But recently, along with twenty other fellow believers, I’ve been taking a Biblical Theology class at my local church. Each week we approach a different genre of Scripture, seeking to understand how it illuminates Christ and his suffering (Luke 24:25-27). Last week, we looked at the five books of the Old Testament that comprise “wisdom literature” which to my surprise includes the Song of Solomon.

We read Chapter 2 in class, which is about a man going to great lengths to get to his bride. In verse 8 we read, “The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills.” You feel the groom’s thrill in pursuing and moving toward his soon-to-be wife, displaying a longing and eagerness that refreshes the reader as we imagine ourselves in her place. It bids us to imagine “if only someone pursued me in that way.” But remember! This is a letter that is reflective of Jesus and the church, a love letter God wrote to his people. Instead of reading it as a how-to guide, or an old-fashioned story about traditional marriage, we get to read this as Jesus’s traveling at great lengths to get to his church, that is, this is the story of God’s very pursuit of you. Jesus didn’t bound over literal mountains and hills – he bound the chasm of heaven itself. He leaped down to earth to die for you to bring you back into his unending, never-breaking love.  

This passage could be re-written in a manner that depicts Jesus all the clearer:

The voice of my love, here he comes. Leaping over the greatest chasm, from heaven to earth, to be with us. He is full of grace, the perfect man. He has arrived and he is calling my name. 

He says to me, Get up, my love, the one I delight in, and come to me. For all the deadness of your winter has passed, it’s been nailed to the cross. And now, through my resurrection, life springs forth from the earth. Restoration of all creation is knocking at the door. The time to worship God forever is now here. Get up, my love, the one I adore, and come away with me. Do not hide, for there is no longer shame, but instead, come out in the open. I long to see your face, to hear your voice. 

I am yours and you are mine.

As I reflect on that truth, I think back to my twenty-something-year-old self and wish this was the picture someone would’ve painted for me, instead of telling me this book was off-limits until marriage. In that moment it felt as if I wasn’t worthy to read the book, when instead that is far from the truth! This book is a beautiful display of God’s intimacy toward his people and how sex is an illustration, not the fulfillment or purpose of love. Now, as someone who is married, this book bids me to see how marriage can’t be my God because my husband will not satisfy or fulfill the desires only God can fulfill. Marriage, and the Song of Solomon, is a reflection, pointing to a far more intimate and satisfying relationship, which is in Christ alone.

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Now, on this side of having kids, my mornings are a bit more…charged. The second my husband and I open the door to our girl’s room, the rigamarole begins. Before we put our hands on the doorknob, we sometimes exchange “the look.” Maybe you know the one. It’s the look of “Are you ready?” or maybe “Are you sure we can’t wait five more minutes?”  

As we head in, our eldest daughter pops her head up from her bed and doesn’t miss a beat: “Mama, Dada. Hungry, Addy. Pancake, banana.” As I squat down to give her a morning squeeze, she passes right on by me and makes a beeline for the kitchen. She is consumed with the thought, “Food cannot come fast enough, I need it now,” and her requests for food play on repeat until her blush pink plate touches the table.

Early last week, I was in a meeting and someone read Luke 12:22-34 from The Message paraphrase by Eugene Peterson. It contains one of Jesus’s more famous teachings about anxiety and worry, how the birds and flowers don’t worry, so neither should we because we are of even more value to God. 

The Message uses the word “fuss” instead of worry. And this is what felt heavy, but revealing to me about it: who fusses?! Everyone! (Despite how much we may pretend the contrary.) We fuss about the weather (Minnesota winters, anyone?). We fuss over our current lot in life, whether that be jobs, relationships, or overcommitted schedules. We can even fuss about preferences toward the everyday like food and clothing, as Luke 12 suggests. But the reason we do so is a little more complicated. The underlying reason we fuss is that we believe in just a tiny bit of karma, so when something doesn’t go our way, even though we’re doing all this good, fussing flows from the injustice that we feel has been committed. It’s a tiny, albeit fruitless attempt to right all wrongs…in our favor.

Jesus adds, “What I’m trying to do here is get you to relax, and not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works.”

Bringing this back to the daily routine of my insatiably hungry daughter: her perpetual morning fussing is a picture of how it’s built into all of us, from birth — this desire to self-justify. The angst-ridden cry of “How dare things not go right for me!”, at its core, is sourced by the belief that we deserve the good thing.

It reminded me of how Old Testament Israel — just days after the Lord freed them from slavery in Egypt — grumbles and complains about the menu, their leaders, the inhabitants of the promised land … the list goes on. In fact, it’s one way to summarize the entire story of Israel: through the lens of the fussing people of God, which, again, is fertilized by the belief that they were good people who deserved good things. Even after the law came in to help pump the brakes on their propensity to trust in themselves, they used it to throw gasoline onto the fire of their arrogance and misguided sense of self.

Yet, in the midst of all of this, the Lord, shockingly, unfairly, yet persistently meets their needs. He was preparing his people for a great unveiling. As they continued to fuss about their circumstances and miss (or forget) his small provisions, the Lord readied his people for his greatest provision, his Son, Jesus Christ. Like the loving Father He is, He gave us the very kingdom itself through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son. Our greatest worry, eternal separation from God, was satiated on the cross. 

Maybe most important here is to see that the cross wasn’t a pedestal or a lectern for Jesus to simply tell us to try harder at not fussing. Instead, it was there that he bore our worst — our most strenuous complaints, our resistance to his offer of grace, and his insistence that salvation was a gift, not a trophy. On that dark day, when Israel grumbled about the True Manna of Jesus’s body itself, we all cried out with them, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” But it was through our acts of evil, that God worked for good and fed us with his grace.

Addy’s morning rituals, Israel’s wilderness wanderings, the Jews’ crucifying of Jesus — they’re all my story. And yours. The good news is that he feeds us anyway. But his plate isn’t blush pink like Addy’s, it’s blood red, full of unconditional love — the only power in the universe that can help turn our fussing into humble trust.

The post Why We Fuss appeared first on Red Tree.

We should also add that we are all fallen beings — we are broken in how we view the world and how we experience it. One of the ways that this manifests is through our instinctual bent toward comparison. To compare ourselves with others is part of the human experience. Consider all the silly ways we keep score: education level, relationship status, career satisfaction, physical abilities, clothing styles, house size, social media highlights, how much we suffer, grades in school, and what our W-2s say at tax time.

To be caught in these cycles of comparison never leads to anything good. As the old saying goes, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” After some mindless scrolling on social media, what might begin as a pretty benign thought of, “What a fun trip! I’m genuinely happy for them” devolves into “They always seem to travel, I wish I could have those experiences,” and from there bottoming out at, “Gosh, what a life they live. Why can’t I live such a life? I wish I had more money and time to do all the things.” During these cycles, there are feelings and emotions that lead to a hard and cold heart. 

We see some of these emotions emerge in Scripture as well. In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain kills Abel because God was pleased with Abel’s offering and not his. A few chapters later, we see another family feud take place between Joseph and his brothers because of their father’s seemingly biased love. Later, King Saul is jealous of David because he’s being praised for his military success. In Luke 15, the older brother compares his dad’s love for him and his younger brother and gets angry because of it. The list goes on.

The emotions displayed in these passages are so intense and so severe that one person takes the life of another, or at least wants to, which is just as bad.

Digging deeper, we often find the culprit underneath the surface – pride — this ancient and unavoidable inner brokenness that pits us against others and makes competitions out of the most menial of things. Pride says, “I know best. I am the best. I am capable. I deserve the best.” But it doesn’t always lead to outright boastfulness. It can crush us too when we realize that others have more than us or have accomplished more than us.

When it comes to spirituality we might say, “Thank God that I don’t deal with that sin like that other poor, less mature person is,” or we might say, “Why do I struggle with this thing that my friend never seems to deal with? Why am I such a terrible person?”

Anyone else having moments of yuck yet? 

Take a moment to consider the emotions you might feel when playing these comparison games. I often experience envy, jealousy, resentment, and anxiety — all of these mixed with sadness because these are not emotions that I want to be experiencing. When I feel them building up within me, I feel stuck. I feel shame because it’s hard to admit it out loud when I’m feeling them. I want to hide and not share with others. 

Proverbs 14:30 says, “A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.” Envy produces a visceral response. Turns out comparison isn’t just the thief of joy, it’s the thief of any and all positive emotions. 

Yet, it’s right at that moment, right when we think all is lost and that we feel that all has been taken from us, right when we realize how hard it is to have a tranquil heart, that the gospel speaks a better word: Jesus died for our present reality, not our ideal.

The law says, “Do these things to obtain the ideal. By completing these things, you will reach fulfillment.” But, the law was only a shadow, a placeholder that showed us that the solution would never come from within, but from without. Christ came to fulfill the law; he was its finish line. And the word of his blood is that he saw us in the reality of our sin and said, “I choose you, the reality you’re in. It’s not the ideal you that I died for, it’s you in the ‘right now.’ The one who is broken — you are who I want, who I desire to know and love.”

Comparison will always be part of our shared story as broken people. God knew that and still chose us. He died for us, impartially, apart from what we’ve done and what life has dealt us, so that we can rest in him, come what may. Comparison is the thief of joy, and in this life we’ll never be truly free from its grasp, but thanks be to God: grace is the thief of comparison.

The post The Comparison Games We Play appeared first on Red Tree.

If I were to lose this pink notebook, I would lose a part of me – and ALL THE THINGS wouldn’t happen. A bit dramatic, but feels accurate. 

This small, worn-out, cloth-bound, collection of paper is a representation of the mental load I carry each day. When a to-do list item comes to mind, it’s a new page. As I write things down, a weight gets lifted. And as I cross things off — “ahhh” — a sigh of relief. If I don’t complete the list, however, my inner auditor files a complaint to my nervous system and my stomach tightens up or I might get a twitch in my eye under all the surface pressure. 

The concept of mental load didn’t become real until we had our first child. All of a sudden, I’m not only thinking about my needs and life’s demands but also thinking about the needs of my daughter. Enter our second daughter and those needs have now doubled. Does Addy have mittens for this winter? Eloise is getting long, I need to take out our 9-month clothing bin. Do I have time to pump before this next meeting? What is the plan for dinner this week? Has Kurt reached out to our tax advisor? I need to get a birthday gift for our nephew. Will there be time to do a quick workout before work? Do we need more bananas? What’s troubling is how disconnected all of these thoughts are, yet my brain happily jumps from one to the next as if they are all close cousins. 

I long for the day when I’ll be able to sit on my couch with my feet up and read a good book without my mind racing to the next thing. The lie that I tend to believe is that I will experience rest and satisfaction when my list is complete and when my mental load no longer feels like a burden or heavy weight I’m carrying. This is not what we’re promised though. In this life, there will always be a list.

We’re all weighed down with a burden that is too great for us to carry. The reason lists feel heavy is that we think they’re a reflection of who we are and the value we bring to the world. We carry around an unseen series of do’s and don’ts that we think grant us standing before others and ultimately God. 

This reminds me of two different stories in scripture that, relatedly, pierce the soul. One is the story of the Rich Young Ruler, who approaches Jesus and asks him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He then proceeds to list all the reasons why he should be permitted to enter God’s presence. 

The other story is about two sisters, Martha and Mary. Jesus was coming to stay at their place and while Martha was preparing for his stay, Mary chose to sit in the presence of Jesus and be with him. But then it says, “But Martha was distracted by her many tasks..” 

Martha and the rich young ruler were worried about completing the lists and having everything just right. The narrative they believe, just like me, is that freedom is found in completing all the things. 

Like Martha, I have turned to Jesus in moments of frustration and said, “Isn’t what I’m doing important? Don’t you care?” I’m doing all that I can do to serve and support my family, to find acceptance in my community, to make sure the needs of those I love are met. In those moments of angst, I want Jesus to tell me, “You’re right. I will stand up for you and the work you’re doing.” But instead of cheering on my list-keeping, he brings a more compassionate, better word.

In the story, he moves toward Martha, puts his hand on her shoulder, and says in a calm, gentle voice, “Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one.” 

This is the only time Jesus corrects himself in the Gospel accounts, as he narrows down a list of requirements to point out that actually only one thing is needed – himself. To sit with him. To let him do what only he can do. 

He doesn’t desire our lists, but us. How does he ultimately demonstrate this? Instead of etching a list for us to keep in tablets of stone, he invites us to place our finger into his scars. Far from keeping tabs, he wants us to be mindful of his wounds, his own box-checking, and his love. And love keeps no record of unfinished chores.

The post The Lists We Keep appeared first on Red Tree.

A year and a half ago all of that changed when our first child, Addy, was born. While my husband and I were thrilled to settle in as a family of three, bringing a child into the world dismantled any sense of routine I had previously set. That early alarm sound that used to be an invitation into a warm, slow start to the day had suddenly evolved into a siren signaling my own demise. Now, the joys of parenting are many and nearly impossible to put into words, but the inconvenience paired with the sleeplessness is not. In fact, I think most of the words on that list are four letters. 

Routine interruption brought with it a sense that I was somehow letting God down because I didn’t know what it looked like to spend time with him now that a newborn was in the picture. Due to the exhaustion that came with the transition, when Addy napped I felt like I had to spend time with the Lord when all I really wanted to do was rest or sleep. I wasn’t being gracious or kind to myself, and I felt like the pressure was on me to maintain my relationship with God, because after all, relationships require time, right? Oddly enough, this narrative (and my false understanding), appeared to come from the Bible itself.

Philippians 2:12 says, “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” What does it mean to work out our salvation? What is it that I need to do in order to maintain my salvation or secure God’s love for me? It’s a daunting thought because what if I don’t “work it out” right? What if God isn’t pleased with the way I pursue and love him? 

Then add 1 Peter 1:14-16 to the mix: “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.”’ Be holy in all we do? Oof! But, again, I have a kid now, and I’m just so…tired.

Left to my own devices, these passages can work together to shape an unhealthy narrative in my mind. They make me feel that it’s on me to please God and if I take a wrong turn, my relationship with him is on thin ice. For me to be holy I need to spend 30 minutes a day in Scripture and journal afterward. Or in order to work out my salvation, I need to serve in three areas at my church and make sure to always be there when a friend is in need, no matter the cost. 

But here’s the thing: while none of these things are bad pursuits, they put me at the center of my spirituality, and not Jesus.

Earlier portions of Philippians 2 frame the context of what it means to “work out our salvation.” It reads, “[Jesus,] who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!”

Working out our salvation involves accepting a gift we did not earn. This is easier said than done. It comes with accepting all that Christ has done for us and trusting that the work that he completed on the cross is sufficient, since Christ is the one who has, ultimately, worked out our salvation (Phil 2:13).

A friend recently reminded me that good works aren’t even meant to be thought of. They’re something that come from a place of love, out of our belief in the gospel and our orientation toward his sacrificial work for us. Good works belong in the “left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing” category. That’s been a balm for me, now just days out from meeting our second daughter, and having renewed fear over what my relationship with God might look like during those first few months. But, his love for me will not change. Afraid or not. Anxious or not. Tired or not. Routine-centered or not. His side of the relationship does not ebb and flow based on my participation. I have no category for this! 

Even during the times it doesn’t feel like God is at work, or we don’t feel like we’re “working out our salvation”, the Lord is working in us. His grace is new in the middle of the night when I wake up to feed and care for this new baby. He’s at work when he reveals to me my lack of patience towards our daughter or my husband due to the sleepless nights. When friends and family come to help or bring a meal, he reminds us through their gracious acts that he loves and is caring for me through his people. And when fatigue gets the best of me, he’ll be the one to quiet my heart and remind me that he is for me (and for you), always. 

The post Too Tired to Work Out My Salvation appeared first on Red Tree.