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By Means of a Struggle

The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.

― Søren Kierkegaard

Scripture: Exodus 4.10

But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”

Reflection: By Means of a Struggle
The Park Forum

In an interview conducted shortly before his death, philosopher Carl Jung expressed:

To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse.

The very notion of God is disruptive. (Though Kierkegaard would have challenged Jung—the struggles we face because of faith are substantively different than those we face simply because we are human.)

Perhaps God simply disrupted Moses’ agenda. Or—and this seems to be the way the authors of Scripture would lead us—God disrupted Moses’ view of himself and his understanding of what has value in the world.

In other words, God’s confrontation with Moses did not end at the burning bush. Each step forward challenged Moses’ framework, chipped away at his pride, and opened his life to possibilities that could not have been considered when the journey began.

When the Scriptures introduce God’s Spirit they use the word pneuma—breath—not static, but dynamic, filling as well as emptying, something we lose track of regularly despite its steadfastness. The journalist Alec Wilkinson reflects:

My hope in life is eventually to be wise. Wisdom, so far as I can tell, is the capital one collects from years of endeavor and failure, of sadness and joy, from an attentive engagement with life, that is. The melancholy element of this arrangement, of course, is that each advance is exchanged for an hour or a day or a year in one’s life….

I have spent a good part of my life trying to reconcile the way I was raised, and the person I was raised to be, with the person I hope to be, which has involved facing thresholds that the psyche insists be crossed. The crossings are often forbidding, at least to me, and require faith and can only be managed by means of a struggle. I expect to run out of time before I finish.

The Call to Prayer

Be glad, you righteous, and rejoice in the Lord; shout for joy, all who are true of heart. — Psalm 32:12

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Exodus 4 (Listen – 4:17)
Luke 7 (Listen – 7:14)

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When Suffering Lingers

Because the schooling of suffering is so dangerous, it is right to say that this school educates for eternity.

― Søren Kierkegaard

Scripture: Exodus 3.5

The angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

Reflection: When Suffering Lingers
The Park Forum

The burning bush appeared at the height of Israel’s suffering. Early rabbinic writings understood the bush to be a symbol of ancient Israel—persevering under the flame Egypt’s brutality.

The Greek philosopher Philo expanded the rabbi’s imagery to include all of humanity. “For the burning bramble was a symbol of those who suffered wrong, as the flaming fire of those who did it,“ he explained in his work On the Life of Moses.

Philo was a contemporary of Christ, although the two never would have met (Philo was an aristocrat in Alexandria). The philosopher spent his life exploring the synergy and tension of Jewish scriptural study and Stoicism. His writings reveal through scripture what he could not find in philosophy—meaning in suffering.

“Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful,” writes Timothy Keller In Walking with God through Pain and Suffering. “There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine.”

Though we burn, we are not consumed. This is the mere beginning of God’s grace. Endurance is the deposit guaranteeing great reward. God’s promise to those who suffer is not only that the flame will be extinguished, but that all it has burnt will be restored.

The prophets joyfully proclaim God as the one who will return the wasted years. The New Testament crescendos with no more tears, no more death, no more pain—all of it replaced by  new life.

It is the cross that is the enduring symbol of the Christian faith, not the burning bush. The bush reminds us that God always hears the cry of his people. The cross shows us that God stops at nothing—moving heaven and earth, even sacrificing his beloved—to bring them restoration.

Prayer: The Greeting

“Restore us, O God of hosts;* show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.”

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Exodus 3 (Listen – 3:59)
Luke 6 (Listen – 6:46)

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A Vocation Hostile to Faith

There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!

― Abraham Kuyper

Scripture: Genesis 50.26

So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.

Reflection: A Vocation Hostile to Faith
The Park Forum

The earliest-dated Egyptian mummies happened naturally—their bodies preserved by the relentless heat and arid climate of the ancient Near East. Around 2,600 B.C.E, long before Joseph’s time, Egypt formalized a mummification process.

“The embalmers took out the brains and entrails and washed them in palm wine,” the Greek historian Herodotus explained. “They began to anoint the body with the oil of cedar, myrrh, cinnamon, and cassia.”

Mummification was not simply a medical practice, but a spiritual rite. Archaeologists have unearthed amulets believed to provide blessing, and canopic jars which paired individual organs to gods for protection. Many mummies held a papyrus scroll containing spells from the Book of the Dead.

The Bible made a point to show that Joseph asked for his father to be embalmed by doctors. Priests would have been normative, and Joseph’s maneuver likely exempted Jacob from some of the spiritual murkiness of mummification. But because he had been a ruling official under Pharaoh, Joseph’s body would have had a full Egyptian burial ceremony.

This isn’t the only time in the scriptures where vocation creates tension with faith. When Naaman places his trust in God after Elijah heals him, the Syrian army commander presents a dilemma. Part of his occupation involves escorting his leader into a pagan temple and helping the leader bow before Baal’s idol—a act which caused Naaman to bow as well.

“Go in peace,” the prophet tells Naaman. Shalom he says—may things be exactly as God wills them.

God knows the true resting place of our hearts. God also values a person wholly submitted to him yet embedded in a pagan culture—how else will the nations be reached? How will each vocation be redeemed?

The inaugural book of the Bible ends with two of Israel’s patriarchs in Egyptian sarcophagi. The author seems unconcerned by this point. He knows it’s the end of a book, not the end of the story. More importantly, his faith wasn’t in men for redemption, but in the coming Messiah.

The Call to Prayer 

I will call upon God, and the LORD will deliver me. God, who is enthroned of old, will hear me. — Psalm 55:17, 20

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 50 (Listen – 4:07)
Luke 3 (Listen – 5:24)

This Weekend’s Readings
Exodus 1 (Listen – 2:32) Luke 4 (Listen – 5:27)
Exodus 2 (Listen – 3:18) Luke 5 (Listen – 5:04)

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Going Home

It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you.

― Timothy Keller

Scripture: Genesis 49.33

When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people.

Reflection: Going Home
The Park Forum

There is a brutal reality to death which cannot be softened. When his father Jacob dies, we read that, “Joseph threw himself on his father and wept over him and kissed him.” Old age may make death more expected, but nothing makes it less heartbreaking.

Joseph had been robbed of his best years with his father—reconnecting only as an adult. When he first heard Jacob was nearing Egypt, Joseph raced out in his chariot to meet him along the way.

Reunions are meant to be joyous occasions. At their best, they are times when loved ones gather to reminisce, laugh, and feast. In this case, the beloved was restored to his family. Jacob and Joseph’s reunion was filled with the triumph of a father and son, once separated by what seemed like forever, now reunited.

The revelation at Jacob’s death, that he, “was gathered to his people” is not simply a Hebrew euphemism. This is one of the first images scripture reveals about the afterlife. Like what Joseph felt when he fell headlong into his father’s arms on the road to Egypt, death, for the faithful, is a reunion of inexpressible joy.

Death may be present reality, but time is not eternity. 2 Corinthians observes that Christians are, “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” Now death; soon life.

Even Jesus wept at a funeral—yet death did not get the last word—he called Lazarus from the grave. Resurrection is a fundamentally relational concept in the scriptures. It restores holistic life to body and soul, relationship, and integrity to community once fractured.

No wonder the prophets of the New Testament would rejoice at the image of the resurrection as the great banquet of heaven. Together we shall delight in new life, knowing that whatever joy we experience as we reunite with friends and family will seem infinitesimal in comparison to the triumph of living in harmony with our Father.

Prayer: The Request for Presence 

Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. — Psalm 86:4

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 49 (Listen – 4:54)
Luke 2 (Listen – 6:11)

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Fresh Focus

We need not say in what precise form or way the blessing shall come: let us leave it in all its breadth of inconceivable benediction.

― Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Scripture: Genesis 48.15

And [Israel] blessed Joseph and said, “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day…”

Reflection: Fresh Focus
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)

If we want to bless young people, one of the likeliest means of doing so will be our personal testimony to the goodness of God. Young men and women usually feel great interest in their fathers’ life-story—if it be a worthy one—and what they hear from them of their personal experience of the goodness of God will abide with them.

I want you to note, that Jacob, in desiring to bless his grandsons, introduced them to God. He speaks of “God before whom my fathers did walk: God who blessed me all my life long.” This is the great distinction between man and man: there are two races, he that fears God, and he that fears him not.

The religion of this present age, such as it is, has a wrong direction in its course. It seeks after what is called “the enthusiasm of humanity,” but what we want far more is enthusiasm for God. We shall never go right unless God is first, midst, and last. I despair for benevolence when it is not based upon devotion. We shall not long have love to man if we do not first and chiefly cultivate love to God.

Jacob died as one who had been delivered from all evil, ay, even the evil of old age. His eyes were dim; but that did not matter, for his faith was clear. I love to think that we are going where our vision of God will not be through the eye, but through the spiritual perceptions. These were brighter in Jacob in his old age than ever before; his faith and love—which are the earthly forms of those perceptions—were apprehending God in a more forcible manner than ever, and therefore signified little that the eyes which he would need no longer were failing him.

*Abridged and language updated from Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s sermon A Bit of History for Old and Young. 

The Prayer Appointed for the Week

O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept my prayers; and because in my weakness I can do nothing good without you, give me the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments I may please you in both will and deed; through Jesus Christ my Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 48 (Listen – 3:43)
Luke 1:39-80 (Listen – 9:26)