A New Hub

We're past the halfway mark in January, but Christmas break just ended yesterday for me. My oldest daughter loaded up her car to return to college, and I'm slowly moving all my stuff back into her bedroom/my office. It's a bittersweet endeavor that symbolizes the emotional adventure of sending and receiving college-age children ... in my house, out of my house, in my house, and back out again. Over and over. 

Have I mentioned that transitions are hard for me? I really have to work at them. And yet my family is in a perpetual state of transition, with no end in sight for the next decade. OK, God, I'm in. Teach me and grow through all of these changes. 

One of our family's transitions snuck up on me over Thanksgiving break. The six of us met up in San Antonio to do something different, explore a new city, and eat great Mexican food. While I knew I was going to learn more about the Alamo and fresh salsa, what I didn't expect to learn was how our family dynamics have changed. 

Kevin and I have always been the hub of our family. We made the plans. We set the schedule. We did the driving. We made the food. We led the discussions. We did the instructing. We solved the problems. We negotiated the peace. (That last one felt like a full-time job sometimes.) Our kids' schedules and interests drove the majority of our decisions, plans, and conversations, but everyone knew Mom and Dad were the hub. 

Beginning with San Antonio and then while having everyone home over Christmas break, I'm realizing that Kevin and I have moved to the periphery. The hub is now this bursting-with-energy force arising out of two young adults and two teenagers. The hub is loud, raucous, and a little disorderly. It's unpredictable. It's laughing, singing, whistling, teasing, pushing, wrestling. It stays up into the early-morning hours and eats at odd times of day. And the two 50-somethings on the periphery of it all just pay the bills and try to keep up. 

This is an astounding, tremendous thing! It seems to me that this is the way it should be. We parents want to work ourselves out of a job. We don't want to spend our entire lives holding everything together. We want our kids to hold themselves, and each other, together. We want them to choose to be friends, and we've got to step out of the way a bit to allow that to happen. We want our families to grow and evolve in the best possible ways, and it seems to me that the best way for that to happen is for Kevin and me to settle into our new place on the periphery and enjoy the ride. 

I'm not ready to be old and boring. I don't want to be the old lady in the flowered dress who no one wants to sit next to at Christmas dinner because she can't follow the conversation. As long as my mind is intact, I will work to stay as relevant, clued in, and connected as I can. I hope my grown children will continue to seek my advice and counsel, be it on God, life, or the difference between a hyphen and an en-dash. 

But I don't need to be the hub anymore. I'm happy to relinquish the hub. Someone else can pack the sandwiches and start the conversations. (Even if it's all about memes and I'm still not totally sure why memes exist.) I am happy to sit back and marvel at how these four fascinating human beings feed off each other's energy, creativity, and wit in the best possible ways. 

(Well, until it goes south and someone ends up with claw marks on their arm, which also happened over Christmas break. Turns out there's still some negotiating the peace to do from the periphery.)

My 2021 Reading List

It was not my best reading year ever, but I still found some gems to pass along, a few duds, and several books that fell somewhere in between. 

MY TOP FIVE

 (*Jump to the bottom for a few more of my non-book favorites.)

#5: Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ by Timothy Keller. This little book could be read in half a day, but I wouldn't recommend that. It's one you want to savor and ponder. Keller breaks down the Bible passages that we associate with Christmas and helps us take in the awe of what they mean. He also weaves in some of the very best Christmas-carol lyrics. If the story of the nativity feels too familiar to you, check out this little gem of a book, especially at Christmastime when you've heard Luke 2 so many times you've lost all perspective. 

#4: Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier. The author is an Oxford- and Yale-educated reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She came to this project not as an evangelical Christian like we might expect (she's not one), but as a reporter trying to solve a mystery. While Shrier supports gay and transgendered adults, she has serious questions about why so many teen girls, many as young as 13 and 14, have become the fastest growing group of transgendered individuals in the western world. Why are so many of them suddenly requesting (and receiving) artificial hormones and "top surgery" when gender dysphoria has historically been confined to a very small percentage of mostly males? Shrier talked to psychologists, doctors, parents, and the girls themselves, most notably to girls who later regretted their decision to transition into males. The author asks how many 20-something women will have to wake up one day to the nightmare that they've changed their voices, mutilated their bodies, and rendered themselves irreversibly infertile--with the consent of their parents and encouragement of the medical community--before we rethink on-demand gender reassignment? If this is an issue you care about, this book is not to be missed. 

#3: Until Unity by Francis Chan. This book came with a lot of buzz when it was released earlier this year. Unity in the church is an important topic right now, and Chan is just the guy to box us in the ears and tell us to start obeying God's Word or else. He presents unity among God's people as an absolute biblical mandate; I've never seen it put so clearly and obviously. The book is short on application (no surprise, as Chan is more of a "Just do it!" guy than a "Let me teach you how" writer), and, unfortunately, is likely an exercise in preaching to the choir, as you wonder how many divisive-types are going to pick up this book. But for anyone who does, Until Unity is a loud, convicting call to the church to wake up, confess our pride, put our secondary doctrinal issues aside, and start practicing biblical love toward all believers, not just those we agree with. 

#2: Knowing God by J.I. Packer. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I'd never read this classic, which has been around as long as I have. But better late than never. I loved it. How can a chapter on the goodness of God be a page turner? How can it be that I was counting down the minutes of my day until I could crawl into bed at night and read about God's wrath? Packer, who died in July 2020, introduced me to new ways of thinking about God. He challenged me and put me in my place. I don't get to decide who I want God to be. "I am that I am" is who He is, and this 50-year-old book sends a clear message to a 2022 world that wants to shape God into whoever they want Him to be. Knowing God is as close as I'm ever going to get to systematic theology, but it was accessible, relevant, and even enthralling. I'll read it again, and my kids will all be getting copies at some point. 

#1: All Things New: Heaven, Earth, and the Restoration of Everything You Love by John Eldredge. This is my "drop-what-you're-doing-and-read-this-book" find of the year. If you're not a fan of Eldredge, don't let that keep you away from this one. I've been on the fence about his writing for years. But I can say for certain that I loved this book. We need this book, all of us. We need this perspective, this hope. We need to live with eternity in mind. I much preferred All Things New to Randy Alcorn's Heaven and N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope, at least partly because of Eldredge's whimsy and imagination. While those may have been the very things I haven't liked about him in the past, here I just buckled up and went with him, and I'm so glad I did. This is a book you'll be thinking about for months, and maybe, like me, rereading again very soon. 

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN GOOD AND GREAT ( and in no particular order)

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. I'd never heard of Enger, but a friend gave me this novel, and I enjoyed it a lot. First, because it's so hard to find fiction I can recommend with a clear conscience. This one I can. And second, because Enger's writing is breathtaking. This story drags in places, but the voice of the narrator--an 11-year-old asthmatic boy with a most unusual father and a brother on the lam--kept me reading each paragraph closely lest I miss some beauty of a sentence. The book is filled with them. The way the thoughts are expressed, the way the words are arranged, has moved Enger to the top of my future reading lists. 

The Power of Place: Choosing Stability in a Rootless Age by Daniel Grothe. I was eager to read this book not only because I know the author, but because the topic hits a nerve with me. I had a parent who chose personal ambition over stability for our family, and I'm still learning how all those moves shaped the person I am today. Grothe argues against the ideas of wanderlust, conflict avoidance, single-minded upward mobility, and duty-free friendships that keep people from committing long term to one place. It's a countercultural proposition in a world that allows us to go anywhere, anytime, but Grothe makes a convincing case. Like Until Unity, I'm not sure that the audience that needs it most will ever find this book, but for me, it confirmed that the firmly-rooted life Kevin and I have chosen is not safe or dull, but a grand adventure in long-term investments and commitments.   

Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope by Esau McCaulley. I have much to learn from McCaulley, an excellent writer who earned his PhD in New Testament under N.T. Wright. This book, his second, was Christianity Today's book of the year, and McCaulley has been featured prominently in a wide spectrum of media this year. He wrote this book to black believers, and maybe some who were raised in the church but have let go of faith, about interpreting the Bible from an African-American context as an "exercise in hope." And it is hopeful. Though it wasn't written for me, I felt grateful to peek in on what McCaulley shared. He takes on questions like: What does the Bible have to say about a just society? Policing? Protest and rage? Ethnic identity? Slavery? None of these questions is easy and all have been debated before, but McCaulley handles them honestly, insightfully, and hopefully. 

Hallelujah Banquet: How the End of What We Were Reveals What We Can Be by Eugene Peterson. This is everything you'd expect from a Eugene Peterson book, although he didn't actually write it. Rather, editors compiled it posthumously from a series of sermons he gave on Revelation 2-3. The letters to the seven churches have always scared the daylights out of me, so I appreciated the framing Peterson did for each church. Jesus was rebuking most of them, yes, but He was also encouraging them, loving them, and calling them to step up and be what He wanted them to be. The seven letters still have a message for us today, and this book helps us see more concretely just how relevant they are. 

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell. If I wrote books, I'd want them to be Malcolm Gladwell kinds of books. Has he ever written anything that wasn't completely fascinating? This book, released in 2019, centers on the encounter between Sandra Bland, a black woman, and the police officer who pulled her over for a lane-change violation in 2015. What ensued resulted in Bland being held in the county jail, where she hung herself. It didn't have to go that way, and Gladwell explains why that interaction went awry, while taking on the topics of Cuban spies, college frat parties, Ponzi schemes, and the greatest sexual abuses of our time. Somehow, as usual, Gladwell makes it all work and keeps you hanging on his every word. 

Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do about It by David Zahl. So the subtitle pretty much sums it up. Zahl's argument is that we're all searching for something to answer the aching question inside us: Am I enough? While the gospel is the only real answer to that question, we search for enoughness in a variety of substitutes. Zahl is a clever writer, and I breezed through most of the chapters agreeing and chuckling. But his final two chapters, on politics and an unexpected entry on "The Seculosity of Jesusland," were particularly illuminating. He helped me better understand why the lines between political fervor and Christianity have become so blurred in our country. Also worth noting are the two quotes he uses at the beginning of the book: 

"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm--but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." (T.S. Eliot)

"The most purely, proudly American genre of writing might be the to-do list." (Parul Sehgal)

GOOD BOOKS THAT I CAN'T RECOMMEND

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl R. Trueman. This book was as close to reading a textbook as anything I can remember since my college graduation. (Trueman is a Bible and theology professor at Grove City College.) Though it required deep reading that was often beyond me in the moment, I got the point. What feels crazy and sudden to us today--specifically, the cultural rule of the day to be whoever you want to be and identify as anything you'd like--has deep historical roots. Trueman got me all caught up on Rousseau, Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud, among many other philosophers I hadn't thought about since college, explaining how these thinkers from the 18th and 19th centuries drastically shaped our 21st-century cultural landscape. Though fascinating and educational, I don't recommend this one unless you're a serious enthusiast of history, philosophy, and culture. 

Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland (no, not that Tom Holland). This is my kind of book: detailed, well researched, well written, and on a topic that I care about immensely. But after starting it with vigor last January, I got stalled out in the Middle Ages around March, and I haven't touched it since. I include it here because I do intend to finish it. I might have to skim 300 pages and jump to the 20th century (which includes an intriguing chapter reference to a Beatles' song), but I would love to be able to cross this one off my list. Unless you are a serious reader with a passion for history, an uncanny ability to remember historical names, and a lot of time on your hands, I wouldn't recommend this one. 

A WASTE OF TIME

Deacon King Kong: A Novel by James McBride. James McBride, I loved The Color of Water with all my heart. And I wanted to love this novel of yours. Especially because I only read two novels this year, which is so disappointing. But though this book was on all the must-read lists of 2020, I did not like it. Granted, I wasn't the target audience. It's hard for me to wrap my brain around devoted Christians who cheat on their spouses, drink their lives away, and swear like sailors. It's a stretch for me to understand life in the projects in 1970's New York. The story is fairly interesting--on the first page, a drunk church deacon shoots the biggest drug dealer on the block, a kid he used to coach in baseball--and the writing is amusing at times, but with a slew of side stories and characters I lost track of, along with drug and mafia themes I didn't quite get, I had to work to finish this one. 

Untamed by Glennon Doyle. Though this was another New York Times bestseller, I couldn't stand it. Doyle is a great writer: insightful, transparent, hilarious. But she's also confused. Starting out as a Christian writer with a husband and three kids (she's still known today as a "Christian blogger"), she left her marriage in 2016 for a female sports celebrity. In Untamed, she tries to combine those two worlds with a lot of nonsense about being a cheetah. I read the book because I wanted to know what she did with God in the midst of her dramatic life change. I didn't need to read far to find out that she decided to craft Him in her own image. A third of the way in, I checked out. 

*Other favorites that I recommend:

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, a riveting 12-episode series produced by Christianity Today. I don't usually listen to podcasts, but I devoured this one. Even if you have a sketchy knowledge of Mars Hill and little interest in Mark Driscoll, this is a fascinating account of the American church over the past 25 years. 

And speaking of Christianity Today, I'm an annual subscriber and cover-to-cover monthly reader. It's hard to know who to trust in the murky waters we live in today, but I trust and learn from CT. The addition of Russell Moore, another of my favorites, to the CT staff has made it even better. 

Overshadowed

Overshadowed. It's not a positive word to most of us. It brings to mind someone who feels unseen, overlooked, and like they'll never measure up. The dictionary definition confirms that: "to cause someone or something to seem less important when compared to someone or something else." 

So I'm a little surprised to find myself meditating quite a bit on the word overshadow right now. Like many people, I'm doing advent reading right now, and twice in the past week this word from Luke 1:25 has come up. I don't remember really noticing it before. 

The context is Mary receiving word from the angel Gabriel that she would conceive a child who would be the Son of the Most High. The angel went on to say some other mind-boggling things to Mary, but she seemed to be stopped at the idea of conceiving a child. Whatever the extent of first-century Jewish sex education, young Mary knew enough to know that her being pregnant was impossible. 

And so despite being "greatly troubled" by the appearance and announcement of this angel, Mary bravely asked a completely reasonable question: "How will this be?"

This is where the "overshadow" thing comes in. The angel, showing no sign of frustration or impatience with her question, answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." 

The devotional I was reading made this good point: "It is important to note that Gabriel does not tell Mary that God will respond to her incomprehension by explaining things, or making her happy, or easing her experience of that to which she is called. Instead, in answer to her confusion, Gabriel tells Mary that God's power will overshadow her."*

How often do I ask, "How can this be?" God's call can seem so high and so hard, even when He's not asking me to be an unwed teenager carrying the Son of God. 

He wants me to love my neighbor as myself? (Does that mean I actually have to meet my neighbor?) Teach the Bible to a room full of squirly kids who are only there for snacks? Parent four very unique kids with very unique needs? Honor my husband? Deny myself? Consider my trials as joy? Trust Him and live with peace in a world that feels completely out of control? How, Lord? How can it be that I can carry out what you ask of me? 

Mary was asking about the impossibility of a virgin being pregnant, but surely her question also included, "How will I ever be able to do what you ask of me?" 

"The Most High will overshadow you" was Gabriel's answer to Mary. As I am not a Bible scholar, I will not attempt to analyze exactly what that means in theological terms. But it's pretty simple to understand what it means for me and you. My translation:

"What concerns me today, when compared to the greatness and power of the Most High God, is of little importance. While patient with my questions, He completely overshadows my concerns. The stuff of life that seems so consuming to me today pales in comparison to the awesome and eternal Lord God Almighty." 

Suddenly, overshadow has gone from a distasteful word to my new favorite prayer word. Luke 1:35 gives me words to pray in times of stress and confusion and doubt: "Overshadow me, Lord!" 

*Alea Peister, November 30 entry of Biola University's Center for Christ, Culture, and the Arts Advent Project, which I highly recommend. 

The Paradox of Launching Kids

We are recently back from another one of those trips. The kind where after months of online research, I enthusiastically trek across the country with one of my kids to look at a college that she will surely fall in love with. It's a productive, satisfying kind of trip, but it always ends in the most bittersweet place. 

I'm preparing another kid to move a thousand miles away from me. (To be accurate, my kid in Texas is only 787 miles away, but the one in Virginia is 1,568 from home, and the third, if she lands in Tennessee like I think she will, will be 1,316 miles away, so let's call it an average of a thousand.)

Nothing is more exciting to me than seeing my kids bravely step out in faith and start finding their own way in this world. It's what we, their parents, have been working toward since the day they were born. Come on, you can do it, learn to fall asleep on your own. Stand up on those two feet and move on your own. Learn to speak for yourself. Make your own choices. Pick your own friends. Manage your own schedule. Own your own faith. And when the time is right, choose your own path, even if takes you a thousand miles from home. 

But in this case, tremendous joy, relief, and thankfulness coexist with gut-wrenching sadness. 

After reading something my friend Megan wrote about her Empty Nest-obia (such a great term), I sat down and immediately cranked out a lengthy response. She hit a nerve. Much of what I write below comes from that response to Megan, along with a few new thoughts and, if you make it to the end, some questions for those of you who are further down the line on this one than I am.

I grew up wanting to be a famous journalist and nothing else. Marriage and children were not really part of my formula. All I wanted was a big career. 

Twenty-six years later, I've logged only two years of full-time employment, and that was at The Navigators, not a place where famous journalists are made. While I'm exceedingly thankful for the meaningful work I've been able to do over the years (and the countless babysitters who made that possible), I have found that instead of a successful career, the most soul-satisfying part of my life has been raising four kids. (And how in the world did I end up with four? For someone like me, four might as well be twenty. The only answer I have is that I liked the person I was becoming more and more each time I had another baby to haul around. Self-sacrifice was so, so good for me.)

I can't say I loved the baby stage of life. I more endured it but really began to hit my parenting stride right about the time they turned 4. With no vision for homeschooling and a great charter-school option, I was happy to let them go off to school and do their thing while I worked. But I kept my schedule free enough to attend all their events, volunteer in their classrooms, sit at home and play games with them on snow days, lead Bible studies for them and their friends, and do hours upon hours of AWANA with them. I couldn't imagine life being any better than that.

Then one day in about 2015, at the height of my bliss, I was standing in line at the post office and heard Pomp and Circumstance, which brought me to tears. Lots of them. In the post office. I spent the next three years dreading my oldest child's graduation. In 2018, when we dropped him off at college 1,568 miles from home, I cried for three days, including the day of my 23rd wedding anniversary. I wasn't crying just about him. I was more crying over my season of life, the sending-off season. I was crying over my youngest leaving home, and she was 11 at the time. I was crying at the thought of having to watch them leave one by one, knowing that they would take a piece of me with them every time and that I might not have anything left by the time the whole ordeal was over. 

Since then, God and I have done some deep work, and my perspective has shifted. My hands are less clenched, my focus is much less self-centered. I have vision and excitement for the good work He is doing in my kids. COVID helped. When my 2020 grad was actually able to go to college and wasn't stuck at home doing online homework in her bedroom, I was thrilled for her to go. 

Now I find myself with yet another senior (they just keep coming!), and my new focus will be seriously tested. This one, since she was 4, has been talking about living outside the U.S. She wants to love on little kids around the world and tell them about Jesus. Ugh. The nerve. 

Just kidding. 

There's nothing more I want for her than to follow God's will for her life, wherever that takes her. After all of her dreaming about being a missionary, I think I would be more sad if she spent her life living next door to me. But still. Seeing her once every couple of years? Ouch!

Next year we'll be down to just one. One who plays multiple sports, is in the school musical and student council, and finds many other ways to give us good practice at living with an empty nest. In God's providence, she is three years younger than her sister, so we'll get to keep her for what seems like an extra year. 

Even with nearly four years left, I  have to fight hard nearly every day to keep Empty Nest-obia from stealing my joy. It's the quiet house that terrifies me. I like quiet when I'm trying to read or write or work, but I also love the noise of a busy house. I also happen to be married to a very quiet person. What will it be like to live in this quiet house? What will we do on a Tuesday night if we're not eating pizza in the car on the way to a basketball game? What will we do with ourselves? Who will we be?

I have to surrender my phobia to God over and over and over again. My identity is not in being a mom to these four kids. We were raising adults all along. We want them out of our house, living their own lives. We did our job reasonably well, and we can let them go. God has new assignments and adventures for us in our next stage of life. These are my mantras. They are the truths that help me fight off my fear and dread for another day. 

If you've made it to the end of this and are a parent five, ten, or twenty years ahead of me, I'd love to hear from you. How did you transition to your empty nest life? How is it good? How is it hard? What advice do you have for those of us who are relutantly joining you? 

 

What Mere Mortals Can and Can't Do to Me

 It's an unfathomable dilemma for someone who's lived all 50 of her years in the United States, but I still try to imagine it. What would I do if I lived in a country facing imminent doom? Would I hunker down in my house, knowing that at any moment men could knock down my door and kill me? Or would I risk my life to try to make it to an airport and onto an unlikely last flight out, knowing that the airport could quite possibly serve as my final resting place in the likely event of another terrorist attack? I know myself. I never choose the scary, high-risk option. I would stay in my house and hide. 

As I've done so many times over the past two weeks, I was contemplating this scenario in my sleepless, pre-dawn hours today. Of course I was also wondering what I would make for dinner this week and how to help my 17-year-old boost her SAT score (legally), as well as a thousand other things, so I got out of bed and opened up J.I. Packer's Knowing God, which I've been reading this summer. The passage before me early this moring contained Scriptures like these:

"When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose words I praise; in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?" (Psalm 56:3-4)

"If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)

These are great, necessary verses. I know them by heart. I can quote them to people at just the right time. But would I really believe them if someone was pointing a gun at me?

Packer's words are helpful: "The translation 'who can be against us' is wrong and misses Paul's point: what he asks for is a realistic review of the opposition, human and demonic, not a romantic pretense that it does not exist. ... Such unrealism is no requirement of Christian discipleship, but is rather a mark of failure in it." 

OK, so I'm not supposed to say, "Enemy? What enemy? I deny that I even have an enemy!" The enemy standing before me is very real, whether it's ISIS or the Taliban or a mugger on my street or a virus in my community. We're not supposed to hide our heads in the sand and tell ourselves there's no threat because God would never let that happen. Sometimes, for reasons we usually don't understand, He does let those things happen.

So what do these verses tell me?

First, that God is "for" me. Packer tells me that this is the language of covenant relationship, the same kind of promise that God made to Abraham and that I have inherited as a follower of Christ: "What is being proclaimed here is God's undertaking to uphold and protect us when people and circumstances are threatening, to provide for us as long as our earthly pilgrimage lasts, and to lead us finally into the full enjoyment of himself. ... The simple statement 'God is for us' is in truth one of the richest and weightiest utterances that the Bible contains." 

So God is for me, and that's very good news. But what about the gun that's pointed at me? Or the grim medical diagnosis? Or my general aversion to anything that could hurt me?

Here Packer reminded me of a great truth. It's something I know deep down, but every day it gets muted by all the screaming evidence to the contrary. The most true, most real, most substantive part of my life is not my beating heart or my sentient mind. It's not my relationship with my family and friends or what I do for a living. It's not the experiences I've had in the past or the concerns I have for today or the hopes I have for the future. It's certainly not the schedule of events telling me what I need to get done today.

My real, true life is invisible. It's spiritual. It's eternal.

Mere mortals can kill me. They can stop my heart and put my body in a grave. So can viruses, cancer, brain aneurysms, poisonous snakes, mountain lions, crashing planes, and carbon monoxide. God doesn't promise that they won't. But nothing can kill my real life, "neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate [me] from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). 

If you are a follower of Jesus, nothing can take away your life. To live is Christ and to die is gain. I pray that will be the last thought of those in far-away countries who are martyred for their faith in Christ. I pray it will bring peace and courage to the Christian servicemen and women whose lives are at great risk as they help people evacuate today. And I pray it will keep the rest of us from being so afraid of the things that haunt us in the night.  

Burdens

Remember three weeks ago when all the country was talking about was whether Simone Biles was a wimp or a hero? Yeah, I know, COVID was in the news like it is every day, but Simone Biles was a really big deal. And now, as it so often does, the world has turned on a dime. We're watching dumbstruck as unbelievable events happen in Afghanistan. And Haiti. For a second, we could distract ourselves with the Olympics and debates over masks in schools, but the loud, ugly, horrible things in this world will not be ignored for long. 

My heart aches. My soul groans. "Enough!" I want to shout. "We can't carry any more burdens!"

Then, of course, I remember Jesus talking about burdens. You may know what He said, too, but it's worth writing out and reading again:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30). 

This morning as I was praying, I just had to ask: "Jesus, how can your burden possibly be light? I know only the tiniest fraction of what's going on in the world, and my load is so heavy that I'm about to collapse under it. You know it all. Every bit of it. And yet your yoke is easy and your burden is light?"

I'm not ever going to understand it. I just have to trust it and take Him up on His offer. He is so much greater, unfathomably greater, than I am that He can bear the heartbreaks of the entire world, across all generations, and still have plenty of capacity to bear mine. 

The God Who Is

"I just can't worship a God like that." 

It's the watchword of our day. (Watchword: a word or phrase expressing a person or group's core belief.)

Who is the group expressing this core belief? All of those who think they can go through the Diety Salad Bar and pick and choose their own god. The onions are not for me, but can I get more of those croutons? 

I'll take a heaping portion of the "love of God," but that "wrath of God" is not my thing. I just don't like it. A God who's judgmental, who tells me what I can and can't do? That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. A jealous God who says things like, "The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies" (Nahum 1:2-6)? No thanks. And who's Nahum anyway? I don't like him either. Why do I need to listen to him? (Nevermind that the phrase "wrath of God" appears dozens of times in both the Old and New Testaments.) No, I can't stomach the thought of a God who makes that big a deal about sin. Or who calls people "sinners" when God's supposed to be about love and acceptance. That's a God on the wrong side of history. I just can't worship a God like that. 

What we've become is a people who want to make God in our own image. 

It doesn't work that way. 

God is the Creator of the universe, the all-powerful, all-knowing Ruler of heaven and earth. His name is "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14), not "I am who you want me to be." 

We don't get to pick and choose who God is. We only get to choose how we will respond to the God Who Is. He's told us everything we need to know to make that decision. He has revealed who He is through the Scriptures and through the Son He sent to earth. It's up to us to learn who He says He is and then decide, "Will I follow Him or not?" That's the only "choosing" we get to do. 

I spend my days writing Bible studies, and I sometimes wish I could be God's PR agent. "Can we tone it down here a bit, God? Don't you think this sounds a little harsh?" "Couldn't we finesse this, you know, make you come across more loveable and less fierce?" "Let's find a way to make this a little more palatable; after all, we're trying to reach people, here." 

God doesn't need my attempts at good PR. God is who He is. His Word is His Word. He's not trying to win a popularity contest. He's about saving our souls. And so He tells us the truth, and that truth can be uncomfortable. 

True discipleship is getting to the point where we can say, "OK, God, I'm yours no matter what. I'm yours when the text is hard and I don't like it.  I'm yours when what you say roars against the cultural sentiments of my day. I'm yours when you call out my sin and tell me to stop. I choose your way over my own way."

This is surrender. This is what it means to call Jesus "Lord." 

I relate to Peter and the other disciples in John 6. Jesus was doing some amazing things, like feeding the 5,000. But He was also saying some pretty freaky things. Confusing stuff about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. This makes sense to us now as a preview of the Lord's Supper, but to the crowds listening to Him in real time, it just sounded weird. Many of the people who had been following Him said, "This is hard teaching. Who can accept it?" (John 6:60), and they walked away. Some of them probably walked away forever. 

Then Jesus asked the 12 disciples if they wanted to leave, too. Peter answered for the group: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God" (John 6:68). 

From the day I met Him 40 years ago, Jesus has captivated me. From the time I got serious about following Him 10 years after that, I've been all in. I believe He is the Son of God. I believe He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the only way I can be reconciled to God the Father. I believe that He lived a perfect life, was crucified for my sin, and through His resurrection has given me the hope of eternal life. He gets to tell me how to live, and I will do all I can to obey. 

But do I still struggle with the "hard teaching" in the Bible? Do I have a hard time wrapping my head around a God of love who's also a God of wrath? Yes. And yet like Peter I say, "Where else will I go? You alone, Lord, have the words of eternal life. I have come to believe." 

There is only one God. He is eternal and unchanging. He is who He is. Follow Him or don't, but don't ever think that you can cast Him in your own image.