I’d Like to Register a Complaint

This morning over breakfast I was reading to my kids from the Egermeier’s Bible Storybook.  Today we were reading the account of water from the rock, from Exodus 17:1-7:

…But the people began to complain at once.  Although God was sending them bread every day, now He had lead them to a place where there was no water.  How thirsty they were!  Instead of asking God to help them, the people complained to Moses, “Did you bring us out of Egypt to die of thirst?”

Have you watched a child do this?  Maybe it’s just the ones I live with.  They’ll complain about their thirst. And they’ll do it endlessly. 

“I’m thirsty!”

We have a patent redirect when we hear this: “That’s so interesting. What are you going to do about that?”

And if it happens to be the smallest brother Cutler making this complaint, he’s not quite able to do anything about it himself. But he is able to ask for help.  Asking for help is so powerful. 

Because immediately we step in to help.

Y’all. Obviously, I’m not God. But I watch this play out over and over again and I’m not sure I’m much brighter than the whining toddler. 

Sometimes complaining is my favorite. That’s a petty and gross confession, but it’s true. 

I feel entitled to air my grievances with little thought towards what I’m actually doing: working myself up over my inability to accomplish my own ends and wearing my listeners out.

I think the alternative to complaining is simply not complaining. It doesn’t often occur to me that the very thing frustratingly in my way is subject to both God’s control and His care.

In my powerlessness I always have the opportunity to ask for help.  

You know what’s my favorite?  That on a Tuesday morning in January God can meet me at the kitchen table with conviction and care, correcting my complaints, and directing my delight once again to His every provision for me.  That’s my favorite.

Words Are Gifts, Too

Josh came home from work one day absolutely buzzing with excited energy.  He had a gift for me.  He dug around in his bag, produced a notebook, and read me a word.  A new word.  

Ultracrepadarian.  

Ultra from the Latin beyond and crepida, meaning shoe or sandal.  The literal meaning here being, let not the cobbler speak above the shoe.  

Potent words like this are my favorite. Nerd out with me here a minute! I don’t just collect these words and store them up for myself, I make every opportunity I can to use said words to my own delight (and typically, others’ dismay.).

Dane Ortlund, in his book Gentle and Lowly, gives us a powerful word gift.  In describing the heart of Christ he pulls out several of the gospel accounts that, in the English translations, use the word compassion.

I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat.

Mark 8:2

Compassion, in the modern language, has a sense of sympathy or pity.  The original word here refers most literally to ones bowels, intestines, or guts.  We’d be more likely to say, “he was gut-wrenched.” 

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Matthew 9:36

I wonder if you’ve ever stopped to think about that.  About the way your body might curl as you weep, about the way you feel it deep in your core when you are truly angry, or the way that your stomach might set on edge when you sense something is amiss.  

When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

Matthew 14:14

You know what’s my favorite?  The Greek and the Hebrew forms of our word compassion took with them an understanding that our whole physical and emotional self is involved here.  This was not a weak, passive response.  This was a consuming, physical reaction coming from the very essence of who God in Christ is.

And he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep,”

Luke 7:13

It makes compassion seem like such a small word.  Words have power. It’s just that sometimes we’ve settled for a relatively puny version of a word and lost the real power of what we were meant to know.

When we can stop a minute and define the terms, the actual terms we are looking at we begin see a whole new picture.  And what a picture to behold!

I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord has granted us, and the great goodness to the house of Israel that he has granted them according to his compassion, according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

Isaiah 63:7

On Trees

Have you ever planted a fruit tree?

I once brought home a bundle of dead sticks from my Aunt’s home in Texas, with her strong assurances they would someday yield a fig tree. It seemed only slightly more plausible than magic beans. 

I stuck the forlorn sticks in the cold winter ground and felt I fulfilled my duties in regards to the alleged fig tree. 

Years passed. We mowed around the sticks and laughed about them every summer. 

And then, one spring, many years past hope that we had done anything more than transplant sticks, buds appeared.  Our first harvest was 3 figs. 

It was a miracle. 

We’ve since moved from that house and seen our dear friends move in. They’ve let us know that the dead-stick-fig-tree has become an abundant, extravagant, space hogging nuisance. 

Why are we talking about trees?  

Because they’re my favorite. 

Take a minute to read Psalm 1 with me:

Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,

but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.

Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

Do you know that the Psalms are part of an ancient, sacred text?  I fear that perhaps in our exuberance to make the Bible accessible we’ve forgotten that it was largely written in the context of a near-Eastern agricultural society. 

In other words, asking the original audience what they knew about fruit trees is laughable. They lived and died by their ability to tend orchards, seasonal gardens, and flocks. They knew about trees. 

So we see here a Psalm reminding us that to meditate day and night on the Word is to be like a tree in the best of circumstances, yielding fruit. 

Friends, fruit isn’t fast food. It’s the literal opposite. Seed to tree to bud to fruit to harvest is the work of many years. 

I wonder if we might be able to delight together in that. Fruit is the work of years. 

(An aside, bc it’s me and I feel the need for great accuracy: in season, from bud to fruit, it’s a little closer to 2-6 months.)

You know what’s my favorite?  

The invitation here is not just a returning to the Word over and over again but a call to stake my life on the promise that God through His Word intends to nourish me and provide for my flourishing.  This frees me to submit my selfish, panicky impatience to a God who lavishes years on producing His Kingdom work in me.  It requires the quiet, daily, patient work of discovering Him in His Word.  And that’s my favorite.

06.26.18

somehow, shua and i have managed to bear offspring that share their mama’s unique propensity for verbosity (y’all, they talk so much.  even bbdb, in his toddler sort of way.)  in an attempt to survive the onslaught of words, it’s best to selectively filter the airwaves.  which is how i found myself half listening to my sweet jack jac discussing commerce in Africa.  what? (cue record scratch)  that’s a thing we talk about at breakfast now?!

i asked him to repeat himself (obvi, i was ready to take notes to submit to mensa.  my six year old: the genius) and his sweet, cheerful response was, 

“mama, today in Africa they’re making clothes.  those friends you went and taught?  they are making clothes and they are selling them and that’s their work now.  mama, you should go back and do that again.”

you know what’s my favorite?  a little boy at a breakfast table in tennessee who’s learning to sacrificially love people he’s never met.  that’s my favorite.