what sux about the cradle-up christian predicament

guess what? we ALL suck without God. that would be Christianity 101. And Romans 3:23. even us dyed in the wool fundies with our undies in a big starchy wad.

(and don't forget that suck comes from weaning and the notion that you're not measuring up because you're not grown up yet, and don't make it something that it's not. just revisit that whole why are you still on milk when you should be already into the steak of God's word? exhortation-Hebrews 5:12)

anyone who thinks they don't suck without God is heavily deluded. most susceptible to this delusion are cradle-up Christians who've never been tested or tempted outside the little Christian ghettos that they hide in. they somehow manage to construe the fact that they have thrown themselves upon God's undeserved mercy as a spiritual trophy. it's like thinking someone should be given a medal for allowing the ambulance to carry them to ER and the surgeon to save their life when they were minutes away from death. and then proudly wearing that medal around. . .

i went to the hospital when i was mostly dead and i allowed someone more powerful and skillful than myself to save my sorry butt. praise me, praise me, this was an ACHIEVEMENT. someone gave me a gift i didn't deserve and i opened it!! and i kept it!! and i still have it!! and sometimes i even use it!! praise me for all those achievements. and don't mind me while i look down my nose at those who haven't found their care packages yet much less opened or availed themselves of them.

self righteousness is mystifyingly, mind blowingly, oxymoronic, a gross contradiction in terms!

yet somehow it's hardwired into our dna. that little black thread from Adam's seed, and Eve's really brilliant people are just as susceptible to this assinine line of thinking as anyone else. probably even a little moreso. how very pathetic our little human psyches are when it comes to seeing ourselves in the light of Truth.

cradle christians have long lists of sins they've never committed and good deeds they have. and many of them are only too happy to share that with you. they have usually become pretty eloquent at describing the grace of God in prefabricated chunks handed to them by others-not a bad thing when you are still weaning. not an impressive one, however, when you've been a christian for years.

eloquence can be a good cover for comprehension and experience. flowery language can camouflage the fact that you have virtually no understanding of how deeply your sin nature runs and how desperately dependent on God's grace you are. how many christians seem to think they stand higher up on the hill of calvary, closer to Jesus than other sinners, maybe because they bought their tickets early and got good seats. in serious denial about how very equally they stand at exactly the same place at the foot of the cross, utterly helpless to wash away their own sins, just like every prostitute, pedophile, and perpetrator of perversions worthy of perdition throughout space and time. SAME exact predicament.

the list of sins they have not committed is spelled out in flashing neon lights. the list of those they have (either sins of commission or omission) is written in invisible ink and they are afraid even to look at it themselves. we are so much better at deceiving ourselves than anyone else could ever be. the human heart is deceitful above all things. it is as if we believe that if we actually glance into the spiritual mirror of truth and see the beast in our visage we'll just spontaneously explode and be instantly sucked into hell.

the problem is, when you are a bearer of the image of Jesus, if you have never seen what you were/are without Him, when you look in the mirror it's possible for you to confuse His image with yours. to confuse His free Redemption for personal virtue.

i know because i was pretty much a cradle-uppy. and i'll tell you about it a little later. (:

Embryonic thought about Second Birth narratives and Paul

I haven't had time to really develop this thought, but I realized that even though Paul didn't have a dramatic birth narrative, he does have a dramatic, supernatural conversion narrative, a narrative of RE-BIRTH. As do others in the New Testament. Maybe after Jesus' final triumphant birth, and then the Death of Death that He wrought on the cross-His killing the second death and rending the wall-like curtain to the Holy of Holies from top to bottom, was the point from which the narratives thereafter would be of rebirth and transformation, tales of the experience of being Born Again, testimonies of His Triumph, testimonies that all those dramatic narratives of first births were all leading up to the real Story, The Grand Narrative, (yes, HIStory) (: the fruit of the New Covenant, the Second Births.

First Born Sons, Crown Princes, and God's Favor

In a culture where the first born son was the crown prince of every family, it is amazing that God recognizes this relationship in the detailed code of conduct and religious observance He lays out for His people, while at the same time continually flouting that expectation in His choice of leaders throughout the history of His people as chronicled in scripture.

Jacob was not technically the first born, but he was chosen. Joseph was the firstborn of his mother, but not of his father. He is chosen for glorious leadership and the salvation of his tribe, but he is not chosen as the ancestor of Christ. Neither is Reuben, the actual first born of his father.

It is Judah, the fourth born, as I've discussed in some detail in the posts on Genesis, who becomes the ancestor of Christ. Judah offered his life in exchange for his brother. Reuben doesn't even get to be the fount of the priesthood. Nor does Simon. It is the third son who gets to be the priestly patriarch. Even Moses was not the first born son--Aaron was! And Aaron ended up serving under Moses' command. He did get to be one of the priestly patriarchs however, descended from 3rd born Levi. And if we skip ahead to David, the Golden boy of the Old Testament, the Golden King of Israel's Golden Age, he was the youngest son of a whole passel of quivers in Jesse's cache.

So it's fascinating to read Exodus and see the Passover experience where the first born son of every home is taken; all the crown princes are lost, all those at least whose families did not put their faith in God by putting the blood of the lamb on their doorposts to appeal to God's mercy. This is a poignant recognition in this pivotal act in the Exodus where God acknowledges the significance of the crown princes. He builds them into the justice system and the religious system for His people, into His judgments, which are meant to bring salvation.

But God doesn't limit Himself to those favored by man. It seems like He might be saying, guess what? You don't get to just be born into favor with God. You don't get to approach God with the silver spoon of being the first born son as if that entitled you to His favor. God is not impressed by claims of entitlement. Check out the self righteous older brother of the Prodigal Son in Luke. And unlike some Ivy League schools, nobody gets into Heaven as a 'legacy student.'

Two things are true. One is that God gets to put His favor wherever He wishes-there is no entitlement for any of us in that regard. The other is that faith is what makes you a 'man after God's own heart.' Abraham believed God and was called the friend of God. Jacob never stopped believing that God was going to bless him and his faith in God's goodness pleased God. And David, David was the apple of His eye. Not because of his birth order and not because of his personal righteousness. He humbles himself and puts his faith in God's goodness. And God pours out His favor upon him. This pattern of birth order is one I want to study in more detail throughout scripture, but for now, I just wanted to draw your attention to this little pattern that might be easily missed without reading the Bible in its entirety again and again. Beautiful patterns jump out and reward you. (: I love to pray with Psalmist from 119:18, "Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things from Thy law!"

Who Gets a Birth Narrative and Why?

We're talking about Exodus and about Moses the mouthpiece of God. Moses of course gets a fabulous birth narrative (which Willow gives a lovely homage to in the story of Alora Danon, also sent to save her people, thank you Ron Howard). (: Who gets a birth narrative in scripture? Let's see




Adam & Eve
(equivalent of a birth narrative,
the birth of humanity direct from the hand of God)
Cain & Able,
the first to be actually born of a woman
None for Noah
None for Abraham
Isaac-miracle of an 'elderly' mother
Jacob/Esau-
unusual birth of wily twins, fathers of rival nations
All of Jacob's children, father's of tribes
Benjamin & Joseph-miracle of fertility
Moses-miracle rescue from infanticide
Samson-miracle of fertility
Samuel-miracle of fertility
None for Saul
None for David
(although for David we had the book of Ruth introducing his grandparents)
John the Baptist-miracle of birth to 'elderly' mother
Jesus-miracle of the Virgin birth, trumps all the other miracle births (:

We have equivalents of birth narratives in the creation accounts of Adam and Eve. None for Noah. No birth narrative for Abraham, father of nations, though we do have them for his son and grandsons Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph (and as I wrote of for Genesis, very briefly for each of Jacob's sons and his daughter). Even Samson, who did not turn out as God had desired, because he he failed to fulfill God's high calling on his life, rascal that he was . . . . . . even he had a birth narrative. I say "even," but it may be a critical clue about the nature of God's call on our lives. . . Later we have an elaborate birth narrative for Samuel, but none for David (although as I noted we get a detailed narrative in the book of Ruth, presenting a wonderful story about his grandparents). In the New Testament we have one for John the Baptist and one for Jesus. In fact, all the birth narratives come to a halt in the final miracle birth of Jesus. There are no more birth narratives after Jesus, the Final Savior, the culmination of the salvation plan.

Why do we get birth narratives? Surely it is to show God's sovereign call on the lives of these individuals, that He not only created them and knew them before they were born, but He created them with a purpose. A purpose of redemption for His people. Because we are co-laborers with God, we have to answer the call. We have evidence that people can choose to answer the call of God on their life or not in Samson (I wrote about this in earlier posts). One of the casualties of using the King James Version 400 years after its language has become obscure and often misleading to contemporary ears is the verse that says the calling of God is without repentance Romans 11:29. An amazing woman of God named Wanda, from whom I have learned so much, once shared with me what this really means--it doesn't mean there is no forgiveness for not answering the call of God, which is how it is very often understood and applied with more destructive than edifying results. It means God never takes it back, He never gives up and withdraws the call, He keeps working with us to the very end of our lives to give us every opportunity to reciprocate His love and work with Him. Birth narratives remind us that He knew us in our mother's womb--nay--He PUT US in our mother's womb. And He did so with Purpose.

So, as far as Paul is concerned, even though Paul was man of the millennium for his testament, he doesn't get a birth narrative. Although he does get far and away enough air time to make up for that. (: And his ego does not seem to have suffered for it. He knows who He is in Christ. And God has a birth narrative in His heart for Paul, as He has for all of us. Every day written in His book before any of them came to be . . .

And as for Exodus, it can be seen as the birth narrative of a people. Egypt has become an unlikely womb, its oppression the labor pains that will give way to its emergence as an entity independent of that which has been harboring it. It was a difficult birth with both complications and miracles along the way. It was the birth of a people with whom He would reveal to the world His nature, His desire for relationship with us, and ultimately, His plan to bring about reconciliation between Him and all those in humanity who would receive Him.

Moses, Man of the Millennia, Mouthpiece of God

If the Old Testament had a man of the millennium award, well if they had a man of the last 4 millennia award, Moses would be the uncontested winner. In the Old Testament, Moses is the Man. Sometimes he is compared to Jesus in the New Testament, but since Jesus is fully God and fully man, that is really an apples and parakeets comparison.

His real counterpart is Paul, another mere human. Both men were educated and prepared in the highest classes of the highest civilizations of their time. They were super literate (although there is speculation that both men had speech impediments!), they never did anything half way. Oh, and they were both murderers. Well, if you want to define a person by a single action, repeated or otherwise. In fact, it has often been pointed out that most of the bible was written by three murderers: Moses, David, and Paul. And the point of that? God's redemption is greater than the vilest sin. To be fair, Moses and Paul killed on principle-they killed for social justice and zeal for God, even if they made bad calls in so doing. David killed out of less noble motives, at least in the case of Uriah. But God's grace extended even to him and his very selfish personal reason for murder.

Earlier I said that Joseph's story was a foreshadowing of the story of the Hebrews in Egypt as suffering and education there was necessary for the purposes God was calling them to. Moses is like the book end to the time of slavery in Egypt, the kind of leader Joseph was, one who would save his people by following God. Joseph saved his tribe from famine (and illiteracy). Moses delivered them from slavery. Both men enjoyed favor from royalty and developed great leadership skills among the Egyptians. So Joseph was the left bracket and Moses was the right bracket, so to speak, setting off this period of time when the people of Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt.

Moses and Paul are explicitly recorded as having exclusive, privileged, secular educations, which helped prepare them for leadership that would profoundly affect the rest of human history. Considering their respective importance for their covenants/testaments, it interests me that we have a birth narrative for Moses, but not for Paul. . .

Entering Exodus-The Great Exit

Exodus is all about Redemption. Okay fine, they're all about redemption. Exodus is like Joseph's story magnified by four hundred years and thousands of descendants. It follows the same path. . . there is a time of slavery following all the promises of prosperity (Joseph's dreams about himself and his brothers, Abraham's dreams about all his descendants). Something beautiful happens during the time of oppression that prepares the protagonist for a greater purpose beyond it, both in Joseph's story and the story of his descendants.

God is not the author of suffering or any evil. But God's magic is that He alone can take evil and transform it into good. God took the opportunity to use Egypt as a furnace for educating and shaping His people. He took a handful of nomads and put them in the thick of the most advanced civilization in the world up to that date.

We can assume that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were illiterate. Why all the stopping to pile up a bunch of rocks in commemoration of something? They couldn't write and their people couldn't read. You needed visuals to mark the milestones of your history, to provide an opportunity for dialogue. Uncle Judah, what is that big pile of rocks doing there in the middle of the river? Well, son, I'm glad you asked. . . let me tell you a story about God and your grandpa Jacob. . . which is part of your story, too.

Apparently Joseph learned how to write since he got to be kind of the finance minister for Pharaoh. And boy could Moses write. . . since we attribute to him the Pentateuch, this first five books of the Law, also known to the Jews as the Torah (separate from all the other books of the Old Testament and more revered). But we'll get to that.

While Genesis covers a ton of time and is one exciting narrative right after another, Exodus is only about half narrative. The rest consists of descriptive instructive details about how to worship, how to manage relationships and social conduct, how to maintain the tabernacle and rituals that would be a lifeline between a people and their God, basically an initial handbook on how to have their own culture now that they're not just some random diaspora population of slaves in Egypt assimilating to someone else's values and traditions. Exodus is the beginning of God's instruction about how to build a culture based on God's values, establishing traditions that embody and preserve them.

Among the well known narratives of Exodus are these:

1) The birth of Moses
2) The killing of the Egyptian
3) Moses' exile to Midian
4) The Burning Bush: Moses' Calling
5) Ten Plagues
6) The First Passover
7) Four Tests on the way to Mt. Sinai:
a) bitter water, b) hunger, manna and quail, c) thirst, d) conflict (Amalekites)
8) Moses' brother-in-law Jethro mentors Moses in the art of delegation
9) The 10 Commandments and other instructions
10) The golden calf debacle

Joseph's family transformed through suffering

I guess what I was most touched by this year was how love grew up in the relationships in this family as the years passed and their understanding deepened. How much Joseph loved Benjamin, how Jacob said he would go to his grave mourning over Joseph (all those decades later when the famine drove them to Egypt, Jacob was still mourning the loss of his cherished son), and how dearly Jacob loved Benjamin, all he had left of Rachel.

And how the brothers had actually grown to love their father, finally understanding that it would kill him if he lost Benjamin too- how Reuben offered his two sons if anything happened to Benjamin—remember how Reuben had planned to come back and rescue Joseph from the well? But he didn’t have the guts to stand up to his brothers to their faces, and now he seeks redemption. Now he is a father himself and he understands what he did to his own father by letting them do away with Joseph. And he offers his own two sons in Benjamin’s place. Remember also that Jacob named him Benjamin-son of my right hand, reminding everyone how important he was to him. And then Judah took personal responsibility for Benjamin and made good on his promise when he offered himself as a substitute for Benjamin. . . a foreshadowing of the Lion of Judah, substitution for us all.

How obtuse I was all these years till this (2002), not realizing how carefully Joseph had set up the test to find out whether his brothers had softened their hearts over the years, whether they would sacrifice Benjamin as readily as they had rid themselves of Joseph.

When Judah made his plea to Joseph (not yet knowing his true identity-and realize that there would be no way to know how his heart had changed if he did know Joseph’s identity- how would we know whether his motive was pure? This is why the tests are so poignant and pivotal-Jospeh wanted to hear the brothers tell the narrative from their perspective-he wanted them to tell the story so that he could see who they were, who they had become, through their narratives).

When Judah made his plea, he said, “His brother is dead, and he is the only one of his mother’s sons left, and his father loves him,” (44:20b). Here I began to weep. (And I had recently lost a dear, dear friend and watched her father lose her five years after he lost her mother).

Judah continues, in verse 30. . “If the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant my father and if my father, whose life is closely bound up with the boy’s life, (31) sees that the boy isn’t there, he will die. . . please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy. . . (34) No!! Do not let me see the misery that would come upon my father.”

Those boys did suffer from their crime. They had to watch the agony of their father all those years. And Judah cries out for compassion on his father, and on himself, not to have to see how much more agony would be wrought for his father and how it would destroy him. Judah was shining—the love that had grown in his heart was shining brightly and everyone could see it. Here I cried a lot, and re-typing it now I am crying again. Perhaps before I had watched my friend dying of a horrible cancer, I didn’t have the depth of experience with grief that would cause this story to take on this infinitely more meaningful and powerful understanding for me.

This time Judah’s cry pierced my heart and I understood. As I had never understood those hundred other times this story was presented to me. It is not clear how Judah or the others actually felt towards Benjamin himself, but perhaps it does not matter so much. They loved their father, and this meant that they made choices motivated by love about who and what Jacob loved most. Love for one person calls you to love those that they love, as Love for God calls you to love His cherished humanity . . . You cannot love the One without loving the other.

Finally, at the end of Genesis, the point. The point of the whole book perhaps, perhaps of the whole human project. . When Jacob died and the brothers still feared retribution from Joseph, Joseph said, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children. And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.” (50:19-21) And I don’t think Joseph was strutting now. As his brothers had learned to love by loving whom their father loved, Joseph had learned to love his brothers through humility, as well as by protecting them.

There is so much of the gospel in this narrative. A beloved son’s life is taken, but in the taking, their salvation is won. After the taking, watching Jacob’s heart aching, the boys became so aware of their sin. They knew what they deserved. But they had also learned to love through this horrible ordeal. They sought redemption. Reuben offered his sons, Judah offered himself, both foreshadowing the sacrifice of Christ.

And in the end, Jacob lived his last days in the presence of all 12 of his living sons and his one daughter. And they were all in position now to spend 400 years gestating and becoming a great nation, to emerge from its chrysalis in the Exodus. Indeed, what Satan meant for evil, God meant for good.

You cannot catch Him by surprise. You cannot sin so much that He is not still able to take deviance, death, decay, disease or disaster and transform them into something beautiful and glorious, weaving them into the exquisite tapestry of His extravagant love story with humanity. He is ready to weave you in. He's just waiting for your consent. You have not because you ask not. . . (oh, do I detect schema from the book of James working itself into Genesis? Weird how that happens . . . (: ). Ask and you will receive.

And that’s just one or two layers of the Joseph narratives. But let’s move on for now and leave that for the next time you read Genesis.

Reframing the Joseph Narratives- Putting some stuff in perspective

It was the Joseph narratives today (January 1, 2002), that caught me utterly by surprise. Same old story, same old version (NIV), same old study Bible for the last four readings notwithstanding, I wept all the way through them, tears streaming down my face. I guess what I was most touched by was the Love throughout the various relationships—in some cases love that emerged later after lovelessness had wreaked horrible wounds in the soul of this family, in the soul of each member.You’ve heard the story many times,

But if you’re like me, you seriously missed the main point. True, there are many, many important points in the story, many life lessons to be gleaned. And maybe you missed it because the people who told you the story had missed it, too.

Start by thinking about the relational dynamics in this family. Can you imagine being the son of the wife who was not loved? To feel that you were NOT enough to satisfy your father because your mother was not enough to satisfy him, something over which you had no control, like the circumstances of all our births. And loving your mother, and seeing her unloved by your father. . . hm, some of us actually know that acute pain. And it is more painful yet when, like a dear friend of mine, your father left you and your mother when you were still a child, and went and married another woman and became the father of somebody else’s son. You left me to become someone else’s father???!!! That pain must be like a stake right through your heart.

Only in Jacob’s family, both wives and sets of children all lived together, right there all under one roof (or tarp, as it were), and let me tell you, this was no Brady Bunch, no "blended family,"-- you had to SEE him loving someone other than your mother, and loving her children more than you, every day of your life. Now that puts things in perspective. Those boys have been maligned throughout history, I feel, in the way the story is told and interpreted.

Those boys had such deep, deep holes in their hearts. And they were powerless to fill them. Imagine how hard they must have worked to try to get their father’s approval, to try to make him love them. And to find that your best was never good enough to make him love you. You were powerless to heal the wound in your family. And in your powerlessness, and all that pain which you were obliged to pack away in your bones, all that suppressed rage. . . you were a murderer waiting to happen. (Kind of foreshadows the great great…great grandson of Joseph, Moses, when he saw the injustices done to the brothers he loved. . . but I digress, just a little sneak preview for later(: ).

This was the context in which the boy with the amazing technicolor dream coat lived and walked, and very probably, strutted. You might even have come to think throwing him in the well was too good for him. If you had to hold your tongue and watch somebody else take all the love you so desperately desired. Yes, I believe there was some bottled up bitterness (and bitterness bites! It bites everybody involved).

So there's some orientation to chew on. . . I'll get to the complicating actions in the next installment. But I'll give you a hint, God loved Leah's sons just as much as He loved Rachel's, and He had a plan to actually use that spoiled boy to save the lives of the sons of the rejected wife, to save them and make them the fathers of millions. And to finally bring love that would bridge the divided house. Oh, and to make Jesus the descendant of one of Leah's sons, not Rachel's Joe Cool (whom God also dearly loved, I'm just saying, God likes poetic justice).

To be continued. . .

Rachel's Quest for Wholeness

And then there's Rachel. She doesn't have to strive for her husband's love, which has always been freely available to her. She does strive against her sister, though, jealous of her fertility. Interestingly, she turns her anger on her husband saying, "Give me children or I'll die!" (30:1), which, unsurprisingly, begets anger from Jacob who points out that only God can open her womb.

After offering her own maidservant, Bilhah (ok so we have Zilpah and Bilhah, do you think they were twins? (: ), Rachel gets an adopted son, Dan and says, "God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son" (30:6). And on the birth of the second son through Bilhah she says, "I have had a great struggle with my sister, and I have won," (30:8), naming him Naphtali, meaning 'my struggle'.

I'm not sure how she means she won, since at this point Leah has four biological sons and Rachel only has two surrogate sons. When finally she has her own son Joseph she says, "God has taken away my disgrace," and, "May the Lord add to me another son." This is about respect and shame. In her cultural context, there was so much shame in being barren.

When Rachel finally has Benjamin, late in life, she dies in childbirth, naming him Ben-Oni, "son of my trouble," (though Jacob changes this to Ben-Jamin, "son of my right hand.") And the only equivalent to a birthquote is the midwife's, "Don't be afraid, for you have another son," (35:17).

You notice from the verse references that these birth vignettes are scattered through out the text, so you have to search for them when you start to see the pattern (or are looking for the patterns you know must be there, because that is the way God is--and His Word has so many layers of meaning to discover). You're welcome for my hunting them down for you. (:

You may also stop to think about how weird it would be, not only to have your husband have a second wife who was part of your household, but to have that second wife be your sister?? And if Leah was the oldest and she was plain, and Rachel was the youngest, and she was beautiful, you can imagine that there were years of painful strife long before they had to share the same husband. Rachel was probably a little spoiled growing up, and she was definitely spoiled by Jacob. Motherhood tends to suck the selfishness out of you. . . I am not a mother, but I see how selfish I am relative to my friends who are mothers. So Leah had more years to purify her heart, I think, in this way.

I cannot imagine bringing that strife into a marriage and then having the love of your husband and your ability to give birth be your bargaining chips as you strive for significance anywhere outside your very particular unique purpose given to you by God Himself.

Neither Rachel nor Leah seems to have a very happy life, even though each has what the other believes will make her happy.

You might not have seen these patterns on your first cursory perusal of Genesis. And it is only the beginning. (: There is so much more in that same book, in those same verses, even. Buried treasure waiting to be found by those hungry enough to dig for it.

Leah's growing pains. . .

Women don't take up a lot of the Old Testament. Although it is important to notice that the Hebrews were extremely progressive among other cultures of their time in allowing women to own land, be mentioned in genealogies, etc. One venue they do get to speak out from in scripture is that of the birth quote (there's probably a fancier term for that somewhere; this is mine). I had read the Bible several times before I really noticed this amazing little micro-genre. One interesting study is just going through scripture and looking at who had miraculous/angel-announced births (which you will notice ended with Jesus). And another study to go through all the births that give the name of the baby and why the mother named it what she did-something autobiographical usually. (Remember Ichabod? The glory has gone out. Look that one up for poignancy).

Anyway, Leah, the unlucky, unloved, unlovely wife. Her husband had to be tricked into marrying her. How much would your heart break at the fury of your husband the next day when you were not who he wanted to be married to. Leah's story is eked out every few years with birth of each new son.

1) Reuben ("See, a son!") 29:32. And she says, "Surely my husband will love me now!"
Maybe having this son will change his feelings for me. . .

2) Simeon (one who hears) 29:33. "Because the Lord heard that I am not loved, He gave me this one too." Wow, how much pain does that reveal. Maybe he won't love me now either, but God blessed me because of my broken heart.

3) Levi (Attached) 29:34 "Now at last my husband will become attached to me because I have borne him three sons." Now it sounds like Leah has finally given up on winning her husband's affection through her fertility. . . and something beautiful happens.

4) She gives birth to Judah (Praise) 29:35 and she says "THIS TIME I WILL PRAISE THE LORD." She has turned from looking to her validation from her husband to connecting directly with God. And perhaps she begins to look at her children as ends in themselves, gifts from God, not means to her husband's heart.

Now, let me just pause to do a little Hallelujah dance. Zoom in on this and think. The oldest son is always given all the honors and birthrights, yes? You'll find out as you read on that Reuben and Simeon made God and a lot of other people really really mad after Dina's assault. Levi at least gets to be the father of the priests for a few thousand years. But JUDAH. Judah is the ancestor of Jesus (and David, first of course). So Two Huge Points here:

1) When Leah's heart totally yielded to God, she gave birth to the man whose descendant would give birth to the Son of God.

2) Jesus did not descend from Rachel, the favorite wife. He descended from the wife who was rejected!

There's an even cooler reason for Judah to be the ancestor of Jesus which I will get to when we get to Joseph (also, btw, not the ancestor of Jesus, just to reiterate (: Jesus did not descend from the favorite)

5) Now she "has a baby" through her concubine Zilpha, and names him Gad (Good fortune) 30:10,11

6) And another via Zilpha, Asher (How Happy I am! The women will call me happy!) 30:12,13 (and I don't even want to think about what it was like to be Zilpha)

Leah may also be succumbing to a motive of competition with Rachel, whose loveliness and lovedness seem to leave Leah empty handed even now. Still, with her maidservant-borne children, she continues to focus on gratitude rather than wistfulness toward her husband.

After a spate of barreness, apparently, Leah is able to conceive again when she so poignantly "hires" her own husband by giving Reuben's mandrakes of the day to Rachel. Mandrakes are a root and they kind of resemble hips and legs and were regarded as fertility 'enhancers.' Her seventh and eight sons come from her own womb.

7) Issachar (Reward) 30:17, 18 "God has rewarded me for giving my maidservant to my husband."

8) Zebulun (Honor) 30:19,20 "God has presented me with a precious gift. This time my husband will treat me with honor because I have borne him six sons."

So her feelings seem to progress as
1) I can win his love
2) He doesn't love me so God will comfort me with a child
3) At least maybe he will feel some bond toward me as the mother of his 3 sons.
4) I give up on my husband; I will praise God.
5) Eh, a child is good thing.
6) Motherhood is good-other women will see me as happy and blessed-they will esteem me.
7) This child is a reward for my good deed (I'm not sure I follow how giving the maidservant to her husband was a good deed bearing on Issachar's birth, since it was her own womb that bore him--I would have expected her to mention the mandrakes).
8) This child is a precious gift AND I should receive honor (if not love) from my husband

In her search for identity, it seems that Leah tries the role of wife, but it does not fulfill her need for meaning. She tries the role of mother and finds her greatest fulfillment here. In some ways her identity is the cut out as the complement (or the negative?) of Rachel-Rachel is what Leah is not, Leah is what Rachel is not. In the end, like many people, Leah seeks out respect, which is a cousin if not a child of Power, in lieu of love, at least in her identity visavis her husband.

And about Rachel I will write in my next post.

Some Notes on Genesis and reading the whole Bible through

In one way reading the Bible is like reading any other great piece of literature-your understanding of it deepens and is enriched the longer you live, the more you see and learn and feel. . . the years layer your schema ever more densely, drawing connections from everything to everything else. When you read the Bible through for the first time, you are just surveying the land.

You get your bearings, figure out which way is East, which mountains are next to which lakes, where are the hot springs, where is the soil rich and where is it lying fallow. But every time you read it again you bring more to the text before you from the text of your own life, the text that you and God have been writing together, your own story. The Bible is The Story and yours will become a part of the The Story of God and His glorious works. So your life creates this enormous resource for understanding scripture, but scripture itself is another enormous resource for understanding each part. The more you read of the whole, the more you understand each part. You begin to recognize images and ideas from other books and chapters that shed light on the one you are currently viewing.

On your second reading you may notice, for example, that the Gospel of John begins by echoing the beginning of Genesis. In the beginning, God. . . In the beginning,was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Very purposefully the author draws your attention back to the bedrock of Judean dogma. John is telling you that his writing is a continuation, a cohesive part of the whole, not a breaking away, not a totally new "religion." You will find glorious patterns woven all the way through the old testament and the new, like an other worldly tapestry of staggering beauty. I always think it is like looking at one of those three dimensional pictures. You have to study it for a bit before you can "see" the image, and when you see it, it is glorious--it's so obvious now, and so beautiful, but it would not be seen if you gave it only a glance to 'prove' itself to you.

Genesis is a great place to start since it is the beginning of the Bible and describes the beginning of Earth and mankind. It's amazing how many of the central and celebrated OT narratives are all compressed in the book of Genesis. 1) Creation 2) The Fall 3) Cain & Abel 4) Noah and the Ark 5) The Tower of Babel 6) Abraham-Called out of a foreign land to become father of nations, Sharing his lot with Lot (actually giving Lot a lot more), Lying about his wife being his sister in the early days when his faith was small Trusting God for a child well past his and Sarah's fertile years, Having a son with a concubine, trying to "help God out", Angels appearing and announcing the birth of a son in his old age, Naming him Isaac, which means Laughter, both because his mother laughed at the angels' announcement and because he brought so much laughter into their lives, he was the promise of God made manifest, Being asked by God to sacrifice his son to prove that he loved God more than he loved God's gift to him, and God, seeing his love and obedience and faith, stepping in to provide a sacrificial substitute, a foreshadowing of God sacrificing His own son so that Abraham and the rest of humanity would not have to sacrifice theirs, or themselves.

Finding Isaac a wife from the "old country", Isaac's twins, Jacob and Esau, and God's choice of Jacob though he was the younger by a few minutes, and though he was a devious self-interested schemer. God chose Jacob like he chose us, not because WE are good, but because HE is good. And yet the poetic justice that Jacob the cunning is out-deceived by his father-in-law into marrying a woman he did not love before he could marry the one he did. Rachel and Leah and all the strife between women who want both children and the love of their husband, and whose birth quotes encapsulate each woman's new stage of thinking and trusting and loving with the birth of each new child. All kinds of escapades with Jacob and his 12 sons and 1 daughter (including her rape and her brothers avenging it, literally overkill) Benjamin is born and Rachel dies, and the jealous brothers (sons of the rejected wife) throwing Joseph in a well and then selling him into slavery, The roller coaster of Joseph's life, lifted up, cast down, lifted up, cast down, lifted up, cast down. . . (reminds me of my own!) probably because God wants to make the point that we do not make ourselves successful, He allows it, or not, should he choose to remind us that we are nothing without Him, The salvation of Abraham's tribe through Joseph's rise in Egypt. . . what Satan had meant for evil God turned to glorious good. Ok, I lost count. (:

One of my study Bibles mentions that Genesis spans a larger period of time than the rest of the Bible combined. I prefer and highly recommend reading each book of the Bible in ONE sitting. Don't forget that the entire Bible can be read aloud at a normal speaking pace in fewer than 80 hours! It is not daunting that it is "long," it is daunting that we must think so clearly and reflectively, that we must ask Him for illumination in a way we need not ask in order to read a modern day novel, that we must study to understand the context. That we must read it again and again to understand the rhythm of the whole majestic symphony. It is daunting because it is not the word of man, it is the Word of God.

When I made the journal entry that I am typing from in 2002, it took me four hours that day to get through Genesis, but mainly because I got so excited seeing the patterns in the birth quotes of Jacob's wives and having to color code and lay it all out in an elaborate chart so I could look at the patterns more closely (there are a lot of other stories packed in between births). This was the first time I think I noticed that this custom of recording (orally or in writing) a quote from the mother at the birth of a child (male children only?) is a pattern which pervades the Bible and has meaning in itself; I will present that story in my next entry. (:

Can I actually sin by ministering to others?

God: I desire obedience more than sacrifice.

One of your standing orders is to pursue healing for yourself, for when you do not, everyone else suffers. Your wounds are not yours alone. Every single person in your life suffers from the behaviors, conscious and unconscious, that are the natural result of woundedness (not to mention that they hurt because they love you and your hurting hurts them that way as well). I think you can hear Him saying, "You keep turning your eyes away from the hurricane of your soul-- you'd rather tend to the hurricanes of others. Yes, Dear One, when you offer sacrifices I did not ask for in lieu of obedience to what I am asking of you, you sin."

You still have ahead of you this very important epiphany--the one that God used one of you to show me this year: I cannot pull those I love out of hell, if I cannot let God help me pull myself out of hell. Place the oxygen mask securely over your own face before assisting others.

Stage one: letting the scales fall from your eyes, letting the cocoon fall away so that your raw baby skin touches the air for the first time, and finds a healing balm in the gentle wind of the Holy Spirit for you there. You look for diversions-- you TRULY care about the broken hearts around you, but you involve yourself with them in ways that distract you from the business of tending to your own broken heart.

Pursuing God’s calling on your life requires you to undergo this surgery of the soul--you have to have the open heart first; if you don't, you won't live to save the others. Trust me in this, Honey. I am broken, and I know that. You know that. But broken people are all God has to work with. It is His amazing plan to use the broken to make things whole. Everything is a big fat joyous paradox for Him! He gives us so much to laugh about for eternity!!!! He will turn your ashes into beauty and your mourning into dancing. But first, you have to STAND UP.

It is painful to reset a broken arm. But you won't be able to carry that baby out of hell if you don't. Schedule the operation. I'll do anything you need to make this happen. I BELIEVE IN YOU. I see a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night hovering over you, leading you to healing that moves in every direction. You are interwoven in it with the Holy Spirit, with the Body of Christ, with broken relationships He will heal, with broken children He will make whole.

Too oft said, but denial . . . de Nile, is not just a river in Egypt. If you sit down in the safety of Jesus and look at all these shards in your life left by hurricane after hurricane, He will make looking at them a healing experience. Surveying the damage accurately is the first stage of rebuilding and renewal. Take some of the spiritual lessons from Katrina and Rita. They have hit home for you on so many levels. You are little David. The armor doesn't even fit you. You will have to go out there with just your sling and your unflappable faith in God Almighty. You'll take that giant down and we will dance for years in celebration.
Take him out, Baby Girl. This is your calling. Your armor is His spirit, your stone is Jesus. Your sling is faith, a gift from God. I am standing here on the sidelines praying all the way. With the clouds and crowds of Holy witnesses—insert names of your loved ones, on both sides of the Jordan, the moms and dads and sweet little boys and girls. run, child, run. let it rip. He's in you. He will not fail you. Run. Chase that demon down and beat the living crap out of it. If you want me to, I'll hold him down while you punch. (:

One Day Hannah Stood Up!

3-10-03 I Samuel What a rich book replete with revival and renewal--God present and attentive all over the place. The book opens with the story of Hannah's pain and God's providence. Her story mirrors Rachel's in that she was the beloved but barren wife (of two)--Elkanah (& Sarah, too to some extent, in competition with Hagar for Abraham's child/heir). It is also very interesting in juxtaposition the narrative of Samson's mother, also barren, though she was Manoah's only wife. I think comparing those two stories might merit a separate blog entry though.

Every year Elkanah would take his wives and family to Shiloh, where the priests of the Lord were, to worship and sacrifice. (Doesn't say whether this is Passover or what, but it seems to be harvest time according to some of the commentaries, so it might be Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year). On sacrifice day, Elkanah would give Hannah a double portion of meat because he loved her (remember Joseph doing this with Benjamin to reveal himself secretly among the unwitting brothers?) Also thinking of the double portion of Elijah. Also Genesis 29:31 where God opens Leah's womb because her husband does not love her).

Because GOD had closed Hannah's womb (like Sarah and Rachel?), her rival kept provoking her, as Hagar and Leah had done to their rivals. This was the cycle every year --it would always happen at "Thanksgiving" and Hannah would always end in tears, unable to eat (1:7). Elkanah would helplessly try to console her with his love--as though it should suffice in spite of the baby-shaped hole in her heart (commentaries remind us that fertility was an imperative from God- Multiply the earth!). 1:9. One day when they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, HANNAH STOOD UP.

1) This seems to suggest they were right by the door, either in an extension of the tabernacle or perhaps outside, so that when Hannah rose, she was already at the point of entry to the tabernacle. Some of the commentaries suggest that the tabernacle had become rather more elaborate. On the other hand, the high priest is just sitting out there on a chair available to everyone, so others suggest that this was the point of deterioration to which Israel had fallen.

2) Otherwise, my inclination is to explain it linguistically. Perhaps, "stood up" means something like, "took a stand" or "one day Hannah sat up and took notice." This makes sense to me discursively because they have just emphasized that this happened every year, but ONE YEAR. . . Hannah stopped the cycle of dysfunction.

She became agentive, even if it is a helpless agency. Perhaps the most important agency is co-laboring with God--which is always helpless (compare O. Hallesby on Prayer and how it is our helplessness and our acknowledgment of it that moves the heart of God to act). Most likely "stood up" is a double entendre--a play on the physical and the figurative. 1:10 IN BITTERNESS OF SOUL. . . this description of Hannah's emotional state makes me think of the many mentions of bitterness of heart and soul in scripture. Lamentations 3:19. . . the bitterness and the gall. . . Ephesians 4:31 Let all bitterness, envy, and wrath be put away from you. . .

1:11 Hannah made a vow which was like the vow God told Manoah's wife to take and keep for Samson, the Nazirite vow. While God wanted Samson to be a Nazirite and conveyed this in a vision (close encounter of the angel kind), Hannah made this vow voluntarily for Samuel (not very democratic, but apparently not marked for parents to make such choices about the future of their children). In the case of Manoah's wife, God is the apparent initial agent.

In Hannah's case, the vow is made almost as a bargain, and Hannah appears to be the initiating agent. Incidentally, what is the probability that Hannah knows the story of Samson's birth, calling and "ministry"? Is there any message or causality in the fact that Samson's mission was other initiated and failed, but Hannah's was self initiated and succeeded--and so magnificently? I suppose that would only be true if the 'other' initiator were someone other than God. All the other people He approached and announced a calling for turned out splendidly. Samson was the one exception.

Obedience was required from everyone in both cases. . . 1:12-14 For years I thought Eli's belief that Hannah was drunk just showed how little spiritual discernment Eli had, but on thinking more about the physical context and the feasting and drinking, it seemed a more plausible conclusion for him to make (this year). 1:15-16 "I have not been DRINKING. . . I have been POURING! (out my heart to the Lord). Look at this beautiful play on these two words and images! 1:17 Eli then believed her and blessed her, and without knowing her request, said a prayer for its fulfillment.

1:18 Hannah took Eli's words as from the Lord. The state of Hannah's heart and emotions actually changed after this experience of crying out to God and feeling that she had been heard. 1:19 The Lord remembered her--I think of Joseph wanting to be remembered by the cup bearer being released from prison. The repentant man on the cross next to Jesus saying, "Jesus remember me when you come into your Kingdom. . . "

1:20 AND SO IN THE COURSE OF TIME Hannah had a baby boy and named him Samuel: "I asked the Lord for him." 1:21-24 Hannah doesn't go with the family to the Shiloh festival until she is finished weaning Samuel and is ready to surrender him to the service in the tabernacle. This choice was approved of by Elkanah who said, "Only let the Lord make good His Word." Why is it GOD making good His word instead of Hannah making good her word? I can't answer this necessarily, except that man's view of who's trustworthy is so distorted.
The point, I think, is that Hannah and God worked together to do something that would change the course of Israel and the course of history. Hannah was a co-laborer with God and God always keeps His end. All the other parties don't necessarily.

Samson made a big mess out of God's glorious plans for him. It cannot be a mere coincidence that the first Sam, Samson, was given a calling as judge of Israel he chose not to fulfill. This is an important precursor to Samuel's calling because it reminds us that we still have free will not to respond to God's calling. God doesn't want robots, He wants partners. He wants co-laborers. And in His glorious redemptive plan He commissioned another Sam, Samuel, to have a shot at obedience and the leadership of His people. And this one bore fruit.

My point, dear friend, is that we often find ourselves situated in dysfunctional contexts that convince us we are stuck. They convince us so well that we don't ever even step outside the frame long enough to contemplate our sense of stuckness. One day, Hannah stood up. One day Hannah said, I want everything you have for me, God. I want to end this cycle of dysfunction. Dear One, stand up!!!!!!!!!

A Note About Samuel and God's Involvement with Man

March 17, 2003

What strikes me most about reading 1 Samuel this year (end--I have read it twice this year) is the nearness of God--His activity, His direct intervention and interaction with men, particularly, Samuel and David. Here the sense of Calling and Purpose are loudly present. This is no theistic-wind-up-the-world-and-see-what-it-does God. This God speaks to Eli. He speaks through Eli to Hannah. He speaks to the child Samuel, and ever afterward to Samuel.

This God comforts Samuel when his people ask for a king, rejecting Samuel's leadership as their prophet-judge as insufficient. This God causes men to prophecy quite apart from their intentions (remember Saul?). This God comforts Samuel again when he is grieving for Saul after God reveals that He is going to replace him. David finds comfort in God repeatedly in this book. He is not a God far away who leaves His people to muddle through their fallen world on their own. He asks them to depend on Him and when they do He defends and protects and comforts. . .

He has purposes and a will, and yet he allows for human agency. IF Saul had obeyed, God says he would have had an heir on the throne forever. . . it all comes down to the choice of co-laboring with God or choosing to go off on one's own. If Saul had obeyed, does that mean David would never have come to fulfill the role he did? Was David predestined to be the ancestor of Christ? Was Saul predestined to fail? I doubt the latter, --God could certainly have worked both families in to the colorful family tree He designed for Jesus) (: