Women’s ministry is a delicate subject. There’s a lot of good happening right now when it comes to building up women in the faith. We have more female authors who hold fast to biblical theology over feelings-based ministry than we’ve had in the past. There’s a welcome push in local churches to train women to teach the Bible and to lead. The problem is it’s often mixed with “fuzzy,” diluted theology that intends to draw out emotions but too often leapfrogs over the harder and messier parts of Scripture, which can make navigating theology confusing at best and distressing at worst. 

At the retreat I attended, this fuzziness mixed good things like reminders of how fruitless we are outside of the vine of Christ with not-so-good things like how we need to chase after Jesus (why is he running away in the first place?) and extensive “take home” lists on how we can do better to serve him in our daily lives. There were songs about how Christ promised to save us mixed with songs about us promising to choose him. All of these were wrapped in flowers and served to us as if they could fit in the same vase together and not choke each other out. Where’s the connection between getting a swag bag — free stuff! no strings attached! — and “Christian” teaching that sounds like anything but free?

And we wonder why women in the church are so exhausted. 

Throughout my life, I have been at the helm of a few different women’s ministries. I’ve been the one making the decisions about what we teach and what we send women home with. Looking back on it, I see how easy the trap is to fall into. I know that I too often offered self-help instead of Christ’s broken body, and platitudes instead of dependence on Jesus. It felt validating when women would tell me that they could use those things to become better versions of themselves. But I look back on it, as a woman who has been humbled greatly by a brokenness that uncovered self-reliance that posed as righteousness, and I cringe. My intentions were good. But now I see that if there were women in my care who were desperate like I am now, which there undoubtedly were, I may have been only rubbing salt in an open wound. I pray that God met them where I could not at that time in my life, and I trust that he did. 

It’s all too common to try and elevate women by urging them to be more like the women they see in the Bible. Be dependent on Jesus like Ruth, be firm in your faith like Esther, fight against evil like Jael, etc. These can be good things, but when they’re overemphasized, made into islands, or unhinged from Christ’s one-way love to us, they give us that hit of dopamine that doubles down on the belief that we’re something when we’re nothing, which is never a good thing. And the more we do it, the more we rely on our habit-building, our perfect church attendance, or our ability to give of ourselves unselfishly and unrestrained, the more white-knuckled our grip will become. Fatigue sets in, followed by panic, followed by desperation, followed by emptiness. And the thing about us humans is that we repeat this cycle endlessly, always believing that we’ll do better next time. I grieve just writing this, understanding how stuck in this cycle so many women are – myself included.

But what would it look like if we turned up the volume on where Scripture truly focuses our attention? Before we hold Ruth up as an example for us to emulate, the New Testament wants to proclaim over us how she’s a picture of Christ clinging to bitter and broken sinners like us the way Ruth clung to her bitter and broken mother-in-law. What if this good news was the first thing we wrapped around the women we serve, around ourselves? The ‘therefores’ we’re going to draw based on this view of Ruth will look far different because we’re not the main character, which is good news to bitter and broken people. It gives women joy, unadulterated joy, in knowing that Christ ran down the holy hill of his glory to pull them from the miry pit, and that kind of grace creates the space to come alongside them as they begin the life-long process of taking themselves out of the center of their universe and letting Jesus take the throne instead. Looking at Scripture this way reminds them, and us, that we will never graduate from the grace of God. That grace will always be what we desperately need. 

In the “women’s ministry of Christianity,” the swag bag of the gospel really is free and isn’t followed up by heavy-handed teaching or endless lists of high expectations for our post-conference spirituality. He’s the main subject of our lives, and of all Scripture, whether we fully live as though that’s true or not. And we never do. But thankfully, his generosity always trumps our impulse to pay him back. His scars speak a better word, one that invites us to sit at his feet and to receive from him grace upon grace (John 1:16).

The post Women’s Ministry and Too Much “Me” appeared first on Red Tree.

There is a saying that I’ve heard many times in my life: “Your scars become roadmaps for another walking the same path.” The idea that the pain we face is going to serve another meaningful purpose is extremely comforting, especially when you’re knee-deep in what can often feel like senseless or life-altering grief. Grief is never convenient or well-timed. We are taken in often with the shadow of shock still written on our faces.

But there is something to be said about finding comfort in another who has traveled the same road. I think we naturally seek out like-minded pain in those moments because it is often the words that come from the heart of someone who has experienced that particular flavor of grief that brings the most balm to your fresh wound. Then, it becomes a shared pain, a pain that is enveloped in a sense of belonging and understanding.

If this is true on a human level, how much more true is it on a divine level? The love we are able to offer someone becomes richer and deeper when it comes from a place of shared grief. Grief absorbs grief, and that truth cannot be replaced with good intentions, however much we may try. And it is that truth that God stepped into, in the person of Jesus Christ. When we read words of comfort and solace in the Bible, we can be assured that it comes from a fellow traveler, not from someone calling out to us from a high place. In fact, God left his high place, and walked away from his throne, in order to climb into the pits with us, to not only meet our despair and grief but to absorb it. In his short time on this earth, Jesus experienced loss, pain, suffering, despair, betrayal, and finally death. His hands are as muddy as ours as he reaches out to us, finding us in the dark in a way that nothing else can. His brow is sweaty, his body bruised and broken. David sang, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” We are loved by a God who did not give us a moralistic roadmap out of pain and suffering, but instead willingly and joyfully walked into it, knowing that that was the only way we could join him on the other side, whole and wrapped in joy.

Our scars become roadmaps for our loved ones who must travel the same road as us. But in the scars that trace the body of Jesus, even after his resurrection, as his encounter with Thomas shows, we find more than solace and comfort. We find a timeline of our redemption, a roadmap to the only way out from beneath the crushing weight of sin and death. His scars — his own walk through the valley, the psych ward of the cross — tell the story that the entire biblical narrative tells. Isaiah wrote, “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” The holes in his hands and feet, the gaping wound in his side, his scarred back and head all are strokes in the divine love letter of the gospel. As we feel our heart break, as we feel our chest collapse and our minds reel, we can be assured that the bloody hands of Christ hold us fast, and that should we open our eyes and look into His, we will find more than a roadmap out of this suffering, but an all-encompassing and unrelenting pursuit of every broken and hurting inch of our being. 

The post The Roadmap of Suffering appeared first on Red Tree.

This predisposition to believe that we bring artistry, knowledge, or any unique addition to the works of God in our lives is something that we see time and time again throughout the biblical story. It’s been a problem since the garden, and one that will remain with humanity until we and our earth (and along with it, our creativity and imagination) are fully redeemed when Christ returns. Regardless of how majestic and beautiful our works can be on this side of heaven (and man, do we knock it out of the park sometimes, you guys), they will never compare to a mere thought or word that passes from the mind or mouth of God. 

Now, does God work through us to create these inspired and astounding pieces of art or literature or engineering or whatever it is we create in our lives? Absolutely. We see it in the Bible. Consider Noah’s ark, for starters. God ordained what the ark would look like, how it would be built, what it would be built of, and how many doors and decks it would have. And when the last nail was put in, God filled it with his own walking, flying, and buzzing creations, both to witness and to showcase. And from this God-inspired ark, we saw life step out, the enclosure having protected God’s people through Noah’s family.

The newly freed Israelites were also on the receiving end of specific instructions that would help them co-create with their Creator, for another ark, this time for the Ark of the Covenant, the box that contained the Ten Commandments and served as the very throne of God in Old Testament times. Again, we see specific materials, measurements, and flourishments. Not only that, but we see in Exodus 31 that God filled the men working on it with his Spirit, ensuring that the vehicle of his grace and protection would be truly worthy of his presence. Again, just like the ark of Noah, this ark would produce and provide a way for God’s people to live in this world alongside their holy and just Creator.

Then came Solomon, who completed a dream that his father David had and built what was without a doubt one of the most breathtaking pieces of architecture that ever graced the face of this earth: the temple. But this one, though the most ornate and dripping with the most wealth, carries one major difference from the arks. While the construction of both arks was led by God’s instructions, the temple’s was led by Solomon’s. In this section of Scripture, the language is no longer God speaking and providing, but Solomon proclaiming what he is doing to make this building majestic. He sends his skilled men (2 Chronicles 2:13) instead of God’s Spirit being the lead architect. He chooses the wood, he chooses the measurements (3:3). The language is subtle but important. “And he made” appears over and over again, which is not something we see in the other accounts. It is clear that this is Solomon’s temple, and though he dedicates it to the Lord, and God even sends his glory to fill it, its creation was birthed in the minds of David and Solomon. The lack of divine instruction is a glaring omission, but intentional as it’s set within the fabric of the story itself — what comes before and what comes after.

Also important is how these structures fared over time. We are not told about the fate of Noah’s ark after it parked itself on a mountain. We can assume that it eventually disintegrated, but it isn’t a small thing that the Bible doesn’t tell us, because narratively speaking it makes the ark eternal. The same can be said about the Ark of the Covenant. The last we see it is in 2 Chronicles when King Josiah instructs the Levites to return it to the temple. The temple was subsequently destroyed and plundered, but the text remains silent about the fate of the ark. Again, it gets absorbed in the theological timeline of God’s redemption of His people. As mentioned above, however, the Bible is very clear about what happened to Solomon’s temple. It was dismantled and destroyed, brick by brick, as the people of God were led away in chains. There were attempts to rebuild it, but they would pale in comparison to the original. It was a tragic reminder that the best that man could offer was unable to provide them the sanctuary that was freely provided by both arks that came beforehand. 

To punctuate this difference, God spends a good deal of time in Ezekiel talking about not only the purpose that Solomon’s temple ended up serving before it was destroyed (“Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the pride of your power, the delight of your eyes, and the yearnings of your soul,” which sounds very reminiscent of the tower of Babel, another man-made wonder), but also brings Ezekiel to the doorstep of a greater temple. In a vision that comes just after a promise from God that he would restore His people after their impending destruction and imprisonment, Ezekiel is shown a temple that dwarfs Solomon’s in both size and glory. In it, we find water flowing through the midst of it, which clues us into how this is the new temple that will make its earthly appearance at the end of days when the doors are thrown open and the River of Life will flow from the side of Christ and in our midst for eternity. 

And at this point, in case it wasn’t clear already, the New Testament goes full tilt. Think of Stephen’s sermon, moments before he is stoned to death when he speaks of Solomon’s temple he follows it quickly with a Davidic psalm that proclaims “the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands” (Acts 7:47). Paul, too, declares to the Athenians that the “Lord of heaven and earth does not live in temples made by man,” but that “in him we live and move and have our being.” Despite the grandness of the temple, God urges us to move on from it, and to see that it’s in his work, his building, that we live and rest, not he in ours. Indeed, the only rest we can have is found in the hands and feet of Christ, nailed to the cross, having finished the work, the building of the temple where God would dwell for eternity.

So, was Solomon’s temple magnificent? Absolutely. Was it a sin to create? I don’t think so. But, just as with anything we do, the trap lies in forgetting that our creativity sprouts from Creativity itself, as well as forgetting that the Bible constantly moves us away from the works of our hands and towards the works of Jesus on our behalf. When we do things for our pride, our delight, and our yearning, we harness ourselves to the side of Solomon, whose pride blossomed from this creation and ended up tearing the nation apart. But this is so much more than just a simple lesson in pride. It’s a reminder that when God’s hands are in our lives, we have the opportunity to delight in being swept up in the very source of Imagination itself. It’s a reminder that our eternal protection, provision, and sanctuary all come from the outpouring of God’s creative flow and not our own. It’s a promise that when it comes to what matters most in life, we can stop trying to make something beautiful enough for God to notice us. Instead, he distances himself from our religious charades and invites us to live with him through what his Son has done for us alone. 

The post The Master Architect Works Alone appeared first on Red Tree.

It’s not surprising to see the in-between show up all over the Bible. Maybe our lives consist of these spaces in between precisely because they show up in God’s story first. Take the lives of Isaac and Ishmael or Jacob and Esau, where blessings and inheritances live for a short time in between the oldest sibling: the rightful heir, and the youngest sibling: the unexpected inheritor. Or how about David’s anointing as the God-chosen king happening well before the end of Saul’s people-chosen reign? God moves in and through it, but there is a moment in time when both kingships are propelled forward simultaneously. Then there is the time when the prophets Elijah and Elisha overlap, one fading out while the other rises up. We even see it in the engagement period in the Song of Solomon — a space between the bride being chosen and being wed – the in-between is where most of the book’s drama unfolds. 

But the ultimate transitory space in God’s story can be seen in the lowly backwater town of Bethlehem. Jesus of Nazareth is born as poor and weak as any infant who had come before him, and yet his birth begins the transition from the old covenant born at Sinai to the soon-to-be-born, new covenant when his blood will pour down an old-rugged cross. It’s easy to forget how his life is one big transition, an “already, not yet” moment in time. It is the fleshing out of the book of Hebrews’ insistence that “what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (8:13). Before he dies, the Law hangs over the heads of God’s people, but Jesus methodically begins to dismantle its curse, urging his disciples to pick food for themselves on the Sabbath, touching and healing lepers and insisting that their cleanliness came from his mere word and not from the priest’s levitical rituals, and even stepping in between an adulteress and her law-demanded stoning.

These three years where he moved in and among not only the people of God but also the Gentiles is the space between the inhale and the exhale. The Israelites had spent thousands of years inhaling, hoping to take in enough air on their own in order to be able to live in the presence of a perfect and holy God. While the incarnated feet of God walked upon our earth, our breath was held, until it was irreversibly intertwined with the last breath of Lamb of God that trickled through his tortured lungs on the cross. And that’s when we could finally exhale too, but in a different way. It’s when we could release our white-knuckle grip on the idea that our salvation, our reconciliation to our Creator, was up to us.

The old gave way to the new that day, which led to a short but important transitional period where Christ lay dormant in his grave for three days. The power of sin and death had been broken, yet followers of Christ were left in the in-between space between death and life. Their encounters with the risen Lord would firmly place them in the “after”, forever closing down the possibility of going back to the “before”. 

And so we live our lives now, post-death and resurrection, but pre-full and complete redemption. Our sin continues to boil over, harming ourselves and those around us. We often find ourselves caught in the chaos of the “middle,” like Paul’s existential confession in Romans 7. Our desperate need for Christ remains, and always will. And yet, we can take comfort in this space because of how faithful our God has been in leading his people from one era to the next. Christ stepped willingly into the tomb, into this groundbreaking space in between. His willingness to breathe his last allows us to take our first breath on the other side, inhaling his grace instead of working our lungs to death in a fruitless attempt at making things right with our works. It is with our death in Christ, in our figurative burying of our old selves that we see in our baptism, where our final transition begins, which will end in the full light and embrace of the eternally scarred hands of who was, at one point in history, just a squalling child birthed by an unknown woman in an uncared for town. And so, all along we’re reminded that it’s not up to us to resolve the tension of the “in-betweens,” but to believe in the one who steps into it himself, who bears our “old” and who becomes our “new,” so that we can walk these last few miles on a road paved with the grace-filled blood of Christ, unburdened and unchained.

The post The Space In-Between appeared first on Red Tree.

The reason Moses was kept on the wrong side of the promised land occurs earlier in the book of Numbers. Amid constant rebellion and pushback from God’s people, Moses reached a boiling point. He let his temper get the best of him and did not follow God’s specific instructions on how to get life-saving water to pour out from a rock for the Israelites. Instead of holding his staff and telling the rock to open up (much like he did on the shores of the Red Sea), he yelled at the people and brought his anger down on the rock itself, striking it twice. Despite his disobedience, the rock still poured forth water, but Moses’ fate was sealed. God said, “Because you did not believe in me, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them” (20:12). We aren’t told how Moses reacted to this news, but we can assume it was devastating. Fast forward to the end of Deuteronomy, the end of forty years of leading a people who were bent on their passions and lawlessness, and here Moses sits, on the top of Mount Nebo, the Lord himself showing Moses the land that had been promised to Abraham so long ago, in which he would never step one foot. 

But in this sad story lies a glimmer of hope. From two angles. The first has to do with the timing of Moses’s death. His death preceded the people’s entrance into a new life, a promised life, a land that was flowing with provision and blessing. The Israelites were unable to enter the promised land until Moses died; they had known this from the time of Moses’ striking of the rock. They mourned, but their sadness was followed by the fulfillment of a joyful promise. Jesus’s death would serve this same type of bridge many years later. He would be the rock that was struck in the wilderness, breaking himself open and pouring out living water. He would be the one to die a cursed death in symbolic Moab, hanging on a tree, for us (Deut 21:22-23). And ultimately, his death would precede and usher us into the land that was promised, the land flowing with milk and honey. Except this time it wasn’t Canaan or any other actual land. This new land, this better land, was Christ himself and the promise of eternal salvation of abundance through his death and resurrection. Christ’s coming was foretold directly and indirectly throughout the stories of the Old Testament. Moses’ life, and more importantly, his death was a symbolic reflection of Christ, who came as a better and complete version of our Exodus hero. Unlike Moses, however, there was no heartbreak at the knowledge of his unavoidable death. We read in Hebrews 12:2 that Jesus “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.” He climbed a hill, just like Moses, and laid down his life, just like Moses, on the precipice of the fulfillment of the greatest promise ever made.

The second angle has to do with what Moses represents in the greater biblical storyline. One of the great acts that God accomplished through him was the passing down of the Law. Immediately after breaking his people free from the chains of Egypt, God thundered his perfect law from the top of Mount Sinai, carving it in literal stone, making it as immovable and as unforgiving as its bearer. This stone-written law was not to be broken, and the penalty for wavering even one single iota from it was death. We see this in the first generation of Israelites who continuously rebelled and were sentenced to wander the wilderness until they died. And, unsurprisingly yet heartbreakingly, we also see this in the life of Moses. Moses represented the law; he carried it down the mountain. Yet it was his failure to keep it that kept him from the promised land. Even the one who saw God carve the letters into the tablets was not able to keep it perfectly enough to walk into Canaan.

So who was it that took on the burden of the Israelites and finally led them into the land of Canaan? It was Joshua, one of the twelve spies that had been sent into Canaan in Numbers 13, the one who encouraged the Israelites to rise up and take the land that they had been promised, despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that had been living there (including giants!). In the face of the impossible task that could not be performed by the work of their hands, he trusted that with God on their side they would have victory. 

The enormity of this transition cannot be overstated. Instead of the man who became a picture of the law and the death sentence that it represents (“Do this or die!”), the people reached the land of milk and honey following a different man, the man who said, “I know that I can’t do this, but God can.” What a beautiful microcosm of the greater movement in the Bible from the works of our hands which always leads to death to the work of God’s hands which always leads to life. Though Jesus hadn’t been born yet, we see glimpses of his upturning of the law even here at the end of the Pentateuch. He is our true and better Joshua, so that we might know that to truly enter God’s land of salvation is to do so by his grace alone, owning our weaknesses, and trusting in the one who was strong for us on the cross.

The post So Close And Yet So Far appeared first on Red Tree.

I say ‘strange’ with a loving undertone, mostly because, unlike most holidays that people celebrate around the world, this particular holiday is meant to celebrate something that didn’t happen. It’s not for remembrance of independence, or gratitude for a certain person or people. It’s not for a great victory or celebration. Instead, it’s to remember a failure. 

If you aren’t familiar with the holiday, the gist is that back in 1605, a man named Robert Catesby and his co-conspirator Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the British Parliament (and by doing so, kill King James I in the process). The plan was to hide barrels of gunpowder in the basement of Parliament, and then blow them up when the king was in the building. Fawkes was caught a few hours before the plan was hatched, thus saving the king and the Parliament building that still stands today. The catalyst was religious freedom for Catholics in what was then a Protestant country. 

There is even a children’s rhyme that perhaps some of you know thanks to the movie V for Vendetta, which used its phrasing as part of its memorable dialogue:

Remember, Remember the 5th of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

The celebrations that happen on this day often include fireworks and huge bonfires that often have effigies of Guy Fawkes himself burning in the midst of it. Like I said, this holiday is … unique.

As I was making my chili and clearing my yard to make way for the bonfire, I began to think about another holiday that, similarly, is a celebration of a seemingly failed attempt to overthrow a government. I’m talking about Good Friday. To those living during the death of Jesus, it would have been anything but “good” – let alone something to celebrate. The promised king had died. And he died the gruesome death of a criminal no less. The man who they thought would free them from the bondage of Rome now lay mangled and lifeless in a tomb that wasn’t even his, hidden by a stone, as immovable as their own metaphorical chains. Fear would have been rampant, buoyed by unending despair. Where there once was hope, now lay death and emptiness. By any definition of the word, it had been a failure.

What they didn’t know was that the earth was about to loosen its grip on the God of the universe, the resurrected, perfected, and victorious God-Man Jesus Christ. What seemed to be a heart-wrenching failure was the unstoppable and emphatic final overthrow of death itself, brought on by the very death that sin tried to devour. Three days later, the stone gave way to the living Rock, who walked out of the grave and into our hearts, where he will stay until we are bodily united with him in life eternal. 

As I sat by our bonfire that night, I let these thoughts flicker in and out of my mind as I watched my family enjoy each other’s company. Thank God for the failure of Black Friday, for the scandal of the effigy of the Son of God himself amid the fires of judgment in our place, for without it, without Him, we would not have seen the sunrise on the victory of Easter morning. And so, I can let another rhyme bounce along in my thoughts as I refill my cup and laugh at my kids’ antics:

Remember, remember, the last great Passover,
Where true Life was hid by a stone.
Three days he did slumber,
Then out he did thunder,
Breaking our chains and our yoke!

The post Remember, Remember the 5th of November appeared first on Red Tree.

This is maybe one reason why I’m so drawn to the encounter the prophet Elijah has with the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. In the wake of calling out King Ahab and the people of Israel for their one-foot-in-both-pools worshiping both the God of Israel and the false god Baal, he sets up a showdown on the top of Mount Carmel, winner take all (life and limb, literally). The winner being the one who can convince their god to consume their sacrifice with fire.

The prophets of Baal go first. They set their bull up on a wooden altar and begin to call on their god. And they keep calling. And calling. From morning till noon. Elijah steps in at this point and begins his verbal assault: “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened” (1 Kings 18:27) Turn up the volume! Your god is probably on the toilet! This of course drives the prophets madder, and they kick it up a notch. They yell louder in case he’s asleep, and even resort to cutting themselves, hoping that the smell of human blood will entice their silent god to speak. But for them, there was no voice. And then, the ice-cold verdict: “No one paid attention” (1 Kings 18:29). 

Elijah takes his turn next and, predictably, it ends with God sending a waterfall of heavenly fire to consume his bull, even after Elijah pours water on it first. There’s something poetic about it all — watching God respond more to impossibility and weakness than strength and human striving. A God who, through his prophets, throws sarcasm toward religious effort is the greatest of twists. And yet there’s one more worth considering.

We could ask: why is all of this banter included in the story? It’s enjoyable to read, but if the point is to show God’s power (over/against ours) in the end, the sarcastic chastising could have been omitted. But the Bible isn’t aimless. Unnecessary additions are not unnecessary. All Scripture is God-breathed, after all.

Well, there is another story in the Bible containing relentless mockery, but it’s not as fun to read as the showdown on Mount Carmel. It takes place on another mount with another sacrifice set up on another type of wooden altar. The mount is Calvary and the sacrifice is Jesus Christ of Nazareth and the altar is a wooden cross. While he slowly and agonizingly suffocates, the onlookers ridicule and hurl insults at him.

Matthew paints the picture: “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from that cross. He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now if he desires him.” Cry louder, Jesus! Maybe God is on the toilet! On and on they went, railing insults at the man from Nazareth. And just like on Mount Carmel, there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention. Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Even to this, the bystanders said to one another, “This man is calling Elijah,” possibly drawing a line back to that mountaintop battle of words in 1 Kings. But, they didn’t know that Jesus was the fulfillment of all that Elijah was and did. And even more, they didn’t know that he was the absorber of every mocking voice of scripture and every mocking voice that trips past our tongues toward others. 

It’s easy to read the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal and think that we are the passive Israelites watching from afar (if we don’t put ourselves in Elijah’s position first!). But, looking at the crucifixion of Christ, that isn’t the only way to read that passage. We are also mixed in the throng of lost men and women who are crying out daily to our own false gods, sacrificing our time and our bodies for things and passions that cannot answer or save. Perhaps we were the rightful receivers of this pointed mockery from the prophet of God, just as we can rightly see ourselves in those who stood at the foot of the cross and hurled insults at Jesus. And inconceivably, Christ stepped into that place during his suffering. He became the object of derision on our behalf. Suddenly, Elijah’s knocks and jabs hit a little harder, because we know that ultimately they will be turned onto God himself while he dies a slow death on a cross.

We don’t get to play the hero in the Bible. We will more likely find ourselves in the fringe at best, and in the thick of the mess more often than that. But if we allow ourselves to sit in the grime, our cleansing at the cross will be all the more sweet and available to us. If we let ourselves acknowledge that we should have been the rightful targets of the derision of a God that we continually spur, it will make it all the more gut-wrenchingly life-changing when we see that he turned it unto himself instead, even while we were actively raving around on our mountaintops of idol worship. I don’t claim even for a minute to understand the magnitude of this kind of love, but I thank God for it. And though I will continue to pass down the legacy of loving sarcasm and joking to my children, I will remind them that even when our jokes go too far and our words sting, God has played the biggest joke of all, in the backward, grace-filled redemption of a wayward people.

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I had gone into the hospital that morning with the plan to do this birth naturally. I spoke with my doctor, a wonderful woman in her fifties with calm eyes and a soft voice. She agreed it was doable, and told me she would be there for the duration. When my water broke, what had been dull contractions became sharp and more frequent. I started to have to breathe through them, and then groan the further along I went. At one point, I looked up and told my doctor that I had changed my mind. It hurt too much. I wanted an epidural. Please. She calmly spoke to me, reminding me of my own words before my body began to tear itself apart. You can do this. You want to do this. This pain will bring life. My mind vacillated from panic to calm with every contraction. Finally, the time had come. The last few inches for my son to come home meant the most pain, the most pressure, the most desperation for me. I yelled with effort – my mind and body focused on one thing entirely: do whatever was needed to bring my son into my arms. Finally, with a rush of blood and water, out he came, naked and squalling. And with one look at his tiny form, my pain was gone. If you told me I had to do that 100 more times just to hold him, I would have done so without hesitation. Then and now. I was glad for the tearing of my body, for here was my son.

All three of my children’s births were gut-wrenchingly wonderful, but this last one was special. Its value is directly tied to the pain I endured. The pain is one of the things I was thankful for, which may sound backward considering how excruciating a birth experience is, and especially considering how those pains are directly tied to the second curse uttered in the Bible. Just after Adam and Eve’s fall from grace, God looked at the woman and said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children” (Gen 3:16). From that point forward, women have had to let pain be the doorway to one of the greatest loves they can know, that of their children.

Labor pains are mentioned all over the Bible, and never in a pleasant tone. Isaiah calls out:

“For this reason my loins are full of anguish; pains have seized me like the pains of a woman in labor. I am so bewildered I cannot hear, so terrified I cannot see.”

Jeremiah shares his tone of anguish by comparing Israel’s pain to that of giving birth (Jeremiah 6:24). Both of these cries are in response to one thing: the vengeance of the Lord. The holy fear and terror that accompanies the truth of God’s justice is continually compared to the pain a woman feels in labor. The pain seizes us and we are helpless in the midst of it.

How curious then that these same allegorical connections are used by God about himself. In Isaiah 42, after many chapters of learning about impending judgment on other nations and his own people, we hear:

“For a long time I have held my peace; I have kept still and restrained myself.
Now like a woman in labor I will groan, I will both gasp and pant.
I will lay waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their vegetation;
I will turn the rivers into islands, and dry up the pools.”

But then, after long diatribes of impending judgment, we see God turn his face towards his children — seemingly out of nowhere:

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you” (Isaiah 43:1-2).

From divine labor pains came the restoration of wayward children to their father. But how does that happen? How can it happen? How does a sinful nation turn the heart of the God of the universe? Isaiah is disclosing part of the mystery: through the labor pains of God, he will bring forth a nation. I don’t see the death of Jesus often compared to labor pains, but read it again — how can it not be? The hands of the law-keepers that seized Jesus and drilled him to the cross were the labor pains that seized a sinful nation who were brought up under the righteousness of God. The groans, gasps, and pants that escaped from the mouth of Jesus while he hung from the cross were akin to a woman bearing down on the cusp of the deliverance of her child. He felt every tear, every bruise, every wound, fully and without any aid or assistance to dull it. He cries out, “It is done!”, and through the gush of blood and water from his side, and the last breath that was pushed from his lungs, the church was born. His dying cry gave way to our first cries of a born-again people. He allowed his naked body to be torn to make way for a redeemed nation. 

Furthermore, He bore the curse that Eve brought upon herself, overturning God’s judgment of our sins onto himself. Through his death, Jesus turns the tables: he calls us from our labors and instead labors for us sinners. And thus we can read the beginning of Isaiah 43 anew: Fear not, for I have redeemed you through my death; I have called you by name, as a parent does his child, you are mine.

Whenever a mother willingly walks into the fire of labor, the world sees a glimpse of what Christ did for us all. Just beyond that cusp of pain is a life with their child, a child who was once in darkness, and now is in the light. A child that was mute and deaf and blind, but who can now sing and hear and see. A child who was nameless but is now called son or daughter. A child who would grow up underneath the love of a God who would not demand work from them but who would tirelessly work for their comfort, their provision, and their eternal hope. This isn’t less true for women who are barren or who have experienced miscarriages or stillbirths. Both the timelines and the forms of pain are altered, but both the imagery and the invitation remain. For the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross despising its shame. Childbirth is a picture of the longsuffering of our God, and the joy of the new life that only he can bring. 

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The story of Esau and Jacob’s deceit-filled meal is one such story (Genesis 25:29-34). 

It opens with Jacob cooking stew. Esau then storms into the kitchen, exhausted from his hunting trip. He’s literally about to die (his words), and in his famished state, he asks Jacob for some of the red stew. Jacob, perhaps without even hesitating, offers him a deal. Esau can have the stew if he relinquishes any right he has to the birthright of Isaac, their father. This is no small ask, as the birthright would bestow on the one who inherits it (normally the oldest son, which Esau is by about a millisecond) the technical ownership of the family upon the father’s death. He would own the land, animals, servants, and any type of monetary holdings they have. He would be the decision-maker, protector, and literal head of the family. And in this case, with Abraham’s family line, he would also inherit the blessing bestowed upon Abraham by God himself, which promised God’s faithfulness throughout the generations. Whew! I mean who would give that up? But, guys, Esau is, like, really hungry. So the deal is made. Esau swears that Jacob can have the blessing, and Jacob hands over the bread and red stew. It says in verse 34 that Esau ate and drank and rose and went his way. Deal done, hunger satisfied, Esau left Jacob alone in the tent, Jacob now the rightful bearer of the birthright.

Such an interesting look into family dynamics, isn’t it? I’m sure my therapist could do wonders with it. But there’s more going on here, just below the surface.

Jacob and Esau, like many pairs in the Bible, represent two different things, more specifically, two different testaments, or promises. The Bible is chock full of pairings like this, even apart from counting the main division of the two parts, the Old and New Testament. Jacob and Esau’s own grandmother Sarah was in such a pair with her counterpart Hagar. Paul unpacks this in Galatians 4, where he says that these women (and the sons they bore) represent two covenants, one of works/slavery and one of grace/freedom. 

The same comparison can be made with Jacob and Esau, and we see it very early on in their lives. The twins struggled in Rebekah’s womb, but the one that fought his way out first was Esau, Jacob literally riding on his coat-tails. The boys grew up, and, so it seems, grew apart. Esau was “a man of the field”, one that would hunt and toil. Jacob, however, was “a quiet man,” who stuck to the tent. Even in their parents’ love we see this dichotomy. Esau was loved by Isaac “because he ate of his game.” Esau had to work for it. But Jacob was just loved by Rebekah. No qualifier. Just loved. We see early on that Esau represents the law: the make-sure-you-do-it-right-so-you-can-be-loved type of covenant. But Jacob, like his grandmother, represents grace, rest, and no-strings-attached love. We see from their relationship that these two cannot cohabitate. They run up against each other their entire lives, but that strife is meant to teach us something.

Picture the scene again. In this tent, in this place where Jacob resides, we have the man of the law, the man of works, storming in famished, needing sustenance. Esau was born first, so he naturally holds the birthright of the family. He is panting at the door of the tent, needing red stew to satiate him and send him on his way. Jacob, in what seems like a mental wrestling match that he will physically recreate later in his life (Genesis 32:22-32), holds the stew at bay and demands the birthright. The man of works relents, eats the stew offered by the man of rest, and leaves the headship of the family behind.

This story is about a transference of ownership. But even more: it’s about the how behind the transference of ownership.

It moves us from Esau to Jacob, from old to new, from law to grace by way of a meal. Christ, the new and better Jacob, offers up the red stew of his blood, the bread of his broken body, and demands a trade with the law: the birthright of his family for the meal of his death. The law, you could say, feasts on Jesus, the only meal that could have satisfied (or fulfilled) it, and just like Esau, it “drank and rose and went his way.” Now Jesus alone has become the head of our family. The tent of rest is our home. We no longer have to toil in the fields and work for the love of our father. It is given freely, without any strings attached. 

These 5 verses are the entire story of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. Much more than an overly-simplified moral tale about not being deceitful like Jacob, or lazy like Esau, this story portrays for us the battle between the testaments, and yet the symbolic and theological unity between them at the same time. It reverberates for us the echoes of God’s mercy and grace that ultimately spill like red stew from the cross and meet us where we are, most notably in our exhaustion over our tireless attempts at working for God’s favor. 

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Recently, however, I failed to take these necessary medications after a long and busy week. I woke up in a fog and proceeded to spend the day struggling to do simple tasks, my thoughts muddled and slow to catch up. I soon recognized what was happening, and realized where my misstep had taken place. I made sure to take my pills before heading up to bed that night, and as I lay there next to my husband, I quietly confessed my struggle with the reality that I needed these pills to stay steady. I begrudged the fact that I feel completely out of control of my own mental state, especially when user error can lead to days and nights like these, where my incapacity to will myself out of this fate is laid before me. I can want to feel better until I’m blue in the face, and yet, depression will still take me slowly and silently into a dark cloud.

As I lay there, my mind wandered to the only thing that helps me make sense of this powerlessness. Who does God say that we are at our base level? Drop into any book of the Bible and it’s clear that our factory setting is broken beyond repair. The fracture that spilled out of the Garden of Eden has disjointed our souls, making it impossible for us to will ourselves out of that broken condition, no matter how much we may want to. It shuts down any avenue that may contain something life-giving, leaving us, for all intents and purposes, dead. And we are helpless to stop it.

My mental state is a byproduct of this historical and spiritual fracturing, yes, but it’s also a picture of it. If you’ve ever felt the incapacitating and unavoidable pull of depression or any mental illness, you are familiar with this feeling. This unforgiving illness displays a clear reflection of our spiritual predicament. We are sliding down a cliff into the dark, no matter how much we bloody our hands trying to keep ourselves from falling. Our great need is for someone outside of us to steady the ground beneath us, to bring light to our darkness, and to revive our flatlining hearts. 

Christ’s work on the cross was a bloody affair, the scandal of eternity. Who would have thought that the God of life would cover himself with the stench of our broken decay in order to save those who didn’t even know they needed saving? On the cross, Jesus stretched out his hand and healed the fractures that left us broken and dying on the side of the road. The price was enormous, but he was willing to pay it, bleeding out under the condition of our disease. Isaiah laments about Jesus, calling him “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (53:3). In other words, he didn’t just see my depression from the mountaintop; he lived it in the valley. And up from the valley, he bore my cross — your cross — on his back, planting it on the hill of Calvary where he would exchange his death for our life.

There in my bed, this truth didn’t miraculously heal my broken brain, but it did turn my face to the greater miracle. The miracle of the cross shines on despite the trouble that I may face here on this earth. Jesus’s pierced hands reach through the fog, regardless of my ability to see or feel them at any given moment. My temporary sickness will one day give way to eternal joy, and for that, I rejoice. But in the here and now, the vastness of God’s mercy and grace is enough. So while I take my medicine, see my therapist, or visit my doctor, I quietly rejoice over this picture of my greater need, and how it’s been resoundingly met in Jesus.

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