I figured a talk about integrity from Michael C. Jensen’s model might be helpful. His central claim is “Without integrity, nothing works.”

When most of us think about integrity, we go to morality or ethics and whether things are right or wrong or good or bad. That is part of the model, but it is more about integrity as a state of being whole and complete. Like a wheel missing a spoke may work for a while, but it becomes less workable. And for a person, integrity shows up in our word: do what we say, or clean it up when we don’t.

The irony was…I was teaching this only a few days after confronting how divided my work and my life had become. Things I had kept from my wife came into the open, and even when given the opportunity to tell the truth, I lied.

This week’s Revised Common Lectionary passages were well timed. Jesus has some very direct words:

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’s seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it, but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others, but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers and sisters.”

This is where the passage becomes personal. I am noticing the split: what I say / what I do, and also what I present / what is actually true.

When you view integrity only from a moral standpoint, areas where we lack integrity come at us like an accusation. This is what keeps them hidden. We want to be right and have powerful ways to ensure we stay that way.

Yet it is more powerful to come into integrity as whole and complete; it simplifies our lives, things work better, and energy can go towards the appropriate place and not defending things more.

Knowing that there can be misalignment between what I say and what I do gives rise to the question: Where do we not yet do what we say?

Thinking about the time spent on image management- embellishing, exaggerating, wanting to be seen as more successful or further along than I actually am- becomes so unnecessary.

Jesus said it plainly, doing things only “to be seen by others.”

“And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father, the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Matthew 23:1-12

At the retreat, I taught that honoring your words doesn’t mean failing to keep them. When you know you won’t keep it, you say so, make another commitment, and clear up the impact.

When you take inventory of where you are out of integrity, it feels like it will prove that I am, in fact, dishonest. Yet the act of coming clean is itself an act of honesty. It moves you away from the shame that wants to keep things hidden.

Integrity can begin with: “What I said and what happened don’t match. Here is what is true.”

The deeper thing I am noticing is why I hide in the first place.

Somewhere underneath it is the belief that if I am fully known, I may no longer be loved. If I tell my wife what is actually going on, she might leave. If people see where I really am, they may reject me. So I hide the part of myself I think is unacceptable and present something I think will be easier to love.

But hiding creates a strange problem. It doesn’t stop love from being offered; it keeps the place in me that most needs love hidden from it.

The fabricated version of me may receive approval, but the actual me is still hiding.

What has begun to make honesty possible is not becoming less needy for love, but receiving enough love to risk being known. As I have sat with the reality that I am already loved by God, I have found more capacity to say: this is where I actually am. This is what actually happened.

Love creates the space where I can look honestly at my life without needing the truth to destroy me.

But now that I see what is true, will I actually step into it?

My old pattern was something like, I’ll tell the truth once I can manage the consequences. I’ll fix the problem first, get things handled, then I can come clean.

Joshua gives another picture: obedience comes before certainty. Being able to see what is true is one thing. Acting on it when I don’t know what the cost will be is something else.

Joshua is leading the people of Israel into the Promised Land and they have to navigate another river crossing.

The Lord said to Joshua, “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses. You are the one who shall command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant, ‘When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan.’ ”

Joshua then said to the Israelites, “Draw near and hear the words of the Lord your God.” Joshua said, “By this you shall know that among you is the living God who without fail will drive out from before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites: the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is going to pass before you into the Jordan. So now select twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. When the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, come to rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan flowing from above shall be cut off; they shall stand in a single heap.”

They are being led and guided by the word of God, and then it comes to the time to act on it. They get to the river, and it is overflowing its banks! This is not a convenient moment to cross. Doing the right thing doesn’t necessarily arrive when the circumstances are calm, and the outcome feels safe.

When the people set out from their tents to cross over the Jordan, the priests bearing the ark of the covenant were in front of the people. Now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest. So when those who bore the ark had come to the Jordan and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the edge of the water, the waters flowing from above stood still, rising up in a single heap far off at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, while those flowing toward the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea, were wholly cut off. Then the people crossed over opposite Jericho. While all Israel were crossing over on dry ground, the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firmly on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, until the entire nation finished crossing over the Jordan.

Joshua 3:7-17

Their feet touch the water before it feels safe! I recognize how much I want the water to part before I tell the truth. I want to know how the conversation will go, assurance that I'll be accepted, and if the consequences will be manageable. At that point I’ll step in.

But the priests put their feet in the water before they know it will turn into dry ground. In this scene, I also notice how the ark goes first. The ark was the representation of the presence of God, and this image reveals God's presence going into uncertain places before I do.

What makes stepping into the water possible isn’t the confidence that everything will turn out the way I want. Trusting that God’s presence will be there, He goes first.

I’ve never really liked the word: obedience. Something about it makes me want to do the opposite. But when the movement starts with love that lets me see the truth, integrity lets me say what's true; now obedience asks me to step into it before I know the outcome.

I was sitting in spiritual direction this week, praying through and processing all this stuff. My director generously offered that I get to honesty in a roundabout way; I might go around a couple of times, but I eventually get off.

I can keep circling the truth… explain it… rationalize it…give part of it…find another way to describe it…go around one more time. Eventually I take the exit, and I simply tell the truth.

Which might be why the line about the straight road in Psalm 107 stands out for me.

Acclaim the LORD, for He is good,
for His kindness is forever.
Let the LORD’s redeemed ones say,
whom he redeemed from the hand of the foe,
and gathered them from the lands,
from east and west, from north and south.
They wandered in wilderness, waste land,
found no road to a settled town, hungry, thirsty, too,
their life-breath failed within them.
And they cried to the LORD from their straits,
from their distress He saved them.
And He led them on a straight road to go to a settled town.
Let them acclaim to the LORD His kindness
and His wonders to humankind.
For He sated the thirsting throat
and the hungry throat He filled with good.

He turns rivers into wilderness
and springs of water into thirsty ground,
fruitful land into salt flats,
because of the evil of those who dwell there.
He turns wilderness to pools of water,
and parched land to springs of water,
and settles there the hungry,
firmly founds a settled town.
And they sow fields and they plant vineyards,
which produce a fruitful yield.

Psalm 107:1-7 and 33-37

He led them on a straight road. That sounds so wonderful. And so does all the flourishing that he brings about.

Maybe becoming whole is simply becoming less complicated. The hiding requires so much maintenance. I have to remember what I said, manage what someone knows, protect the image I presented, anticipate what might get discovered, have a contingency plan, and keep circling.

The straight road is much simpler. This is what happened, this is where I am, this is what I said I would do, this is what I will do now. And if I can’t keep my word, I can say that too.

That part of the Psalm that says God turns wilderness into pools of water and parched land into springs is actually happening, not figuratively, all around me the last couple of days. I live in the desert southwest of the United States, and it's been steadily raining for the last few days.

And for the metaphorical side, I have spent a lot of energy believing that honesty would lead me into the wilderness, rejection, disappointment, lack, anger, abandonment. And some of the consequences of telling the truth are painful. Coming clean doesn’t magically restore trust or erase the impact of what I did.

But I am beginning to experience something I didn’t expect. The place I was most afraid to bring the light is also the place where love is most able to receive love. I thought hiding was to protect love. It was actually keeping the part of me that most needed love from being able to experience it.

Maybe that is why all this feels less like becoming a better version of myself and more like becoming whole. I am much more accepting of myself as I am and life as it is.

Thanks be to God.

I was so hoping this week would be light and wonderful; things have been going well, but alas, it looks like it is going to be another heavy one.

In the Revised Common Lectionary, we have been following the story of Moses, and this week we come to his passing. Moses heads back up a mountain, which is a recurring theme in his life where he met with God.

Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and the Plain—that is, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees—as far as Zoar.

The Lord said to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.”

God’s promise to the forefathers was repeated to Moses, and he was able to see the Promised Land, but he wasn’t able to enter it himself.

Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command. He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day. Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired, and his vigor had not abated. The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning for Moses was ended.

Joshua son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him, and the Israelites obeyed him, doing as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

What this says about Moses is powerful, too. The Lord knew him face to face, and he was unequaled in the works God did through him. And he dies and is buried in the ground. Returns to the dust. He lived an incredible life, and it was complete.

He gets to the promised land, but he doesn’t get to personally experience it. His life is complete even though something he spent his life moving toward remains unfinished.

Psalm 90 is the only Psalm attributed to Moses, and the superscription says: “Psalm of Moses, man of God.”

I think thats a pretty cool way to be known or referred to by others. What if we all had something like that?

Julie, woman of God.

Mine is going to be:
Luke, man after God’s own heart, here to bring Jesus near.

And yet, why do I care so much about what will eventually be said of me? It comes back to my age-old struggle with significance.

For years I carried the belief that unless I produced something massive and visible, it wasn’t significant. At times, this descends into a sense of meaninglessness.

Psalm 90 touches on this theme of the futility of life. Moses speaks of two types of time: the temporal, fleeting sense of our lives against the backdrop of eternal time.

O Master, You have been our abode
in every generation.
Before mountains were born,
before You spawned earth and world,
from forever to forever You are God.
You bring man back to the dust
and say, “Turn back, humankind.”
For a thousand years in Your eyes
are like yesterday gone,
like a watch in the night.

Psalm 90:1-4

In October of 2023, I was meeting with my spiritual director as had been my monthly practice since Lent the prior year. I was sharing something; I don’t recall what it was, and the director asked:

“Sounds like the noonday demon; have you heard of it?”

He told me about the spiritual danger of Acedia, and giving it a name made it all the more obvious and like it wasn’t just me. He went on to tell me that the desert fathers and mothers would call it the “Noonday Demon” because monks were susceptible to it during the middle of the day, between 10am and 2pm.

Sitting in the room with my spiritual director, I found it immensely clarifying. It was like I was experiencing something but couldn’t identify it, and now it had a name. To have a name for the thing gave it a handle. I could see how I was picking it up and putting it on.

This landed so deeply with me in that I put a notification on my calendar every day at 10am “Beware: The Noonday Demon,” and I came to discover what this thing was all about.

For me, acedia is the thought that this is all meaningless, nothing matters, so why even bother; might as well just throw in the towel and give up. It is more common in the heat of the day, hence the name Noonday Demon.

For me, it starts with scrolling, killing a little time, and finding something entertaining while avoiding an important task. The goals or activities I set for the day would be rationalized away with a “who cares?” Then I would busy myself with meaningless stuff and avoid the one thing that mattered. The energy drain was real and led to irritability and overreacting.

In those moments, I had a choice to either believe the voice that said nothing mattered and drift away, or interrupt it and return to something real.

The prompt on my phone was a reminder to stay aware. Whenever I saw the notification, I’d be on the lookout. No matter where I was or what I was doing, I would stop and pray and ask the Lord to help me notice it and not buy into it.

Reading Psalm 90 makes all this a lot less abstract for me.

You engulf them with sleep.
In the morn they are like grass that passes.
In the morning it sprouts and passes,
By evening it withers and dies.
For we are consumed in Your wrath,
And in Your fury we are dismayed.
You have set our transgressions before You,
Our hidden faults in the light of Your face.
Psalm 90:5-8

This is the secret life of organizing my music collection and telling my wife it was a productive day. And yet the light of God’s face exposes what we hide from ourselves. Hiding costs us the energy that drains us so badly our eyelids are engulfed with sleep.

I came across a quote that speaks to the seriousness of it all from Dorothy Sayers, a contemporary of CS Lewis:

“The sixth deadly sin is named by the Church acedia or sloth. In the world it calls itself tolerance; but in hell it is called despair. It is the accomplice of the other sins and their worst punishment. It is the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive only because there is nothing it would die for.”

It names what I was feeling, but didn’t want to admit.

Who can know the strength of Your wrath?
As the fear of You is Your anger.
To count our days rightly, instruct,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:10-11

This is not about accounting our accomplishments before God, but more of an honest reckoning of the hours spent. A wise heart isn’t more productive or efficient; it’s an honest one.

Sate us in the morn with Your kindness
Let us sing and rejoice all our days.

And may the sweetness of the Master our God be upon us
And the work of our hands firmly found us,
And the work or our hands firmly found.
Psalm 90:14 and 17

Satisfaction doesn’t come from some spectacular outcome. It comes from small, faithful acts done on a regular Tuesday.

Moses isn’t asking for fame, vindication, or recognition from important people. He asked for the ordinary and faithful work of his hands to be established. That it would count and not be burned up in insignificance.

And yet, on the other side of it, I was starting to be able to do the things I needed to do and take care of the work that was mine. The work of my hands can be established without all of it being finished by my hands.

Maybe the path to meaning isn’t avoiding the feeling that none of this matters or finding something massive to accomplish so that it finally does. Maybe it is learning to recognize that voice and refuse to believe it.

Which makes the Gospel passage this week kind of funny to me.

My wife and I are in a discipleship workshop at church built around the Great Commission. So when I saw “The Greatest…” at the top of the passage, I got excited, thinking this was what we had been studying.

But I got the wrong Great…This is the Great Commandment.

I though I was coming to a passage about going and doing and Jesus gives me a passage about loving.

And I needed that. Before I get too preoccupied with what I am supposed to accomplish, Jesus brings me back to something much simpler:

Love God

Love the person in front of me.

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him.

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22:34-40

The simplest definition of a significant life isn’t about spectacular achievement but loving God, loving the person in front of me, and faithfully doing the work that is mine.

May the sweetness of the Master our God be upon us

And the work of our hands firmly found...

It was held in this beautiful old church with vaulted ceilings, and we ended up sitting in the balcony. We had rushed in late after having a hard time finding parking, trying to find seats, and the room was filled with noise. Sirens going off, loud banging and clanging of stuff crashing together, and tons of disorientation.

Then we moved toward silence. And of course silence doesn’t immediately feel silent. First you meet all the noise already inside you. Whatever emotions and distractions and to-do items still undone. And the little agreements that have been running beneath everything.

What surfaced for me was: nobody cares about me, it’s all up to me, I’m not good enough.

At the time, those just looked like painful thoughts. A few days later I started wondering whether those were more than thoughts and some of the lies I had actually been living from.

Because if nobody really cares for me, I need to get all I can just to take care of myself. And if it’s all up to me, then I have to control the outcome. Then if I am not enough, I’ll have to manage what people see.

My prayer this morning is: Lord, forgive me for believing that you don’t care about me and that it’s up to me to make things right in my life.

The passages in the Revised Common Lectionary this week provide the backdrop for what I was experiencing this week.

Moses is asking God what happens next, he wants direction and assurance.

Moses said to the Lord, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider, too, that this nation is your people.”

He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Exodus 33:12-14

I keep thinking I need God to tell me how I am going to fix everything in my life. Myself, an ideal family, a harmonious marriage, debt, trust, my business. And God’s answer to Moses begins somewhere completely different: I know you by name, my presence will go with you.

And like Jesus in the wilderness, who speaks Scripture back to the devil’s temptations… Nobody cares about me - “I know your name. It’s all up to me - “My presence will go with you.” I’m not good enough - “You have found favor in my sight.”

And Moses asks to see God’s glory...

Moses said, “Please show me your glory.”

And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord,’ and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.

But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.” And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

Exodus 33:18-23

God shelters Moses as he passes.

Maybe being known by God is what finally makes it possible to stop hiding from God, from other people, and eventually myself.

Then this week, things I had been hiding from my wife came into the open. And even when she gave me an opportunity to tell the truth, I looked he in the eyes and lied.

When the truth finally came out, so did the shame. I coach people about integrity. I am serving as a spiritual director. I write about walking with God, and I had been lying to the person closest to me.

Somewhere underneath it all, an old rule was operating: If I tell the truth, I will be rejected. And so I created something I thought would be easier to love.

In light of this, the exchange in the gospel passage from Mathew becomes more interesting.

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this and whose title?”

They answered, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed, and they left him and went away.

Matthew 22:15-22

This makes me think of the image I am protecting. I have spent plenty of energy on managing my image. Polishing the facade. How successful do I look? How spiritually mature do I appear? What would people think if they knew how things actually are?

And then Jesus holds up a coin and asks whose image is on it. I found him holding up a mirror and asking me what I was so desperately trying to protect.

And it made me wonder…If I belong to God, perhaps I don’t have to manufacture a version of myself worthy of belonging to him.

I know you by name!

A fabricated self can receive approval, but it cannot experience being known. If I keep presenting the version of me I think will be loved, I can never really receive the love being offered to the person I actually am.

I know you by name!

And that has me thinking differently about integrity. I have usually thought of integrity in moral categories: right and wrong, honest and dishonest, good and bad. And those distinctions matter. But I am beginning to see another dimension of integrity, and that is wholeness. Something closer to shalom. Nothing split off. What appears to be true and what is actually true belonging together.

Something has integrity when it is whole and undivided. What it appears to be and what it actually is belong together.

My need to be right may have actually helped me remain out of integrity. Because once I did something wrong, I needed to explain it, rationalize it, reframe it, justify it, minimize it, hide it. Anything except simply saying this is what I did and where I actually am.

Perhaps returning to integrity doesn’t begin with proving that I am still a good person. It begins with being willing to be seen as I actually am.

I am known by name!

When Paul writes to the church community in Thessalonica:

For they report about us what kind of welcome we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 1:9-10

Paul describes conversion as turning from idols toward “a living and true God.” Maybe one of the idols I have been serving is the version of myself I think I need to be in order to be loved. I wonder whether part of that turning for me is turning away from the version of myself I keep manufacturing and living before God who is actually alive and actually knows me.

This morning my prayer wasn’t particularly sophisticated. Lord, forgive me for believing you don’t care about me and that it is up to me to make everything right. Restore to me the joy of my salvation. You love me with an everlasting love.

I have some things to make right. Trust does not magically reappear because the truth finally came out. There is work ahead of me.

But maybe the work doesn’t begin with constructing a better version of myself. Maybe it begins here: I am known by name. And because I am known, I can tell the truth.

This was about the fifth time I had been to the prison, and there was a group there that I prayed for every day and wrote to every week. Many of us had been praying for Pastor Hicks to go free; he was in parole proceedings and had just been denied. He wouldn’t have the opportunity to make parole for another five years.

When I saw Ron, I expected disappointment. I was surprised by his joyfulness and how at peace he was with the decision and his sense of purpose for his next five years. While Don gave the message from Philippians, Pastor Hicks became the living and breathing demonstration of the peace of Christ.

This wasn’t the first time I walked into a prison as a free man and found myself wanting the freedom possessed by a man that couldn’t leave. That day I heard the words, but I also saw what they looked like in human life.

This moment is on my mind as it is one of the passages in this week’s Revised Common Lectionary. What resonates is not just the anxiety, but its roots.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved...

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:1, 4-7

I had heard these verses before, but that day it became harder to misunderstand them. “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” looked like a man whose parole had just been denied and somehow he wasn’t destroyed by it.

We are to always be rejoicing and grateful for everything that comes into our lives. This emphasis on praise and prayer is what brings about the peace that doesn’t make sense; it surpasses all understanding.

This doesn’t really mean calling every difficult circumstance in our lives good. Pastor Hicks didn’t pretend denial of parole was wonderful in order to have peace. And Paul doesn’t seem to be offering positive thinking.

In this way we guard our heart by letting our thoughts ponder only pure and wholesome things.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. As for the things that you have learned and received and heard and noticed in me, do them, and the God of peace will be with you.

Philippians 4:8-9

Paul says to us: rejoice, pray, give thanks, make your requests known, direct your mind to what is true and good, and then, crucially, “do them.” The peace I saw in Pastor Hicks wasn’t an idea. It was a practiced life with God in circumstances that hadn’t become agreeable.

It has been 10 years since that moment at the prison. I heard a message and saw a man live it out, and I wanted some of what he had, even though he was in prison and denied freedom, and I was a free man but still entrapped by many things. I’ve found myself wondering whether what I actually admired in him has become truer in me.

Much has changed since then. Pastor Hicks was eventually paroled and set free. He is now with his family and has a cell phone and a car and a ministry.

This week, as I’ve prayed through these passages, I’ve found myself wondering if the freedom I saw in him has become any more true in me?

Anxiety isn’t just an unpleasant emotion I want removed. It has a purpose in my life, and I use it to steward my things and keep myself on the right track. Yet it also goes haywire and has too much of a say. I see the things I do when uncertainty becomes difficult to tolerate.

I was traveling this week for work. I used anxiety to put pressure on myself to drive a big outcome I wanted to generate. I also noticed the anxiety with thinking that I had lost of few personal items, the rental car keys, my glasses, or the thought of all I would miss out on or have to endure if I didn’t generate the big outcome I wanted.

Underneath all of them was the same discomfort of not knowing what is going to happen, and I’d very much like to know and have it go my way!

I see two different ways in the other Revised Common Lectionary passages to deal with the anxiety that comes with uncertainty. In the Exodus passage, they are trying to make something happen so they can feel secure and in control.

Now the golden calf doesn’t seem all that bizarre. Moses is delayed and the people don’t know what happened to him. They don’t know what comes next and they can’t handle the uncertainty.

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took these from them, formed them in a mold, and cast an image of a calf, and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

Exodus 32:1-4

I recognize that impulse. When I can’t see what God is doing, I want to make something happen. Something I can see and measure and feel powerful that I can create. Maybe some of my anxiety isn’t only fear about what might happen; it is also my resistance to not knowing what God is doing.

Exodus shows people responding to uncertainty by manufacturing a sense of security. And then today my wife and I attended a wedding. I found myself noticing how much thought and planning had gone into everything. The location, the guest list, people travelling, the flowers, the food, the ceremony. And the little details that could have only belonged to this particular bride and groom.

Someone had spent an enormous amount of time imagining this day before it arrived. By the time we got there, so much had been prepared. Our part was mostly to show up and receive it and participate in it.

This makes the parable Jesus tells about the wedding banquet so much more telling.

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’

But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad, so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

Matthew 22:1-10

What strikes me is that the feast is already prepared. The guests don’t have to create it. They don’t have to organize the meal, raise the animals, set the tables or make the celebration happen. The invitation is simply to come and receive what has already been prepared.

And yet some of them are too occupied with their farms and businesses to come. I recognize something of myself in that too. I can become so preoccupied with making sure everything works out, producing the outcome, securing what comes next, that I miss the life that is already being offered to me.

Today at the wedding, my wife and I didn’t have to make the celebration happen. Someone else had imagined it, planned it and prepared it long before we arrived. We simply walked into it and participated.

I wonder how often my anxiety has me living as though nothing has been prepared. As though everything depends on me. As though if I don’t know what happens next, there might not be anything waiting for me when I get there.

Ten years ago at Angola Prison, Pastor Hicks had just received an answer he desperately didn’t want. His circumstances had not changed for the better. He was still in prison and had five more years before he could even try for parole again.

And yet somehow he was receiving the life available to him there. He was praying, serving, loving people, living with purpose, joyfully rejoicing.

Maybe that was what I wanted when I looked at him all those years ago. The freedom to receive what God was giving even when it wasn’t what he had asked for.

Paul says, “The Lord is near.”

Maybe the peace that surpasses understanding isn’t what finally arrives when all the uncertainty has been resolved.

Maybe it is what becomes possible when I stop requiring certainty before I allow myself to receive the life God is offering me.

I still want things, I still make plans, I still ask God for outcomes. Anxiety still shows up and sometimes gets far too loud. But I don’t have to turn the gold into a calf just because Moses is taking too long.

Maybe I can pray, give thanks, make my requests known, and come to the feast.

The Lord is near.

Thanks be to God.

Earlier in the week, while leading a group spiritual direction session, we were praying for the Lord to guide a man in the midst of his situation. During silence, he heard, “The Lord is leading me to stay right where I am.”

While sitting with my spiritual director, I named the tension between wanting to get to another place where finances, house, business, and circumstances were better so I would be ok, and being present to God in the here and now and knowing I’ll be ok.

Something I’ve been doing recently that’s getting annoying is that I am counting everything, everywhere. It’s in the apps for calories, exercise, sleep, revenue, credit cards, contractors, clients. How much is coming in, how much is going out, and how much still needs to come in.

My director said that this might be good stewardship, which is generous of him and somewhat true. But am I counting because I’m stewarding my life or because I’m trying to be certain that I’m ok?

And I am noticing this week the passages in the Revised Common Lectionary have a surprising amount to say about what we do with what we have been given.

We are following the story of Moses, where he receives the Ten Commandments. Before any commandment is given, God says who he is:

Then God spoke all these words, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

Exodus 20:1-2

Before God tells Israel what to do, he reminds them who he is and what he has already done for them.

Among the commands is Sabbath:

Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work.

Exodus 20: 8-9

There is activity, and then there is surrender. We work, and then we rest. While we rest, we delight in the Lord and find the Lord delighting in us. Perhaps stopping is one ways I remember I am not responsible for making the entire world work.

Psalm 19 then widens the lens to the heavens and all of creation and connects it to the word of God and the sun that touches everything:

The heavens tell God’s glory,
and His handiwork sky declares.
Day to day breathes utterance
and night to night pronounces knowledge.
There is no utterance and there are no words,
their voice is never heard.
Through all the earth their voice goes out,
to the world’s edge, their words.
For the sun He set up a tent in them—
and he like a groom from his canopy comes,
exults like a warrior running his course.
From the ends of the heavens his going out
and his circuit to their ends,
and nothing can hide from his heat.

Psalm 19:1-6

This Psalm takes my gaze away from my little ledger and puts me into an immeasurably larger world. The heavens are declaring something I can’t calculate. And God’s wisdom is described as more desirable than the gold I’ve been worrying so much about.

The LORD’s pact is steadfast, it makes the fool wise.
The LORD’s precepts are upright, delighting the heart.
The LORD’s command unblemished, giving light to the eyes.
The LORD’s fear is pure, outlasting all time.
The LORD’s judgments are truth, all of them just.
More desired than gold, than abundant fine gold,
and sweeter than honey, quintessence of bees.
Your servant, too, takes care with them.
In keeping them—great reward.
Unwitting sins who can grasp?
Of unknown actions clear me.
From willful men preserve Your servant,
let them not rule over me.
Then shall I be blameless and clear of great crime.
Let my mouth’s utterances be pleasing
and my heart’s stirring before You,
LORD, my rock and redeemer.

Psalm 19:7-14

While I was sitting in spiritual direction and praying about all the counting that I have been doing, these words came out of my mouth: “God owes me one.”

We went back into silence, and while I sat there, I noticed that God counts too. He counts the sheep and knows what’s missing. He counts every hair on my head. He tells Abraham to count all the stars when really only God can do that.

When I showed up for the spiritual direction session, I had just come from a haircut, and my hairdresser always styles my hair in a way that I can never replicate. My hair was all stuck up and messy looking. My director noticed it and reminded me that the last time I had been sitting with him, I had just come from getting a similar haircut

I sat there while God counted all the hairs in my electrocuted head!

Everything got flipped on its head, and now I was allowing myself to be known and enjoying the process of being known. I had been counting to determine whether I was okay. And suddenly I was letting myself be counted, not measured, but known.

He who counts can be counted on.

Coming back to the Lectionary passages, Paul in Philippians 3 presents his resume. He talks about his heritage and his instructors, his status, zeal, and righteousness. Then he changes the accounting:

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3:7-11

He had things he could count as evidence of his worth, and he says they’re nothing compared with the surpassing value of knowing Christ. We all remember all that Paul went through to be able to say this. But this doesn’t turn passive; he still says:

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it, but one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:12-14

This is where my tension gets resolved more beautifully than “stay put” versus “go achieve.” I can be okay here as things are and still press forward. Maybe I don’t need certainty around where I’m going to prove that my well-being is okay where I am.

And then Jesus tells a story about people who forgot an even more basic distinction: the difference between being an owner and a tenant.

“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

Matthew 21:33-41

The landowner creates the vineyard, plants it, fences it, digs the winepress, builds the tower, and leases it to the tenants. The problem isn’t that they work hard and want to be paid for their efforts. They begin to believe that what was entrusted to them actually belongs to them. And it makes them bloodthirsty.

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:

‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?

“Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

Matthew 21:42-45

The tenants kill the son to take the inheritance. But we have the Gospel, where God really does give the Son.

Suddenly “God owes me one” meets the God who has already given himself.

I had been counting everything, trying to determine whether I am going to make it. And the Lord reminded me he counts too. Every sheep and every star and every hair on my ridiculous freshly cut head.

Maybe I can work the vineyard and press toward the goal, without pretending that I own it. And maybe I can still receive this place as where God is already with me. He who counts can be counted on.

Last night I finished Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. It’s a massive book, and I have been at it for four months. The ending is profound in the way in shows how Christlike love can be embodied. Hugo has spent hundreds of pages showing the wretchedness of human life, but also the strange ways love, mercy and grace keep appearing in the middle of it.

Near the end there is a line from the main character:

“Because things are not agreeable,” said Jean Valjean, “that is no reason for being unjust towards God.”

Things have not felt particularly agreeable lately.

And then, near the very end of the book, Valjean is talking with Cosette, whom he raised as an adopted daughter, and asks if she remembers when he rescued her and found her in the forest and helped her carry the bucket.

I was sitting in church this morning and could not stop thinking about that scene.

I have also been reflecting on a season in my life a couple of years ago that was extraordinarily difficult. Sitting there this morning with that season on my mind, the tears were coming pretty easily.

And somewhere in the middle of it, I sensed the Lord drawing my attention back to that time:

See, right there, I was there helping you carry the bucket.

I still want things to change. I still have work to do. I still want to press toward the goal. But maybe I don’t have to get somewhere else to find the God who is already here.

The God who was there carrying the bucket with me then is here with me now. He who counts can be counted on.

Thanks be to God.

The last couple of months we have been up against a situation that I can’t seem to get out of. We were already in a precarious financial situation, and we had a flood causing tens of thousands of dollars of damage to our house, and insurance denied the claim.

I also know I have contributed to some of the pressure we are under. I have not always stewarded money as well as I could have, and part of me believes that if I helped get us into this, I should be able to get us out of it.

Much of the pressure is coming from me. I feel responsible for getting us out of it. And at the same time, I do trust that the Lord is with me in it. I have been talking to God constantly, asking for help, asking for provision. But the provision has not arrived in the form I keep requesting.

I started noticing the same pattern in smaller things too.

I was traveling last week and out of routine and wanting to be present with the people I was with, yet I kept making these mental lists of all the things I needed to do.

And then I add stories to them. What this guy thinks of me and how scared I am to take the action I said I would. Or how a lady thinks I’m dropping balls everywhere, letting things fall through the cracks, and that makes me untrustworthy, and now she has a reason to cancel the work we are doing together.

I realized I was spending a lot of energy asking God to work in my life, do it for me, while avoiding some of the work that was actually mine to do.

This is why this week’s Revised Common Lectionary passages felt so familiar. The Israelites have just been delivered from Egypt by the power of God, and now they are in the wilderness without water. Almost immediately, they begin to wonder whether the same God who brought them out has abandoned them there.

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.”

Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?”

But the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?”

So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do for this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.”
Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.

He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Exodus 17:1-7

The key line here for me is “Is the Lord among us or not?” I recognize that question. I might not say it directly, but when the money doesn’t come, when the claim is denied, when I can’t see the way out, some version of me asks the same thing.

I also notice that when Moses cries out to God, God gives him something to do: “Take the staff…go…strike the rock.” God is the one who provides the water, but Moses is invited to participate in what God is doing.

What feels like uncertainty and desperation inside Exodus looks very different when the same story is remembered later in the Psalms.

Before their fathers He did wonders,
in the land of Egypt, in Zoan’s field.
He split open the sea and let them pass through,
He made water stand up like a heap.
And He led them with the cloud by day
and all night long with the light of fire.
He split apart rocks in the wilderness
and gave drink as from the great deep.
He brought forth streams from stone,
and poured down water like rivers.
Psalm 78:12-16

In Exodus, they are inside the crisis asking, “Is the Lord among us or not?” In the Psalm, the same moment is remembered as evidence that he was.

I think that is part of what pressure does to me. When I’m inside it, I tend to interpret the whole story from the current moment. The Psalm invites me to remember. Philippians invites me to look even more closely at how God is actually at work.

Philippians passage has some beautiful poetry that allows us to lift our gaze on Jesus. Then Paul encourages us to “work out” our salvation with fear and trembling. There is a part we play. Yet it is God who “works in” you.

If, then, there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

Therefore God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,
so that at the name given to Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence but much more now in my absence, work on your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Philippians 2:1-13

When Paul says “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you...” I can see the paradox I have been living.

I keep wanting to know which is mine and which is God’s. What am I supposed to do and what am I supposed to trust God to do?

Paul doesn’t split them neatly. He says: you work because God is at work in you.

I have to pause there for a moment, because every now and then that blows me away. My action does not have to compete with God’s action. I get to participate in what God is doing! There is something extraordinary about that. I have a part to play, but I am not acting alone.

And once I saw that, I started wondering what “working out” might look like in the ordinary mess I had been carrying around in my head.

Now, being in the age of AI, I sat down and typed out everything in my mind. The people, the tasks, the stories. The whole time I was thinking, it will probably take me as long to write all of this down as it would to just do the tasks.

But getting it out of my head helped me see how much of the weight was not actually the work itself. It was the stories I had attached to the work. I could see my tendency to put things off, to keep loose ends floating around, and then to live in the chaos they create.

I fed the 800-plus words into Claude, had it sort everything into buckets and priorities, and suddenly it did not look nearly as overwhelming. I got most of it done in about thirty minutes. The tasks had not changed, but the fog in my mind had

I was able to drop some of the stories about myself, the tasks, and the people involved, and simply act. Even the tasks I was afraid of, I was able to do anyway.

This did not suddenly make me self-sufficient. But it showed me that action becomes possible when some of the stories loosen.

Which is probably why Jesus’ parable about the two sons landed so directly for me. One says he will not go and then goes. The other says he will go and does not. The question is not who had the better intention. It is who actually did the will of the father.

When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?”

And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why, then, did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for all regard John as a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.”

And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

“What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not,’ but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same, and he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?”

They said, “The first.”

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him, and even after you saw it you did not change your minds and believe him.

Matthew 21:23-32

He tells a story about a dad who asks his two sons to go work. One said he wouldn’t, but then he did. The other said he would but didn’t. Jesus didn’t ask who had the better intention, but which one did the will of the father?

That is where the story of the two sons gets uncomfortably specific for me. I can have good intentions, I can make mental promises, I can rehearse what I should do, I can even feel guilty about not doing it. None of that is the same as going into the vineyard!

It begs the question: “Why is it easier to think about doing stuff rather than doing stuff?!”

This week, when I put everything down on the page- the people, the stories, the tasks, the fear- once it was outside my head and organized, it didn’t look nearly as impossible. Then I started doing the work, and thirty minutes later, much of what had been haunting me was done.

I still don’t know how every financial problem will resolve. I still need provision I can’t manufacture. But I am beginning to see that trusting God and taking action are not opposites.

Maybe my working out and God’s working in are not separate things at all.

Perhaps faith is not waiting until the fog lifts before I move. Maybe sometimes the clarity comes as I go.

We went out for ice cream afterward and walked around to find a place to sit in a courtyard surrounded by huge date palms lit up in the night sky. My oldest daughter prompted everyone to share what they love most about the birthday girl.

What flowed were some of the most beautiful and heartfelt words I could ever hear. Her friends spoke about her authenticity, boldness, hard work, how much fun she has, and how she loves people well.

I was so overcome with delight that other people were loving someone I love so much. I hadn’t arranged anything about her friends loving her this way. I couldn’t have made them see her as I did. It was something I simply got to receive.

As I read this week's Revised Common Lectionary passages, I found myself thinking about the surprising ways God’s generosity shows up in our lives.

The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

Exodus 16:2-3

They are hungry, afraid, and uncertain about how they will survive. They remember Egypt as the place where they had food, even though it was also the place of their bondage.

And in the middle of their complaining, God invites them to draw near.

Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites: ‘Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.’ ” And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. The Lord spoke to Moses, “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’ ”

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.

Exodus 16:9-15

I love that they are instructed to draw near the Lord. And when the provision comes, it is so unexpected that they ask, “What is it?” God’s generosity arrives before they can even recognize what they have been given.

The people who once wondered what this strange food was would eventually remember it as one of God's great wonders. The Psalmist invites us to remember and proclaim and rejoice in God's work in our lives.

Acclaim the LORD, call out His name,
make His deeds known among the peoples.
Sing to Him, hymn to Him,
speak of all His wonders.
Revel in His holy name.
Let the heart of the LORD’s seekers rejoice.
Inquire of the LORD and His strength,
seek His presence always.
Recall the wonders that He did.

Egypt rejoiced when they went out,
for their fear had fallen upon them.
He spread a cloud as a curtain
and fire to light up the night.
They asked, and He brought the quail,
and with bread from the heavens He sated them.

And He brought out His people in joy,
in glad song His chosen ones.

Psalm 105

The experience that began with complaining is now remembered with joy, and the Psalm invites everyone to proclaim God's goodness together.

Something similar was happening beneath the date palms. My eldest daughter’s question invited everyone to remember and name the goodness they had experienced in my younger daughter.

But what surprised me was how much joy I experienced simply listening.

Paul seems to know something about that kind of joy.

For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me, yet I cannot say which I will choose. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better, but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, so that, by my presence again with you, your boast might abound in Christ Jesus because of me.

Philippians 1:21-26

Paul's concern extends beyond his own experience to the flourishing of others. I wasn’t the one receiving the affirmations the other night. But hearing them brought me immense joy. There is a kind of joy that comes from participating in another person’s flourishing.

Paul seems to find joy in the flourishing of others. But Jesus tells a story about a people who find another person’s good fortune much harder to celebrate.

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Matthew 20:1-16

The workers had received exactly what they were promised, yet the generosity extended to others somehow diminished their experience of what they had received.

I kept thinking about that as I remembered our evening beneath the date palms.

Each time someone spoke about what she loved about my daughter, my delight grew. Their love didn’t diminish mine. It added to my joy.

There is something wonderful about being loved. But there is another kind of joy in seeing someone you love being loved.

Thanks be to God.

There are checks I’m waiting on, repairs that need to be paid, a dispute with insurance over a denied claim, investment subscription docs, events I want to attend and money I want in the bank at the end of the year.

Apparently I’m an accountant. What’s coming in? What is going out? What hasn’t happened yet? What should have happened by now? What do I need to do next? Will it pay off?

It’s not just money either. I’m tracking sleep, how well I ate, and how often I worked out. And...whether a relationship is going the way I hoped. Whether I belong in a particular room. Whether my life is adding up the way I thought it would.

So when I came to this week’s Revised Common Lectionary passages, I found myself noticing something about control. The story of the Exodus shows Israel’s problem is completely beyond Israel’s ability to solve. With the Egyptian army behind them and a sea in front of them, there is no clever strategy left. No amount of accounting can fix the situation.

The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. The Egyptians pursued and went into the sea after them, all of Pharaoh’s horses, chariots, and chariot drivers. At the morning watch the Lord, in the pillar of fire and cloud, looked down on the Egyptian army and threw the Egyptian army into a panic. He clogged their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty. The Egyptians said, “Let us flee from the Israelites, for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.”

Exodus 14:19-25

What strikes me is how little of this is within Israel’s control. Yet the Israelites still had to walk across. I imagine some were strutting across, pumping their fists and amazed at what God was doing for them. There may have also been some scarring across, freaking out, still being chased by chariots.

God makes a way they could never make for themselves, but they still have to enter it.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers.”

So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.

Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

Exodus 14:26-31

By the morning the sea returns to its normal depth. The thing that looked like Israel’s certain destruction has become their place of deliverance.

The natural world is pliable in God’s hands. Psalm 114 is a poetic retelling of the same liberation, but it does it with playfulness and awe. It’s almost as if creation is startled by God:

When Israel came out of Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a barbarous-tongued folk,
Judah became His sanctuary,
Israel His dominion.
The sea saw and fled,
Jordan turned back.
The mountains danced like rams,
hills like lambs of the flock.
What is wrong with you, sea, that you flee,
Jordan, that you turn back,
mountains, that you dance like rams,
hills like lambs of the flock?
Before the Master, whirl, O earth,
before the God of Jacob,
Who turns the rock to a pond of water,
flint to a spring of water.

Psalm 114

The sea flees...Mountains dance...Rock becomes water...Everything that looked fixed suddenly isn’t.

I’ve been spending my nights calculating within the limits of what I can currently see, while scripture keeps presenting me with a God who is not confined by those limits.

When I’m doing the arithmetic, trying to work out how all of this is going to happen using only the variable currently available to me. Perhaps this is what worrying does. It takes the present arrangement of things and assumes that this is all God has to work with.

But then Jesus tells a story about accounting too:

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”

Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him, and, as he could not pay, the lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him by the throat he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Matthew 18:21-35

The servant owes a debt he cannot possibly repay, and yet he still thinks the solution is repayment: “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.”

But the king does something outside the servant’s calculation. He forgives the debt. And almost immediately the servant goes out and starts keeping accounts again.

I started wondering how often I do the same thing. Not by grabbing someone by the throat. But keeping track of what someone owes me. What I think I owe. What should have happened or what I need to accomplish before I belong. What number in the bank will finally make me feel secure.

I keep trying to solve by accounting for what God keeps meeting through grace. Maybe I can stop asking the books to tell me whether I am safe, whether I belong, or whether God is with me.

Maybe it is discovering that grace has already scrapped the ledger.

Thanks be to God.

I’ve noticed my desire is to be satisfied with the Lord alone and glorify him with all my days. Yet there are also certain wants beneath that. I have realized that I am afraid to want the things I want.

And it’s not because desire itself scares me, but because disappointment does. There are things I deeply want: meaningful work, financial abundance, joyful intimacy with my beautiful wife, homes and places and experiences.

But beneath the wanting is a strange agreement...if I really hope for these things and they don’t happen, I might be let down or discover something divesting about God or myself.

So I keep one hand on the emergency brake, so to speak.

I am currently reading the book Les Misérables. It’s a massive book, and Victor Hugo wanders all over the place, and I’m wondering where it’s going, and most of the time I am lost. He does so much world-building, and I feel like the thing could be half the size.

There is so much that I am missing. But I am seeing a main theme around being trapped in prison. The main guy breaks free multiple times; that’s what he becomes known for, then he gets trapped again and somehow finds freedom.

An interesting part is that the bad guy, who I despise, gets locked up and I’m celebrating; there is justice! And then he escapes from prison, at night, in the rain, and I’m on the edge of my seat, and I’m cheering for him and wanting to see if he gets free. My heart is racing, and I can’t fall asleep without finding out.

That catches my attention, and I’m noticing all the different ways people are locked up. There are literal prisons, social prisons; one guy’s worldview becomes an obsession, and it’s a prison; another guy is protecting himself in ways that leave him isolated.

I was sitting at my breakfast bar journalling and found myself writing out what I really want. And as the desires come out, I discovered that the thing underneath it all wasn’t jealousy, or greed, or ambition...it was fear, and specifically...What if God doesn’t come through?

This week in the Revised Common Lectionary, we are looking at the Passover festival. God is about to free his people from captivity, and he gives some very clear and somewhat strange directions:

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.

They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn with fire.

This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the Lord. I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.

The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be a day of remembrance for you.

You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.

Exodus 12:5-14

All these instructions come before they are set free. They are still slves in Egypt nd they are told to take a lamb, slaughter it, put your sandals on, and eat it in a hurry. Taking these actions in faith that the deliverance is going to come.

They are still slaves, but God tells them to eat like people who are leaving.

Israel is literally enslaved, but God instructs them to prepare for the freedom that hasn’t yet appeared. It is to be a festival. This celebration flows from Psalm 149, which begins with a fantastic word:

Hallelujah.
Sing to the LORD a new song,
His praise in the faithful’s assembly.
Let Israel rejoice in its Maker,
Zion’s sons exult in their king.

Psalm 149:1-2

The people who are being freed are not merely told to leave. They are being taught to remember and celebrate their freedom.

I had confused protecting myself from disappointment with freedom. I was protecting myself from disappointment by diminishing hope.

I was spending so much time worrying about whether God would come through and open the door that I hadn’t noticed I was holding it shut from my side.

And as I sat with that, I began to notice this is not the only way I bind myself. I do it in relationships too. I can hold onto an offense, reenact what somebody did, hold to resentment, and keep my distance as a form of protection.

Jesus has another way:

“If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone...Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Matthew 18:15-20

That language of binding and loosing jumped out for me as I had been noticing prisons everywhere in Les Misérables, and here was Jesus using the same kind of language. Sometimes the thing binding me is the fear of disappointment. Sometimes it’s resentment. In both cases, what feels like self protection has just become confinement.

I still don’t know what God will do with the things I wrote at the breakfast bar. I don’t know which desires will be fulfilled or changed or which I will eventually have to release.

But I am beginning to see that refusing to want them does not make me free.

The Israelites were still in Egypt when they put on their sandals and picked up their staffs, like people who were leaving. Maybe thats where I’m at too. Not out of Egypt, not certain of what comes next. Just a little more willing to tell God what I want and keep my sandals on.

She is in a young professionals group at church and is going to share her testimony at the group on Monday night, and we were talking about it together at the dinner table. She was saying how she is open to God and what God wants for her life and wants to know him more, but is also frustrated that she couldn’t fully know him or fully know all there was to know about God.

My only response was, yeah, me too. I have spent much of my life believing that knowing more, accomplishing more or understanding myself more clearly would finally make me whole. Sitting next to my daughter, I wondered if God was showing me something different.

Moses is in exile, out in the wilderness. This is not only geographic wilderness. Moses himself is living inside an unresolved story.

There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.”

When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!”

And he said, “Here I am.”

Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Exodus 3:2-6

That will get your attention! A bush that is burning yet not consumed. Moses tries to get a closer look, but God calls to him and says, “Come NO closer.” Take you shows off; this is holy ground.

I love the tension in that. Moses is being drawn toward God, but he isn’t being invited to master or possess what he sees. God reveals himself and yet remains beyond Moses’ grasp. Moses eventually hides his face because he is afraid to look at God.

And then this God, whom Moses cannot fully see, tells Moses what he sees:

Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. Now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

He said, “I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

Exodus 3:7-12

Moses receives a massive calling, and immediately asks: “Who am I?” And what is fascinating to me is that God doesn’t really answer the question. He also doesn’t tell Moses how talented he is, or affirm him with five reasons he is qualified, or encourage him by saying he is stronger than he thinks.

God answers with “I will be with you.”

Moses asks something about himself, and God gives him something about their relationship. Moses asks an identity question, and God answers with presence.

Maybe the answer to “Who am I?” isn’t found by looking harder at myself, but it begins with knowing who is with me.

But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”

God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:

This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.

Exodus 3:13-16

Moses wants to know God’s name, and God’s answer is again mysterious: “I am who I am.” The Hebrew translator Robert Alter has the name as “I-Will-Be-Who-I-Will-Be.”

God reveals himself, but isn’t making himself manageable. And Moses is given enough to follow, but not enough to possess or control. He has to walk forward trusting the One who promises “I will be with you.”

I’m starting to see that faith isn’t knowing everything about God. Maybe it is discovering that God can be completely trusted even when he can not be completely understood.

That kind of trust is what makes wholeness possible. Thats what I hear in Psalm 126:

Judge me, O LORD.
For I have walked in my wholeness,
And the LORD I have trusted.
I shall not stumble.
Test me, O LORD, and try me.
Burn pure my conscience and my heart.
For Your kindness is before my eyes
and I shall walk in Your truth.
I have not sat with lying folk
nor with furtive men have dealt.
I despised the assembly of evildoers,
nor with the wicked have I sat.
Let me wash my palms in cleanness
and go round Your altar, LORD,
to utter aloud a thanksgiving
and to recount all Your wonders.
LORD, I love the abode of Your house
and the place where Your glory dwells.

Psalm 26:1-8

Wholeness might not come from fully knowing. It might come from trusting God...who I can’t fully know...who knows me completely. This is the kind of trust that goes hand in hand with wholeness.

In 2020 I wrote a book on the spiritual path of sales called Selling Without Selling Your Soul. I wrote about how the opposite of selling your soul isn’t necessarily about becoming less ambitious. It is becoming undivided, whole.

The Psalmist here hasn’t got it all figured out, yet they say, “The Lord I have trusted” and “I shall walk in Your truth.”

The distinction here is between possessing all the truth and walking in it. One side is I need to understand truth so I can be secure. The other side is I trust God enough to walk in the truth I can see today.

Romans 12 starts to show us what this new kind of life is actually like. And it’s breathtaking! It is where you don’t have to know everything, fix anything, retaliate, or control someone else’s response.

It is a life that has loosened its grip and can love without controlling everything.

Let love be genuine…
Rejoice in hope, be patient in affliction, persevere in prayer...
Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep...
Do not claim to be wiser than you are...
If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all...
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good...

Romans 12:9, 12, 15, 16, 18, 21

And we can only live this way by walking with the God who knows everything about us.

The book I mentioned is based on this encounter between Peter and Jesus in the Gospels.

Peter has just had an extraordinary moment with Jesus where he identified him as the Messiah. He has the right answer and knows what is true about Jesus, and then Jesus tells him he is going to suffer and die:

From then on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he would have to go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised on the third day.

Peter took him and began to tell him off. “Certainly not, Master!” he said. “That’s never, ever going to happen to you!”

Jesus turned on Peter. “Get behind me, satan!” he said. “You’re trying to trip me up! You’re coming at this from a human point of view, not from God’s point of view!”

Matthew 16:21-23

Peter knows something true about God, and then immediately tries to make Him manageable. Thats Exodus 3 all over again! God reveals himself, but doesn’t surrender control of himself over to us.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to come after me, they must give themselves up, and pick up their cross, and follow me. Yes: if someone wants to save their life, they must lose it; and if anyone loses their life for my sake they will find it. What use will it be, otherwise, if you win the whole world but forfeit your true life? What will you give to get your life back? You see, the son of man is going to ‘come in the glory of his father with his angels,’ and then ‘he will reward everyone for the work they have done.’ I’m telling you the truth: some of those standing here will not taste death until they see ‘the son of man coming in his kingdom.’ ”

Matthew 16:24-28

I wrote Selling Without Selling Your Soul around that question: what good is it to gain the whole world and lose your true self? At the time, I was thinking mostly about ambition, achievement, money, success, and all the ways we trade ourselves trying to get somewhere.

I am hearing the question differently now. I can lose my life trying to secure it in all kinds of ways. I can trust a million things other than God to make things right in my life. By needing to know, needing to understand, needing to be right. By trying to control what happens next, or doesn’t happen next. Even by trying to fit God into something I can comprehend.

Peter is trying to save the life he thinks Jesus ought to have. Jesus tells him that the way to true life is almost exactly the opposite. Loosen your grip, give yourself up, follow me.

And that takes me back to the dinner table with my daughter. She wanted to know God more, and was sad that she couldn’t know everything there was to know about him.

And I couldn’t fix that for her. I couldn’t give her an answer that would make all the mystery disappear.

So we sat there together and held hands and prayed slowly. She poured out her heart to God, and I listened. We didn’t understand God any better when we got up from the table. But somehow we had been with him. And that was holy ground.

As I moved from Paul back into Exodus, I noticed that Exodus begins, in a sense, with an act of naming. The Hebrew people are multiplying in Egypt, and the new Pharaoh looks at them and decides who they are:

Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.

He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.”

Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.

The Egyptians subjected the Israelites to hard servitude, and made their lives bitter with hard servitude in mortar and bricks and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

Exodus 1:8-14

Pharaoh creates a whole oppressive system from a story about their identity. When it comes to an identity, a false naming doesn’t just remain an idea; it creates a world.

I’ve loved the word salubrious for a long time. I had a college teacher in Dendrology who taught us about trees and their Latin names. He loved language and entomology, and each day he had a word of the day. The only day I remember was Salubrious, and he said: “not to be confused with salacious.”

I took the word to heart and found it pretty descriptive of my vibe. Years later I worked with a coach, and she helped me clarify it as a guiding value. While I have other values, this one seems to be an overarching one for them all.

The other day, I was writing something for my book. It was about how we have these false beliefs of ourselves: worthless, abandoned, wrong, ugly, small. These words don’t just sit quietly in our minds. They shape our experience of life. We give meaning to events and explain them through that lens.

Later that evening I was reading Les Misérables by Victor Hugo and came across this line:

“Their health is delicate. A decapitated Alexis, a poignarded Peter, a strangled Paul, another Paul crushed flat with kicks, divers Ivans strangled, with their throats cut, numerous Nicholases and Basils poisoned, all this indicates that the palace of the Emperors of Russia is a condition of flagrant insalubrity.”
Page 592

Flagrant insalubrity - what an amazing phrase! Well done, Victor Hugo, or your translator. I wonder what the original line was in French.

Flagrant insalubrity is not the easiest to say. Thankfully, I have a daughter who is a speech therapy assistant, and she is helping me with my enunciation.

But the phrase resonated so well with me because it describes something I experience in false identity. A false belief about who we are can become more than a thought. We build an entire interior around it, a condition of flagrant insalubrity.

And that is exactly what Pharaoh is doing. His fearful story about the Hebrew people is becoming a world of oppression, bitterness, and eventually death:

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.”

But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.

So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this and allowed the boys to live?”

The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.”

So God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.

Exodus 1:15-21

The counter-movement comes through the midwives: they feared God, and they didn’t do what the king of Egypt was commanding them to do. They were living under a different authority than Pharaoh was naming.

Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”

Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river.

His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him. The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said.

Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?”

Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother.

Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

Exodus 2:1-10

The symbolism here points back to Noah and the flood, and forward to our baptism. The meaning of the name Moses, “drew out of the water,” can also be related to the false identities we are drawn out of. The identities that I work hardest to protect may be the very identities God is drawing me out of. These false identities keep us confined.

One of the best business books I’ve read, and I say best because I think about the ideas so frequently, is The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. The book talks about the Theory of Constraints. Every system has a bottleneck, and improving areas other than the bottleneck doesn’t change anything.

Find the constraint, work there, and suddenly movement becomes possible. Until you locate the next bottleneck!

I wonder if something similar happens in our spiritual lives. A false belief about who I am can become the place where everything gets constricted. I can work on all kinds of things around it, but still find myself caught in the same pattern.

Psalm 124 gives a much more poetic image for what it feels like when that constraint finally breaks:

Were it not the LORD Who was for us
—let Israel now say—
were it not the LORD Who was for us
when people rose against us,
then they would have swallowed us alive
when their wrath flared hot against us.
Then the waters would have swept us up,
the torrent come up past our necks.
Then it would have come up past our necks—
the raging waters.
Blessed is the LORD,
Who did not make us prey for their teeth.
Our life is like a bird escaped
from the snare of the fowlers.
The snare was broken and we escaped.
Our help is in the name of the LORD,
maker of heaven and earth.

Psalm 124

Now of course this isn’t an objective description of what is really happening but there are times when I have been so in a funk, so locked up and consumed by it that it seemed I was being stalled alive!

And that brings me back to identity. In the Gospel passage, Jesus begins with the identities others have placed on him:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

And they said, “Some say John the Baptist but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Matthew 16:13-20

This naming of Peter is so powerful. When we see Jesus for who he really is, we see ourselves for who we really are! And he is then given the keys to the kingdom of heaven, with the power to bind things up and free things up by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Maybe transformation is not becoming someone completely different. Maybe it is becoming who God has always known us to be, the self we have forgotten beneath all the other names we have learned to live under.

That same movement shows up in Romans: a renewed mind, a truer understanding of ourselves, and then the gifts we bring into the body of Christ.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:1-2

Our gifts are grace given to us, but they aren’t merely for us. They are given within the body, to be offered to one another. It's a thrill when we operate from this place, and the more we give of them, the more will be given to us.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the encourager, in encouragement; the giver, in sincerity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Romans 12:3-8

Renew your mind and give your gifts.

There is something only you can uniquely give. It’s a dose of the holy spirit poured into you that isn't necessarily for you. It’s a gift given to you to give away. I often notice those gifts in the moments when I feel most alive, most connected to God, most illuminated by love.

But those moments are not always light or happy.

I was with a group this week and shared something difficult. I was close to tears, and my words became few. Yet the way people moved toward me, prayed for me, and cared for me was so infused with love and grace that it was clearly of God.

It was a holy moment.

And strangely, although I was mostly receiving, I was also giving something of myself. It cost me something to be that open. It cost me keeping things light and bubbly. It cost me being seen as having it all together.

It even cost me being willing to look needy and, dare I say, desperate.

She was reentering society and also reconnecting with the family system, and let’s just say it’s been a little rocky. I’d make a bid for connection, and somehow someone would get dinged.

I found myself being joyful despite the hardships. It was kind of like having a balance sheet and tallying up two columns, one with the hard stuff, good things in another, and hopefully the good outweighs the bad.

Then there was the joy after the hard stuff. We went through something difficult, resolved it and then it was good to be together again. That still makes joy dependent on the circumstances and getting beyond it.

We went for a hike together yesterday, the two of us. We were chatting about the summer, and she mentioned Isaiah 35 as scripture that was resonating with her. I didn’t know it, but she shared some sections from memory. It was a tough hike, up a mountain in the Arizona heat. On the way down, I went right by some flowers in the desert, but she noticed them and pointed them out, and it was a reference to a passage in Isaiah 35. I took a few pics.

I’m noticing a third kind of joy, and that would be joy because we went through something together. Now, this is not because hurting each other is good. Or because pain, misunderstandings, or conflict should be romanticized.

But because there is a kind of intimacy, tenderness, reconciliation, gratitude, and even delight that only happens because something was at stake. I wasn’t joyful because nothing had gone wrong. I was joyful because things had gone wrong and we were still here, together, more deeply connected.

We have been tracking the story of Joseph, and in a previous episode his brothers sold him into slavery. Through divine providence, they are reunited, yet the brothers don’t recognize him, and here is where he reveals his identity to them:

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer.

He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.”
Genesis 45:4-8

Joseph is clear that what they did to him hurt. But yet he also knows that God was sending him ahead of them to preserve life. He doesn’t erase the wound in order to find God, and he doesn’t erase God so that he can remain in the wound that was dealt to him.

That feels very different than an emotions balance sheet:
Sold into slavery (-10)
God gave me success (+20)
Therefore, net I’m ahead (+10)

Joseph seems to be seeing the entire situation differently, in a larger context. He tells them to come closer. They talk and connect and cry it out. And create a plan to reunite the whole family.

Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me; do not delay. You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. I will provide for you there, since there are five more years of famine to come, so that you and your household and all that you have will not come to poverty.’ And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.”

Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them, and after that his brothers talked with him.
Genesis 45:9-15

Family systems have a way of making us all bump into one another. The possibility of someone being hurt is pretty high! Yet the hurt doesn’t mean something has gone wrong with our connection; it may be evidence that we are actually in a relationship.

Psalm 133 gives a poetic image of dwelling together, and it’s not saying there won’t be friction.

Look, how good and how pleasant
is the dwelling of brothers together.
Like goodly oil on the head
coming down over the beard,
Aaron’s beard that comes down
over the opening of his robe.
Like Hermon’s dew that comes down
on the parched mountains.
For there the LORD ordained the blessing—
life forevermore.
Psalm 133

I like the repeated use of the phrase comes down as a way of signifying the blessing is flowing down from the heart of God, out onto the parched mountains.

The Psalm talks about what comes down, and now Jesus wants us to pay attention to what comes out of our hearts.

Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”

Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?”

He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind.[a] And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.”

But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.”

Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding?

Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”
Matthew 15:10-20

Family really has a way of showing us what comes out of our hearts! It reveals what’s there.

Immediately after this exchange, Matthew gives us an encounter with a woman under enormous pressure. And what comes out of her is remarkable.

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”

But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.”

He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”

He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that moment.
Matthew 15: 21-28

At first, when I was reading this, it seemed like Jesus was being a jerk; however, that was just the lens I was reading it from. It’s amazing how she enters into the metaphor, not making it mean that she is less than at all, and then convinces Jesus to do what she asked.

And it is said that her faith is great! Her poise is incredible, and it is amazing what flows out of her heart. She was being ignored, and the disciples wanted her sent away. And she responds with persistence and wit and immense love for her daughter.

Kinda like the desert still bringing forth flowers. I am still thinking about those flowers. I wonder how much joy I’ve been walking past because I’m waiting for the desert to stop being the desert.

I didn’t expect the texts to read me as much as they did; I am noticing the level of comparison I’ve allowed into my life. A trigger has been a flood in our house a couple of weeks ago, insurance denying the claim, and the initial costs of the repairs clearing out our checking account.

Then I noticed the neighbor across the street, who is only there for a weekend each year, starting the work to get a new roof. Where do these people get this kind of money to have a second home that’s huge and then get a whole new roof when you are never there? And then the next neighbor has just put in a pool, and the truck with all the trees and landscaping plants was out front, and I did the math in my head and could tell it’s probably more than our repair work, and my mind wondered where these people get this kind of cash.

This dynamic was playing out in my work. I placed names of the people I wanted to reach out to on my calendar. When the time came, I bumped them to a better day. I was comparing myself to them; they have everything already, I have nothing to offer. So I moved them to later in the week when I had better energy. That never came on, so I didn’t do the things I said I would do.

On Friday, I was sitting with my spiritual director telling him about all this stuff. There was freedom in telling the truth about where my heart was at. Others’ wealth and well-being were evidence of what I lacked, and it was blinding me to what I do have.

We prayed the opening of Psalm 105 together:

Acclaim the LORD, call out His name,
make His deeds known among the peoples.
Sing to Him, hymn to Him,
speak of all His wonders.
Revel in His holy name.
Let the heart of the LORD’s seekers rejoice.
Inquire of the LORD and His strength,
seek His presence always.
Recall the wonders that He did,
His portents and the judgments He issued,
O seed of Abraham His servant,
sons of Jacob, His chosen ones.
Psalm 105:1-6

There is a moment where you are seeking something because you lack it, and then you realize you already have what you are seeking!

The Old Testament story of Joseph and his brothers also has this theme of comparison.

Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers; he was a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father.

Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children because he was the son of his old age, and he made him an ornamented robe. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.
Genesis 37:1-4

So Joseph is the annoying little brother, the telltale who is clearly the favorite of the family. His brothers saw the robe and did the math on what it meant about them. I know that math! I’d been running it all week with the neighbors and the people I said I would call.

So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan. They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them they conspired to kill him. They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” But when Reuben heard it, he delivered him out of their hands, saying, “Let us not take his life.” Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him”—that he might rescue him out of their hand and restore him to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the ornamented robe that he wore, and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.

Then they sat down to eat, and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers agreed. When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.
Genesis 37:17-28

They decide not to kill him because there was something to be gained by selling him into slavery. Even their mercy was a transaction; they ran the numbers on their own brother.

Psalm 105 tells another side of the story:

And He called forth famine over the land,
every staff of bread He broke.
He sent a man before them—
as a slave was Joseph sold.
They tortured his legs with shackles,
his neck was put in iron,
until the time of his word had come,
the LORD’s utterance that purged him.
The king sent and loosed his shackles,
the ruler of peoples set him free,
made him master of his house
and ruler of all his possessions,
to admonish his princes as he desired
and to teach wisdom to his elders.
Psalm 105:16-22

What jealousy and comparison meant for harm, God was already writing into something else.

The Gospel passage gives us another band of brothers in trouble. This time they are in a boat, and the one who could rescue them wasn’t with them.

Immediately he made the disciples get into a boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them.
Matthew 14:22-24

As we have been reading through the book of Matthew, I am seeing how prevalent it is that Jesus gets away to be alone. It is mentioned between so many powerful moments, healings, and miracles that you can see it is very much his way of life.

After completing my 2-year spiritual direction certification, which had a lot of days on retreat and solitude, I’ve realized that I now crave this time away when before I avoided it and thought it was exile.

I am finding that silence and solitude are where I am able to notice the condition of my heart. Whether there is comparison or one of the other patterns I am prone to. And it draws me back to the One who has always been present, even in my comparison game.

Meanwhile, the boat is getting battered in a storm, and Jesus comes to them from a place of prayer:

And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind,[b] he became frightened, and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Peter often gets a bad rap here for not believing, yet it is clear that he actually walked on water a couple of steps before he doubted, and then again, hand in hand with Jesus, heading back to the boat.

This is what happened to me on Friday, going from getting to giving. I have what I need, and what’s more, I have plenty that I can give away. There are gifts only I have that I get to bring forth. A depth of feeling and noticing. Space for people to see what’s going on and shift their perspective. The gift of time and presence, telling truth at a different level. And trust that God will lead us to a deeper place to create wonderful things in the kingdom of God.

The names are back on my calendar.

In August of 2010, I found myself on a men’s retreat, The Crucible, that was rather unorthodox. It wasn’t so much sitting under a tree with a bible and a journal, although there was some of that. It was more like men running around shirtless in the woods banging on drums, even though there wasn’t much of that.

One of the teaching sessions, the story of Jacob wrestling with God, was used. They said each one of us men would experience the same thing this weekend. I was already scared, and that terrified me.

When my turn came around, I experienced instantaneous transformation. I’ve never walked the same, and I’m happy to have a limp.

Since that moment, I have been fascinated with transformation, the model of it, where it shows up in stories, and where it is different from change.

Sixteen years later, that curiosity still isn’t exhausted. I keep finding the same shape of transformation in every story I love. I have dedicated my career to transformational coaching.

Jacob is alone in a deserted place.

And he rose on that night and took his two wives and his two slavegirls and his eleven boys, and he crossed over the Jabbok ford. And he took them and brought them across the stream, and he brought across all that he had. And Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.

Jacob physically wrestling is significant because this is his main way of striving. Leaving the womb, he grabbed his brother’s ankle; he wrestled away his brother’s birthright and wrestled with Laban in a couple of ways. Now he is doing it again; he doesn’t give in.

And he saw that he had not won out against him and he touched his hip socket and Jacob’s hip socket was wrenched as he wrestled with him.

And he said, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking.”

And he said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

And he said, “What is your name?”

And he said, “Jacob.”

And he said, Not Jacob shall your name hence be said, but Israel, for you have striven with God and men, and win out.”

And Jacob asked and said, “Tell me your name, pray.”

And he said, “Why should you ask my name?” and there he blessed him.

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, meaning, “I’ve seen God face-to-face and I came out alive.” And the sun rose up upon him as he passed Penuel and he was limping in his hip.

Genesis 32:22-31

There is a lot of restraint from the other man. Similar to a dad wrestling with a child, the idea is to keep the fun going. Then he barely touched the hip socket, and it was wrenched out of place

He must have skillfully applied significant pressure to the exact right location. If been suffering from low back pain recently, and this week I went to a body worker that did all this pressure point stuff. It was incredible to stand up straight afterward, the first time in a month, and feel like my legs were unbolted or on springs

Notice in the exchange with Jacob and the man how lopsided it is. The man won’t give up his name; you can’t grab hold of him, which was Jacob’s move his whole life. But the man bestows a new name on him. He couldn’t acquire anything from the man; he could only be acquired.

The Psalm this week is an evening psalm, a nighttime prayer. The last line, beholding the face, that is Peniel. And taking your fill, thats foreshadowing to our gospel story.

I called You, for You will answer me, God.
Incline Your ear, O hear my utterance.
Make Your mercies abound,
O rescuer of those who shelter
from foes at Your right hand.
Guard me like the apple of the eye,
in the shadow of Your wings conceal me.

As for me, in justice I behold Your face,
I take my fill, wide awake, of Your image.

Psalm 17:6-8, 15

So here is the pattern…transformation comes by touch. It’s not by effort, not by technique, not by winning. Jacob wrestled all night and gained nothing until one precise touch wrenched him, renamed him, and gave him a new identity. The power wasn’t in the struggle; it was the contact.

And then the pattern becomes a Person.

When Jesus heard it, he went away from there in a boat to a deserted spot by himself. The crowds heard about it, and they followed him on foot from the towns. When he came out and saw the large crowd, he was sorry for them. He healed their sick.

Matthew 14:13-14

For the context of this passage, Jesus had just been notified that John the Baptist, his cousin, had been beheaded. He wanted to get away, and be alone so he could process this. The crowds find him; he is compassionate, and with a healing touch he restores people physically.

When it was evening, the disciples came to him. “This is a deserted spot,” they said, “and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away so that they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”

“They don’t need to go away,” said Jesus. “You give them something to eat.”

“All we have here,” they said, “is five loaves of bread and two fish.”

“Bring them here to me,” he said.

He told the crowds to sit down on the grass. Then he took the five loaves and the two fish and looked up to heaven. He blessed the loaves, broke them, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. Everybody ate and was satisfied, and they picked up twelve baskets full of broken pieces. There were about five thousand men who had eaten, besides women and children.
Matthew 14:15-21

Check out all the touches in the two stories. A touch to the hip socket that wounds a man into blessing. A compassionate healing touch that heals the sick. A multiplying touch to the bread and fish that feeds thousands, and there are twelve baskets left over.

The man at the Jabbok wouldn’t give up his name. Now he stands on a hillside in plain sight, people flocking to him, taking bread in his hands, blessing it, breaking it, giving it away. The pattern has a face, and the face has a name!

Both stories leave evidence behind: a limp and the twelve baskets. Thats the difference between change and transformation. Change is something you manage on the inside. Transformation is an inner thing made external, visible enough that people notice how you walk.

I behold your face, and take my fill, and I’m happy to have a limp.

Then I read it next to Genesis 29, where Jacob wasn’t vague about what he was asking for. He said it clearly and received it exactly as spoken. It’s a fascinating Old Testament story with a wonderful plot twist.

Then Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?”

Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was graceful and beautiful.

Jacob loved Rachel, so he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.”

Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.” So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.
Genesis 29:15-20

In the larger context, Jacob is on the run. He said that he would serve seven years, and it seemed like only a few days. It says that this is true love, but his real motivation is something else. Have a look at what he says when the seven years are up.

Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast. But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her. (Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her maid.)

When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?”

Laban said, “This is not done in our country—giving the younger before the firstborn. Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.” Jacob did so and completed her week; then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife.

Genesis 29:21-28

He says give me a wife that I may go in to her. There is no name in that sentence. Jacob, a deceiver, is played at his own game and deceived. When he says to his uncle, “give me your daughter, so I can go to bed with her,” he did get what he asked for. His desire was sexual, and he was given an outlet for that desire.

“And when morning came, look, she was Leah.”

The woman he thought he went to bed with wasn’t the one he woke up with.

This is the ancient world’s version of Willie Nelson’s song Ten With A Two, which has the lyric:

Last night I came in at two with a ten
and at ten I woke with a two.

Just a fun little recollection…When I moved to Illinois in 2003, I worked for a mortgage company. At the Christmas party, the tradition was to have the rookies sing a karaoke song in front of the whole company, spouses and all. I did Ten With A Two, which didn’t go over well with my beloved wife and others, and was fired in the New Year. I learned my lesson and now only sing Tequila at karaoke.

Bringing this back to Jacob, he is deceived in the night in a similar way to how he deceived his blind father to take Esau’s blessing. Robert Alter in the commentary of his translation of the Hebrew Bible shares this about the connections between the two stories:

The Midrash Bereishit Rabba vividly represents the correspondence between the two episodes: “And all that night he cried out to her, ‘Rachel!’ and she answered him. In the morning, ‘and,...look, she was Leah.’ He said to her, ‘Why did you deceive me, daughter of a deceiver? Didn’t I call out to Rachel in the night, and you answered me!’ She said: ‘There is never a bad barber who doesn’t have disciples. Isn’t this how your father cried Esau, and you answered him?’”

Leah tells him he taught her this!

Jacob is following his desires towards the things he thinks will make everything right in his life. In biblical terms, following after things other than the Lord, having him satisfy all our desires, it is idolatry. And whatever we follow ends up ruling our life.

He works for 14 years to buy the family he never chose. The strange part is that what he wanted was never a wicked thing to want.

Psalm 128 is a wisdom psalm that describes the blessing of following the Lord’s ways, and it shows what an idol is counterfeiting.

Happy all who fear the LORD,
who walk in His ways.
When you eat of the toil of your hands,
happy are you, and it is good for you.
Your wife is like a fruitful vine
in the recesses of your house,
your children like young olive trees
around your table.
Look, for it is thus
that the man is blessed who fears the LORD.
May the LORD bless you from Zion,
and may you see Jerusalem’s good
all the days of your life.
And may you see children of your children.
Peace upon Israel!
Psalm 128

A wife, children around a table, the fruit of your own hands. This is exactly the life Jacob is working for, and the psalm has no criticism of it at all. But it comes as a blessing, and it’s not a wage. Jacob is trying to buy it in seven-year increments from a shady salesperson.

Discipleship is all about following after God, but also living the life of Jesus as part of the kingdom of the heavens. And Jesus keeps describing that kingdom as a field.

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
Matthew 13:31-32

Our faith can be small, yet when planted in the kingdom, it flourishes and creates a beautiful environment for more flourishing.

The next one is smaller still, and hidden.

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
Matthew 13:33

Then two more stories and what it costs to want it:

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
Matthew 13: 44-46

Jacob sold everything also. Fourteen years of his life, which is a steeper price to pay than the merchant paid. What separates this is the four words: in his joy he goes. The merchant is laughing on the way to sell his furniture. Jacob’s fourteen years produced a grievance, wondering why he was deceived. One of them is glad, which is why giving up small things to follow Jesus is no sacrifice at all.

Which brings us back to not knowing what to pray for.

In the same way, too, the Spirit comes alongside and helps us in our weakness. We don’t know what to pray for as we ought to; but that same spirit pleads on our behalf, with groanings too deep for words. And the Searcher of Hearts knows what the spirit is thinking, because the spirit pleads for God’s people according to God’s will. We know, in fact, that God works all things together for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.
Romans 8: 26-28

Paul doesn’t say that we ask for too little or ask vaguely. It says we don’t know what to ask for. And like Jacob, often I ask for what I think I need and then I am completely wrong.

Earlier I said that whatever we follow ends up ruling our lives. Here is Pauls answer to that. It’s not serving for seven years, something is freely given.

God, after all, did not spare his own son; he gave him up for us all! How then will he not, with him, freely give all things to us?
Romans 8:32

That means nothing to negotiate and no Laban to negotiate with!

Who shall separate us from the Messiah’s love? Suffering, or hardship, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? …

No: in all these things we are completely victorious through the one who loved us. I am persuaded, you see, that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor the present, nor the future, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Messiah Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:35, 37-39

I am not writing this from the other side of having learned to want only the right things. I’ve asked for the wrong things many times. What's changed is not the accuracy of my wanting; it is that I no longer think I am the only one praying.

The Lord is the one who works all things together for the good. Even for Leah, the one with weak eyes, the one no one wanted. She has sons, and the fourth one, Judah, through whom the royal line runs and who brings us the Messiah!

Let’s start from the top, with Jacob on the run:

Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a stairway set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

And the Lord stood beside him and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring, and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Genesis 28:10-15

This story comes at a low point in Jacob’s life. He has deceived his father Isaac to receive the blessing that was meant for his brother Esau. He flees as his brother is furious and wants to kill him. At a vulnerable place, this dream is incredibly impactful.

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

Genesis 28:16-19

This passage came to me powerfully earlier this year. It was used at the completion of my two-year spiritual direction program. We were looking at the icon of Jacob’s Ladder, angels ascending and descending, and reflecting up the ups and the downs of our journey through life.

To close the retreat together as a cohort, we silently walked the labyrinth while the sun was setting behind a mountain, the sky filled with colors that were shifting, and the whole moment was indescribable. Angels were ascending and descending, and all the ups and downs of life were contained; surely God was there in each moment, and I had not known it.

That moment was a ladder to the top. This week brought a ladder to the bottom.

Friday morning I got up around 5:45, and there was water throughout the hallway, spread all across the dining room and living room. We had a storm the night before, and here in Arizona they come through fast and furious.

Our house has a courtyard in the middle, kinda like a square doughnut, and it had filled up with water and flowed into our house. A contractor friend had looked at it years ago and warned that they might get blocked and he’d hate to see it flood. I saw the leaves blocking the drains and knew it was all my fault. I should have cleared them. This is why I don’t deserve a nice house. This is why I can’t have nice things.

Then I looked out the front, and our beautiful 10ft bougainvillea was blown over, blocking the entryway. We had just had a gardener at the house saying we needed to trim it down in size because it was too heavy. He offered to do it, but the price was too high.

I spent three hours hacking away at the bush and dragging it to the street. These things have huge thorns, and the gloves I had were left out in the rain because I can’t take care of my things, and I couldn’t wear them.

Partway through addressing the bush, my mind went back to a conversation I had with a coaching client the day before. The client had taken a big jump of putting himself out there in a brave way and second-guessing himself and things he said.

I asked what if how it happened, as it is, was perfect? He couldn’t see it was perfect, and acknowledging it was would mean lowering his standards.

This was playing around in my mind as I hacked at the bush and dealt with the thorns, and now I had to drink my own medicine.

Then the gardener I mentioned came through the neighborhood; I waved as he went by and made it look like I was having fun. He came back around later and stopped to see how I was doing. Not his words, but saying I told you so about the bush being too heavy. He asked about the job and if I wanted him to do it, but I said no, too much money. He drove off, and I can’t believe he was taunting me like that!

An enemy taunting me about what sprang up in my yard overnight, which is almost exactly where this week’s gospel passage begins.

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field, but while everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’

He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”

Matthew 13:24-30

The weeds that sprang up in my field while I slept were the ways I make an event mean more than it is. The voices that I buy into that tell me who I am. I should have cleaned out the leaves. I don’t deserve to have a nice house. I can’t take care of my things.

And like the servants in the story, “lets go and pull them out,” this is my whole reflex. I see a weed, and want to get rid of it, clean things up before anyone sees. Same with the client I mentioned who couldn’t acknowledge it went perfectly and had plenty of reasons why. And so was I, cutting up a bush with no gloves and persecuting myself the whole time.

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

Matthew13:36-43

It’s interesting that angels are mentioned in both passages. The same angels on Jacob’s Ladder are the ones who handle the harvest. The sorting is their job, not mine.

A coach of mine helped me see something that relates closely to this. The things we most want to get rid of about ourselves, that we are trying so hard to change, is what is keeping us stuck. We need to co-opt the enemy! Notice it. See how it is running us and choosing for us. Then see if we can choose something else.

This is why getting rid of it never works. The weeds are tangled into the wheat at the root; my attentiveness and my persecutor are the same facility, pointing in opposite directions. So the master says let both of them grow. Notice them, name them, but leave the pulling to the harvest, which was never mine anyway.

Meanwhile, the psalmist prays like a man with no weeds to hide.

LORD, You searched me and You know,
It is You Who know when I sit and I rise,
You fathom my thoughts from afar.
My path and my lair You winnow,
and with all my ways are familiar.
For there is no word on my tongue
but that You, O LORD, wholly know it.
From behind and in front You shaped me,
and You set Your palm upon me.
Knowledge is too wondrous for me,
high above—I cannot attain it.
Where can I go from Your spirit,
and where from before You flee?
If I soar to the heavens, You are there,
if I bed down in Sheol—there You are.
If I take wing with the dawn,
if I dwell at the ends of the sea,
there, too, Your hand leads me,
and Your right hand seizes me.
Should I say, “Yes, darkness will swathe me,
and the night will be light for me,
Darkness itself will not darken for You,
and the night will light up like the day,
the dark and the light will be one.

Search me, God, and know my heart,
probe me and know my mind.
And see if a vexing way be in me,
and lead me on the eternal way.

Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24

The psalmist knows that there is nowhere we can go where God is not there. It’s not about cleaning up our act before inviting God to search us. He gets handed the whole field, weeds and all, and does the sorting in his own time.

We had the flood mitigation crew come over on Saturday and pulled off every baseboard in the house as they were all buckled. The water in the walls went further than imagined, all the way to the bedroom closets. Now there are dehumidifiers and what looks like fifty fans running day and night.

It’s like living in a white noise machine. Paul says the whole creation groans as it waits; this week it sounds exactly like this. The groaning is the drying out.

Going back to Jacob at Bethel, he takes the stone he slept on and pours oil on it, anointing it, and the very site of his descent and renames the place. He didn’t wait for better circumstances.

I’m looking at all the ripped-out baseboards, the maze of fans plugged in everywhere. Even though I can’t plug in a laptop without tripping the breaker, I’m saying surely the Lord is in this place. I didn’t know it, and I’m beginning to.

This week I was sitting with my spiritual director who had just returned from time at the Taize Community in France. While he was on retreat at the monastery, a stained-glass window depicting a father and son captured his attention. He wondered who the image was of, and especially the little boy, and he saw a portion of it available as a wooden icon in the gift shop, realized it was Isaac. He bought it home and had me contemplate it as we sat together.

In the image, a portion of the larger stained glass, it is just the little boy, with the Father’s hands behind him. One hand pushing him forward, the other comforting him. The boy is reaching up, holding the father’s hand, the other on his stomach, sensing the knot in his gut, while in a situation he doesn’t understand.

It took me into the experience of Isaac, and also into my childhood experiences that shaped and formed who I am today.

When Isaac was young, he must have known the pressure of his father, as the favored son who would father many nations and peoples and would one day, through his descendants, a savior would come. The pressure of his calling was immense. And now his father was offering him up as a sacrifice, going all the way, until the Lord provided a sacrifice as a substitute.

No doubt that whole thing had a profound impact on him. This week’s passages in the Revised Common Lectionary pick up the story where Isaac is older, and a servant is given the task to return to their homeland and find the man a wife. The Lord identifies Rebekah:

Then Rebekah and her maids rose up, mounted the camels, and followed the man, and the servant took Rebekah and went his way.

Now Isaac had come from Beer-lahai-roi and was settled in the Negeb. Isaac went out in the evening to walk in the field, and, looking up, he saw camels coming. And Rebekah looked up, and when she saw Isaac, she slipped quickly from the camel and said to the servant, “Who is the man over there, walking in the field to meet us?”

The servant said, “It is my master.” So she took her veil and covered herself.

And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.

Genesis 24:61-67

The boy who carried the weight of his calling made it back from Moriah, finds himself comforted and loved. The story does not leave him alone with a burden he can’t carry.

But there is a particular kind of burden that is harder to put down than that knife on the mountain. It’s the burden of needing to prove yourself, of trying to satisfy a crowd that won’t be satisfied. Jesus names it directly.

There are two passages in the gospel selection this week:

“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,

‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’

“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

Matthew 11:16-19

This is a game I have played in the marketplace trying to win business. I needed to be proven right. I played my flute and needed people to dance! And yet I came to find the freedom once I stopped. Stopped defending and performing and trusting the fruit to show what is true in its time.

And also a famous gospel selection, but the larger context of it is very insightful. Jesus is praying to the Father as he shares this. Hear this as a prayer of Jesus over you.

At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:25-30

Real talk here…there have been seasons where I have found coming to Jesus hard work and much other than restful. Usually when I have been cooking up some self-discipline project, burning the midnight oil and then dragging myself up early, until I am in such a foul mood that no one wants to be around me, not even Jesus. :)

Which is exactly the point I kept missing. The yoke was never meant to be one more thing I needed to perform my way into. The character of God revealed here is doing this according to His gracious will. We can learn from him as he is gentle and lowly of heart. Meaning...he is not dominating or overpowering.

God was revealing things to us as we were children. That we were supported and provided for, even while we couldn’t do it for ourselves or produce any value in return. We were utterly and totally dependent and vulnerable.

This is the easy yoke at work. It is not easy because the load is light but because we are not pulling it alone.

During a coaching session with a client this week, we were wondering about the fact that when we are weakest, we are strong. My client had an extraordinary moment to serve a friend of his who was in a difficult season. At our most powerless, it is then that we are able to be powerful. Because there is more availability to the Spirit who picks up the slack for us.

Coming back to the little boy in the icon. He is being pushed forward into his calling and also reaching up for comfort. He doesn’t need to prove he belongs or have to win the marketplace. He is already held. Taking the easy yoke of the one who is gentle and lowly of heart. And receives rest.

At the time I was having a lot of success in my sales career, however it was never enough and I was not processing things effectively. I would be able to have self control with alcohol when I was at home. But on the road, with a $250 per person expense account and clients that wanted to go out for a big night with Luke, it was a different story. Going on the road to see clients flipped something, and I played the part of a rockstar pretty well.

I decided to join this leadership development program not really sure of what I was getting in to. We met in person, about 10 or 12 of us, for a full day once a month.

The container turned my life inside out. In more ways than one. I was doing significant inner emotional processing, and the group aspect made it potent and effective.

Things got worse before they got better. I had an issue with my immigration to the US and was thrown into deportation proceedings. I’d head out on the road and the partying became a pressure release valve, or an escape hatch, and I wasn’t processing things effectively. Having the group made it possible for things to implode without the collateral damage that could have been possible for a guy like me going off the rails.

I was in the program for three years. One of the core teachings we came back to often was the Emotional Needs of a Leader. Dr. Townsend put the material out in the book People Fuel. The book talks about the relational network around us and how it is a contributing factor to our energy, our productivity, and our emotional well being. We all have emotional needs, which he calls relational nutrients. There are 22. They are arranged in a simple flow grouped in four quadrants: first be present with me, then encourage, then clarify reality, and finally move toward action. The exercise was to identify what we needed and make a request of another person to meet it.

The most important realization I had, and continue to have, is how infrequently myself or others would ask for their need for Advice to be met. This meant that I had to tame my advice monster and meet another need someone was requesting, without telling them what I think they should do.

That was harder than it sounds. Advice was the thing I was best at. Persuasion, a personal response that lands, being “on”, that was the whole act on the road. And it turned out to be the one nutrient almost no one was actually asking for.

And in that vein I learned to value the need of Containment. Often, it is so freeing to be able to vent and unload and not worry about how it is received or how you might be judged. The rockstar could be admired, but he had never once let himself be received as is.

That is the part I am still living into. I have come to realize that there may be a couple missing from the list.

One of them is Delight. Celebration is on the list, it is acknowledging a win, both cognitively and emotionally, of the external accomplishment. Delight is different. Delight is being enjoyed. Not what you did, but that you exist. It is the Father’s posture toward the Son: this is my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.

For leaders, especially those who are so often tolerated, managed, or leveraged, being delighted in is a profound and often unmet need. It was the thing the salesguy on the road never let himself receive, because performance can earn celebration, but it can never earn delight.

Another one missing from the list is Witness. Not being understood in a single moment, that is closer to attunement or validation. Witness is being known over time. Someone who has walked with you for multiple years can reflect your whole journey back to you in ways you can’t see yourself. There are relationships from this group that have endured and lasted and stood the test of time and we still keep showing up as ourselves and for each other.

That longitudinal knowing, for a relentless guy like me, always moving, always performing, polishing the facade, was afraid to stand still long enough to receive.

I think that is finally what Witness is…telling the truth about where I have been so that someone else does not have to feel so alone in where they are.