“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
Jeremiah 17:7-8
The prophet Jeremiah, speaking to the Israelites as they were being exiled from their homeland, here quotes and expands on Psalm 1, the psalm we sang and read together this past Sunday. Like Psalm 1, this prophecy asks of us: where, and to whom, do you send out your roots?
In the next month our family anticipates moving into a house and more fully making a home for ourselves here in Kazakhstan—and then for a few months, from June to November, we will be back in the US, in this place which is also our home. Where do we belong? As we think through this and try to arm ourselves for the struggle we are in and know is coming, especially for our boys, I’ve been reading quite a bit on Third Culture Kids (TCKs). This is a description of kids like ours, who have a home as expatriates in some country other than their passport country, where they also have a home. Many authors discuss the difficulty TCKs have in answering the question, “Where are you from?” and the longing they experience to know where they belong. But the proposed solutions of some of this literature come up empty: find belonging in yourself; find belonging in your family; find belonging in the TCK, international, or expatriate community.
We all long for belonging whether or not we even have a passport, but to try to root ourselves in ourselves or in others is to make ourselves into tumbleweed. Jeremiah’s prophecy quoted above begins with (Jer. 17:5-6):
“Thus says the Lord:
‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 He is like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.’”
To trust, to send out our roots to humans—to ourselves or to those around us, even those who have or seem to have what we’re looking for—is fatal. We must trust, we must send out our roots only to our Father, who alone is the source of life. The apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Ephesus gives us a picture of ourselves as tumbleweed, desperately trying to root ourselves in ourselves or in others who are flesh like us (Ephesians 4:14): “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” But he also gives us a picture of who we are and can be as we learn to trust God, as we send out our roots to our Father (Eph 4:15-16): “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
Ultimately, what we want our sons to say of themselves as they answer “Where are you from?” and the deeper question behind it, “Who are you?” is this: “I am a baptized man, bought with the blood of Christ, made a member of his (worldwide and centuries deep) Church, looking for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” Where do we belong? We want to know because we want to be able to abide, to come and stay, to rest and be fed, to be known and loved. Listen as Jesus prays for you and me (and for all our children!) in John 17:20-26—and even now as he stands before the Father interceding for us:
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Hannah
What does it mean to think like a Christian about the government?
On Sunday, January 19, we began a series in Adult Sunday School about a Christian view of government. After a month-long break, we are going to be resuming it this Sunday (2/16)!
If you missed the first session, I strongly encourage you to print out the handout and take an hour to listen to the audio. That session is the foundation for what we will be discussing over the next few classes.
One of the foundational truths that we began with last time is that all government is established by God. Over the next two sessions (2/16 and 3/2), we are going to be addressing the specific question of why God has done this. Why does he establish governments? Seeing his purpose should hopefully clarify for us how to think about our own government, and it will likely also begin to reveal how different the human perspective on the purpose of government is from God’s perspective.
Just like in the first session, we are going to be avoiding the particular political issues that divide Americans; instead, my goal is a Biblical understanding of government itself. Once the foundation is in place, I hope that it begins to change how we wrestle with the issues, but we need to start with the foundation.
Make a point to stay after church for Sunday School this week! As always, childcare will be provided for the youngest kids, and Sunday School will be offered for upper elementary, middle school, and high school students.
In Christ,
Steven+
Lessons from Church History
As you all likely noticed, this year’s cohort of Anglican History students joined us last weekend. For the last three years, I have had the pleasure of teaching this class to clergy, ordinands, and lay leaders from the churches of our diocese and beyond. One theme that seems to leap off the page each year is worth sharing with you all, because it has been an encouragement to me.
You can’t read a lot of church history without realizing that there have been long seasons of stagnation in the church. The list of causes for these seasons of stagnation is long: Corrupt clergy, disinterested laity, foreign invasions, lack of engagement with the surrounding culture, too much mimicking of the surrounding culture, pagan opposition—basically, everything you might guess has been the cause of stagnation in the church, at one point or another. The church has low points, when worship, discipleship, and evangelism fade, moments when the church looks like anything but the light of the world.
In each and every one of those seasons, though, God has stirred up people through whom the revival of the church has arrived. That is encouraging! But the real encouragement to me—the point I want to share with you—has been the fact that, in each season, it only took one or two people to shift the direction of the entire church. In each of those moments, God didn’t use a multitude; instead, one or two people faithful to him and willing to wait on him in prayer was all that he was waiting for. Through the ministries of individuals and tiny groups, revitalization and revival spread across kingdoms and dioceses.
The stories of the men and women—people like St. Aidan, Alfred the Great, Theodore of Tarsus, Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Elizabeth I, John Wesley, Hannah More, Edward Pusey (and many more)—whom God has used are an encouragement to me, because it reminds me how much God loves to work through tiny groups of humble people. When we are faithful to him, when we pursue him in prayer, when we seek to conform our lives to Jesus Christ, there is no limit to what God might do with us. In many of the stories, the people probably didn’t even realize how much God was doing—in hindsight, we can see it, but they were just saying “yes” to him in humility. Many of them battled fear, opposition, and false accusations. They were clergy, monarchs, professors, ordinary lay men and women—God didn’t need a particular status or background; all he was waiting for was one man or one woman faithful to him.
I earnestly believe that God does far more with the lives of the few who give him everything than we could ever expect. Much of it may be invisible to us, but from the standpoint of history, from God’s perspective, it is more than we might imagine.
In Christ,
Steven+