sing praises to you among the nations [B].” When we see this pattern emerge over and over again, we should take note and ponder the implications of the fact that giving thanks and singing are so closely connected.

I’m reminded of a sermon I heard when I was visiting family in Texas a few years ago. Joseph Tenney of Church at the Cross preached from 2 Chronicles 20 where King Jehoshaphat and the Israelite people were facing a formidable enemy. You might be familiar with the verse, “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you”—that’s from this account (2 Chron. 20:12). The Israelites were in a seemingly hopeless situation, but they fixed their focus on God, fasting and praying for deliverance. A Levite (whose tribe, you’ll remember, was the tribe in charge of leading music, among other things) received a word from the Holy Spirit telling the people not to be afraid, for God would fight on their behalf.

So the next day, the Israelites went out to meet their enemy, and the king made a surprising move: “And when he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the LORD and praise him in holy attire, as they went before the army, and say, ‘Give thanks to the LORD, for his steadfast love endures forever’” (2 Chron. 20:21). He told the people to…sing? Yes, you read that right. They were to sing and give thanks to God—there’s singing and giving thanks showing up together again. So picture the Israelites standing there facing a multi-nation enemy and putting their singers on the front lines. Not exactly the most conventional military strategy, right? What do you think happened next?

“And when they began to sing and praise, the LORD set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were routed [… and] they all helped to destroy one another” (2 Chron. 20:22-23). Did you catch that? God intervened when the singing started. Seems like singing praise to God is a pretty significant thing.

Such was the point that Joseph Tenney made in his sermon entitled “Worship as Warfare.” He emphasized how “worship routs the enemy,” both the physical enemy in the case of the Israelites and our spiritual enemy now. And this is where we start to see the importance of singing when giving thanks. As Elder Tenney pointed out, Satan knows the significance of songs. As a fallen angel, he once stood before the throne of God, which we know from Scripture is a place where songs of praise are common. So he knows the power of music directed in worship to God. Imagine his frustration, then, when God’s children fix their attention on God, focusing on thanking and praising Him, and doing so through song. God’s glory is magnified, our hearts are uplifted, and our faith is strengthened—all things our enemy detests.

Are you being tempted? Are you discouraged? Are you anxious? Are you discontent? Are you weary? Are you overwhelmed? Think of things to thank God for. Then go a step further and sing—in your devotional time, while you’re driving, while you’re cooking or cleaning house or folding laundry or fill-in-the-blank. Sing a song of thankfulness to God. You don’t even have to be able to carry a tune. You can make up your own song or sing some of the theologically rich songs that others have composed. There are even albums like Glory Revealed and Glory Revealed II that are word-for-word Scripture set to music.

In this way, we can live out Colossians 3:16, which commands, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Notice that here thankfulness describes the way in which we sing. So not only does giving thanks occur alongside or produce singing as we see described in the Old Testament passages above, but also singing to God in general should be characterized by thankfulness in our hearts. Singing and thankfulness, thankfulness and singing—the two go hand-in-hand.

So next time you sing in worship, I encourage you to really think about what you’re singing and realize how very much there is to be thankful for. And next time you think of what you have to be thankful for, try breaking out in song. It might seem awkward at first, but I have a hunch that the more you make music a part of your spiritual training, the easier it will become and the more you will realize the beauty of the clues God has given us in His Word to show us the power of songs of thankfulness to Him. 

PC: Pamela Hollis. Used with permission.

Welcome to My Perfectly Imperfect World

Hospitality. It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot especially in Southern circles, and it’s a quality which characterizes the Middle East, but I’m finding that in different places it can mean different things. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines being hospitable as being “given to generous and cordial reception of guests” or “promising or suggesting generous and friendly welcome.”[i] From my experience growing up in the South, I saw a lot of “Southern hospitality,” but frequently the “friendly welcome” was conditional, and the generosity had limits.

Hospitality in the South often meant a well-dressed hostess bringing out the best dinnerware to the fancy dining room in an immaculately tidy house for invited guests on a scheduled day for a specific purpose with a definite end time. Growing up in this culture, I subconsciously internalized the notion that to welcome people into one’s home, the house had to be spotless, a fully-developed meal—with dessert—had to be served, and loungewear was unacceptable attire. Even if someone was just “stopping by,” both house and person had to be fully presentable. In other words, hospitality was a lot more self-focused than it was others-focused.

Over time, I came to recognize the superficiality of this type of hospitality, especially as it was shown in contrast to a handful of families I knew who would offer whatever they had on hand as they welcomed people to step into their daily routines in their messy (i.e. lived-in) homes on short notice for an indefinite period of time. They made no allusions to perfection. They welcomed others with generosity and friendliness to join in their everyday lives and reap the benefits of their heart-felt hospitality.

The combination of seeing that contrast and reading Rosaria Butterfield’s book The Gospel Comes with a House Key (highly recommended!) grew in me the desire to display a genuine hospitality without preconditions where I am okay with allowing—even inviting—people into the messiness of my everyday life. This doesn’t mean there is never a time or place for bringing out the fancy plates and having the house cleaned and straightened and getting dressed up when guests come. There’s nothing wrong with those things. But if that is our standard and understanding of hospitality, how much are we limiting ourselves and depriving others (and ourselves) of the genuine friendship and fellowship that comes from living life together?

So what it does mean is not getting upset when people drop in or invite themselves over. What it does mean is putting off my pride and my desire to put on a good front. It means being generous with what I have instead of waiting until I have “enough” to be able to share. It means not thinking more highly of myself than I should. Do you remember the verse that talks about that? Paul writes in Romans 12:3, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (ESV). He goes on to talk about different members of the Church having different gifts which should be utilized (vv. 4-8), and then what does he talk about just a few verses later? You guessed it. Hospitality.

Romans 12:13 is one of four places in the New Testament where the word “hospitality” is used, and one of three where it is in the form of a command. In all three of these cases, the literary context of each command includes mention of a particular fruit of the Spirit. See if you can pick up on it.

“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. […] Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.” Romans 12:9-10, 13 (ESV)

“Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers.” Hebrews 13:1-2a (ESV)

“The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” 1 Peter 4:7-9 (ESV)

Did you see it? Love, love, love. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that love and hospitality are mentioned so closely together in all three instances. After all, it is the love of Christ which undergirds His welcoming of us into His family—the ultimate act of hospitality. He gave everything for us, even His very life. And He gives His Spirit to us Who enables us to exhibit His love in our lives. Love is both the motivation and the power behind genuine hospitality. When we gaze upon the love of God in Christ, we are better able to lay down our pride and selfishness and open our homes and lives in love.

I am certainly still a work in progress in this area, although moving to the Middle East is already giving me opportunities for rapid growth. It’s common here when you move into a new home for friends to come by and congratulate you. And by “come by” I mean come in. The “Southern hospitality” mindset would cry “Horrors!” at the thought of welcoming guests into a sparsely furnished home strewn with half-emptied boxes, undecorated walls, and cluttered shelves. And double horrors if the guest was a pastor!

So when a family friend asked if she and her husband and the pastor and his wife could come over one evening after church less than a week after we arrived, I have to admit the thoughts of how messy our apartment was and how little supplies and furniture we had did enter my mind. The desire for people’s first impressions of our home to be ones of a neat, beautifully decorated, comfortably furnished, well-supplied haven certainly was present. And—full disclosure—I did spend some time that morning straightening a few shelves and putting out the few fall decorations I had brought with me.

But because I had already decided that I wanted to learn to practice selfless hospitality, I chose to put my pride aside and welcomed our guests with our suitcase-filled entry room, our messy shelves, our mismatched mugs, our pulled-in kitchen chairs, and our borrowed end-tables. And it was lovely. Because hospitality is not about putting on a show. It’s not about us at all. It’s about giving and serving and welcoming as Christ has given to and served and welcomed us. Do I still have a long way to go in the process of dying to self and showing hospitality? Absolutely. But praise be to God, He is gracious and patient. So just as I am seeking to grow in offering genuine, Christ-centered hospitality, I challenge and encourage you to join me—because as it turns out, welcoming people into our imperfect-yet-redeemed lives is the most perfect hospitality of all.

PC: Teresa Cantrell. Used with permission.

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[i] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hospitable : accessed 4 November 2021.

Coming Home: A Balancing Act of Pain and Joy

A couple of weekends ago, my husband and I had the opportunity to go to Homecoming at my undergraduate alma mater. It was my husband’s first time to see the place I called home for four years—years that exemplified Dickens’s sentiment regarding the best and worst of times. Truly, some of my happiest memories and some of my most painful ones are wrapped up in that little college on the hill—a college whose size was indirectly proportionate to the influence it had on my life.

Although I’ve been away from the school almost twice as long as I was there, this was only my second Homecoming since graduation. That might not seem unusual for most. After all, I’ve rarely personally known adults who return to their alma maters for homecomings unless it’s for a major reunion year, and even rarely then. My bond with my college was different, though, and if going to Homecoming meant seeing beloved professors and dear friends again, then I imagined that I’d be there as often as I could.

But then spring semester of senior year happened, and the school was shaken to its core. I won’t go into details here (although I have written some about it in earlier posts), because it would take an entire book to explain everything that happened. But the result of it all was that by graduation, we knew many of our professors were leaving, and within a year, dozens of faculty and staff who were our teachers, mentors, and friends were no longer there. And many of them left severely hurting. It felt as if the school was left with a giant, gaping hole, and the ones who remained were left to try to hold things together all while dealing with their own grief.

The gut-wrenching, mind-boggling, exasperating, infuriating circumstances of that semester led many in my graduating class to feel like washing their hands of the school forever. The deep love that many of us had for the school persisted, but the pain of seeing it as a shell of what it had been during “the best years of our lives” was just too deep for us to willingly subject ourselves to it again. And yet there were some dear faculty and staff who remained, and it was the prospect of seeing them again—and a few close friends who were going—that led me to go back for Homecoming a year and a half after I graduated.

The emotional and physical reaction of just walking around campus again knowing that there was so much that was unresolved, so much hurt that was being ignored, so many people who should have still been there but weren’t—it was almost overwhelming sometimes, and I left thinking, “Well, I can say I’ve been to Homecoming. I don’t think I’ll be doing that again.” And over the next several years, I didn’t.

But my affection for the school remained, and I couldn’t quite stay away completely, so when I was invited to guest lecture in a class two different years, I gladly accepted, and when I made solo road-trips in summertime, I would make a pit-stop at the home of a professor whose family had become a sort of adopted family for me while I was in school. Each visit was marked by joy that was tainted by pain. Reuniting with loved ones was always joyful, but there was no escaping the ache and sadness.

It wasn’t the nostalgic sadness that any graduated student from any school can expect to feel when they see changes in their alma mater—new buildings, face-lifted facilities, repurposed rooms, etc. Those types of changes are a sign of life. But with each visit in my years as a young alumna, the change I had to confront was the reality that the rippling effects of my senior year were resulting in life being sucked out of the campus, and it felt as if that type of change couldn’t and shouldn’t be accepted as merely part of the normal passage of time.

During my last semester, we often described the once vibrant, sunny campus as being covered by a proverbial thick, dark cloud. You could feel the heaviness in the atmosphere that spring. And when I returned each time after graduation, it was as if the cloud was slowly rolling away only to have a vacuum fill its place instead of the crisp, fresh air of an engaged, invigorated student body and campus community that was a hallmark of most of my time there. When I returned and taught in classes, ate in the cafeteria, walked through the heart of campus, and drove around its perimeter, the vibrancy that had characterized my student experience was missing. Even as new classes of students arrived who had no idea about what had happened a few years before, it seemed as if the deep sense of community (a buzz-word at the college during my time there), of togetherness, of family was gone.

So when we found out we would be able to attend Homecoming this year, I had to emotionally prepare myself to go back. The driving force behind our decision to visit was so that my husband could meet those faculty and friends who are still there and, secondly, so that he could see the campus itself just as I had seen my husband’s a couple of years earlier. Making the decision easier was the knowledge that a much-needed first step toward change in leadership had taken place since my last visit.

This change had prompted alumni of all ages to start discussing re-engaging with the school, with people having differing opinions about whether it was the right time to restart, or in the case of younger alumni, to begin their support. The topic of attending Homecoming was part of that discussion, and again people had mixed feelings. With so much still needing to be addressed, would reinstating financial giving or returning physically to campus convey an acceptance of the wrongs that had been done? Would it give the impression of turning a blind eye to the hurt that so many are still living with four, six, seven years later? These were all legitimate questions, as was the question one friend asked me upon seeing me visibly happy and excited to be on campus, knowing that we both still had so many issues with things that had gone on.

Her question about that weird dichotomy of being happy to be in a place but still deeply saddened by its unresolved issues got me thinking about the importance of balance when it comes to my relationship with my alma mater, which in turn got me thinking about how that balance can be applied to any part of life. It is certainly not healthy to paste on a smile in order to plaster over the serious issues, the legitimate grievances, the deep-seated pain that are prevalent in a given situation. Ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away, nor does the mere passage of time, and it can compound the problem to pretend otherwise. But neither is it healthy to have a laser-focus only on the bad to the point of ignoring the glimpses of hope, the legitimate growth, the deep-seated joy that can be found. Acknowledging the existence of problems doesn’t necessitate refusal to celebrate the good, and there is no point in robbing ourselves of the opportunities to find and give joy even amid suffering.

Living in this dichotomous state can be challenging at times, since we are essentially being pulled between the two extremes of response—in this example, throwing in the towel and walking away forever or pretending the last seven to ten years never happened. But my last visit to campus helped me see that this middle ground is perhaps the healthiest, albeit most difficult, place to be. It is the only ground which honors both our brothers and sisters in Christ who have left and our brothers and sisters in Christ who remain. It is the only ground which gives us space to fully stand up for what is right, which includes both lauding the good and calling out the bad. And it is the only ground from which we can join with those working to rebuild that thriving atmosphere for students by encouraging them to keep up the difficult task of striving for excellence and honoring Christ above all.

My four years at that tiny hilltop school shaped me in ways I am still coming to realize, and I think one of those ways was training me to evaluate the merits of all possible responses to a given situation to arrive at a conclusion that is well-rounded and thoughtful. Ironically, or perhaps fittingly, the very training I received at the college is what helped me arrive at this middle-ground position regarding the school itself, and it is my fervent hope that it can continue to be a place where students can have that intellectually stimulating, socially developing, personally shaping, spiritually deepening, generally invigorating experience that I did.

That’s why I will continue to encourage current faculty and staff by enjoying and not neglecting our friendships. That’s why I will continue to pray for leadership to be filled with godly wisdom, humility, and love for both students and faculty. That’s why I will continue to expectantly watch for the time when I can with a completely clear conscience give financially. That’s why I will continue to pray for healing and for restoration of broken relationships. That’s why I will continue to look forward to the day when young alumni can be fully engaged. Because current students deserve to have all the benefits and resources we had as they prepare themselves to make a difference in the world.

For those of you readers who are part of the college’s family, I pray you will join me in asking God to continue His work to bring redemption and restoration not only for the sake of the many who are hurting but also for the sake of the current student body. And for those who don’t have any connection to the school, I pray you will give thought to areas in your own life where you might be tempted to either sugar-coat the bad or overlook the good and that you’ll seek to find that balanced middle ground where you can honestly acknowledge the pains and the joys and move forward with them both in hand.

The awesome thing about God is that He knows all the bad and all the good of every single situation, and He freely gives His wisdom to those who ask (see James 1:5). So will you join me in asking Him to give us wisdom as we seek to respond to situations from our limited perspective? May He help us learn to see things increasingly as He sees them, and may our posture be one that reflects the goodness and grace of God in Christ Jesus.

Lessons from a Life in Limbo, Part 2

Two weeks ago, I shared the circumstances surrounding the prolonged engagement of me and my husband, and today it’s time to delve into the many ways God grew and sustained us during that season. If you missed Part 1, I’d encourage you to read it before continuing here.

Perhaps one of the most obvious lessons to us during the extra year of engagement was that waiting time is not wasted time. There were definitely occasions when we felt the delay was taking more than it was giving, but God graciously gave us eyes to see the many ways in which the waiting was purposeful. For one, we read at least six engagement/marriage books together and answered countless relationship-building questions, which gave us an even stronger base of understanding and practice in communication before we became husband and wife. My fiancé was able to build up some extra savings because of the additional year of work before we got married. I was able to be here to help family when a new baby was born and when a grandmother required 24/7 care.

Avoiding the trap of focusing on what could have been wasn’t always easy, though. For example, I had left my job when my contract ended in June 2020, anticipating moving that month. Had I known I would have been in the States a whole extra year, I could have kept working. But I didn’t know, so my contract wasn’t renewed, and my position was eliminated. There were times I thought of the money I wasn’t making, the projects I wasn’t finishing, and the time I wasn’t getting to spend with coworkers and was left feeling frustration with a present I hadn’t been able to foresee.

But then God would gently turn my eyes to the gifts I would have missed if I had still been working a 9-to-5 that whole year—gifts like being able to talk to my fiancé for longer periods of time and at times that worked best for him instead of only on my lunch break, gifts like having the time and space to focus on wedding planning instead of having to juggle it with a job, gifts like spending more days and holidays with grandparents before moving across the ocean, gifts like being physically present to help my parents with caring for their parents and having the freedom to travel back and forth from state to state to do so, gifts like having the time and mental energy to get my genealogy business going and to start a new creative outlet to help educate others about history and genealogy.[i] After waiting so long to meet each other, we felt the pangs of losing a year of married life, but God sustained us by reminding us of the many things we had gained in its place.    

We also saw the truth of Proverbs 21:1 played out in real time. That verse states, “The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (ESV). In other words, even government officials are under God’s control. We saw this in the speed and ease with which my fiancé and his family got their visas renewed. We saw it in the ease of entry all of them had to the States at different times and in different cities. And these glimpses showed us that God is capable of making easy what seems incredibly difficult or even impossible to us, which also reminded us that if borders weren’t opening to travel, it meant God had a reason why. Even if we didn’t know what His reason was, we knew He was able to open literal borders and would do so when the time was right.

In the times when our hearts felt impatient or forgotten, the Holy Spirit reminded our heads that God is trustworthy. He reminded us that God knows everything we know and everything we don’t know, so it only makes sense to trust our lives and our future to Him with His limitless perspective instead of wringing our hands with worries based on our limited one. We know, because we have been adopted as His children thanks to the work and death of Jesus on our behalf, that He has our best interests at heart. So why not rest in His goodness, knowing that He is both kind and capable to work all things for His glory and our good?     

In addition to these reminders God gave us, often through His Word, another of the biggest blessings during the waiting time was the prayers and words of encouragement from fellow followers of Jesus. By choosing to share our story with others, with all its struggles and joys, we reaped the great benefit of seeing how God is glorified when His family supports each other. We had people on almost every continent and in nearly ten time zones beseeching God on our behalf, and the knowledge that these prayer warriors were battling alongside us lifted our spirits in ways not much else did.

More than once, people would text me out of the blue to see how I was doing on a day when I was particularly struggling or would message us on the very day something big was happening, unbeknownst to them, to say they had been led to pray. Many sisters in Christ obeyed God’s instruction to “Rejoice with those who rejoice” and “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15, ESV), both literally crying with me and exulting with me in turn. We were greatly encouraged by the faithfulness of the family of God.

But being so open about our journey also brought opportunities for growth in addition to encouragement. We had to learn how to be understanding when people don’t understand. As much as we shared about our situation, it was still impossible for people truly to know what it was like to be in it themselves. Many people shared experiences from their own stories that were applicable to ours in a general way and were very helpful, but no one had lived through a situation exactly like ours, and we found that many people didn’t understand all the complications our particular situation involved.

As a result, we got a lot of well-meaning advice disguised in the form of questions. “Why don’t you just get married in the U.S.?” was by-far the most common. Knowing when to give the full spiel of why for a long period of time that either wasn’t possible or wasn’t a good idea and when just to smile and nod was a bit exhausting. But looking back now, I can see that God used those situations as a training ground for me to exercise my spiritual muscles of kindness, gentleness, and patience toward others—a lesson I have a feeling He’s going to keep teaching me in the coming years. 

Once the door did seem to be opening for us to get married in the U.S., we faced another round of inner questioning as we made the decision to walk through that door. We had decided even before we were officially engaged to have our wedding overseas and had developed the idea of a stateside blessing ceremony to be able to involve our American family and friends in witnessing the commitment we were making to God and to each other.

It was difficult for me to think about getting married with my parents as the only representatives of my family there and with none of my friends present, but being able to have ceremonies in both places made an overseas wedding more agreeable, since both sides of the family would be able to participate in an in-person ceremony that way. Nonetheless, there were still a lot of thoughts of what I would miss by not having the wedding in America, and I kept telling myself, “Those things aren’t important. What’s important is that we get married.” Once the decision was made, though, I began finding excitement in all the positives of having a wedding overseas, to the point that I was quite emotionally invested in getting married in my fiancé’s hometown and was looking forward to all the cultural elements that would be absent from our wedding if it were to happen in the States.

Fast-forward through almost two years of this anticipation, and we suddenly found ourselves facing the decision to scrap all of those plans and to have only one ceremony—our wedding ceremony—in the United States. All those things we had been looking forward to—the chance to honor a cultural tradition of getting married in the groom’s hometown, the opportunity for my in-laws to plan their son’s wedding as is the custom in their culture, the unforgettable experience of celebrating with a massive (to me), exuberant family, the joy of coming home from our honeymoon to our very own home—all those things we had to learn once again to hold with open hands and say, “Those things aren’t important. What’s important is that we get married.”

But after the eighteen-month-long rollercoaster of a journey with God, we found ourselves changing our self-talk a bit. As we asked ourselves what was really most important to us, it wasn’t just that we get married. It was that God would be abundantly glorified in our marriage ceremony. Our day, just like our lives, wasn’t ultimately about us, it was about Him. Wherever it happened, whenever it happened, we wanted to be husband and wife, absolutely, positively, most definitely, but we wanted glory for God’s Name most of all.

In January 2020, we would have told you that we wanted God to be glorified in our wedding, but at the end of the subsequent year and a half of waiting and wondering, we emerged to find that God had been doing a deeper work in our hearts, loosening our grip on the earthly things we had been holding onto more strongly than we had been holding onto Him. With our reoriented hearts, we prayed more sincerely that those who came to celebrate with us or who witnessed online would leave with a sense of the depth of God’s love and would come to know His abundant goodness as much as we had during the season of our waiting. And in yet another act of graciousness, He gave us glimpses after the wedding of how our prayers had been answered, increasing His glory all the more and showing us how the twisted road to our wedding was worth it, because it ultimately led people (ourselves included) to be pointed to Him.

So if I had to summarize the last year and a half in a single sentence, I would say it like this: Life in limbo is rarely fun, but for followers of Jesus it is bountiful and beautiful, full of many blessings from the Good Shepherd who leads us gently through.

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[i] For those wondering, that creative outlet is called Time Tracing: How to Engage with History, and you can find it on Instagram and Facebook @time.tracing.

Lessons from a Life in Limbo, Part 1

At the beginning of 2020, I wrote the first part of my and my now-husband’s story in a trilogy of posts called “How I Fell in Love with an Arab.” At that point in time, we were recently engaged and set to be married in about five months. But God had a different timeline. In subsequent posts, I alluded to what was going on in our relationship, but now that we are finally married, I can sit back and reflect on the engagement chapter of our story and share how we saw God’s hand at work. In this first post, I’ll share the overarching timeline, which might seem a bit heavier than my usual posts. But it’s important to understand the full heaviness so that the full hope can be seen. Plus, I want to give adequate space to sharing the many ways in which God grew us in His faithfulness during that season, so I’ll save those details for next time. Are you ready to follow along on our roller-coaster ride? Let’s begin…

Two months after we became engaged, my fiancé returned to his home country, having completed the studies for which he was in the United States. At the time, we thought we would only be separated for five months, because the plan was for me to travel with my parents to his hometown, have the wedding there, honeymoon in Europe, return to the U.S. for a stateside blessing ceremony with my extended family and friends, and then return to his country to live. In December 2019, this seemed like a perfect plan, though not without its unique stressors. After all, it was basically wedding planning twice with two different countries, multiple international flights, and moving involved. But even so, it was a plan we were excited about and happy with.

Less than two weeks after my fiancé returned home, God provided in a marvelous way, and my fiancé found us a beautiful apartment in a perfect location at an amazing price. He painstakingly sent me videos and photos, drew out the floorplan, and sketched maps to show me where it was in relation to other locations I knew. Once it was purchased, he (and my amazing in-laws) began preparing the home for us to move into once we were married. (Apartments there are often purchased rather than rented, which means people usually take the appliances with them when they move and we would need to buy all new appliances for the kitchen and laundry plus closet units for the bedrooms since many apartments, ours included, don’t have built-in closets. Bottom line—there was a lot of work to do.) Things were falling into place for us to set up our home in June, and we were eagerly counting down the days until we became husband and wife.  

But then the world shut down, and suddenly our perfect plan started falling apart. As Covid spread around the world, travel restrictions began to be implemented, and eventually the country we needed to fly into banned all non-residents from entering, while my fiancé’s path out was also obstructed as land borders were closed. It became clear that our wedding day was not going to be June 27, 2020, and as summer turned into fall we lived in a constant state of checking the news for any signs of opening, all while trying to be ready to travel and have a wedding as soon as restrictions were lifted. It was emotionally exhausting.

For the remainder of 2020, every time there seemed to be movement towards open borders, we would formulate another “plan B” with new dates for travel, wedding, blessing ceremony, etc. to the point that we lost count and eventually joked we were on “plan Z.” It was mentally exhausting. And as the one-year anniversary of our engagement rolled around in November, we had the sinking suspicion that we weren’t going to be getting married in 2020 at all.

We were both feeling the weight of long-distance, the strain of a seven-hour time difference, and the frustration of trying to make major decisions with only one to two hours a day to talk, during which times we were usually tired of staring at a screen. Don’t get me wrong, we were incredibly thankful for the technology that allowed us to talk and see each other every day, but it was physically exhausting.

Then out of the blue, my fiancé found out about a special program that would allow him to apply to cross the closed land borders to be able to access an airport so he could fly out. It was risky, because there was always the chance that he could get stuck in the US if the program was suddenly stopped, but with an unknown period of separation before us, we decided it was worth the risk to get a moment of reprieve. By God’s grace, he was approved through the program and within a week was on a plane to the States, where he was able to stay for a whole month through Christmas and into the new year. It was just the boost our spirits needed to get us through what would be the most challenging months yet.

Soon after his return home, one of my fiancé’s first orders of business was renewing his and his family’s tourist visas to the US, which were due to expire in March. No visa meant no stateside ceremony and no more visits should, heaven forbid, our separation be extended even longer. Oftentimes, this process involves an in-person interview at the US embassy, which is difficult for my fiancé to access even in “normal” times, given its location. On top of that, thanks to Covid, a severe backlog existed to the point that interviews were being scheduled four or five months out. But my fiancé and his family submitted their applications—my fiancé choosing to be honest about being engaged to an American, even though that could have complicated matters—and within two weeks they received word that their visas would be renewed—no interviews required! We were all stunned and praised God for such abundant favor.

Come March 2021, two months into our second separation, the country we were trying to get into announced they would be implementing a pilot program, albeit one with very stringent requirements, to allow tourism to gradually return to their country. What followed was a period of several weeks in which stressors seemed to be converging upon us from all directions. Family matters, unwelcome travel requirements, eruption of violence, and conflicting information came in wave after wave, seeming to throw new obstacles up as quickly as ones were removed. It was spiritually exhausting, and I think I cried more in those few weeks than I did in all the weeks of 2020 combined. My fiancé, too, struggled with being unable to help and comfort in the ways he could if he were present. It was a rough couple of months.

But eventually, we were in a position to be able to travel, had booked plane tickets for July 2, had rescheduled everything for the blessing ceremony to be August 14, and had found a gorgeous venue for the wedding on July 10 that didn’t even exist back in 2020. It seemed like our wait might finally be coming to an end. But then, ten days before we were scheduled to travel, the restrictions were extended indefinitely, and we were right back to square one. To say it felt defeating is an understatement. After a year and a half of waiting, we were finally a couple of weeks away from getting married only to be faced with yet another wait with no end in sight.

During the next two weeks, the roller coaster intensified as plans changed significantly in quick succession. First, we explored options of traveling with an approved tourist group. When those fell through, my fiancé’s family made the decision to travel to the US so that we could keep our (2^nd) original wedding date of July 10, and we started planning a small, private ceremony to be followed by the already-planned blessing ceremony on August 14. Within twenty-four hours, we had arranged for a venue, officiant, photographer, flowers, hair/makeup, etc. and had informed family of the changes. But another twenty-four hours later, we got word that my fiancé’s family would be unable to travel due to a medical issue.

I was shell-shocked. I literally wept, and my poor fiancé had to endure crushing waves of helplessness as he listened to me through the phone. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such powerful frustration boiling up from my core as I did then, followed by feelings of complete numbness. What was God doing? We had been waiting patiently, trusting that He had a plan even when we couldn’t see what it was. We knew without a doubt that He had brought us together and that we were supposed to get married, but just when it seemed doors were opening, they were getting slammed in our faces. Why put us through this roller coaster? How much more could we take?

After another emotionally exhausting forty-eight hours or so, we decided to stick with the idea of getting married in the US (which brought its own risks and grief over what we would lose) and turn the August 14 blessing ceremony into our actual wedding. My fiancé decided to keep his flight in early-July, so we could be together for the last month of engagement, and we prayed that land borders would remain open long enough for his family to travel in August for the wedding. Again, his traveling was risky. What if they grilled him at passport control about why he was coming? What if they only gave him two weeks and we had to get married with only my parents there and then be separated again when he had to return home? “What ifs” had become our constant companion over the last year and a half, but that didn’t make them any less burdensome.

But praise be to God, he had the smoothest flight and entry to the US he has ever had, and they gave him six whole months at passport control! Once he landed in my city (after a delayed flight from Chicago—because what’s an extra hour of waiting, right?), the relief started to set in. He was here. At least we would be able to get married, even if it didn’t happen in the way we wanted it to. But praise be to God again, his family was able to travel and be here for the wedding, and God’s love was displayed.

Now that you have the outline of what happened, stay tuned for Part 2 to see the Hope that sustained us, the Hand that upheld us, and the Goodness that guided us each step of the way.

 

The Enduring Peace of Present Tense

Life has become very full as of late, and writing has slid down a bit on my list of priorities. But I remembered this post I wrote in 2018 and thought it would be a good one to re-share. The immutability of God has been one thing that has sustained me throughout the current season when so much has been topsy-turvy and plans have been changing by the day—sometimes even by the hour! And that’s the great thing about the message in this post—it’s just as applicable today as it was when I wrote it three years ago, because God Himself is the same today as He was three years ago. So the perfect peace of present tense is a peace that endures.

Lately I’ve been pondering a specific element of God’s nature—His immutability, i.e. the fact that who He is does not change. And as I was thinking about putting my ponderings into a blogpost, this past Sunday we sang a song in church that touches on the same idea. (Funny how God does that a lot.)

The song is called “Great I Am,” and, as I have had to explain to those hearing it who are unfamiliar with the Bible, when we sing it we are not exclaiming how great each of us is. Instead, we are singing one of the names of God—I AM—and not just any name, but the name He used to identify Himself to Moses and the people of Israel.

It’s best to look right at the verses themselves in Exodus 3:13-14 (ESV). We find Moses at the burning bush, where God has just told him to go back to Egypt (from where he has fled because he murdered an Egyptian) and to confront Pharaoh and to lead the people out of slavery:

Then Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they ask me, “What is His name?” what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

This name, perhaps more than any other, best communicates God’s immutable nature. Incidentally, it is also a great example of why studying grammar is incredibly helpful in understanding Scripture, but that’s a blogpost for another day. We will touch on grammar a little bit here, though, because this name of God is in the form of a subject (I) and a verb (am), and the type of verb is important.

‘Am’ is the first-person present tense of what’s called a “be verb” (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been). This just means that it is a verb someone uses to describe his current state of being. Often, we follow ‘am’ with some sort of description (a predicate adjective), such as “I am happy” or “I am tall.” But here, God just turns the subject and verb combo into a name. “I AM WHO I AM,” period. And again, “I AM has sent me.” In other words, God just is.

Unlike us humans who can say, “I was short, but now I am tall” or “I was blind, but now I see,” God does not need the past tense to describe His essence. There is nothing God used to be that He is not now. This point is reiterated in the same conversation with Moses when God says, “This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations (Ex. 3:15b, ESV).” In other words, He is still I AM. Forever extends forward and backward for eternity. God is still the same being He has always been and always will be. He is always I AM.

In the New Testament, we see that the same is said of Jesus, giving us one of the many indications that Jesus is God. The writer of Hebrews writes plainly, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8, ESV). And when Jesus was arrested leading up to His crucifixion, His declaring “I am he” was powerful enough to make an entire group of people fall to the ground (John 18:4-6). Jesus, being God, is also I AM and always will be.

So why does all of this matter to us? As believers in Jesus, it’s important at the most basic level because understanding the unchanging nature of God helps us know Him better. And knowing Him better helps us love Him better and enriches our relationship with Him. But it’s also important because His immutability gives us complete confidence in Him, His Word, His work, and His promises. We don’t have to worry that what we read of Him in Scripture may not be true anymore. We don’t have to be concerned that God might no longer be able to finish the work that He has begun in us of making us more like Christ. We don’t have to be afraid that God might have ceased to be loving or just or gracious or kind or sovereign. He is still all of those things because He is I AM, the God who never changes. In short, we have a present-tense God, and there is perfect peace to be found in that truth.

PC: Tricia Kent. Used with permission.

Regaining a Patient Perspective

The last two years in my life have been an emotional roller coaster whose peaks and drops have become more pronounced with time. In the last week alone have come perhaps the highest highs and lowest lows to date, in mind-blowingly quick succession. And once again I find the Lord encouraging present me through something He showed past me. So today, I share a post I wrote back in 2018 because I need to remember it and because I pray it will be a good reminder for you too.

 

In The Baron’s Apprenticeship by George MacDonald, the character Barbara is recounting a conversation she had with the curate, Thomas Wingfold: 

 

Mr. Wingfold said that it was not fair, when a man had made something for a purpose, to say it was not good before we knew what his purpose with it was. “I don’t even like my wife to look at my poems before they’re finished,” he said. “But God can’t hide away his work till it is finished, as I do my verses, and we ought to take care what we say about it. God wants to do something better with people than people think” (p. 95).

 

The truth and accompanying implications here, stated another way, are these: 1) God does things with a purpose; 2) God’s purpose in a given situation is not usually apparent to us at the outset; 3) we should avoid jumping to conclusions about our circumstances, assuming we know His purpose, and judging Him and our circumstances according to those assumptions. As these thoughts were simmering in my mind, I came across several Psalms that help us look deeper into this idea.

 

In Psalm 105, the psalmist is recounting the history of Israel from Abraham to the exodus from Egypt and return to the Promised Land. In the middle of the psalm, we read, “When he [God] summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread, he had sent a man ahead of them […]” (v. 16-17a, ESV*).  Here we see God’s preparation for His people, years before they ever knew a famine was coming. What a beautiful, good thing!

 

But in the rest of verse 17, we find an unexpected ending: “When he summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread, he had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph who was sold as a slave.” So wait, our good God provided a means of survival for His people, but He did it by allowing a man to become a slave? You got it.

 

I think it’s safe to say that we can all agree that slavery is bad. And being kidnapped by your brothers and sold to foreigners isn’t something we would call “good.” Yet, Joseph himself acknowledged that God’s hand was in his slavery. He told his brothers, “And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God,” (Genesis 45:7-8a). He later told them, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). Very clearly, Joseph understood that what seemed like a bad situation was actually a good one. But likely, he had doubts when he was in prison in a foreign land, having been unjustly accused after having been sold into slavery.

 

Joseph’s story is probably the most common illustration for the idea that what looks like something bad can actually be something good, but that shouldn’t make it any less potent. And when we combine it with Thomas Wingfold’s admonition to avoid judging things as “not good” prematurely, it becomes even more thought-provoking. What would have happened if Joseph had insisted that God had sent this flood of horrible circumstances upon him and therefore couldn’t be relied upon much less worshipped? What would have happened if he had hardened his heart to God because he judged God’s purpose to be against him instead of for him? How often are we guilty of doing just that?

 

In other Psalms, we see this idea again, that God uses bad to bring about good. Psalm 66:11-12 reads, “You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through the fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.” Notice God is the one doing the action here. God is the one bringing them into the net; God is the one laying a burden on them—and not just any burden, a crushing burden; God is the one letting them be ridden over. The verse prior to these tells us that God did these things to test and try His people; in other words, God put them through challenging times to refine them for their ultimate good.

 

Are we comfortable and confident enough in our faith to accept that God sometimes puts us in painful, difficult, even crushing situations? Do we believe in a God that is big enough to redeem evil and use it for good? In these verses, God is the one inflicting the “negative” things on His people, but He is also the one bringing them out of those things into a peaceful place where they can flourish. His purposes were sure all along, even though the process might have obscured them from view.

 

Elsewhere, the psalmist writes, “You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again” (Psalm 71:20). Again we see that God is the one making him experience trouble, but that God is also the one who brings back to life what has been crushed. God can send someone to the lowest of lows and then bring them up again.

 

In all of these cases, what is important to note is that God is not cruel in allowing bad to happen to us. In our finite existence, it can seem that sad and painful circumstances are always and forever bad, but in God’s infinite reality in which we live, where His ways are far above our understanding, His good purposes are always at work and will always prevail. As the psalmist testifies, “The works of his hands are faithful and just” (Psalm 111:7a). We must be careful, then, that we don’t unjustly accuse our all-wise God of cruelty or callousness simply because we cannot see the bigger picture or all of the details of His eternal plan.

 

Because we know who He is from His Word, we can trust Him completely—even in the midst of crushing burdens that weigh us down, grief that knocks our breath away, and pain that doesn’t relent. He is in control. And He is good. I can’t think of a better way to conclude than to revisit Thomas Wingfold’s words. May they sink into your soul, challenging and encouraging you as they have me.

 

Mr. Wingfold said that it was not fair, when a man had made something for a purpose, to say it was not good before we knew what his purpose with it was. “I don’t even like my wife to look at my poems before they’re finished,” he said. “But God can’t hide away his work till it is finished, as I do my verses, and we ought to take care what we say about it. God wants to do something better with people than people think.”

 

PC: Yandle Multimedia Photography. Used with permission.

Source: MacDonald, George (Phillips, Michael, ed.) The Curate of Glaston. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1986.

*All Scripture is quoted from the English Standard Version