Tend the Fire | A Book, a Bowl, and a Treacherous Road

I’m jumping into the deep end today, friends, so put on your water wings...

Fingers hovering over this first paragraph, I find my challenge is how to talk about something that’s been talked into the ground amongst the family of Christ for centuries past, but from a position of being neck deep in the unprecedented – unprecedented changes, unprecedented challenges, in unprecedented times – all of which demand a rethink of things taken for granted in simpler times.

For me, going back and re-pounding my spiritual tent-pegs, so to speak, has been a necessary response to the explosion in recent decades of once-unimagined innovations and their impact on society, engageable on a global scale but reverberating at an atomic level – and this lending to the consideration of many servants of Christ, that we may be approaching the beginnings of the prophesied birth pangs of creation itself.[i] Whether near in our understanding of the concept, or God’s,[ii] it’s clear that we are heading into uncharted territory and, in my slightly rattled opinion, a person ought to take inventory of her equipment and preparedness before going any further.

I’ve felt compelled to recheck my foundations, to evaluate their sturdiness, look for holes and cracks, check my centeredness upon them, to be ready should an unfamiliar kind of storm come over and test my footing for me. For an ordinary sinner standing entirely on someone else’s perfection and benevolence, I feel this is a pretty important exercise, considering the time of trouble we are forewarned is coming.[iii]

(Small but momentary ruffle of a few ultra-sensitive feathers here, but press through.) Ironically, we Christ-followers who are watching these changes from our smart-window box seats, adding our own reactive spins to a society already spinning out of control, are claiming confidently to have the Answer to humanity’s ills. And yet, we are resoundingly outpaced and unprepared to respond to even a fraction of it. In my humble opinion, this finally undeniable state of helplessness puts the Church (especially the chronically self-sufficient American Church) in the most promising, or tragic, state of mind she has ever known.

Granted, there are a variety of powerful, knowledgeable, well-spoken, or charismatic leaders on the scene who seem to be attempting to take the dragon by the tail and tame it on our behalf. And, of course, we should link arms and do everything we can to make the world a better place. God knows, there’s plenty to be done.

I do, however, have what I believe are some very good reasons for leaving the popular strategy – that of hiring a human strongman to wrestle the dragon for us, while we follow the strongman – on the table. Not the least reason is this:

Personally, that recognition drastically impacts my view of navigating my narrow road into the final stretch.

 Still on the subject of trajectories, what will matter is whether or not we have “oil in our lamps” to rise in the dark when our bridegroom comes.[v] Again, we won’t be able to blame or look to anyone else if our own lamps are empty when He does come. The choices we make, from now to then, will determine whether our proverbial lamps are empty or full.

(This would be a great place to pour a glass of wine, light a candle or two, settle into a comfortable chair and turn down the atmosphere to match the one coming in the conversation.)

I know it’s a ridiculous question – whether you’ve ever been hungry for something but couldn’t figure out what you were hungry for. But I’m asking it anyway, because I’m posing a slightly more emphatic question than that: Have you ever been really hungry and really not able figure out what you were hungry for?

For most of a year, after I my first son came into the world, every time I walked through the produce section at the grocery store, my senses would perk up and demand my attention, like toddlers pulling on my pantleg. But it wasn’t clear which sense or what it was wanting. The best I could discern was that (it’s almost embarrassing to admit) it had something to do with dirt, because my mind could do no more than flash me a picture of an unwashed potato or carrot.

The answer to the mystery is common knowledge these days but, back then, I wasn’t nutritionally savvy enough to understand that I needed the micronutrients that were in the soil where the potatoes and carrots were grown, and they were hiding out undetected on the skin of the vegetables. I still can’t tell you which sense was picking up on that.

A story oozing with high cliché capacity, I know. But I’m trying to draw as close an analogy as possible to another kind of mysterious “craving” that is incredibly difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t yet experienced it. This one showed up in my life the very same year, right after I surrendered my life to Jesus and was brought back from the spiritually dead. This craving registered in a similar way as my food craving, but it was coming from… well, from some deep, newly birthed place inside.

Again, crazy sounding, but I found this thing hiding in the pages of a book. It still makes me tingle inside to remember the first few times that I cracked it open and read. It was familiar. I’d been taught out of it as a child, and had even occasionally sampled from it as an off-the-rails adolescent. But before now, it had been just a collection of words.

I always believed it to be what it said it was – the words of God – and that it was telling the truth. And I loved Jesus from a very young age. But I couldn’t see how my life, wildly lived and wildly failed, had any future connection to the words in this book. But now, because I had been changed, the book seemed to have changed with me. Because I had been made alive in spirit, the Bible now revealed itself to be alive in Word and in Spirit.[vi]

(I could easily go on about the astonishing visceral experience of it, but better just a little taste, to arrive at the point with enough flavor to make the journey worth it.)

For months, I had an intensely physical response to the new spiritual “food” on which I was now gorging myself. Several times a day I would read from the book, and literally vibrate with life for hours afterward. Every night, I would climb into bed and settle in for another helping. The words seemed to leap off the pages, like micronutrients shaken loose to cling to my skin, then scramble into inner nooks and crannies that had never before seen the light of day.

The honeymoon year came to an end, and I did not step out of it as a “well-put-together” Christian. More accurately, I was well-fed trainwreck in recovery with a lot of hope and a lot of work ahead of me. Over the years, there have been waves of advance and retreat, even the occasional head-over-heels tumble. Likewise, there have been a few side-road runaway attempts, in pursuit of some less intense but still familiar patterns of pain relief and escape – meant to avoid feeling hard things, deny difficult realities, and/or dodge consequences or responsibilities.

Yet... the persistent yearning for the mysterious, invisible Spirit-food hiding in a book, has never left me; It’s always there, pulling on my pantleg and coaxing me back onto the narrow road to keep walking.

In case anyone should feel uncomfortable with this kind of creative license, comparing food for the stomach with food for the soul, follow the trail of breadcrumbs, if you will:

“And [God] humbled you [Israelites] and let you hunger and fed you with manna*, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word[vii] that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” 

Deuteronomy. 8:3 (emphasis added)

“…And the tempter came and said to [Jesus], “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word[viii] that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Matthew 4:3-4 (emphasis added)

“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

                                                            Jesus – John 6:47-51 (emphasis added)

It isn't an accident that this conversation began in one place and wound around to another. We are, indeed, heading into an unrecognizable and fairly intimidating cosmic landscape that will require our full attention and more. As sojourners and servants of Jesus, specifically counseled to follow in His footsteps with crosses on our backs,[ix] we will only be able to obey out of a state of spiritual health and strength.

Some may push back on my choice to approach the conversation from the perspective of hunger and satiation rather than obedience. Clearly, both are nonnegotiable, but I think Paul made better sense of it than I can:[x]

So it is clear that no one can be made right with God by trying to keep the law. For the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life. This way of faith is very different from the way of law, which says, “It is through obeying the law that a person has life. But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law...

Why, then, was the law given? It was given alongside the promise to show people their sins. But the law was designed to last only until the coming of the child who was promised. God gave his law through angels to Moses, who was the mediator between God and the people...

Is there a conflict, then, between God’s law and God’s promises? Absolutely not! If the law could give us new life, we could be made right with God by obeying it. But the Scriptures declare that we are all prisoners of sin, so we receive God’s promise of freedom only by believing in Jesus Christ.

For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another.

                                                                                          Galatians 3:10-13, 19, 21-22, 5:13-15

Finally, to the point. Here we are, sojourning through a suddenly and stunningly unfamiliar world, engulfed in an enormous bank of info-fog, with a gazillion jammed together, neon-lit, online, offroad sideshows competing for our patronage, and obscuring the modest Firelit lamps lining the narrow road that winds unassumingly through the middle of it all, in front of us. How much more than ever before do we need the Word, the manna, and the Spirit, given to us to reveal what’s been and what’s coming, and help us to find our way through it?

I know there are a lot of options vying for the opportunity to show us the way through. Speaking for myself, I see a few options for camps I could join, if I wanted to. I could join the lawless-love camp, or the loveless-law camp. I could choose a preferred biblical theme and algorithmically locate like-minded campers. I could join an attribute club – the toughest or the cleverest or the most attractive, and power through. I could invent my own interpretation of the biblical narrative and recruit followers. I could wander from camp to camp, never openly revealing who I am or what I really believe. Or I could just go off-grid here on the mountain and leave the rest of humanity to fend for itself.

Really, I could easily just park myself in a grassy ditch and take a very long nap.

But there’s this mysterious sense, a familiar craving... pulling on my pantleg and wooing me to come sit down and eat...

Your fellow sojourner,

Maranatha.

To be cont’d....

[i] Matthew 24:3-8

[ii] 2 Peter 3:8-10

[iii] Matthew 24:3-44

[iv] Romans 14:10-12

[v] Matthew 25:1-13

[vi] Hebrews 4:12

[vii] Hebrew: mōwṣā: Biblehub: Strong’s Concordance,  https://biblehub.com/strongs/deuteronomy/8-3.htm

[viii] Greek: rhēmati. Biblehub: Strong’s Concordance, https://biblehub.com/strongs/matthew/4-4.htm

[ix] Matthew 10:34-39; 16:24-28; Mark 8:34-38; Luke 9:23-26

[x]. Read the book of Galatians in its entirety for a more complete understanding of Paul’s thoughts.