Archive for January 2013
Don’t blame Mother Nature
Posted on: January 24, 2013
This time last year, we were in the middle of Snowmaggedon here– a several day storm that dropped 14” of snow, followed by nearly an inch of ice, a “once in a hundred years” storm, which hopefully will not be repeated any time soon. We’ll just have to make do with our usual storms, whose inches and inches of pounding rain result in river flooding every year, and whose high winds litter the ground with downed branches and trees.
Most places have their particular most-likely natural disaster. Children in the South and Midwest do tornado drills as frequently as fire drills at school. Residents of the Gulf coast and Eastern seaboard can cite the names of all the worst hurricanes of the last 50 years. Those living anywhere in the West can tell you that this last year has been one of the worst ever for wildfires. California has its many faults… um… earthquakes. To live along the Mississippi or Missouri Rivers is to be familiar with flood clean-up. The Texas economy has been devastated by drought for several years running now.
Did you ever notice how often people speak of these as something like “Mother Nature’s fury”? A malevolent intentionality is assigned. Although the specific victims are chosen at random, the general death and destruction are ascribed to being somehow deliberate. Speaking strictly scientifically, of course, such anthropomorphism is baseless; these events are simply the product of entirely impersonal and emotionally neutral physical forces at work. Going through them, though, it feels like there’s more behind it. There is – but not what the world thinks.
I recently finished memorizing the fourth paragraph in Romans 8, and I’ve been pondering on how it relates to this issue. Paul would neither agree with the scientists nor buy into the school of thought that “Mother Nature is out to get us”. In verses 19-22, Paul says “For Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the Creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him Who subjected it, in hopes that Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. And we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth until now.”
Paul, then, does not speak of the created world as a scientist would, an impersonal collection of physical forces, but, indeed, as an entity to itself. Yet he does not refer to a name such as “Mother Nature”, either, since that name implies that IT is responsible for bringing to life the rest of the world. Rather, he rightly names the entity “Creation”, a name that clearly acknowledges that rather than being the source of life, it is itself the product of a Creator.
And why did God make the Creation? All of the first six days of creation were building up to the introduction of God’s highest creation – Adam and Eve, uniquely created in the image and likeness of God and designed for fellowship with Him. Creation was brought into being for the purpose of sheltering, nurturing, feeding, caring for and being cared for by the children of God, to rejoice in its productivity, to be ever bountiful, to be ever perfectly suited to man’s needs.
Then came the Fall – and man was not the only one to suffer the consequences of it. Creation became “subjected to futility”. Rather than everything working like it should, everything became pointless because Creation is in “bondage to corruption” or “decay” or “failure” depending on the translation. No matter which word is used, the sense is that Creation was forced into a condition where it is spiraling downward to chaos. It’s coming apart at the seams. Rather than nurturing and providing for us, Creation often disables and destroys us. Storm and tempest, earthquake and fire, all manner of natural disaster – Creation is as unhappy to be perpetrating them on us as we are to experience them. Although all of these things are still in God’s sovereign hand, and He still works in them for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, Creation mourns its role in the destruction of itself and of those it was created for.
But one day…. One glorious, wonderful day, Creation itself is going to be set free from its bondage. Just as in Adam and Eve’s fall Creation, too, was enslaved, so, too, in the redemption of the children of God will Creation be freed. We will not live redeemed in some ethereal heaven, disembodied and floating on clouds. We will have new bodies – changed, transfigured, like His glorious body – real bodies, and we will live on a new earth – a real place, changed, transformed and at last freed from the power of sin. Our liberation day will likewise mark the liberation of Creation!
When the wind howls and branches creak, when the earth heaves and volcanoes spew ash, when drought parches or flood drowns, that isn’t “Mother Nature” venting her wrath. It is Creation groaning “as in the pains of childbirth” while it waits with us for the day when futility, decay, corruption, and death will be behind us, the day of the revealing of the glory of the children of God.
Behind or in front?
Posted on: January 17, 2013
The name of my blog is taken from a quote that gives the chemists’ definition of a “solution” – something that’s still all mixed up. Looking at most of my posts, I don’t sound very mixed up. I tend to speak with a high degree of self-assurance, but I would like to make clear that while I do tend to speak in rather definitive tones, I don’t ever mean to imply that I have all the answers. I am fully convinced that equally intelligent people of equally good will may hold very different viewpoints. Today’s post is one that goes back to my “mixed up-ness”, for it speaks to an issue about which I have very mixed feelings – but on which many hold very, VERY decided opinions. So, take these musings in their proper context, please!
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I live in an area that has within about an hour-and-a-half’s drive an army base, air force base, and naval base, with tens of thousands of troops stationed at each. There are multiple National Guard units. There are several seaports, so we are a jumping off place for thousands of tons of military equipment being deployed to/returned from overseas. On any highway, or in any apartment unit or store parking lot you are likely to see license plates from any corner of the country – Maine to California, Florida to Alaska, and, yes, even Hawaii. In any school classroom, there are likely to be a few kids whose dads are either just leaving, in the middle of, or soon to return from a multi-month deployment. The military complex drives a huge part of the Puget Sound economy. Uniforms and buzz cuts are as familiar as Birkenstocks and umbrellas.
It’s not surprising, then, that bumper stickers and Facebook posts here carry lots of pro-military slogans. The two most common are these: “If you won’t stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them” and the milder “Support our troops”. The first one really bothers me. Whether you read it as “if you don’t agree with my definition of supporting our troops, you are the enemy” or as “if you don’t agree, you should be shot”, the sentiment runs counter to the very idea of freedom our troops are supposedly fighting to protect. If we aren’t free to disagree, we’re not free at all! The second phrase carries no condemnation with it, but while I understand the intent, I still find myself wondering just what exactly does it MEAN to “support” our troops?
This isn’t just a matter of theoretical interest to me. I have four “othersons”, boys I’ve known since their childhood or infancy, who are or have been in the military, two of whom have done one or more deployments in this “war on terror.” (I’ve met with their mothers every Tuesday morning for prayer and Bible study for 23 years.) I know several other friends of my kids who are also in the military. I’ve known any number of military families in the churches I’ve been in for the last 28 years. This question of supporting our troops matters very personally. This question has faces. Yet surely, supporting our troops must include a certain degree of … friendly skepticism, if you will.
Not everyone wearing a uniform deserves to be put on a pedestal. No matter how much patriotic sentiment likes to paint a portrait of all soldiers as noble, self-sacrificing heroes, the truth is that soldiers are people, and as such, they run the same gamut as the rest of the population. Read the news around any military-thick area and there will be stories of drunken fights, underage girls smuggled on base with fake IDs for sex and drug parties, domestic violence, drug rings, theft rings, gangs. Some soldiers are using their service to serve themselves, not their country. What does “support our troops” mean in this context?
I am awaiting a chance to read a new book that’s just come out called One Step Ahead of the Devil by L.M. Hausen. (Available at Amazon.)It’s not going to be a fun read. I already know the basic story because I was privileged to be in one of the groups praying for the family as they lived through the events described, the story of a military doctor who refused to falsify some records. The retribution meted out is a harrowing tale that you’d expect from communist Russia, not America. (In case you’re wondering, the story was verified and reported by Sam Donaldson on ABC News. It is fact, not conspiracy fiction.) We’ve all read of other abuses of power by military officers, of sex scandals, of deaths by hazing. The statistics on the rape and sexual harassment of female troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan are shocking. What does “support our troops” mean in these situations?
What does “support our troops” mean when faced with events such as the Abu Ghraib prison debacle, or the more recent civilian massacre? What does it mean when one sees photos of American troops posing in apparent glee over the bodies of the dead enemy – bad enough in itself, but all the worse for the extra rage it will engender in the survivors, rallying more to their cause, and in the end, resulting in the death of even more American soldiers?
What does “support our troops” mean if one fervently believes that what they are doing is politically, militarily, and sometimes even morally, wrong, that our troops have been sent to a place they should never have been sent to, to do a job that they should never have been given, for a reason that could never be justified?
I believe the majority of military personnel, like the majority of the civilian population, are basically decent, hard-working people, doing a job that is incredibly hard and that the rest of us wouldn’t do unless compelled by a draft to do so. They are forced to make decisions the like of which I can scarcely even begin to imagine, in conditions that make me shudder to think of – but I recognize that not all deserve the “hero” label. I do not hold the individual soldier responsible for where he finds himself stationed or the war she is assigned to fight – but I do hold them responsible for recognizing the moral limits of the authority of those over them, and for conducting themselves in a manner befitting the uniform they wear. I believe that even if one is utterly convinced that a particular military campaign is wrong, it is never right to take that anger out on the soldier passing by on the street – but I do not believe it is wrong to make one’s voice heard to the leadership of the country in an attempt to get our troops out of it. I believe it is a shame that our country pays many of its soldiers so little that their families qualify for food stamps and other assistance even as the soldier is putting his/her life on the line, and it is an outrage that our country, having exacted so much of our soldiers, provides such poor care after they have served, especially when they have sacrificed bodies, sanity, and family in that service – and there are no “buts” about this one!
I do pray for our troops. I pray that they would conduct themselves with honor and integrity, with wisdom and discretion, with compassion and mercy. I pray that they would not dehumanize either themselves or the “enemy”, but would value all life and not take it from another lightly. Even recognizing that not all civilians would necessarily understand the reasons for their actions, I do pray our troops would take no actions which they would be ashamed to confess before God or man, or which will haunt them after they are home. I pray for their safety. I pray for wisdom for our leaders, that they would not use our soldiers as mere political pawns. Although I personally have a hard time reconciling Christian faith with military service and the taking of life, I pray for the success and advancement of those who can do so, so that they may influence those around them by a Godly witness.
This – prayer – I believe is the responsibility of every Christian, no matter what they may feel about the military or its actions. I believe we are just as responsible to pray for the innocents caught in the crossfire, and even for those who seek to destroy us, if we would follow Jesus’ command. All are ones for whom our Lord gave His life and desires to see come to repentance and salvation.
Just what DOES it mean to “support our troops”? Equally sincere people may reach very different conclusions about it – and though I’m sincere, I haven’t reached a conclusion yet, other than this: it is safer for a society to have a healthy “loyal opposition”, than to have unanimity by silencing all dissenting voices.
If that doesn’t suit your definition of “standing behind our troops”, then prepare the blindfold. I’m ready for the firing squad!
There was a letter to Dear Abby yesterday that bugged me. It was nothing new, but I’m not going to let it slide. The letter ran as follows, “My fiancée, “Tara”, has a problem with social boundaries. … Recently, a male friend of mine quit talking to both of us because of her behavior. When I talked with him, about it, he said Tara makes him uncomfortable. She doesn’t understand where friendly joking stops and serious flirting starts. She gave him the impression she wanted to start an affair, so he walked away. Tara has been open and up front about everything. She doesn’t lie. It’ s like she doesn’t know any other way to interact with the opposite sex, and it’s spooking me before our wedding. I don’t want to have to be my fiancée’s constant social monitor.”
It’s a fair enough question, and I sympathize with the young man’s unease over his future wife’s apparent inability to appropriately process social cues. But as noted by the ellipse, I left out one sentence in the letter that bothered me. The writer not only describes the problem, but makes a diagnosis of just WHY Tara has the issue she does. He states, “She was home-schooled most of her education and missed out on a social life.”
Why is it that if there is a social-adjustment issue in someone who was homeschooled, it is ASSUMED that the issue arises from the mode of their education? If the letter writer’s fiancée had the very same issue, but had been through the public school system, he would not likely blame the school, but would be more likely to consider factors such as her family modeling, or even more likely, something along the Asperger’s line that interferes with her ability to properly process social cues. But, no. She was homeschooled and “missed out on a social life”, so that must obviously be the explanation.
However, if the ability to read, process and produce appropriate social cues is tied to the quantity of social interaction with others, then how does one explain the statistics on how much of the population is socially dysfunctional in spite of having been through our public education system?? The fact is, both public schoolers and homeschoolers run the same gamut socially: some are gregarious and make friends wherever they go, some have their small circle of friends that they are comfortable with, some are just kind of socially awkward by personality, and some have brain issues that interfere with social interaction. It is not how they were schooled, or whether or not they had a “social life”, that makes them that way.
Tara may well need some professional help to figure out precisely what is going on, since this kind of social handicap could be a real hindrance to her adult life. It probably would be best that she and the letter writer not marry until the issue is addressed. But I hope the letter writer digs deeper into what is going on with his fiancée than just blowing it off with “she was homeschooled and missed out on a social life”. She deserves a real explanation.
First, for the nitpickers, yes, I know that’s not quite a direct quote. Poetic license.
I have an extreme dislike of the unscriptural term “prayer warrior”. Unscriptural? Yep. Although there are some who are recorded as “wrestling in prayer” for others (see Epaphras), nowhere does the Bible distinguish some believers as “better” pray-ers than others. Certainly there were instances of someone who was willing to “stand in the breach” on behalf of others, but it was that person’s willingness to intercede, not some special ability to do so, that garnered God’s favor. Look at the lists of specific, special spiritual gifts and guess what you won’t find? Prayer. Soldiers fight wars; civilians don’t. If the Church has “prayer warriors”, then an impression may be given that prayer is something that should be left to the “professionals”. Non-“warriors” get the idea that “warriors” are somehow more “effective” pray-ers. Both ideas are mistaken. There are no prayer elites; ALL believers are commanded to pray. Just as there are those who have a great passion for study, for missions, for caring for the poor, for working with children, there are some within the Church who have a greater PASSION for prayer than others – but that does not make them a class apart, let alone somehow “above” the rest.
Given that every believer should pray, I decided I would share how I keep track of who and what I pray for. (This isn’t about my personal prayer – my own confession, praise, supplication, or time spent listening – though all are key parts of a believer’s prayer life. For these, I don’t have a schedule, and I don’t follow a formula. Those are meaningful to many, but I don’t happen to use them. Yea, freedom!) Although I do a lot of on-the-spot prayer for and with others, I floundered for years trying to figure out a way to be more consistent about praying for the people who are a more or less permanent part of my life. I finally ran across some descriptions by other folks that inspired me some years ago, and over time those suggestions jelled into my current practice. I don’t necessarily get this routine done every day. Weekends, and Sunday especially, I’m most likely to not get it done, since Saturday I’m totally out of my weekday routine, and Sunday I’m getting ready for church. Some days I blitz through, and some days I spend a half hour. I’m not as consistent as I’d like to be, but doing it this way at least keeps me MORE consistent than I otherwise would be. This is not intended as a “how to” for everyone – it’s just a “how I” that might give you ideas as others did for me.
I have a small 3-ring binder to keep my prayer stuff in, with three sections. The first has a month by month calendar in which I’ve noted birthdays and anniversaries, and to which I add things such as surgery dates, test dates or graduation dates for students I know, travel dates for mission trips – anything with a specific time frame.
Stuck in the current month, and moved along through the year, is a card with lists of people for whom I pray every time. I list moms-to-be and their due month, with baby’s name if known; these may be family or friends, or increasingly common, children of my friends as we all enter the enchanting land of grandparenthood; I pray that God would knit those babies safely in their mothers’ wombs and keep the mom in good health as she carries her precious burden. (If there are specific concerns, I mention those, too.) Having lost my own father 21 years ago when I was only 30, I have a heart for those who have lost parents, so there is a list of folks who have lost their parents within the last year, which parent, and the month of the loss; I pray that God would comfort them in any stray moments of grief that hit or any anniversaries of events such as birthdays or wedding anniversaries. We have several friends who have children who have turned from the Lord completely, and our own son who, while he has not turned from the Lord, is not living by His standards, either; these are all brought up with a prayer that He would draw them back to Himself, and give the parents wisdom on how to love them with God’s fatherheart. There is a list of soldiers deployed to dangerous places, for whom I pray safety, and that they would take no action for which they would feel shame confessing before God or man; and I pray for their wives and children, that they would be provided for and protected. I pray for our nephew, who is currently a missionary in Africa, that he would be kept safe and that his work would be fruitful. Finally, I have a list of specific family and friends who either don’t know the Lord or who have walked away from childhood training in Him; for these I pray that God would send folks into their path that would speak His word to them, that He would give us wisdom on what/if to say ourselves, and that He would bring them to know Him. Notice that none of these take more than a few sentences each. God listens to our heart, not the word count.
The next section to come up is my immediate family. I pray daily for my husband. I’ve used prayers modeled out of Stormy Omartian’s book The Power of a Praying Wife and others, but I focus a lot on his work, since he labors in a spiritually and emotionally toxic environment. After Rob, is the kids’ section. For them, as for the next section, each has his/her own page, with general and specific prayer items underneath. Since we have five kids, and there are conveniently five days in the week, each kid gets his/her own day for me to focus on in prayer. (If that child has a family now, then I do the whole family on that day.) Some years ago, I chose a theme verse for each of the kids/families, and have it written at the top of their page, so I first pray that verse over them. Then I pray the general things. For all the kids, I pray for their relationship with the Lord. For married kids, I pray such things as for the husbands to cherish the wives, for the wives to trust the husbands’ leading, for the wives to be good managers of their homes, for the husbands to find favor with their employers. I pray for wisdom for their parenting. I pray for my grandkids to grow in grace and the knowledge of the Truth. For my unmarried girls, I pray that if it is God’s intent that they should marry, that they would keep themselves in purity and that they would be preparing themselves to be fitting helpers for their husbands, and (as we have prayed for all the kids since they were little and have seen come to fruition with our oldest two) that God would likewise be preparing their future spouses. Then there are prayers for specific things such as jobs needed, school, housing, illness and such. Answers are noted, too, both here and in the next section.
The final section is by far the longest. It is similar to the kids’, except that it doesn’t have a verse for each one. In this section, I have a page for each extended family member/whole family (mom, siblings and siblings-in-love, aunts, uncles, cousins), close friends and their children, and my “otherkids” who I have known from infancy or toddlerhood here and am very close to. I also have some pages with lists of names that I don’t do as extensive prayers for, such as old homeschool friends who I am in little contact with now but who I still think of fondly or all the pastors I know. The key to doing this section is that I do not pray through all these pages every time, but just for a few, moving a marker along. Some days I may pray one or two pages, sometimes four or five, depending on time and how the Spirit moves. Sometimes someone is on my heart “out of turn”, or there are other things on my heart and I don’t get to that section at all. It generally takes me a couple of weeks to go all the way through the section – but at least no one gets forgotten!
There is no one “right” way to conduct our prayer life, no one “right” cause to pray for. I have a friend whose passion comes from the injunction to pray for government leaders. She begins every school day with a folder containing the names of every elected official for our county, for every state and federal legislator, for judges, for Cabinet members, and the President. She prays for them each by name. There are those whose passion is for missions, so they pray for many missionaries and mission organizations and for specific countries. There are those whose passion is the unborn, so they pray for the unborn, for their mothers, for agencies reaching out to them, for the holding back of agencies working against them, for government policy makers. And there are many, many Christians who don’t feel a particular burden for ANY special group, need, or cause! If you’ve asked God to lay something on your heart, and He hasn’t, then don’t worry. He obviously isn’t calling you to prayer as a passion, but has some other ministry for you to focus on.
Whether we have a passion for prayer, or a particular passion for which we pray, we are all TO pray; it is not optional. Like any spiritual discipline, the more we pray, the more familiar doing it becomes. If we ask God to teach us to pray, as Jesus’ disciples did, He will surely do so.
Prayer isn’t a matter of being a “warrior”. It is a matter of being aligned with God’s heart – and that is something open to ANY of His children.
All in favor…
Posted on: January 10, 2013
My husband’s name is Robert. During the seven or eight years in which he was Executive Director of one congregation, he had fun with the fact that meetings were run by Robert’s Rules of Order – especially when it turned out that there were a few in the Voters’ Assembly who didn’t realize that that is the name of a codified body of rules for conducting formal meetings, named after a man whose LAST name was Robert, not just something my hubbie made up as he went along so he could control the group. While many of us may not be familiar with much of the bulk of Robert’s Rules, there is one aspect that virtually every American knows: the vote. “All in favor, say ‘aye’. All opposed, say ‘no’.” Majority rules. It’s a cherished American tradition, applied to a vast spectrum of life, and, for the most part, it works well.
It doesn’t, of course, apply to parenting. “I don’t care if all five of you vote for sundaes for dinner, you’re still having tuna casserole.” It doesn’t fly in the military, either. “Sorry, Sarg, but we voted to cut the hike to 5 miles, and we don’t want to carry packs today, either.” And although it is common to speak of America as being a democracy, it isn’t; it’s a republic. There’s a big difference! One is rule by simple, direct majority – mob rule. The other is rule by elected representatives… of the mob.
There’s one place that thinking in terms of sheer numbers as carrying the day is troubling to me: the church – specifically, in prayer. This is typified in comments such as “Yes, my doctor was amazed at how fast I recovered from surgery. But, you know, I had a LOT of people praying for me.” “We’re just praising God for this new job, but you know, we just had SO many people praying for us.” “There were so many people praying for this baby, I just KNEW I’d get pregnant!”
Many of us are part of telephone, or its modern incarnation, email, prayer chains. With the advent of the internet, a prayer request can now garner literally thousands of prayers in a matter of hours. Don’t get me wrong here: I firmly believe in this kind of prayer. When I have a great need, I don’t hesitate to reach out to friends and family to request prayer on my behalf. I consider it a privilege to pray for others. In fact, I confess I get, well, miffed, if I find out a close friend had some kind of big crisis and didn’t let anyone else know so they could be lifting the one in need up in prayer. We are commanded to pray for one another and carry each other’s burdens.
I see a problem, though, when we act as if the more people there are praying, the more likely it is that God grant the desired outcome. When we credit a recovery, a healing, a new job, a pregnancy to the quantity of voices raised on our behalf, we are, in fact, implying that someone who DIDN’T get those results just didn’t have enough people on their side. It’s as if we think God is tallying votes! “Let’s see…. 997…998…999…1000! Bingo! OK, I’ll heal this child. Now, next one…. 995… 996… …. …. Nope, sorry, didn’t make the quota. You lose.”
It’s as if we believe the point of prayer is to convince God to do what He otherwise would not – to convince Him to be merciful as if He otherwise would be cruel, to convince Him to be generous as if He otherwise would be stingy, to convince Him to be kind as if He would otherwise be harsh. To think this way is to misjudge His character, and, indeed, slander it. No matter what the answer to our prayers, God is ALWAYS merciful. He is ALWAYS kind. He is ALWAYS generous. He is ALWAYS good. Whether He grants life or allows death, brings healing or allows sickness, saves our house or allows us to lose it, keeps us in our job or allows us to be let go, gives us that child or leaves our womb empty. His character and qualities never change.
We are free to pray for healing. We are free to pray for provision. We are free to pray for restoration. We pray for life rather than death, for a child rather than barrenness, for a job rather than unemployment. We are told to present ALL our requests to God, but all of our requests are ultimately supposed to be Jesus’ prayer, “Not my will but THINE be done.” If we think we can sway God by by th mere count of votes in favor of the proposal, we are, in fact, treating Him as the Great Gumball Machine for which we need only enough coins to turn His will to OURS.
Whether it is one righteous man or ten thousand, God is not a God of majority rule. Or, well, maybe He is. HE is The Majority. Rather than praying to get Him on OUR side, we should be praying that we would be on HIS.
Keeping our eyes peeled
Posted on: January 5, 2013
Ps. 44: 3, 5 “…You with Your own hand drove out the nations, but them You planted; You afflicted the peoples, but them You set free;… Through You we push down our foes; through Your Name we tread down those who rise up against us.”
Since it’s now into January of 2013, it’s obvious that the Mayan who predicted the end of the world on 12/21/12 had as much insight as the stone into which he carved his calendar. There are those who attempting to salvage the apparent failure by saying that the calendar wasn’t intended to predict the end of the world, just the end of an age, and that December 22nd simply marked the beginning of a new era of love, peace and cooperation among nations. (Wasn’t that what the Age of Aquarius was supposed to be?)
This was only the latest in numerous attempts to foretell the end of the world. All have proven just as accurate. No matter how many times these predictions fail, there will be at least some who will believe the next one. You see the same thing with the “Predictions for the coming year” tabloids. Look at the previous year’s predictions at the end of the year. Good grief! Although there are bound to be a few that pan out (which sheer statistical likelihood would predict), the vast majority fizzle. Yet people buy into it. There is something in the human race that desperately longs to have “inside knowledge” about the how and when of things to come.
In the time of the Old Testament, the people were used to God acting through military, or military-type, means. His rescue of them from slavery involved heavy tactics of increasingly horrific plagues culminating with the death of thousands of the Egyptians’ first born – not just of sons, but of their cattle, too. As the people fled, God drowned much of Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea. The Israelite’s entry into the Promised Land had been accomplished through His empowerment of their military conquest of the peoples who were living in the land at the time. Once established in their new home, when God’s people strayed into idol worship, God abandoned them to their enemies; when they cried out to Him, He raised up a rescuer who fought for and led a military campaign to defeat the foe. Through the first kingship, to David, to the splitting of the kingdom under his sons, to the Diaspora of the Kingdom of Israel, to the Babylonian captivity and then the return of the people of the Kingdom of Judah, God’s saving power was most often shown in military and political might and methods, as frequently described in Psalms such as the one for today.
It should be no surprise, then, that in the time of Jesus’ coming, most of the Jews were looking for a Messiah who would be the ultimate military rescuer to lead a revolution to conquer their foes and return them to a position of political independence and power – forever. The LORD had been silent (as far as recorded prophetic voice goes) for some 400+ years, it’s true. During this time arose the Pharisees, who believed that if they could just follow the Law closely enough, they could please God enough to convince Him to act. They missed the whole point about the heart, of course, and had turned following God into a mere religion of tradition, proscription, and ritual, but they were convinced that they were putting the right coin into the slot to get the gumball of God’s cooperation in restoring the nation to its Davidic splendor. They considered the past as predictive of the future; what God had done before was surely what He would do again.
Contrast that with Simeon and Anna. We are told that Simeon was “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” After Anna had seen the Child, she gave thanks to God and spoke of Him to “all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.” Consolation. Redemption. Radically different concepts than conquest and revolution. Simeon had been told that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. We don’t know at what point it was revealed to him that he would see that Christ as a mere infant, but from what little we’re told of Simeon, I doubt that he pestered God with questions about the manner of the encounter. It was enough for him that he was told. Though Simeon saw the Child, there is no indication that he witnessed that the ultimate fulfillment of that Child’s life – yet it was enough for him. We’re not told that Anna was given any specific prophecy or foreknowledge of the Child’s coming, though she certainly recognized Him when she saw Him. For her as for Simeon, seeing just a small part of God’s promise of the coming Messiah was as good as seeing the whole thing accomplished.
Simeon and Anna were looking to see what God would do, so they were ready to see it when He acted. The Pharisees were looking to see God do what they expected, so they were blind and couldn’t see what was right in front of them. We have the same choice. The more intent we are on predicting God’s future plans, determining when, where, and how He will accomplish His mission for us, the more we cloud our vision from being able to see what He is doing. The more we simply wait for His consolation and redemption, the more we will see.
As we end this Christmas season and go on into the new year, let’s keep our eyes peeled!
the susie solution 