Advent, day 4. The Sin and the Son

God does not select events or people at random. He is ultimate purpose. So when a humble widow from Zarephath is the chosen saviour of Elijah, we figure there must be more than meets the eye. She and Elijah connect: we expect him to walk comfortably with God's mystery since it's a daily thing with him. Then the woman's only son dies.

Suddenly we confront the invisible spiritual realities of Sidon's daily life. She immediately assumes her son's death is punishment for her sin.  Spirits and demons control the people's mindset: things are caused by the unseen. People die for reasons. She has seen the power of God and knows that He could well be the killer. It seems a leap to us, but it is a logical step to her: a powerful man arrives. Power kills. Her son dies. 

With nothing left to lose, she confronts the man of God and admits that she has sinned. What sin would bring this type of calamity, but a sin against the demons? And since child sacrifice was so common in those days, I have guessed that she avoided sacrificing her son and now believes the spirits are exacting revenge. She cannot yet distinguish between the Love of the Most High and the Envy of the demons. 

So through this painful valley, God will show her Who He is.

Advent, day 4. The Sin and the Son

1 Ki 17:18 What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?

I never asked for this—

For life or hope or help.

I’m just a simple woman

looking after son and self.

We opened up our home

Inviting you to stay.

‘Cause after all, man of God,

He listens when you pray.

He’s made this land a waste;

Our gods are shame-defaced.

Because the skies withhold,

Asherah’s hope is cold.

Vineyards, fields, and wombs

Are barren, fruitless tombs.

I was at peace with death,

But you showed up with breath—

I clutched in desperation,

Not sure it was salvation.

Came you to remind

Me that heaven is not blind?

My sin must now be righted

For gods which had been slighted?

Born a gifted boy,

Priests warned that he’d annoy—

Gods are ever jealous

Whenever we’re not zealous.

We honoured them much higher,

But the demons wanted fire.

To burn my son, my soul

Would never more be whole.

Coward, I ran away—

I left my man to pay.

The gods exact the price,

And his life sacrificed.

A widow now I pay

The cost to disobey.

The child, the prophet laid

Before the LORD and prayed,

“Let his life return

And his mother learn.”

The son from death arose,

The mother’s heart reposed.

Advent, day 3. The Jar and the Jug

The drought across Samaria, Israel, and Judah affected everyone, including Elijah. The ripples of sin touch the innocent. God still met his needs, but then allowed them to fade to call him to deeper trust. So he trekked back across the Jordan, towards the Mediterranean through a country where he was a most wanted man. God sent him to a foreigner, not even a faithful Israelite. Then God required him to ask something unreasonable of her: cutting away at her own chance of survival and her son. 

This God of all Comfort seems more the God of Discomfort: Elijah is thirsty, starving, hunted, exhausted and must ask the lowest member of the community for help. In this humiliation the prophet seems to get it, that the comfort of God comes through tribulation.

The Jar and the Jug

1 Ki 17: 14 The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry in keeping with the word of the LORD . . .

Elijah:

Brook trickles less each day—

My beard drags in the mud.

I face the scorching sun again

And seek the face of God.

Such silence in the wilderness

Quiet death pervades.

The muted rainbow, desert home

Where I seek out the shade.

This morn I woke before the dawn

And found my brook run dry.

You sent me to this desolation:

Your plan subverted—why?

Widow:

Today I heard their God

Not in my ears,  but deep

Within in my soul—in empty space

Where I am loathe to creep.

A foreign voice of mystery

commanded, beckoned me—

To feed a stranger at his plea.

Starvation madness consumes me.

Elijah:

Today a stranger—most absurd,

I, in a foreign land—

Cursed to thirst by my own word,

I crave to drink this sand.

“Woman, would you kindly bring

a dying prophet water?”

She went without demure 

As if a loving daughter.

“And please, a morsel of dry bread—“

At this she sadly shook her head.

Widow:

Your God lives and your God speaks—

Of this I am aware:

He even knows my lowly place

And that my table’s bare.

I have but flour and oil to make

A small meal, then it’s done.

These twigs will cook the final food

For you, me, and my son.

Elijah:

Don’t be afraid. Do as you planned:

Recall you first heard His command.

Widow:

Today I heard Your God

Ask more than I could give,

Then put in me the courage

To sacrifice and live.

Advent, day 2. The Ravens and the Brook

After predicting years of drought in Samaria, Elijah is sent eastward across the Jordan to a jagged ravine, Kerith. The name means "cutting away" and certainly large areas of his life were cut away as he lived in deep seclusion. Away from human faces and contact, away from familiar activities, away from the company that misery so loves. Sleeping in a barren rock-land, eating from the beaks of scavenger ravens--birds designated unclean, and drinking from a dwindling stream, Elijah must have had some interesting conversations with God.

1 Ki 17: 4 You will drink from the brook and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there.

On the evil and the good the sun does rise, 

O God of heaven, earth, and skies.

On the just and the unjust You send rain,

But seasons run amok when You refrain.

These people, Lord, are messed up and crazy—

False prophets and gods are making them lazy.

Now drought is encroaching, the dust is a test;

Must the few good suffer from thirst with the rest?

Away from the city where I’d be in danger

You send me to Kerith where I am no stranger

With hyrax and foxes and rabbits replete

And ravens who bring me my bread and my meat.

Morning and evening, these bird so intelligent

Bring meals for this prophet’s courage and nourishment 

Small black-winged angels—faithful to mission:

Daily display Your abundant provision.

I long for Your refreshing shower;

But to withhold is in Your power.

Advent 2018, a study in Elijah, day one.

A year of inner words and silence it has been since my last post on 1 January.

But this Advent has challenged me in a new way: Advent has always meant arrival, appearance, anticipation for me. Looking ahead to something coming. Which is odd. In fact, we are looking back at a past arrival and remembering it, imagining and reinventing its coming, but in our own eyes and age. I lose the perspective of what it must have been like not to know the New Testament's "wrap" of the Old Testament's build-up.

This Advent I am returning to the prophet who was to reappear before that First Advent. Elijah. 

The final verses of the last book of the Old Testament:

"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse." 

Then four hundred "silent" years go by and we flip a few pages in our Bibles and read about the angel talking to Zechariah burning incense in the temple. The angel says of a son promised to him and his barren wife, Elizabeth:

"Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and the power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous--to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."

Elijah we know as a wild and crazy prophet; some of our best known Bible stories are about him. But he was genuinely seeking Advent. The Promise had not yet come. The nations were not yet blessed. And fathers' hearts were not turned to their children. 

Welcome. Each day will offer a poem attempting to peer into the life, heart, and soul of Elijah and the people he encountered. Where were the rays of hope in his tumultuous career?


Day One: The Rain and Dew

1 Ki 17: 1  "As the LORD, the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word."

The calling of a prophet is not lightly undertaken

When the land is rife with chaos and despair;

When the people sit in darkness, for by Light they are forsaken,

When the weight of spirit-worship fills the air—

The hand of God is heavy when He calls His man to speak

The words the people still refuse to hear:

God makes the message plain through the upright and the meek

That His anger is again their cause to fear.

The man of God is broken by what breaks the heart of God:

Demon-idols crushing souls of men like stone.

Lives and bodies shattered by malicious, deadly fraud:

Prosperity, security, and home.

When the king is on his throne and the prophet stands before,

And the message is of emptiness and drought—

The only thing that holds the holy man within that door

Is knowing disobedience lies without.

Before the king the Tishbite stands

And foretells drought throughout the land. 

Rachel in Ramah

This morning in church one of the readings (it was Holy Innocents Day) was about Rachel weeping in Ramah for her children because they are not. I've heard that thousands of times. But tears sprang up thinking about Rachel. In previous years I've contemplated what it was like on the Flight into Egypt, how Mary managed in a hurried, night-time, desperate escape into refugee status. But Rachel's story is a sidebar to the Main Event.

She had no idea of her role in the coming of the Saviour of the world. Her children and family were collateral damage. What about this unsuspecting mother, Rachel and her children? She had two under the age of two--she wept for her CHILDREN. They must have been both little boys. Maybe they were twins. But she lost them both. Brutally. I couldn't think about that: but clearly it wasn't in a sterile hospital with kind nurses and people being sympathetic and understanding. No. Most likely it was in her home or outside her front door. Fast. Merciless. Some present day Syrian mothers would no doubt have a clearer picture than I.

Rachel is my new picture for collateral damage. And many times collateral damage doesn't realise what was going on--the purpose--the Big Design--the "reason" if there can ever be a reason for babies to die. There is One who collects all our tears in a bottle. The tears shed over the loss of babies must be of tsunami proportions in a bottle all of their own.

I plan to carry Rachel's tears with me into this year and meditate on them. Her broken heart, how was it to carry on, and did time ever heal that heart? There must have been a two year gap of little boys in the whole neighbourhood of Bethlehem ever after: no Bar Mitzvahs for those two years. All those mothers must have been strength for each other in occupied territory. Rachel: two identical verses about her: one in Jeremiah, the other in Matthew. Weeping and loud lamentation. And she refused to be comforted.

Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.

Is Evil Hunting You?

SNAP: when Crackle theology meets Pop psychology

A peculiar mantra has been circulating lately which is disquieting and must be laid to rest. It has been around for centuries, but people of faith have picked it up and begun to wear it as either a badge of identity or worth. This four-word theme has had a profound effect on spiritual perspective and needs to be critically examined.

Evil is hunting you.

Take a look at that for a minute. What does that mean? Rather than seriously considering the underlying implications, we take the words at face value, understanding the meanings of the words separately, we think we comprehend the implications. However, there is an insidious claim in there that we don’t recognise (but we do reinforce) when we knee-jerk respond: “evil is hunting me” as an explanation for a setback, an illness, a serious accident, or a devastating loss.

What is evil? That’s difficult to answer since it is pretty well understood by everyone. We each have a grasp of the concept. But is it a thing? A person or personification? When it is not being an adjective (descriptor), how do we know it when we see it? We are sure to recognise it when it stares us in the face: be it a car accident, a travesty of justice, abuse, a war, cancer, or the flu. We have attributed it to so many things that it is losing its substance.

Which brings us to the next question: is it hunting us?

If it is hunting, it sounds like an entity. And hunting is something deliberate, so it must have a will. And from there we step into the spiritual realm. We encounter Satan and his minions, all of whom we are confident are evil. So much so that at times they get the credit when things happen to us which may have nothing to do with their machinations at all. It is disturbing, also, how much traction Satan has in the minds of faithful people. Sometimes they forget he is not omnipresent and, being limited to one place at a time, he may not have the wherewithal to be bombarding them personally. Sheepishly they smile and assure you that it’s probably his demons who are oppressing or hunting them. Demons we know very little about and usually manifest in clear and obvious ways. In light of this, quite a few claims of “evil pursuit” do not align with Biblical descriptions of demonic activity (or witchcraft, if you will)—so it is a huge leap to attribute accidents, natural disasters, and the bureaucracy of ungodly authorities to vague demonic evil.

So: is evil hunting us? Does it have a will and are we its target? 

Most likely, as Joseph sat in the bottom of the dry cistern his brothers had thrown him into, listening to them discussing the price of selling him to the Ishmaelites, he did not perceive evil as hunting him. Very likely he thought things were evil and going to get more evil. Undoubtedly he was assailed by dread and some fear. He did appear to be “in the clutches” of evil. But years later, after saving the known world from famine (an outcome of this cistern experience), he said: “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”

What appeared to be evil hunting and hounding him was, in fact, not evil but a big plan. Some insist that this is God “bringing good out of evil.” If that makes more sense to you, so be it. However, whether that is reality or not, the outcome is that whether evil hunts you or not, evil is not the determining factor. It may “hunt” or we may reap the consequences of choices (ours or others). Evil does not have a will—it is more likely the chaos that erupts when goodness is turned from. We all do have options and we can pursue the good or not. When we choose not to, however, evil is the only alternative. If something is not for the good, it must be against it.

I urge us all, friends, let us resolve to avoid this mantra, and encourage others likewise for these reasons:

“Evil is hunting you” misdirects our attention with four serious consequences:

1. puts the emphasis in the wrong place. It makes evil the determiner and own the seat of power. It is the subject of the sentence and “you” is the object. (Wouldn’t a life-view with God as the subject of the sentence be more helpful?)
2. possibly misperceives what “evil” is. Many things perceived negatively have evil attributed to them, but science has proven the value of such an obvious “evil” as pain. We do not know the whole story until the end. 
3. makes us defensive. If we have the attitude that we are being hunted, we become the prey, the victims. We sometimes fall into a “circle the wagons” mentality that sees danger in everything and expects the worst in all scenarios. It dulls us to the brilliance of life and its gifts.
4. it potentially vilifies people. This is true in many scenarios today: because evil describes many people and places they become to us “evil incarnate.” They become the enemy. They are feared, hated, and lo, if we look within we will see the vestiges of evil clinging to our very thoughts about them. 

Ultimately, by our giving credit and regard to the influence of evil, by allowing it to “hunt us” in our own vocabulary, we give it strength against us and begin to find evil itself in the ways we determine to fight it in our own strength. If we must use evil to fight evil, violence to fight violence, then we open the floodgates—

Now there is a daunting thought.

Rather, let us joyfully remind ourselves that He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.

Every Stone Shall Cry: Begging to be Black

With thinking writers like Antjie Krog, South Africa has a mine of greater value than all her gold and diamond mines combined. This daring, forthright journalist-poet goes on inner and outer journeys to help her understand her fellow human beings and herself in depth and compassion. In A Change of Tongue (blogpost 11-19-14) we followed her journey with fellow poets to Timbuktu in West Africa. In Begging to be Black Krog continues the quest motif in three significant ways.

At first it seems like a braid of three strands: a modern day murder, a personal European journey, and a historical search for the phenomenon, Moshoeshoe. But as the book radiates out, we are amazed by the complexity Krog unearths. Rather than a simple braid, we are treated to fantastic beadwork of extraordinary design.

The murder is in the town near her home; the gun is hidden on her porch; she is sucked in. Her travel to post-Nazi Germany is a scholarly and personal pursuit of the roots of Afrikanerdom which bore the fruit of apartheid. Her fascination with Moshoeshoe and his powerful legacy among the Sotho and others led her to research what made this man so different from all others?

Begging to Be Black is a genuine search to understand what it means to be black in post apartheid South Africa. Krog is not a hand-wringing, helpless white woman. She was a member of the ANC and took a number of unpopular stands throughout her journalistic career., taking risks for herself and her family. Her openness to learning from others, history and herself make her a brilliant model for young South Africans today: a model for conversation and dialogue. 

Where is the path to understanding how ubuntu will actually work? In Krog’s book Country of My Skull (blogpost 4-14-14) she documented the TRC for three years. The testimony of Cynthia Ngewu begins to set a pattern for the conversation of reconciliation. She said:

This thing called reconciliation . . . if I am understanding it correctly,

if it means this perpetrator, this man who killed my son,

if it means he becomes human again,

this man, so that I, so that all of us

get our humanity back . . .

then I support it all.

It is said that true bead artists always incorporate a little “mistake” or irregularity in their beadwork to keep it from being absolutely perfect or absolutely boring. Krog has managed the same feat in her writing: she blends in her own personal issues (her Afrikaner family and her Jewish husband), being used by her trusted African friends to cover their own misdeeds, the other-worldliness she discovers as she lives and studies in Germany, where the seeds for apartheid’s eugenic theory were germinated.

Begging to Be Black is also a series of conversations about the many issues that arise when “ubuntu” is the ultimate topic. These conversations, with more significance than the colour of one’s skin, range across privacy and community, space and ownership, loyalty and justice, reconciliation and humanity. Antjie has developed deep relationships with an astonishing variety of people. She has proven herself an able listener. Her gift has enabled her to share deep places in the hearts of those unable to speak or use her hard-earned platform.

It seems fitting that Krog chose Moshoeshoe as her historical figure to bring understanding to her modern situation. He is a significant and universally acknowledged genius of human nature. Both Max du Preez and Rian Malan also referred to him at length in their works on Southern Africa. He epitomises the best of Africa.  His self-observation expresses a humble awareness of the “bigger than we are” quality Africans call ubuntu. “Though I am still only a pagan, I am a Christian in my heart.”