The Song of the Bow ...

David intoned this lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan. (He ordered that The Song of the Bow be taught to the people of Judah; it is written in the Book of Jashar.) He said:

Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places!
How the mighty have fallen!
Tell it not in Gath,
proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon;
or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice,
the daughters of the uncircumcised will exult.

You mountains of Gilboa,
let there be no dew or rain upon you,
nor bounteous fields!
For there the shield of the mighty was defiled,
the shield of Saul, anointed with oil no more.

From the blood of the slain,
from the fat of the mighty,
the bow of Jonathan did not turn back,
nor the sword of Saul return empty.

Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!
In life and in death they were not divided;
they were swifter than eagles,
they were stronger than lions.

O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul.
2 Samuel 1:17-24 – NRSV

David excelled at poetry and singing before he became king. So it is only natural that at a time of sorrow that he would turn to his strengths to express the depth of his feelings. Although there is a certain amount of irony in this lament, I don’t believe that such was David’s intent.

David remembers the good, the strength in these two men. He cannot have forgotten the painful politics, the random raids, the chases through the desert wilderness, or the sound of Saul’s spear shaft singing past his ear. Yet David does not sing about the famous spear of Saul. He celebrates his fonder memories: the mighty warrior, the relentless foe, their speed and strength in battle. Remembering the loss of Saul and Jonathan brings to mind the true enemies of God’s people, not the squabbles between them.

How will your survivors remember you? What images will come to mind when your spouse, your children, the boys, or your co-workers remember you? What will be the weapons, the tools, the instruments that they remember in your hands? Just as it is too late to speak the unspoken to someone who has died, it is too late to change the image that our survivors have of us, even in that last eulogy.

Think about it.

Grace and peace,

Ron

A litany of why

Sometimes we wonder why things are the way that they are for us. We are, after all, the children of God. Should we not be blessed? Let me voice the litany of “why” questions that I hear my brothers and sisters speak from day to day:

Why does our family struggle with finances, with meeting our bills? It’s not like, after all, that we spend hundreds of dollars each month on cigarettes or alcohol. It’s not as if one of us has a gambling problem. Yes, we probably could be a little more careful with our money, but why do we feel as if we live from day to day? Why are things happening that cause my retirement nest egg to decline, it seems like every day?

Why do I have this pain, why do I experience this personal suffering in my body? Why does this pain distract my spirit, restrain my godly passion, diminish my energy to do the righteousness of God? Since my body affects my spirit, why is this pain allowed to persist?

Why does this world careen from one crisis to another? We know that reporters are honored by their peers when they find the ugly, not the good; crisis, not creativity. Still it seems as if there is enough violence, hate, poverty, and war in our world for several lifetimes, not just ours.

Why are my children suffering? I know that God says that he loves children; why does he allow these challenges to happen in their lives? Aren’t their trials great enough? Haven’t I prayed enough, counseled enough, given enough?

Why does God withhold this desire of my heart from me? Does it not glorify him? Would it not please him? Do I not please him? Surely this is only a small thing in the power of God …

Why? Well, honestly “why” is the natural question in the face of suffering. It leads to lament, which is the moaning of our spirits before the spirit of God. We need to lament, we need to express to God our sorrow because he does understand it. He even understands the sorrow that is too deep for words. Eventually though, on the other side of lament, comes the act of faith, the act of endurance. James says, “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4 NRSV)

Paul goes further. He says that suffering, that crisis, only serve as contrast to the glory that even now God is bringing to his creation.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.
Romans 8:18-30 – NRSV

O God, be righteous; because your righteousness is our righteousness, the righteousness of your frail children.
O God, be glorified; because your glory spills over to bring glory to us, your children oppressed by an arrogant world.
O children of God, be righteous: do justice, show mercy, and walk humbly before your God, and you will demonstrate the righteousness of God.
O children of God, glorify God, humble yourselves, and he will lift you up.

O God hear the sighs of our heart, enact in us the glory of your righteousness, and help us trust that you are the Savior, the one who comes at just the right time. O Lord, expand the borders of your kingdom; please begin in our hearts.

Grace, and peace,

Ron

Loss, lament, and leadership

But the Israelites broke faith in regard to the devoted things: Achan son of Carmi son of Zabdi son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things; and the anger of the Lord burned against the Israelites.

Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth-aven, east of Bethel, and said to them, "Go up and spy out the land." And the men went up and spied out Ai. Then they returned to Joshua and said to him, "Not all the people need go up; about two or three thousand men should go up and attack Ai. Since they are so few, do not make the whole people toil up there." So about three thousand of the people went up there; and they fled before the men of Ai. The men of Ai killed about thirty-six of them, chasing them from outside the gate as far as Shebarim and killing them on the slope. The hearts of the people melted and turned to water.

Then Joshua tore his clothes, and fell to the ground on his face before the ark of the Lord until the evening, he and the elders of Israel; and they put dust on their heads. Joshua said, "Ah, Lord God! Why have you brought this people across the Jordan at all, to hand us over to the Amorites so as to destroy us? Would that we had been content to settle beyond the Jordan! O Lord, what can I say, now that Israel has turned their backs to their enemies! The Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it, and surround us, and cut off our name from the earth. Then what will you do for your great name?"

Joshua 7:1-9 NRSV

About six years ago, I started using Michael Carotta's model of spiritual formation as one way to understand spiritual growth. In his view, spiritual growth happens in three areas (frequently unequally): spiritual growth, moral living, and emotional intelligence. Obviously, when we first encounter a disaster as Joshua and the Israelites did, our first response tends to be neither spiritual nor moral/intellectual, but rather emotional. Fear. Hurt. Grief. Uncertainty. Remorse. God wired us to be emotional beings. Somewhere along the line we have to acknowledge that, and stop denying or disconnecting from our emotions and passions as I believe that we have been falsely taught to do in the past.

But after we have a moment to consider the crisis from more of a temporal (or geographic) distance, then we naturally begin to try to figure out whether what happened did so as a result of our behavior (moral living) or God's plan (spiritual faith) or something else. Many things happen in this world that don't correspond to our view of God and what we believe he ought to allow. And so yes, you would be so right if you were to say that this has more to do with us (and our mental and emotional adjustments) than it really does with God. But at the same time, God is not a disinterested observer in this process. Who knows but this adversary or adversity has been placed before us to strengthen or test us. It is not given us to know. But God made us beings who would consider these questions.

Joshua's attitude toward God (and that of the elders) is one of lament. Is he confused? No doubt, because Joshua is obviously blind-sided by all of this. A possible reason that God asked him to stand was to let him know that no amount of lament or worship was going to make this right; other action would be required and that action is consecration. In this situation, God tells Joshua exactly went wrong and devises a process by which not only is it possible to define who is responsible, but it is possible to make the people ready to continue their faithful obedience to God.

To feel emotions is a part of being human. And what they tell us is important, but before we make them the final analysis, we need to remember that they are only a part of the evidence. We need to weigh the emotion, the moral, and the spiritual whenever we are working our way through any situation. This may take time, if for nothing else than to make sure that we have brought them into balance. May God help us find balance in our lives.

Grace and peace,

Ron

Remember to forget

Today, a poem to bring the word of the day to us.

“Forgetfulness”
by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

“Forget” is an important, if not often used word in the Bible.
Moses, as he preaches his way through Deuteronomy,
seems to be very concerned:

Concerned that we don’t forget the things that we have seen,
Concerned that we don’t forget the covenant with the Lord,
Concerned that we don’t forget the Lord who gave it,
Concerned that we will forget God by not keeping his commandments,
Concerned that we will forget God and serve other gods,
Concerned that we will forget the times that we have provoked God to wrath.

God is too important to forget.
God’s covenant faithfulness is too powerful to forget.
God’s generosity in blessing would make one ungrateful to forget.
God’s commandments provide protection to us
that it is in our best interest not to forget.
God with a capital G is to be remembered,
while gods with a little g need to be forgotten.
Then, at the end of his sermon, Moses gives the children of Israel
an odd little command:
he tells them to not forget to forget the Amalekites.
I’m serious.

Here it is:

“Therefore when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies on every hand, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; do not forget" (Dt 25:19).

So how do you remember if you’ve kept the instructions of Moses?
If you remember, have you forgotten what you were supposed to forget?
At first this question may seem absurd, and even frivolous.
But it’s not.
Let me explain.

Being human means that six things happen in our lives most every day:
1 - We do good things to other people,
2 - They do good things to us,
3 - Other people do good things to other people;
4 - We do bad things to other people,
5 - They do bad things to us,
6 - Other people do bad things to other people.

Now, certain things seem immediately and intuitively obvious:

We would like to wipe 4, 5, and 6 off the list.
Sometimes people think they’re doing 2 or 3 and yet they’re really doing 5 or 6.
Sometimes we think that we are doing 1, but really what we’re up to is number 4.

Since, to quote Novalee Nation, “we've all got meanness in us,” sometimes we even do 4-6 on purpose.
These six things are all part of being human.

The Amalekites were humans who had done some bad things to the children of Israel.
Things so bad that you wouldn’t want to talk about them in front of the children.
Moses told the children of Israel to forget that the Amalekites even existed, to “blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.”
Somebody wrote it down so that the children of Israel wouldn’t forget the command to forget. Ironic, hunh.

Ironic because it points out the extreme difficulty of forgetting when
someone inflicts a trauma on us.
Ironic because it also points out the dangers of trying to bury the memory
in our subconscious as well.
So what were the children of Israel supposed to do with their pain
and their memories of it?
What are we supposed to do with our pain and our memories of it?

We can’t, and we shouldn’t, forget the pain caused by other people.
We can’t, and we shouldn’t, forget the other people.

We can and we should wipe out the power of that pain over our life. And, until they repent and repair the relationship, we should wipe out the power of those other people in our life.
Absolutely.

That doesn’t mean that we forget those other people.
That doesn’t mean that stop praying for those other people.
It might even help if we can love those other people,
because then we can start loving ourselves again.
Especially when we’re supposed to be a part of the same family.

“It takes two to tango,” our dads may have told us
as we tried to blame the fight on our sister or our brother.
And we believed it, because much of the time it is true.

So when we hate somebody else for something they have done to us
there remains a little nagging voice, whispering in our ear, that says,
“There might be, you know, just one half of one ten thousandth of a part
of possibility that I might have, possibly, contributed to the problem.”

So, maybe, just maybe, to be mad at,
or to hate somebody for something they have done
causes some of that anger, or loathing, or hate to stick to ourselves.
Which just kills us. Much worse than it affects anybody else.
Does that mean that we shouldn’t me mad, or angry, or even furious at someone
who wrongs us?
Absolutely not.

Pull out your Bible. Turn to Psalms.
It is full of psalms called laments.
Laments are songs where the children of God have been getting mugged by the “others”.
The children of God get tired of it, so they cry out to God.
Unfiltered. Uncensored. Unafraid. Inspired.
Here is a small sample:

"Break the arm of the wicked and evildoers; seek out their wickedness until you find none” (Ps 10:15).

“The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and his soul hates the lover of violence. On the wicked he will rain coals of fire and sulfur; a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup” (Ps 11:5-6).

“May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts, those who say, ‘With our tongues we will prevail; our lips are our own — who is our master?’” (Ps 12:3-4).

Notice that the children of God are not asking God to let them break arms,
rain coals, and cut off lips.
They’re asking God to do it.
They want God to “cry ‘Havoc’ and let loose the dogs of war.”
This is an extreme variant of number 6.
And then they do an amazing thing: they leave it up to God to do,
or not to do, what they have asked.

First, they describe in great detail exactly how they feel about their pain
to the Creator of the Universe,
then they describe in graphic detail the kind of pain
they want their enemies to experience,
and then they let it go.
Probably not after one lament;
maybe not even after one hundred.

But as long as they’ve got a hold on the pain and anger,
it has a hold on them.
As long as we have a hold on it,
it has a hold on us.
We can’t stop the memories in the present of the power of pain in our past,
But the pain will stop when we stop giving the memories of our past
power over the present.

Forget the Amalekites; God has removed us from their power.
Forget the Amalekites; God has dealt with them,
or is going to, soon, and very soon.
Forget the Amalekites.

I know that this sounds simplistic.
Perhaps it is; but perhaps sometimes we just make the answers too complex.
We tend to think that our problems are too complex for simple solutions.
And that may be.
Yet sometimes the truth is that we just have to keep doing the simple thing
until it finally works.
Sooner or later the children of God have to decide:

Decide to go gather straw and begin making brick again, or
start picking grapes, grapes in clusters as big as a man.
Decide to parse out every violation of the Law they have ever done, or
praise God for the grace that saved them from that indictment.
Decide to bathe in the river of wrongs done by the Pharaoh in Egypt
and themselves in the desert, or
cross the river and wipe out the power of the past
by embracing God’s power in the present.

What do we need to decide?

Our Father is trying to awaken us out of our nightmare to show us that
he has disposed of our monsters, chased off our fears.
Now we need to recognize his face, remember his strength,
see where we’re at, and decide to forget the monsters.
Remember to forget.

Grace, grace gives peace,

Ron