An Observation on Moses

(If you want to really follow along here, read Exodus, chapters 2-4)

I've just started reading in Exodus, and I've noticed something about Moses that I've never noticed before. Perhaps you'll find it interesting.

Moses comes to us as a man of action. The first time we see him (after he's grown up, that is), he catches an Egyptian slave-driver abusing a fellow Hebrew, and murders him. He doesn't ignore it and keep passing, or even stand by and watch--he gets involved. A little later, he comes upon two Hebrews fighting, and demands of the one in the wrong why he is striking his brother. Once again, he is not passive--he gets involved. After he flees to Midian, he finds the priest's daughters in trouble; they need to water their flocks, but the local shepherds are trying to drive them away. Once again, Moses puts his neck out--he saves the girls from the shepherds, and waters their flocks for them.

So that's three instances, in pretty rapid succession, that kind of show us the sort of man that Moses is. He's not the kind of guy to just sit back and watch things happen; he's bold, and he stands up for what he believes is right.

But a strange thing happens when God begins to speak to him from the burning bush. Suddenly all the fight seems to have gone out of him. God tells Moses to stand up to Pharaoh for the people of Israel; He equips Moses with everything he needs--He sends Moses in His name, and gives him the ability to perform miracles, and promises to give Moses the words to say to Pharaoh; but suddenly Moses goes limp. He doesn't want to get involved. He keeps looking for excuses. He wants God to send someone else.

What's happened here? Why is Moses suddenly so afraid? Earlier on, he killed a man, on his own volition, because he was abusing just one of his Hebrew brothers; but now he's not even willing to go and just talk to Pharaoh, with the authority of YHWH, to set all of Israel free.

Maybe he's just grown complacent over the years. Maybe he's gotten comfortable; he's got his wife, his kids, his job . . . it's not glamourous, but it's familiar. Stable. When we think about it that way, it kind of starts to make sense, doesn't it? It's so tempting to turn a deaf ear to God's call when that call leads us into unknown territory.

Moses actually doesn't give us a fantastic example in this case. He finally agrees to go, but only after God promises to give him his brother Aaron for a mouthpiece. While Moses is still on the way to meet him, God actually comes out to where Moses is lodging with the intention to kill him, because Moses has dishonored God's covenant with Israel, by neglecting to circumcise his sons (more evidence, maybe, that Moses has forgotten where he came from?).

There are plenty of lessons to learn here, but I'll leave that to the reader and the Holy Spirit. I've just been mulling over these things for a couple of days, and thought it might be of interest to others.

May the God of peace be with you.

Golden Calves

Tomorrow is St. Valentine's Day.

I kind of forget about it. I've never had a girlfriend, so the holiday has never really meant much to me; except maybe to make me aware that I've never had a girlfriend, which is something I expend a fair amount of energy trying to forget.

This is the part where, in years past, I might have gone on a rant about how stupid the holiday is. I would probably have said at some point that it's a holiday invented by card and chocolate companies to make us spend money. Which is likely true; but to be honest, if I did have someone, I'd be buying cards and chocolate like everyone else.

So I'll say it: I really wish I had someone. I do. The girl in my dreams is short; she's pretty, not hot. She has red hair, and gets all her clothes at Anthropologie, and she is always down to get a loaf of bread and go feed ducks. We get all dressed up like rich folks going to an opera; but instead, we go have a picnic. It's just the kind of people we are.

And that's what it looks like inside my head. A lot of the time. Probably more of the time than is reasonable or healthy.

I am what I am. Laugh if it pleases you.

God is teaching me to be patient, and to commit my girl (or lack thereof) to him. It's a hard lesson, and I'm not enjoying it. But in retrospect, all those times I thought I was ready to love a girl, I wasn't really; and all those girls I was so infatuated with weren't right for me at all. I'm better off for having been alone all this time. At this point, I'd have to be pretty dense to keep on trying to win this game on my own. And anyway, it's so much easier to just enjoy girls' friendship when I'm not worrying about whether or not I want to try to date them. Girls are great people, and when I try to form them to some mold I have in my mind, I completely miss out on that.

I'm not sure where this is supposed to turn into advice, or insight, or whatever. I think I might be better off if I just stop trying to advise other people, and live honestly in front of them instead. I guess if I were going to say anything, it would be this: If you're alone tomorrow, like I will be, don't worry about it. Rest in the knowledge that if there's someone for you, then God knows about them, and He's taking care of the situation, preparing both of you for one another; and even if there isn't someone for you, He will be enough, if you'll let Him. It's a hard pill to swallow, but it's good medicine; it's bitter in your mouth, but sweet in your stomach.

And I can never tell; she might be right around the corner.

Happy Valentine's day. May the God of peace be with you.

A Prayer

Father, helpless, I look to you.
Have mercy on a boy at the end of his rope.
If the rest of the world is buying cheap grace on Sundays and worshipping at the bank,
Then I am clasping my hands and parting my hair,
Hoping that if I put the right gift on the altar, maybe I can play harp one day.

Lord, are you some fickle totem?
If we perform the right dance, will you give us rain?
Are you a cosmic vending machine?
But even if we had quarters, you gave them to us to begin with!

Christ, have mercy on me.
Rescue me from all this fruitless posturing; deliver me from this foolish thought: that I might somehow earn your favor.

Draw near to me, my God and Father.
I am bankrupt. I am weak. I am foolish and conceited and lazy and self-righteous, and I need you.
If you will have mercy on me, then I will exult even in this; for your strength is made perfect in my weakness.
I thank you, for you are merciful.
Amen.

On the Eucharist

"The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."
1 Corinthians 10:16-17

This week, some of my closest friends are coming to my home, and we are going to eat together. Afterward, we are going to take the Eucharist together. I am very excited, and I want to share just a few thoughts on the meal our Lord has given us. I should say by way of disclaimer that I am no theologian, and I am ready at any time to be refuted by the authority of the Holy Scripture; but by God's grace, I hope that will not be necessary.

To begin, as it regards the meaning of the sacrament, I have little novel insight to offer; but the significance that presents itself to me the most readily is the idea of Christ's sacrifice as a meal for us. It always brings back to my mind the state that I was in before I surrendered to Him. The fact of it is that when I wandered in a barren waste, hungry, and even starving to death, the God of all creation, driven by no need and bound by no obligation, broke His body to give me bread. He fed me, and saved my life. It's life-changing. But that's not all. When I was miserable, and depressed; when everything was gray and gloomy, and I had no happiness, and no joy, Christ spilled His blood to give me wine--to make me glad, to lighten my heart. Parenthetically, that's why I prefer to have real wine in Communion, as opposed to grape juice--I just feel like it loses a little bit of significance when you take the alcohol out.

Second, I take a mystical view of the Eucharist; that is, I believe in a real presence of Christ in the bread and wine. I don't believe in transubstantiation, mind you--but certainly not mere symbolism, either. I believe that when we take the Lord's Supper, we partake in a real way of His sacrifice for us; that He meets us there, with sustenance, with forgiveness. I'm not prepared to defend this view with Scripture (though I'm sure there are those who can); and am indeed prepared to drop it if suitable evidence can be produced against it. But the fact is that there's a difference in me, between the weeks that start with me at church, taking the Eucharist, and the weeks that I don't get it; just like there's a difference between the person I was before I was baptized and the person that I am now. I believe there's real power in the sacraments.

Finally, I love the unity that the Eucharist brings. In the passage that I quoted at the beginning of this, St. Paul seems to hang the unity of the church on the fact that we all partake of the bread that is Christ's body, and the wine that is His blood. When I gather with my friends to share the meal that our Lord has given us, we will all be remembering Him together; and in turn, we will be joining in with the larger body of Christ around the world, that remembers Him in the same way; and I think that's a beautiful thing, and I'm thrilled that I get to be a part of it.

I hope that God has used this to give you something to think about, or teach you something new, or remind you of something old; I hope at the very least that I've spread no falsehood. Thank you for reading. May the God of peace be with you.

Hopefully, Encouragement

I've been doing my daily offices lately out of the Book of Common Prayer. There are things I like about doing it this way, and things I don't. What I don't like is mainly that there's not a whole lot of continuity; jumping around so much, you kind of lose your sense of the narrative. But I like the sense of connection--when I read the Scriptures set out in the Book of Common Prayer, I'm joining in with my brothers and sisters all over the world who are reading the same Scriptures; I also like that the decision about what to read is taken out of my hands, so that the Word is made that much less subject to my own whims. One thing I really love is that it brings me to the Psalms every day, and that's a beautiful place to be.

So much of the Bible can seem disconnected, can't it? You read about God's dealing with the Israelites, or about King David's reign, or even about Jesus raising the dead, and as wonderful as it all is, sometimes it can seem a bit distant from you. Sometimes it can seem very much like it's coming from the top down--it's all about what God is doing to people. But the Psalms have such an involving perspective--they are written from the bottom up. The Psalmist is not unsympathetic or distant; he is very much a part of our broken and yet beautiful world. In those 150 prayers, he explores the whole range of the human experience; from the highest ecstasy to the lowest despair; from the hottest rage to the coolest, most calm peace. The Psalms are wonderful, to me, because they give me permission to simply be human--to be sad when I'm sad, happy when I'm happy, and angry when I'm angry.

The past couple of weeks have been difficult for me. Between girl troubles, drama at work, family problems, moving out from home for the first time, and all the old demons that those things woke up, my heart has been a stormy sea; and it's seemed at times that I only mount one wave to be hit in the face by the next. The worst of it was the sense of distance from God; for so long, I had felt so near to Him. I had really been striding along, following Him; but then when things got hard, it seemed like I just couldn't get a hold of Him, whatever I did. And then I began to actually be angry with Him. There was a sense of purposelessness in the pain--"God, what is this all for? Is it really necessary?" I wondered why He didn't seem to be doing anything about it. I remember praying desperately one day, saying almost nothing except "If you won't save us, who will?" It was like the weight of the whole world, of all the pain I've ever felt, was crushing me, and He wasn't going to do anything about it. And spread over it all was this kind of intellectual frustration; I wanted, I really wanted, to just come up with some objective answer to it all, and just pick myself up and move on. But the heart refuses to be dealt with that way. Sometimes you just have to be sad until you're done being sad.

I've become convinced, and the past couple of weeks have helped to solidify my conviction, that God understands us. By that I mean that He graciously makes room for all the irrationalities that come with being human; He has compassion for our unreasonable sadness, and even for our ridiculous anger towards Him. God has condescended to wrestle with me. To wrestle! When He could so easily and so justifiably crush me between His thumb and forefinger, or under the weight of His very self. To wrestle, when He could even go limp and give in, and spoil me like a useless child.

I wanted to find a rational answer to my emotional tumult, but God knew better. God didn't come to me with answers, or some proposition to make me see the facts and pull myself together. And so often, that's how He deals with us, isn't it? I said that my heart was a stormy sea; my Lord calmed it the way that He calmed another stormy sea, by saying simply: "Peace, be still." Not "Brendon, I'm in control, and I'm using all this for your good, so you've really got nothing to worry about." Not "How dare you, a man, be angry with God?" No, just "Peace, be still."

The end of it is that as much as it hurt (and may hurt still--who knows what a day may bring?), it's been good for me. I understand my own humanity a little better; the nature and place of sadness and anger, and how God relates to them. I understand God a little better. My sense of His goodness and mercy is a little improved. I have been between the anvil and the hammer, and I'm a little sharper for it.

The Psalmist prayed from every place the human heart can go. He prayed from black despair, and from blind anger--anger against God. I know so many people who have been having a hard time this month--so many that I almost believe there's something objective that's just making times hard for all of us, together--and I want to offer them encouragement. I want to remind them that it's alright to be sad. It's alright to be angry and to wrestle with God, like the Psalmist did. It's good for us, in the end; I'm not sure we can really know God without fighting Him. But a beautiful thing about the the Psalter is that the last three Psalms in the book are all exultant injunctions to praise God, and praise God, and praise God. The Psalmist feels everything a man can feel, and ends it all by giving glory to God. I think that's gorgeous, and I think it's enlightening. And I think that if we have the courage to weep and to fight, to be naked and transparent before God, we will end the same way.

I hope you've found some small encouragement in this. May the God of peace be with you.

A Prayer for Honesty and Humility

O Father, make me honest.
Teach me not to pretend.
Teach me to let my "yes" be yes, and my "no," no.
Teach me to let go of all this awful posturing; this ugly vanity; this horrible need to impress people; this drive to justify myself.
Are you not my Justifier?
Teach me to be open and transparent before my neighbor, as I am before you.

Father, make me humble.
Teach me to forget myself.
Teach me to love without care for whether or not I am loved in return.
Teach me to let go of all this awful, grasping greediness; all my designs and purposes for people; all my demands and daydreams; and simply love as you give it to me to love.
Will you not be sufficient for me?
Teach me to rest in your love. Amen.

A Prayer and Confession

O God, to every open window and every unlocked door, my feet are quick to run.
Show me but the batting of long eyelashes, or the curve of a cute nose;
Let me hear one sweet laugh or one kind and softly spoken word;
Let me only feel the warmth of a hand in mine,
And every thought of obedience and devotion is forgotten;
Every flame of fidelity, every spark of the divine love is put out.

Is that what you are to me, Lord?
Is the life of Christ only what I'm willing to settle for instead of sex?
Is the Son of man only some poor replacement for hair and eyes and hips?
Do I only fold my hands to pray so long as there's no one pretty to put them on?

If it is so, then I am a fool, and I have learned nothing at all from my wandering.

When I wandered in a desert waste, who found me?
Was it some pretty fantasy?
No, Lord; it was you.
You found me walking in circles, muttering nonsense to myself,
And you shut my mouth, and you opened my eyes, and you set me on the path that leads to life.

When I was hungry and thirsty, who fed me?
Was it some maybe-someday sweetheart?
No--she has only ever been faithless;
She has given me dust to eat, and tears to drink.
But you--you broke your body to give me bread,
You spilled your blood to give me drink.

And yet for all this, I have turned aside to every other road,
Chasing the imagined scent of sweet perfume and the echo of some flirting voice.

O my God, forgive me.
The story of you and I is the record of your fidelity and my faithlessness.

Rescue me, Father, from my own foolish fantasies.
Every other well is empty; every other garden, overgrown;
And if I found my brown-eyed girl, though she had all the beauty a man could look for,
Though she were the kindest and most graceful of all your creatures,
Yet if I found her by leaving your flock and straying from your pasture,
She too would prove a spring of corruption, and a bed of thorns and weeds.

O Lord, be thou my vision.
Let your grace be sufficient for me.
Let your love be to me fullness and life. Amen.