• More Stories,  Scholarship,  Scripture

    Your Redeemer Will Keep You—Part 3

    June 19, 2019

    This post is the third part of a presentation I had the opportunity to give on Ruth 1 at a women’s Bible study at my church. If you’d like to catch up, this link will take you to Part 1. The last post left Naomi destitute, but, despite her best efforts, not alone! After trying to send her daughters-in-law home before her journey back to Bethlehem, Ruth has pledged to remain with her. This post reflects on Ruth’s remarkable decision, and what it means for Naomi, and God’s covenant promises.

    This point of the story gives us is one reason, among many, to be grateful for the word of God. Here, we can see the stories of how God worked in the lives of those who came before us. We have a great cloud of witnesses who each bore the weight of sin and suffering, and yet ran with endurance.[1] Naomi could not see what was happening, as we often cannot.

    But looking back through the lens of scripture and history, we can see that God was at work in Naomi’s story, even when she couldn’t see it. He did not let Naomi go alone. Despite her best efforts to leave Ruth, she stayed by her side, remaining faithful to the covenant she had made with Naomi’s family. I can only imagine that Naomi was not ready for or expecting this from Ruth—after so many losses, the text seems to indicate that she had no expectation to have anything but loss and grief follow her. 

    Do we see what is happening here in verses 16–17? We are beginning to see God filling Naomi’s emptiness. God is bringing Naomi and Ruth out of exile. Naomi may not realize it, but this is a movement of grace in her life. Not only is he bringing Naomi home to a belly-filling harvest, he is deftly bringing about the fulfillment of the promises he gave to Abraham, through Naomi’s exile, suffering, and return. And this seems to be the author’s aim in chapter one—to show his audience that God’s love never fails. His covenant-keeping faithfulness is constant; it is our vision that is faulty. 

    We can see that God is working to fulfill his promises to Abraham for Naomi and even for us without even spoiling the story by telling what comes in the next few chapters—it’s all here in Chapter 1. All we have to do is watch Ruth. 

    The first hint that we should connect this story with God’s promise of a coming, is Ruth’s decision to stay with Naomi.

    There are at least three signals here in these verses:

    1. She is leaving her home.
    2. She is choosing a family—one that she did not have to choose, who could offer her nothing in return.
    3. She is pledging to stay with and love Naomi forever, to death.

    Who else might we know that does this? 

    Ruth’s actions were actions of emptying herself of every hope she could claim by returning to her family. She was foreshadowing for Naomi, and telling us, of a Redeemer whom she had not yet seen—one who would empty himself to make good all the promises of God to Abraham and his descendants. A redeemer who would bring his people from exile, and, as the heir to Abraham, rule for all eternity. 

    But Ruth probably didn’t realize that this is what she was doing. So what was she tryingto do here? What was she actually choosing? Naomi? I doubt it. Naomi had nothing to offer Ruth. Ruth had every reason to expect that it would be better for her to say a tearful goodbye to Naomi and go home. As a Moabite, she had no reason to expect a warm welcome from Naomi’s family and friends in Bethlehem. Moabites were descendants of Abraham’s relative Lot, in fact, they were the descendants of an incestuous encounter between Lot and his daughter-in-law. There was generations-deep bad blood between the Israelites and the Moabites—violence, persecution, idolatry. The law in Deuteronomy prohibited Moabites from worshipping with Israelites. Numbers 25 tells of violent deaths at the hands Moabites (and violent revenge), and plagues on the people in consequence for men marrying or having other sexual relationships with Moabite women. With this context, Ruth certainly could not expect protection, marriage, and children. So what could Ruth have been thinking? What could Ruth possibly gain by staying with Naomi? There was only one gain. YAHWEH. He was her only gain in choosing to remain with Naomi. “Your God will be my God,” she says. What does that say about Him? If, like Ruth, we were given the choice between God along with physical and economic insecurity, or physical safety, provision, and family without him, what would we choose? Oh, that we would have faith like Ruth’s. 

    So Ruth, forsaking everything, followed YAHWEH and remained with Naomi on the long journey back to the land of promise. She did not leave Naomi to suffer alone, but shared the burden of her friend’s suffering. Like the coming Christ, at great personal cost, she cared for her chosen family with tender affection and loyalty.

    Despite this, Naomi continued on in her despair, as if nothing profound or important had just happened. The pair resumed their journey to Bethlehem, the town full of prophetic potential. And when they arrived, in verses 19–22, we see that Naomi is, as I titled the next section, Kept by the Redeemer. 

    Are you getting tired of the despair yet? Me too. So keep reading! I’ll post the next section soon.

    [1]Heb 12:1

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  • Grief,  More Stories,  Stories and Songs,  Uncategorized

    Your Redeemer Will Keep You—Part 2

    June 17, 2019

    This post is the second part of a presentation I had the opportunity to give on Ruth 1 at a women’s Bible study at my church. If you’d like to catch up, this link will take you to Part 1. The last post left Naomi destitute and alone, after her husband and two sons had died in Moab, far away from her home, Bethlehem. Finally, after famine and loss, she has reached a breaking point. The section below covers Ruth 1:6–13, from Naomi’s breaking point to where we see the Redeemer break through.

    The Breaking Point (1:6–13)

    It’s surprising, actually, that her breaking point didn’t come sooner, considering her plight. Being a single woman, abandoned, in a way, through the death of her husband and sons, she decides to return to the land which seems to have been abandoned by the God who had promised much and, in Naomi’s mind, failed to follow through. Her womb was empty, and she had no hope of producing an heir who would be able to provide for her physical needs and be a sign of the continuing covenant with God.

    The narrator slows the story down here so that this point really soaks into the readers—we can just feel the tension rising in the story, can’t we? If you look at the passage, you can see that he pulls out a different literary tool in this section than he’s used to this point, and describes the whole conversation between Naomi and her daughters-in-law in detail.

    So perhaps this is her biggest problem—she has no heir. Her line will end with her death. In scripture, this problem was not unique to Naomi. Sarah, Abraham’s wife, an old woman like Naomi, laughed at the prophecy that she would become pregnant and have a son. In this section, Naomi is acting a lot like Sarah! It was true that her body was too old to bear another son, and it was true that her daughters-in-law would not be able to give her an heir even if she did have another son. And so, like Sarah, she took matters into her own hands. Unlike Sarah, however, her move was not to finagle a way to work things out. Instead, she simply gave up, assuming that God would not continue working when the odds were seemingly stacked against him. 

    She did what she probably believed to be the kindest and reasonable thing, under the circumstances. She sent her daughters-in-law, her only hopes for an heir, back to their Moabite families. 

    This is an incredibly bleak point of the story. Naomi is utterly hopeless; vulnerable at every point. She is a woman, alone in a foreign land, facing the options of staying there, or returning to a home that she has not seen in over ten years with the meagre hope of finding pity among her distant family in a place rife with violence, perhaps especially against women. To be a woman, alone or even a group of women, would have been fraught with risk, and terribly frightening. So here is Naomi, drowning in sorrow and bitterness, empty of hope that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who brought them out of slavery through the parted waters of the Red Sea into the Promised Land, might yet have good things—the fulfillment of promises—waiting for her. 

    Can you see yourself here? There are so many circumstances that might lead us to this point. 

    What do you feel when you read that one third of the homeless population in Minneapolis are children? What happens when see or experience abuse? We lose loved ones to death. We fail at our jobs and people look down at us. Spouses leave us, and children reject us and everything we have tried to teach them to love. Sometimes even things as simple as reading the headlines in our newsfeeds or momentary rejection from someone we respect can cause us to despair. Can any of us read about the abuse in some of the Sovereign Grace, Southern Baptist, or Catholic churches and not feel a little twinge of despair? Can we read about the murder of babies in the womb, or terrorist groups, or the persecuted church, or injustice in our streets without wondering what God could possibly have in mind?  Do these cause you to spiral into despair and doubt? 

    Naomi felt not only grief, but physical deprivation, and hunger. She felt displacement and loneliness. She felt grief and loss, and the disappointment of shattered hopes and dreams. Has your faith ever faltered or failed in the face of your own suffering?

    Mine has. I remember several times in my life where I could, at least in some ways, relate to Naomi. I remember the last week of March during my freshman year of college, when I spent the week jumping at every phone call, waiting to hear who had died. I lost five peers in four years of high school, two of my classmates just two months before graduation, and all but one in the last week of March. I was jumpy the next March, scared to believe that another loss wasn’t just around the corner. I would imagine Naomi felt like this too. I also remember a few years ago, after my second miscarriage (the first of which occurred in the last week of March), I felt utterly betrayed by my body and even by God. I remember opening my Bible and just looking at it—letting my eyes skim the pages. I don’t say read, because I wasn’t really reading—I was just looking, devoid of feeling or understanding. To use Naomi’s word, I felt utterly, completely “empty”—when I read, when I prayed… My vision of the good things in my life was crowded out by hurt, and loss, and grief. I knew I was blind, and hoped my vision would return, but despite my desire for hope and joy, I was just simply…numb, empty. Can you relate?

    Maybe, when I felt like that I should have spent more time reading Ruth. Because it is here, in verses 16–17, the climax of the chapter, God shows Naomi his faithfulness in the deepest, darkest of places. We, looking back, can see God working where Naomi saw only doom and gloom. One of her daughters-in-laws, Ruth, refuses to go home.

    Instead, she pledges to remain with her, live with her, worship with her, and die with her. In Ruth 1:16–17, we see the part of the story I’ve titled The Redeemer Breaks Through. Ruth’s words here are beautiful, and often quoted. She gives Naomi a strong declaration of love and intent. She says in 1:16–17: “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

    Right under Naomi’s nose, before her bitter, sorrowful eyes, Ruth was demonstrating the faithfulness and love of God to Naomi. She had not been abandoned, she was not alone. Like a ray of light through a cloud, like a laser beam sent to break up the crusty cataracts on her doubt-clouded eyes, God had provided Ruth to show Naomi his steadfast love for her and his faithful, covenant-keeping intentions. 

    But Naomi doesn’t see clearly just yet. Despite Ruth’s act of immense self-sacrifice and deep love, Naomi remains focused on the bitterness of her circumstances, and, the narrator tells us that she simply “said no more.” She remains chained to her grief and bitterness at the God she believed failed her in every way.

    This, however, is simply not true. The next section, as we will see, will show us how God was continuing to work through Ruth in Naomi’s story, and the story of Israel, and even our stories. We will see the foreshadowing of the coming Messiah.

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  • Miscellany,  My Story

    Oh! And this happened.

    June 14, 2019

    I graduated!

    Well, I actually finished my MA in Catholic Studies in December, and I didn’t actually walk in commencement. But I did show up for the reception to take pictures with my friends in our caps and gowns.

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  • Scripture

    Your Redeemer Will Keep You—Part 1

    June 13, 2019

    After presenting the following at a Bible study last week, I’ve had several requests to make it available. For that reason, and because it does reach into the realm of loss and death, I’ve decided to post it here. Please read with its original audience (a women’s Bible study at a Baptist church) in mind.

    The book of Ruth is named after a woman who played an important role in the history of redemption, and bringing about the Redeemer. 

    But the first chapter of the book spends most of its time telling us about her mother-in-law, Naomi. This chapter provides the foundation for the rest of the book so that we can see God’s provision—not just for Naomi, but for his chosen people, as the promises that he made to Abraham in Genesis 15 slowly come into fulfillment. 

    I’ve titled my lesson for Chapter 1 “Your Redeemer Will Keep You,” because in this chapter we are given a peek behind the curtains so that we can see God caring for Naomi in the midst of, and despite, her failures and disappointments.

    All of this fulfillment could appear unlikely, though, at the end of Chapter 1. By the time we reach the end of the chapter, Naomi has given herself a new name. She no longer wants to be called by Naomi, the name that means “pleasant,” but by the name “Mara,” which means “bitter.” If we’re reading the Old Testament from start to finish, we might notice that this is not the first time that someone has undergone a name change. One notable re-naming happened in Genesis 17. There God renames Abram “Abraham” and his wife Sarai, “Sarah”[1]when he renews the covenant with Abraham, promising him a great nation to be birthed through his offspring. From this point on, we don’t read of Abram and Sarai, but of Abraham and Sarah.

    In contrast, it is not God who renames Naomi, but rather she re-names herself. The reason, it seems, is that rather than fulfilling his covenant through her, she says in verse 21, “The LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me.”[2]She is so convinced that her suffering is a sign that God did not care for her, that it was an exclusion from the covenant promises, that she takes a new name.

    So—what had happened to Naomi between Verse 1 and Verse 20 that could so traumatize her that she felt like she needed to change her name? Let’s circle back to the beginning of the chapter and work our way through from start to finish to see how Naomi came to change her name at the end of the chapter. I’ve broken the chapter into four sections that you can trace along with me.

    1. Naomi’s Emptiness, 1:1–5
    2. Naomi’s Breaking Point, 1:6–13
    3. The Redeemer Breaks Through, 1:14–18.
    4. Naomi Is Kept by Her Redeemer Ruth 1:19–22. 

    I promise, though, that we will not spend the whole morning talking about Naomi’s hard times. We will also see two ways that God is hinting at how he will fulfill his promise of a Redeemer, for both Naomi specifically, and Israel as a nation, and even us.

    Naomi’s Emptiness (1:1–5)

    We can see pretty clearly what happened to Naomi in the first five verses of Chapter 1, where the author provides the setting for the story. In these verses, the narrator spells out three reasons Naomi might have reached the point of despair that would cause her to want to give herself the name Mara. Here are the three that I think the text indicates, and these are all part of the first section, which I’m calling “Naomi’s Emptiness”: (Sidenote: Watch these themes throughout the book, and see how God works in all three of these areas)

    1. An Empty Belly, or Exile
    2. An Empty Throne
    3. An Empty Womb

    We only have to look as far as the first verse to find the first two: Ruth 1:1

    “In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.” 

    Naomi’s first, and broadest challenge is indicated in the very first clause of the very first sentence of Ruth, where we are told that Naomi and her family lived in the time of the judges. This means there was an empty throne. This was the time in Jewish history that came after the Egyptian slavery and Exodus, and the conquest, and most importantly for our story, during the years before Israel had a king. The last verse of the book of Judges, Judges 22:25, which comes right before Ruth in our Old Testament, describes this period concisely, and hints at why this was a problem and trial for Naomi: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” 

    Instead of the eternal kingdom promised to Abraham, chaos, war, and disobedience ruled the land that was meant to be Jacob’s birthright. The book of Judges is full of stories of violence and ungodliness even among the judges who were often used by God to pursue justice in and for Israel among the surrounding nations. If you read Jason DeRouchie’s “Invitation to Ruth” in the study guide, you can see just how hard the times were, especially for women—fathers allowing their daughters to be harmed, husbands, judges, even, causing the violent death of their wives, women raped, murdered, and story after story of sinful violence. This was a time when Israel, and therefore Elimilech and Naomi, were experiencing the curse God had promised if they disobeyed the law he had given them.

    God’s covenant with Abraham had not yet been fulfilled. God had promised that Abraham’s descendants would be blessed themselves, and that they would be a blessing to those around them. But clearly, the land and its people were not blessed themselves, and they likewise were not being a blessing to the nations around them. There was no king in Israel who could lead the nation in worshipping God, pursuing justice, and blessing the nations. Soon after Ruth’s time, possibly even during her life, the people’s suffering was so great they were begging God for a king— a ruler to fill an empty throne.

    Another reason Naomi might have had to doubt the faithfulness and love of God came in the form of a famine in her hometown. She and her family had empty bellies.

    Bethlehem—the town literally named for bread and food, located in what my ESV study notes call a “fertile region”—did not have enough food! Thus, Naomi and her husband Elimilech were not able to provide for their sons. She and her family experienced hunger. Her family’s hunger led them to leave the land that had been promised to Abraham generations before, and go to a land where YAHWEH was not worshipped. What a disappointment! Elimilech and Naomi were exiled through famine from the land that had been promised to them. How could they take part in the promises of God, if they were moved away from the land that was so intricately tied to God’s covenant with Abraham?

    Naomi’s third problem was an empty womb.

    The narrator describes Naomi’s family and origin not once, but twice. They were from the tribe of Judah, from Bethlehem. In repeating himself in verses 1 and 2, he makes clear that Naomi’s family line was very important to the story of redemption that had been promised. The Messiah was to come from the line of Judah, and, specifically, from Bethlehem. Naomi had reason to hope, then, that her sons, from the fullness of her womb, would be involved in the fulfillment of covenant and prophesy.  

    But verses 3–5 shows the destruction of that hope. First, Naomi’s husband died. Sad as that may have been, Naomi was still able to hope in her sons’ future. But in a devastating blow, both of her sons died childless after marrying Moabite women. Naomi was left alone. She had neither an heir, nor a provider. As a woman in ancient near east society she was utterly destitute without male family members. In the darkness of this grief, the promises of God must have felt incredibly far-fetched, and the likeliness of God’s provision for her and his faithfulness to fulfill his covenant must have seemed so far away. Her grief must have been, understandably, deep, and dark. 

    These losses seem to have been a breaking point for Naomi, and we can see this clearly exhibited in the next section, verses 6–13. I’ll post this section, which I called “Naomi’s Breaking Point” soon. Watch for it, and feel free to subscribe so you can be notified when it’s up.

    [1]Gen 17:5

    [2]Ru 1:21

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  • Miscellany,  My Story

    An Early Summer Update

    June 11, 2019

    I’m still here.

    It’s been awhile, and I’m eager to write. 

    Since I last wrote, we’ve taken our first family road trip to Denver. Both of the kids did well, and we will do it again. Days after we returned, we took a semi-unexpected trip to Washington (the state) for my grandmother’s funeral. I’ve also been attending a summer Bible study, and taught Ruth 1 for the group last week. It was a blessing to spend time in Scripture preparing, and to feel like I was using my gifts in a new way. 

    I was able to share some of my story in the lesson, and since it has been the most substantive thing I’ve written lately (or thought about, to be honest), I’ll be sharing it in pieces here on Unhurried Chase. 

    I’ve also been spending time with my husband, finishing the basement of our new house. We’re at the stage where everything crucial is “finished,” and we’re mostly just left with a mess and a lot of annoying things to finish, like breaking down boxes, filling nail holes, staining bookshelves, and touching up paint.

    It’s been lovely to have warm weather—the raspberries are bursting through their fences with green leaves and little nubs of growing berries. My garden is… surviving, mostly. I tried to grow wildflowers in the front, and something sure is growing! Unfortunately I have no idea if they’re weeds or flowers. And the stinging nettles survived the weed killer.

    My daughter is developing a passion for toad farming in her kiddie pool. Her record for toads caught in a day is three. Her best name so far, was Petunia Timber(something) Toadyroad, or Mrs. Toadyroad. We now enforce a strict no-kissing rule after I saw her bid a toad a passionate farewell a few days ago.

    My son is regularly wearing out the seat of his pants (he doesn’t crawl, he scoots), and winding up with grass in his diaper. He is all boy, and has a special joyful sound he save just for balls—even if they’re actually just light fixtures or the big red concrete balls outside of Target.

    So, while I’ve missed blogging, life has been full of things that make me so grateful for the place God has me right now. 

    I hope to be back soon!

    Jamie

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  • Book Reviews,  Books,  Death and Dying

    Book Review: The Art of Dying

    April 30, 2019

    Anyone reading this review probably knows what this blog is about: death, dying, and the Christian. So it will be no surprise to you that my favorite book of the year so far is a book about just that. The Art of Dying: Living Fully Into the Life to Come by Rob Moll is a book that I’ve been telling people I wish I had written. I found myself either nodding in agreement with the author on topics I’ve already come to conclusions on, or totally engrossed as I learned new information. It’s a book I fully intend to buy and give away. I think everyone should read it. 

    Now, if that glowing recommendation alone doesn’t convince you to read it, I guess I will have to endeavor to entice you with a little more information.

    Rob Moll is a journalist, formerly editor-at-large at Christianity Today. Inspired, at least in part, by the story of Terry Schiavo, he wrote The Art of Dying because of an awareness that Christians, surprisingly, did not seem to have an appropriate response to questions of life and death. More particularly, they did not appear to have a set of ethics or principles, informed by their faith, that could adequately inform their decisions regarding death—their own or a loved one’s. His argument is that Christians, like the rest of our Western culture, wrongly avoid all thought of death. “Death is indeed evil.” He says, “Yet there is no evil so great that God cannot bring joy and goodness from it. That is why death deserves our attention in life. Because we want to avoid it, to turn our face away, it is good to look death in the eye and constantly remind ourselves that our hope is in God, who defeated death.” His goal, it seems, is to offer a deeply Christian understanding of death as both encouragement and corrective. I think he succeeds.

    The first few chapters of the book articulate our current problem of avoiding death in our daily lives, as well as the medicalization of death—a sort of “how we got here” look at our current state. He then explains what has been lost in our Christian traditions surrounding death by giving a brief and broad history of Christian death up through the end of the 19thcentury. Leading his readers gently toward the boots-on-the-ground questions about death and dying, he includes a chapter entitled “The Spirituality of Death,” making a convincing argument for why death is a monumental occasion in the life of a believer, requiring preparation. Moll then takes his reader through the dying process from start to finish, answering practical questions interspersed with interviews and personal stories related to preparing for your own or your parents’ death, caring for dying people, questions of funeral practices and traditions. He ends the book with chapters on grief, the resurrection, and what understanding death means for life. 

    Every chapter of this book has the potential to be life-changing for someone. There were several things, though, that come to mind from this book without even having to skim the pages. I’ll try to share them, briefly, with you here. 

    • The first was the effect of death on a community. Moll shares that as we lost the traditions of mourning, grief has become more and more isolating. By marking houses and clothes with signs of mourning, the community helped bear the weight of grief. Describing C.S. Lewis’ experience of isolation described in A Grief Observed, Moll says “As if the burdens of the griever weren’t enough, society gave Lewis another responsibility—the cruel job of forcing a man in mourning to help those around him feel better about their awkwardness in his presence” (129). This resonates with me, and makes me wonder what sort of steps I can take to ease this load off of the grieving around me. Along with this, I was so glad to read Moll’s exhortation to not use the hope of resurrection as a bludgeon to those in the midst of grief: “those in mourning and their comforters may make grieving more difficult when our Christian hope is used to discourage public mourning” (131).
    • Secondly, I noticed lack of training in seminaries and the overall neglect of the elderly in churches. I know my church tries to care for the widows and the elderly, and as far as I know they do okay at it. I also know that it’s one of the quietest ministries in the church. Along with caring for the elderly better in life, I wonder if we should somehow try to bring the “business” of death back to our churches—can we recruit any seminarians to become funeral directors, or church-based morticians?   
    • Third, I was struck by his accounts of supernatural experiences as the hour of death approaches. I was convinced that we have over-medicalized death before reading The Art of Dying, mostly for practical reasons. But reading his numerous accounts of people being guided from this life to the next by spiritual beings has made me even more convinced. Moll says of previous periods of Christian history that “No one assumed that the difficult physical work of dying would leave a person spiritually unable to participate” (62). It seems clear to me that, whenever possible, we should not rob people of the spiritual experience of dying. Moll argues that this is not just for their benefit, but for ours: “Even Alzheimer’s can’t touch the life of the spirit. When a dying person gives physical evidence that his or her spirit is entering a new life, it can be spiritually encouraging to onlookers and emotionally comforting to those who will grieve the loss of the person. And as we support the dying spiritually, we help them to die well” (72).

    Aside from loving the content, I loved the structure of Moll’s book. It seemed very well suited to convince the reader that there is a problem, provide its context, and then offer a solution—or at least a launching point for better thought and practice. And I know I’m maybe hyper-aware, but I see such a great need for resources like this that I’m very grateful to have read it. I think you will be too.

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  • Cemeteries,  Death and Dying,  Miscellany

    An Unlikely Spot

    April 27, 2019

    One of my favorite things to do on sunny days is to wander around in old cemeteries. It’s not because I’m morbidly fascinated with death. No. I love them because they’re beautiful, full of history, and beneficial to my soul and spiritual life. Usually they’re well-cared for, orderly, green, and the monuments and headstones are beautiful. And more than that, they’re peaceful. Cemeteries are not parks. They’re quiet, solitary. What a beautiful place to walk, or settle on a bench or under a willow to think or pray.

    Cemeteries make me feel remarkably human. After all, they’re full of untold stories. They’re a reminder that people’s lives are full of joy and loss. I always imagine the funerals of the people interred—the stories their family and friends could tell about them. The sorts of stories my family tells when we reminisce about our past. The funny mishaps we got into or the jokes we played. There are whole lives buried in cemeteries; whole histories, represented by one headstone. The untold stories in cemeteries are various: the mannerisms and daily way of the deceased have been lost, but also the stories that were family legends, told and retold to endless delight. Stories of average people that were passed down to maybe the next generation or the next, but lost to the generations to come. You can just feel the line of generation after generation stretching back behind you, adding the perspective of history to your own struggles—maybe your problems aren’t as big of a deal as you thought. In fact, cemeteries remind me that maybe I’mnot as big of a deal as I thought. I’m humbled in cemeteries. They remind me that my story is just a small part of a much bigger story.

    In cemeteries, it’s okay to be weak. It’s okay to think of failure, longing, and mortality. It’s a good place to remember the dead, and mourn. And it’s a good chance to think of resurrection. Scripture talks of death as sleep, a waiting for resurrection. The dead in Christ are simply waiting. When we walk through cemeteries we can imagine what it will be like to greet the faithful believers who came before us or loved ones lost in our lifetime as brothers and sisters in Christ, in our new, resurrected bodies. Won’t that be a wonderful day? In cemeteries, we’re among family. And we can long with them for the day when Christ returns. I don’t know where their souls are, or what their experience is, but I know that they are waiting, like me, for the return of Christ. And in that waiting there is a sort of camaraderie and connection. We can groan in longing, with all of creation, including the dead in Christ, to be with Christ in the resurrection.

    Maybe it’s silly, but I also love to be happy in cemeteries. I think that when I am dead, I would want people to be happy around my grave. I think I want my grandchildren, my great-great-great-grandchildren, and those of strangers, to play hide-and-seek behind my headstone. And maybe it’s presumptuous, but I would assume others felt the same way. Why must the dead be alone? Bringing children to cemeteries, letting them play around the headstones, doesn’t feel disrespectful or improper to me. It’s a way of honoring the dead by not forgetting them, but bringing them into our daily lives. We remember that they are not simply corpses, but they were men and women, humans made in the image of God, with eternal souls.

    And, for my children, it’s a way of including the dead in their own lives. My hope for them, and this is probably worth another blog post, is that they will learn at an early age that life is a gift, and that it is short. I also want them to understand that souls are eternal, and that, as I said earlier, the body of Christ is made of saints both living and dead—we have a whole family from ages past that we will see and know in heaven after Christ’s return. The truths we believe as Christians are not just something we believe today, but they are old truths, things that have always been true, and always will be true. 

    So, the next time you need to, as Pooh says, “think, think, think,” try your local cemetery. And let me know how it goes.

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  • Books,  Death and Dying

    Lots and Lots of Books

    April 24, 2019

    Curious what books I’m reading?

    For those of you who are interested or want to read along with me, I’ve added my reading list under the “Resource” tab on the home page.

    Or, you can just follow this link.

    I’d love more suggestions! Let me know if you can think of books (or other media) I should add.

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  • Scripture

    Man of Sorrows, Man of Dust

    April 18, 2019

    We’ve had a lot of time to think about dust and ash this week, haven’t we? The great loss at Notre Dame de Paris, the hours of televised burning and a centuries-old building turning to ash, is a good reason to think about dust and ashes. And then here we are in Holy Week. This is the week where we Christians remember the death of our embodied God, and celebrate his wondrous resurrection.

    Holy Week provides us with the perfect opportunity to examine and meditate on just what it means for us to be made of dust. Not in a biological and physical way, but what it should mean to us in a spiritual, emotional way. It’s a chance for us to understand what it means for our daily life.

    Jesus was, after all, man. Jesus, the everlasting Word, who separated light from dark, land from sea, and created every sentient and non-sentient thing, become flesh. He became dust. 

    And this is what we remember on Good Friday. We remember Philippians 2: 

    “…though [Christ] was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”


    In this, Christ is an example for every human who ever has or ever will walk the face of the planet. He emptied himself of his divine form (note: I do not mean that he emptied himself of his divinity, but merely the form) and took the form of a man of dust. And as a man of dust, what was his posture? He was humble. He was obedient. He was the supreme example of how dust-made man should relate to God.

    Jesus stands in contrast to the Israelites when they worshipped the dusty work of their own dusty hands, to the citizens of Babel when they sought to a name for themselves and chose to protect themselves with dust-made bricks of dust instead of trusting God, and to Pharaoh, when he stood in rebellion to God, sought equality with God, and refused to bend his knee to his power. Jesus was not defiant in his human frailty, but humbly trusted himself to the will of his Father (Luke 22:42). Abraham, Job, and Hannah show us how this sort of humility looks in the lives of humans who were made in God’s image but had no divine form to give up. They did not strive for positioning with God, or defy him, but were comforted by him in their dusty humanity, recognizing that their frailty was paired with the possibility of near relationship with their creator. They relied on him, not themselves, and humbled themselves to his power over life and death. And, though they were not brought into the glory that only belongs to Christ, they were met by God and drawn into near relationship with him. Their responses to being made of dust then, were appropriate, and they mirrored Christ’s.

    So let’s linger with this thought for the last few days of Holy Week. Let’s remember Christ’s humility in taking the form of a man of dust. Can you believe it? That he would not only take on the form of a servant, but take his obedience even to the point that he would die, like every other man? And let’s mourn that it was our sin that made it necessary for him to humble himself to this point. He did not deserve to be degraded to the point of becoming a man of dust, taking it on so completely that he would die. Man of Sorrows, indeed. 

    He became dust. Willingly. Intentionally. Lovingly.

    But Hallelujah, what a Savior! It wasn’t the end of his story.

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  • Books,  Death and Dying

    Powerlessness and Freedom

    April 6, 2019

    One of the worst feelings I remember associated with miscarriage is the feeling of powerlessness. There’s no way around the horror of miscarriage, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You are stuck with only one outcome. No creative thinking, no dedication to finding a different solution, no hard work or pleading for an exception will change the fact that your baby has died and your body can’t (and shouldn’t) hang on to the pregnancy.

    This feeling of powerlessness is probably familiar to anyone who has lost someone. I’m not qualified to say for sure, but if I had to guess that’s where the “Anger” stage of grief comes from. We face the inevitability of death, and realizing that we’re powerless to stop it triggers anger. It’s scary to face a threat you cannot match.

    Henri Nouwen talks about this feeling in A Letter of Consolation. He speaks of how even if you think you’re confronting death by planning for it, etc., there’s still something that throws you off-balance when you lose someone you love dearly. “Whatever we felt, said, or thought about death in the past was always within the reach of our own emotional or intellectual capacities. In a certain sense, it remained within the range of our own influence, or control. …But mother’s death was totally outside the field of our control or influence. It left us powerless. When we saw how slowly she lost contact with us and fell away from us, we could do nothing but stand beside her bed and watch death exercise its ruthless power. This experience is not an experience for which we can really prepare ourselves. It is so new and so overpowering that all of our previous speculations and reflections seem trivial and superficial in the presence of the awesome reality of death” (40).

    And here, in this discussion of powerlessness, he delves into one of my favorite topics—”befriending death.”

    He says that this powerlessness leads us to ask new questions about death, “open[ing] to us levels of life that could not have been reached before, even if we had had the desire to reach them” (40). This powerlessness makes us look back, reflect on our memories and realize how short time was. The coming and going of events was always moving forward toward this moment of death. I love this part: 

    “I think that from the point of view of mother’s death and our own mortality, we can now see our lives as a long process of mortification…It sounds unpleasant and harsh, and moralistic. But mortification—literally, “making death”—is what life is all about, a slow discovery of the mortality of it all that is created so that we can appreciate its beauty without clinging to it as if it were a lasting possession. Our lives can indeed be seen as a process of becoming familiar with death… I do not mean this in a morbid way. On the contrary, when we see life constantly relativized by death, we can enjoy it for what it is: a free gift” (42).

    Is this not true? Life is beautiful! And how do we know this? By seeing the horror of death. We ought to avoid death for its horror, but befriend it for stripping away any doubts of what is good.

    Nouwen speaks of reminiscing after his mother’s death—encouraging his father to look through old photos, of their early years, the years of vacations, raising Henri, and seeing him leave the next. “All these times have passed by like friendly visitors,” he says, “leaving you with dear memories but also with the sad recognition of the shortness of life. In every arrival there is a leave-taking; in every reunion there is a separation; in each one’s growing up there is a growing old; in every smile there is a tear; and in every success there is a loss. All living is dying and all celebration is mortification too” (43).

    This brings us back to powerlessness. Realizing that all of life is mortification doesn’t feel good. All of the autonomy we might have thought we had goes right down the drain. Nouwen posits that this moment brings us to “the great paradox in life.” The choice is to give up autonomy, to be controlled by grief and loss and stop living in the future but continue on in the past. A more “human” move of even greater autonomy, is to “be so in control that we can surrender ourselves” (49). To what? To “an unknown future” (51).   

    This, he says, is taking the “option to understand our experience of powerlessness as an experience of being guided, even when we do not know exactly where” (51). Nouwen uses the apostle Peter as an example, to whom Jesus said first “feed my sheep” three times, and then reminded him that age brings autonomy, and then dependence. “..a growing surrender to the unknown is a sign of spiritual maturity,” Nouwen says, and this “does not take away autonomy” (52).

    It’s unbelievable, really, when you think of it—death as a means of new life. We see it on the grandest scale in the story of Christ’s death and resurrection buying new, eternal, life for his people. But Nouwen brings us down to a little, physical, perhaps earth-bound parable of Christ’s death, reminding us that the apostles could not fulfill their vocation until after Christ’s death. 

    And in that way, this redeems the feeling of powerlessness when you lose someone. Powerlessness does not have to be a terminal destination, but a launching point. It can be an invitation to freely give up your attachment to transient things, and move just as freely into new spaces, to invest in people in a new, more abandoned way. When we are not bothered by pretending or hoping to be immortal, we are free to experience and pursue new depths of life that we may never have thought possible. 

    We also gain freedom by resting in the one who is not powerless in the face of death! I’m reminded of Augustine’s City of God. In the very center of this massive work Augustine zeroes in on the power of Christ in his incarnation and resurrection (I’ll have to find the reference later—my copy is in the room with a napping baby). There are other immortal beings (angels, demons), but none are a suitable mediator for man because they either do not want to help (demons), or are unable because they have nothing in common with us (angels) by which to mediate. Jesus alone, the immortal and blessed one, had the incomprehensible power to both take on mortality andbreak the power of death.

    If we rest in that power, we have no need to cling to our own. We can walk willingly toward our own demise, and that of those we love, without anxiety or regret, loving life all the more for knowing the one who, by his own power, won victory over death.

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