Returning Point

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The wood creaked as the old man pushed the window open as far as it would go. During the heaviest rains it had been swollen by the damp—and kept firmly closed. Now, dried out, and with the rain stopped, the wood yielded to gentle persuasion, allowing bright sunshine to enter.

Noah shielded his eyes against the brilliant light. He’d opened the window when his floating zoo had come, with a decisive thump, to rest against the mountainside. He hadn’t seen peaks—or sunshine—for a long time. The air smelt blue not green, like water not grass. The birds he loosed came back, unable to find a place to land.

So he waited, opening the window and looking out every day, curbing his impatience. All the inmates were restless, anxious to get out, to feel solid ground under their four feet, two feet, ten feet, three hundred and fifty-four feet, or no feet at all.

They were all that was left, too few to afford to make a mistake and leave the safety of the ark before God had made adequate provision for them. Everything else was gone, a world scrubbed clean by the brush of the Almighty.

They would have to start again.

But the birds had kept coming back.

Then the last one didn’t.

Like an old hound, Noah sniffed green on the breeze, heard the Voice, and turned toward his traveling companions bunched up behind him.

“Out!”

Years later another old man stood outside the entrance to the great city, staff in hand, watching a floodtide of humans and animals flow past, heading toward the wilderness.

They carried, carted, or drove everything they owned—along with bags and chests of items that their “hosts” for the last four hundred years had eagerly thrust on them. Was it compensation for years of ill treatment? Or desperation? The cries of bereaved Egyptians could still be heard even above the tramp, shuffle, and creak of the Hebrews.

When the crying stopped and the anger set in, Moses knew that they would be pursued. He shaded his eyes, looking to see if the end of the column was visible yet. They had to hurry, get as far as they could as fast as they could.

For Moses, what was happening on this day was a kind of redemption. Years ago he had tried to do what God had done today—rescue his people. He’d failed miserably. He carried that failure into the desert. Now, a better and more humble man, Yahweh had brought him back to Egypt, to do it right, to take His people toward a brighter day and greater prospects.

“Forward!”

Forty years later Moses was dead. Joshua felt his absence. For all those years he had followed the old man, listened to his instructions, obeyed his orders, and seen God work through him. Now, the newly-minted leader stood on the shores of the Jordan and wondered if he was capable of wearing Moses-sized sandals…or if he wanted to.

He’d witnessed the stubbornness of the people Moses had led out of the Egypt. Just because those he was leading were of a new generation didn’t mean much. They still had the same genes, and the same propensity to want to do their own thing their own way.

Across the river lay fortified cities, and people stronger and more numerous than the Hebrews he led. He had seen them. Though he knew that Yahweh would give them what He had promised—a homeland—he also knew that gaining it wouldn’t come cheaply.

Still, it was a new beginning. At long last, entrance into the land promised to their forefather, Abraham, awaited them.

The priests stood at the edge of the river. Between them, carefully carried, was the Ark of the Covenant that represented the promise the great I AM had made to them—and the commitment they had made to Him.

They waited for Joshua’s command. Behind them, still and silent, were the soldiers and the citizens of this new nation.

He shrugged off the heavy cloak of his fears, remembering that late night encounter with Someone much senior to him. He may have succeeded Moses as leader but he knew he wasn’t the real commander.

He raised his spear.

“Cross!”

Yes, cross—another new beginning.

Walking Trees

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“The patient has arrived, Sir.”

“Thank you, Gabe. Let’s get started.”

The operating room was silent except for the quiet breathing of the Surgeon and his assistant. The patient was not physically present; this surgeon’s technique did not require her to be.

“I see it right there,” said Gabe, pointing to a tiny blotch nestled in the cerebrum.

The Surgeon nodded his approval.

“Well done. That nodule was discovered just the other day. It’s a good thing the patient came to me immediately before it got a chance to extend itself farther. As it was, it almost went from thought to action.”

“What caused this one, Sir?”

“It was nothing really. A friend neglected to call. There was no slight intended, just a busy schedule that got in the way.”

“It doesn’t sound like enough to do any harm.”

“Small and insignificant as it looks now, it would have led to a much bigger problem if she had allowed it to fester.”

Gabe scratched his head.

“One thought would lead to another?”

“And eventually to an action that everyone would regret.”

He reached out and touched the spot that his assistant had indicated. Instantly, the cancer-like cell was exorcised, dissolved without leaving a trace. The Surgeon paused, searching the nooks and crannies of his patient’s mind. When he found what he was looking for, he continued.

“See that over there, Gabe, the dark shadow covering that whole area to the right? There’s one that hasn’t been turned over.”

Under the Surgeon’s light, it wasn’t hard to see the ominous mass. Its tentacles, slight, seemingly anorexic, reached out into the cerebellum. Though their tips seemed innocuous, it was clear that their roots had grown thick and fat, bulging with menace.

“That’s the result of an old wound, a fifteen year old memory that our friend here has not released to me yet.”

The Surgeon’s assistant thought for a moment, his face growing more perplexed as the seconds passed.

“Why don’t you just touch it and take it away like you did this last one?”

As soon as he said it, the little assistant blushed with shame. He knew the reason. Hadn’t it already been mentioned several times in this single conversation? The Surgeon smiled, aware of what had caused the sudden flush.

“You know I won’t touch it until she lets it go. She has chosen to harbor an old wrong, and she can justify her reasons for holding on to the memory of it. She nurtures that original memory with every additional imagined offense. The scab gets ripped off; the wound reopens and grows.”

Gabe peered through time and eternity at the patient whose thoughts lay open before them.

“Why does she hang on to something so dangerous? Fifteen years is a long time.”

“Our friend thought that such a little black spot of painful memory was harmless, that she had it under control, that she could handle it. She didn’t understand that one unhealed memory would poison every other thought, every other action. For fifteen years, the relationship between the offender and the offended has been diseased, not enough to kill it, but enough to cripple it. It has chained the two of them, kept them from enjoying grace, from reveling in the warmth of close friendship, and from living out their conjoined mission as I would like to see it lived out in them. This memory, and the offense that made it, will take a while to heal completely.”

Time was no obstacle to the Great Physician and, even though Gabe had been hanging around humans for so long that he had come to share their appreciation of instant solutions to immediate needs, he knew that some things took time.

“Trees walking?”*

The Surgeon laughed.

“Ahhh, you remember that event, do you, Gabriel? Yes, for her the healing of this cancer will not be instant. The roots of the disease have had time, and her permission, to go all through the body. Pockets of resistance will pop up. If she is wise, she will bring those moribund memories to me immediately and not allow them to affect her joy, her peace, and her passion. Slowly but inevitably, the memories will be healed—if she wants them to be.”

Gabe was silent as he watched the spread of the cancerous mass of unhealed memory contaminating everything in its path.

Better let this one go soon, or you’ll be walking in the trees for a long, long time.


*Mark 8:22-26

Faith Measured in Bottles of Oil

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No one knows her name. Her story is recorded briefly, tucked away amidst epic battles and personal issues of life and death. Of what importance is a preacher’s widow, living in reduced circumstances, in the light of bigger news events?

But when your creditors are pounding down your door demanding that you turn over your children so that they can work off a debt; when you have nothing to offer in exchange for their servitude except a little oil in the bottom of a jar, it really is of little importance who’s fighting whom in some faraway conflict on a foreign battlefield. The immediate and the urgent take precedence over everything else.

The story is recorded for us in 2 Kings 4:1-7. The woman is the widow of one of God’s prophets. We aren’t told how the family got into debt. It wasn’t unusual for the time. In fact, Leviticus 25 gives the rules to be followed when a member of the community sold himself to another because he couldn’t provide for his family any other way. And whether it was the prophet’s own debt, now to be paid off by his sons, or debts that accumulated after his death as the widow tried to look after her family, we are not told. But she was in a desperate situation.

So the widow went to find the prophet, Elisha. She explained her problem. And she includes the statement: “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that he revered the Lord” (4:1). Did she wonder if “revering” the Lord was enough, considering that the Lord her husband had revered had not protected her children from the possibility of indentured servitude?

Elisha asks: “what do you have in your house?” What little she may have had to pay off the debt was already gone. She replies: “your servant has nothing there at all...except a little oil” (4:2). The comment reminds me of the answer the disciples gave to Jesus when asked by the Lord to feed the crowd. What do you have? Nothing—a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread, but that’s not enough to feed all these people.

That all depends on who has his hands on the fish, and the bread, and the oil. And what happens to all these “few” depends on just how far the possessors of the “little” are willing to trust God. Elisha instructs the widow to collect all the jars in the neighborhood. He specifically tells her: “Don’t ask for just a few” (vs. 3). How far was this widow willing to go? She and her sons collected all the jars they could find and then shut themselves up in their house and went to work. Elisha’s instructions were to fill all the jars. We don’t know how many jars there were, but she filled them all, and she filled enough. And when the last jar was filled, that “little” bit of oil stopped flowing (vs. 6).

The story goes that the widow was able to sell all the jars of oil, pay off her debts, and still have enough to live on afterwards (vs. 7).

What would have happened if the widow had ignored Elisha’s instructions to collect the jars, thinking him crazy to suggest such a project? What would have happened if she had not collected all the jars, or if she had grown weary and decided not to fill them all?

Her complete faith, her unqualified obedience, her tenacity in not giving up in the face of a humanly impossible situation, provide us with huge lessons that we can learn. When our situation is desperate, when we only have a “little” or a “few”, when the pressure is on us and we don’t know what to do, God leaves a little story, in the middle of “bigger” stories, to remind us that faith exercised in absolute obedience will always be responded to by the Almighty God in whose hands we rest.

It All Depends On Who's In Charge

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Soon. Too soon. I know you told me that you’d be with us, that we should be courageous and strong. I can hear your words ringing in my ears, reverberating through every sinew and muscle, sticking like Jordan’s muddy banks to my every sense. Nevertheless, it still feels like it’s too soon.

You took Moses too soon. I know, I know — he blew it at the rock, but I’d rather follow him than be the leader. After all, he was your friend, got closer to you than any man ever has. I hear that voice again reminding me about what you said: you’ll be with me just like you were with Moses.

I just feel that I will never be as close to you as he was, obey you as well as he did — the rock notwithstanding! I’ve never had that intimacy with you that he did. That’s my fault, I know. I’m sure not blaming you. I try to meditate day and night on your word, just like you said. It’s not easy to find the time or the energy with all these people at my heels.

When I think of all the things that could go wrong, I get a bad feeling. I told the people what you said, and they promised to do everything they were instructed to do. But, as soon as they said that they would obey me just as well as they obeyed Moses, I could feel the hair rising on the back of my neck. They think they are better than their fathers. You and I both know they aren’t. I know I’m not.

Then there’s the business with the prostitute in Jericho. I hope I didn’t make a mistake there. You told me not to spare anyone and now I have to live up to the promise that Micah and Judah made to that woman — and to whoever ends up sheltered in her house. She did take a lot of risks for them, and showed some strong faith in you. Still, I feel as though I’m already breaking the rules you made. How can you bless me, or these people, if I don’t do exactly what you tell me? I hope there are exceptions.

I’m a military man, not a diplomat, so who knows how many toes I trampled on issuing the orders to get us across the river. That WAS pretty amazing though. I remember the Red Sea parting, but not too many others do. Crossing the Jordan with the waters piled up before us was like déjà-vu for me. I still haven’t gotten over the big hoopla once we crossed. For the first time, I really felt that the people saw me as their leader, not just as a Moses stand-in. Now that I’ve reached that plateau, I’m not sure I want to be here.

I suspect your latest command brought me down a couple of rungs on the leadership ladder. That business with the circumcision took the stuffing out of most of the male population — quite literally! Boy, you sure do ask us to do some scary things. While the men were healing we could have been wiped out, easy pickings for any ten-year-old armed with a pick handle.

Well, here we are, facing Jericho. I sound confident, but my innards are churning. You told me to be strong and take the land you promised, and here I am thinking that the desert is beginning to look pretty good!

Wait, someone’s coming from the Jericho side.

“Who goes there? My men know better than to draw a sword in the presence of their commander, so you’re either suffering a lapse in judgment or, you are an enemy. Which is it?"

“It’s a good thing YOU don’t have your sword drawn then, isn’t it. I’m not one of your men, nor am I one of your enemies. Give your brain and your innards a break, Joshua, I have come as the commander of the Lord’s army.”

Get down, man! Get down. This is a Moses moment.

“My Lord, give me your orders.”

“Moses took his shoes off in my presence once; you do the same. I touched the ground you are standing on and it is now holy."

Forgive me; here I was thinking I was in charge of all this. It’s you; it always has been. Just as I was Moses’ servant, I am more than happy to be yours. Issue your orders, Lord: I’m ready now, whenever you are.