Inscrutable Ways

Inscrutable Ways

You do so many many things that leave us wondering. We don't understand Your actions; they baffle us. And we hurt. But You are God: the infinite, glorious, almighty, good God. And of course we, with our finite and darkened minds, can't understand You. Forgive me for resenting and resisting Your inscrutable ways. You told us from the beginning that You are inscrutable and Your ways are beyond our ability to sort out. And You said from the outset that Your people live by faith and that faith is what allows us to draw near to You. Ah, Lord, I humble myself under Your mighty hand. "Lord, I am willing to receive what You give, to lack what You withhold, to relinquish what You take, to suffer what You inflict, to be what You desire." I don't need to understand, but I can, and by Your grace I will, trust. 

(This is #2 of several brief meditations on God's titles and character. Here's the first one, if you missed it and you're interested.)

Great Physician

The next several posts will be short meditations on one particular title (who He is) or character trait (how He is/what He's like) of God. In answer to a text requesting prayer, one of my friends sent back a list of names/attributes of God. Over the next several days, I used that text as a prompt to help me focus on facets of God's nature and to ground me in truth/reality. Sharing some of those short, personal meditations here.

Great Physician 

You are the Great Physician: the I Am who heals us (Ex.15, Ps.103, Hos.6). You know everything there is to know about our bodies, our brains, our emotions, our social aspect, our souls, and the complex interworkings of each of these parts that make us human beings. You made us, and You know us. You were there when we took that terrible Fall that broke us so badly, and You are perfectly aware of the exact impact that the brokenness, pain, sin, and darkness has for each one of us. You have diagnosed our condition with absolute accuracy, and You have prescribed a course of treatment that will sustain us through even the hardest of days and lead us to final healing. You have the cure. And You are the Cure. You are my attending Physician. You are overseeing every detail of my case; You know my entire history thoroughly. You are inherently trustworthy, and You have prescribed a regimen that takes everything into account and will take me in the right direction. Great Physician, thank You. I believe that You know what You are doing. I am confident in Your wisdom and ability. 

The Inscrutable Ways of God: Samson's story, Part 2

A couple of weeks ago, we took a look at themes that show up in the early part of Samson's story. Today's post continues Samson's story, mostly from Judges 14.

Everyday life under Philistine oppression proceeded for Israel and for Manoah’s family until Samson got to marriageable age...and promptly fell for a Philistine girl. No bueno. God had told His people that they weren’t supposed to marry foreigners, and Samson’s parents tried to encourage him to find an Israelite girl to marry, but Samson wasn’t interested. He told his dad, “Get her for me, because she is right in my eyes.”

If you’ve been reading Judges, hearing that phrase coming from Samson should pull you up short. I mean, as you read the book, there’s been this recurring theme of “there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Throughout Judges, God has been indicating that the main source of trouble in the land was the independent, law-ignoring, I-do-things-my-way spirit among God’s people that led them away from God and into all kinds of evil. And suddenly, the sentiment comes straight from the mouth of the young man that God has promised was going to begin to deliver Israel. It’s rather disillusioning to find out that the promised deliverer has actually embraced the lawless attitude of his culture. Keep reading, though. What comes next is fascinating.

 

“Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.’ His father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord, for He was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines.”  

What?

Blink twice.

And then keep on reading.

“Samson went down to Timnah...a young lion came toward him roaring….The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the lion in pieces….Then he went down and talked with the woman, and she was right in Samson’s eyes.”

Samson takes a trip to see the girl he’s interested in, gets attacked by a lion, experiences supernatural strengthening by the Spirit of God, kills the the lion with his bare hands, and continues on down to the girl’s town. And the text reiterates: “she was right in Samson’s eyes.” God is definitely making a point here.

What is He communicating to us?

I’m sure that this is not a comprehensive answer, but as I’ve meditated on this passage and others from the book of Judges (similar motifs/sin/failures show up in the lives of the other judges - the deliverers that God raised up for His people), here are some thoughts that have been an encouragement to me:

1. God gives an honest portrayal of the human reality that we are all affected by the culture and times that we live in. Every human being gets marked by the date/time stamp of his environment. We all bear some of the earmarks of our culture, and not even the godliest of us escapes being tainted by attitudes and thought patterns that, viewed from God’s perspective, are corrupt and rebellious.
   
2. God’s sovereign purposes continue unhindered. Samson’s disobedience to the law of God and his contamination by the spirit of his culture didn’t “ruin” God’s plan for Samson’s life. God actually worked His plan for His people out right in the middle of mess.
   
3. God uses flawed servants. God has only ever had one perfect Servant. His name was Jesus, and He was the one-of-a-kind Son of God who lived out complete obedience to the will of God. All of the rest of God’s servants are flawed, and God demonstrates His power, grace, glory, and humility by working in and through broken, sinful people.
   
4. God’s ways are inscrutable. Samson is traveling to a Philistine town to pursue something that God has forbidden. Instead of allowing him to be eaten by the lion, God the Spirit empowers him to kill the lion bare-handed (all the while knowing that, in a couple of weeks, Samson would also break part of his Nazirite vow by touching the lion’s dead body). (Also, God is very patient.)

What does this mean for us?

Well...do you find yourself frustrated by your own sin and failure? Have you discovered shards of your culture’s lies and rebellion against God imbedded deeply in your own thought patterns? Does the tension between God’s sovereignty and the existence of evil ever unsettle you? Do God’s perplexing actions and complex patterns of light and darkness wreak havoc on your sense of justice, logic, and the way things “should be”?

Child of God, life in a broken world is hard. Isn’t it? The Bible reminds us that things have always been this way. And for millennia, God has navigated His people through these troubled and troubling waters and given us Himself and His truth to help us chart a steady course. Draw encouragement from Samson’s turbulent life and the truth about God’s character and ways that shine so brightly in the middle of it all. This God is our God, and He will hold us fast.

The Mundane Ways of God: Samson's story, Part 1

Two of my friends and I have agreed to read Judges once a week for the next two months. I’ve been through the book about four times now and am seeing more of God and His ways in the lives of His people! Judges 13-16 gives the account of Samson, and I wanted to share some of the things that I’m noticing throughout the whole book as they show up in the life of this particular judge. The same Divine patterns show up in the lives of Gideon, Abimelech, and even Micah and the tribe of Benjamin (two startling and disturbing accounts recorded at the end of the book of Judges), but we'll watch them unfold in Samson's story, and then you can read Judges and see the themes unfold elsewhere for yourself!

The Ways of God in the Life of Samson (and Most of Human History)

Please take time to at least open up your Bible or Bible app and glance through Judges 13-16, so you get a feel for the text and can pick up on the textual references that I’ll be making.

The account of Samson begins like this: “And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord gave them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years.” Forty years. 40. Two generations were born and raised with this as their reality. Bondage to the Philistines was the status quo for forty years. Well, at some point during those years, one barren woman in the tribe of Dan gets a visit from the angel of the Lord. The angel tells her that she is going to have a son who will be dedicated to God and who will begin to rescue Israel from the Philistines. That’s a big deal: definitely a life-changing (and a nation-changing) event. And soon, just like the angel said, a son, Samson, was soon born to this woman and her (somewhat flaky?) husband Manoah.

But while it’s true that a visit from an angel may change your life in an instant, the reality is that everyday life still unfolds one day at a time, and even the most colorful of lives have their share of the mundane. That’s just how life on earth was designed to work. The eternal God has ordained that we live out our lives with a certain cadence: eating, sleeping, working, aging. Life is lived by minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Seasons come and go, and for the most part, there’s no way to speed up their arrival or their passing. We are bound by time. There is a natural course of life that God has set in place, and we cannot thwart it. God, however, is not time-bound, and therefore rarely acts on the schedule that we think He should. Some of our greatest struggles with God rise from this timing disjunction, and when we read Scripture, sometimes we miss the fact that the people in these historical accounts experienced many of the same time-tensions and much of the same mundaneness that we do. The text alludes to these things so briefly and matter of factly that we hardly register how refreshingly and comforting familiar it is.

What happened next in Manoah's family? “And the young man grew, and the Lord blessed him.” And just like that, the text captures the passage of years. A baby is promised and born. A baby that God has said will begin to rescue Israel from the oppressive Philistine regime. But...that baby has to grow up before it can do anything. And so Samson went through his toddler years and went to school and became a teenager. And for all intents and purposes, nothing was happening. The Philistines were still making life hard for Israel. We don’t hear about any other visits from angels or any other major revelations. Life just keeps happening. Diapers are changed. Meals are cooked. Gardens are tended. Clothes are outgrown. Loved ones die and are buried. Babies are born. Farmers plow. Smiths forge tools. Carpenters craft furniture. Weavers spin wool and make cloth. Shepherds tend sheep. Much of life feels insignificant. The moments that feel significant are few and far between. That’s the way it is. And we often find it easy to chafe at this perceived insignificance, to feel trapped in these endless time-warps. But Judges reminds us that the passage of time in mundane cadences (even under difficult circumstances) is part of the ways of God. He is unhurried. He is not reactive. He simply is. He is the God who works wonders (as Manoah and his wife noted), the God who makes lavish promises and who freely to fulfills His promised purposes in His time. He doesn’t withhold good gifts. He is purposeful, wise, and generous. He is not like us.

To us, the grind of life often feels hard, doesn’t it? It can be painful. But it’s OK that the ways of God sometimes fall hard on us, and we struggle to accept what He is doing. God knows this about us; He remembers that we are dust. And He has told us that righteous people live by faith. He wants us to trust Him.

Friend, hold onto the truth about who God is and His heart for His people in your time of waiting and mundaneness. We are all in the middle of His Story, and every story has dark times, weary stretches, hazards, and hurt. It’s OK to be struggling in the middle of your story. Because of Jesus, all will end well. Cling to hope.

We’ll look at the next section of Samson’s story in an upcoming post.

The Far Kingdom

Gusting winds roll the maple leaves, flashing their silver undersides. Sunlight and shadows play in the blue-skyed afternoon, and the birds chirp out their pleasure at the whole scene. 

I sit in the car, treasuring the few minutes of solitude, wishing to talk to God, yet quivering with that inside exhaustion that makes it difficult to do more than just stare. These days of battle blur together; they live heavily yet pass quickly, leaving the past hidden under a dust-cloud while a deep fog hangs over future. The war can be relentless; the days grueling. And sometimes, in the middle of it all, the outcome feels murky and uncertain. Except for one thing. 

There is one thing that not even the battle-haze can completely obscure: the Far Kingdom. It is visible even here in the raging present. There are promises. There is a river. There is a city of God. There is a King, and there is a Kingdom. And though everything else crumbles around us, we as believers have received a Kingdom that cannot be shaken (Heb. 12). The promises of God cannot fail. God cannot lie. So here in my car, in the middle of the battle, with all its noise, danger, and exhaustion, I will pause to look up for a glimpse of the King and the Kingdom. I will remember that I have been given two solid realities: today and the Final Day: a Now and a Forever. Everything that lies between these two realities must be taken in by faith. 

O God, give me courage to live today. Help me to look up, to see the Far Kingdom, to ride into battle with the joy of faith, to believe that every sword-stroke leaves its mark, that every wound works a weight of glory, and that nothing will be wasted. In Your love, grant me this grace as You have promised.

(I would be remiss and less than generous if I didn't share this jewel of a song with you: Far Kingdom. It has helped me for many weeks now. Click the link. Listen to it. And while you are at it, also listen to Shadows of the Dawn by the same artist, The Gray Havens.)

God Who Works Wonders

The account of Samson: such a fascinating, complex narrative. God is at work doing surprising things: using people that we would never use to get our work done, letting His purposes reach His people via the winding trails of their own sins and failings. And although He does judge those sins and expose those weaknesses, as we read the Biblical account, we find that His people are never at the mercy of their weaknesses. He is always quietly in control, accomplishing His work with daunting precision and giving grace in unexpected, generous ways. He rescues His people again and again in ways that we never saw coming.

Here are two notes on the first part of the life of Samson:

1) The first is a simple meditation on a name of God that appears in the narrative.

Following the second announcement of the angel of the LORD (Judg. 13), Manoah offers a sacrifice to “Yahweh who works wonders.”

Take that in. Turn it over in your heart and mind. Ask yourself: What is your impossible request right now? What situations sit on your heart like a 160 lb. weight? Where does the hurt cut so deep the healing seems beyond reach? Friend, He is the One who works wonders. He can do anything. Take this truth about Him: admire it, treasure it, feed on it. “Yahweh, the One who works wonders.”

2) The second note offers an example of the LORD working a wonder in Samson’s life.

Judges 15 – And Samson was very thirsty, and he called upon the LORD and said, “You have granted this great salvation by the hand of Your servant (he had just killed 1000 of Israel’s enemies), and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore the name of it was called En-hakkore (“the spring of the one who called”); it is at Lehi to this day.

Amazing, isn't it? Just like that – because one of his thirsty children cried to Him – “God split open the hollow place” and made a new stream that flowed for years to come. 

Reading this account reminded me of the passage in Isaiah where, hundreds of years later, God promises to provide water for His people in their time of need.

Isaiah 41 – When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.

No idle words, this promise. God has already shown His ability to do this on behalf of one of His own. So take heart, believer. God is the kind of God who intervenes in His children’s lives.

In pondering the Samson account in conjunction with the Isaiah passage, I found two things particularly encouraging:

* God did this miracle for Samson (a struggle-laden judge, at best: God's care is not dependent on our performance!).

* He did it in answer to Samson’s request (you don’t have because you don’t ask).

This God is our God. He is the One who works wonders. We are the ones who call out. In what ways do we sell God short? What things do we not even ask for because it’s not on our radar screen, because we don’t even think about the fact that if we asked, God might actually do something for us? He’s the kind of God who responds to the needs of His people.

So…ask.

Just ask.

Ask this God who works wonders.

When God is Impatient

Have you ever watched someone you love deeply suffer? Has your heart ever been shredded by the pain of those you care about? Have you reached that breaking point where you can’t take it anymore and you stop at nothing to bring relief to that person, no matter the cost to you (and then there are those agonizing times when there is absolutely nothing you can do to ease their suffering)? Did you know that’s how God feels about the suffering of His people? When you hurt, He hurts. It grieves Him to see you suffer. He feels that tortured, restless impatience that you’ve felt when your spouse or child or close friend was in pain (even if the pain/painful circumstance was partly their own fault). Take some time to think about this passage in Judges 10.

Judges is a dark book. A book where it seems that all God’s people do is forsake Him and all He does is bring judgment again and again. By the time you get to Judges 10, we are already several cycles into this idolatry-judgment-repentance-rescue paradigm. Once again, Israel has walked away from God and is worshipping idols. God uses the Philistines and Ammonites to “crush and oppress” the Israelites. They are “severely distressed,” and they recognize that their suffering has come because they “have forsaken our God.” They ask God for help, and He reminds them that they were the ones who discarded Him in favor of other gods. He tells them to go ask their new gods for help. The people respond to God by saying, “We have sinned; do whatever seems good to You. But please deliver us.”

Now think about it. This cycle has already happened multiple times. Israel has a track record: a track record that shows that as soon as they are not in distress, they abandon God again. Frankly, they are not really deserving of help/rescue. They have brought suffering on themselves. What is God’s response towards them at this point? The text says, “and He became impatient over the misery of Israel.” Another translation puts it, “His soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel.” Wow. God is moved by the pain of His people. He feels their hurt. It affects Him. Reader, God is easily moved to compassion by your misery. God sees what’s hurting you, and it sits heavily on Him too. His love moves Him to act on your behalf. He is not indifferent to your need for rescue and comfort.

This truth shows up in the prophets too. God will talk about “waiting a long time” to bring rescue to His people, “but now I will cry out…I will lay waste mountains…I will lead the blind…I will turn darkness to light…” He gets to this point where He will move heaven and earth to come to the aid of His people. The same way you do when you can’t stand the suffering of the people you care about. And the sweet thing is, although we are often helpless in the face of our loved ones’ pain, He never is. He is always able to act. So take heart. He sees and knows; He feels your grief with you, and He will act on your behalf.

Good Friday Poem

Good Friday

     George Herbert

O my chief Good,
How shall I measure out thy blood?
How shall I count what thee befell,
And each grief tell?

Shall I thy woes
Number according to thy foes?
Or, since one star show'd thy first breath,
Shall all thy death?

Or shall each leaf,
Which falls in Autumn, score a grief?
Or cannot leaves, but fruit be sign
Of the true vine?

Then let each hour
Of my whole life one grief devour:
That thy distress through all may run,
And be my sun.

Or rather let
My several sins their sorrows get;
That as each beast his cure doth know,
Each sin may so.

Since blood is fittest, Lord to write
Thy sorrows in, and bloody fight;
My heart hath store, write there, where in
One box doth lie both ink and sin:

That when sin spies so many foes,
Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes
All come to lodge there, sin may say,
'No room for me', and fly away.

Sin being gone, oh fill the place,
And keep possession with thy grace;
Lest sin take courage and return,
And all the writings blot or burn.