[This blog is based on a family-focused advent devotional that I recorded in video form for my church. I am sharing a version of it here in the hopes that it might encourage you as well!]

I’m excited to share with you during this season of Advent. Today we are going to look at a passage that most people have heard or seen before, but may never have thought about how amazing and full of meaning it is for our lives. My hope is that you can take a fresh look at it with me and be amazed at God’s good gift in Jesus.

John 3:16-17 says: ¹⁶ “For God so loved the world,^[a] that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

I cannot comprehensively cover this verse, but I want to focus in on 4 key words/phrases. First is the phrase “God so loved…” Our God is a God characterized by love. This might sound normal to you, but it distinguishes Christianity from almost every other religion. The God of the Bible is personal, involved, engaged, and caring. His commands are out of love and for our flourishing. God loves enough to act so that we can be saved from the brokenness, corruption and evil caused by sin (both the sins of others that affect and hurt us and our own sin as well).

Second is the word “whoever.” This means “anyone.” There is no stratification, no additional ifs that restrict the kind of person that can be included in the phrase “whoever believes in me” here. This passage is not saying that you can only believe in Jesus if you are pretty good and haven’t messed up too bad, or if you have built up enough good deeds, or if you look like you have it together. NO! This means what it says – whoever! Jesus right in this very passage is talking to a very religious person—a Pharisee named Nicodemus—so he is pointing out that the same thing is required of both the religious and the non-religious as well – they must believe in Jesus.

And that brings us to the third word: “believes.” The kind of belief this is talking about is an “all in” kind of belief. It’s not an “okay, I guess I believe that if I will get something out of it” kind of belief. Jesus is not like Santa Clause, about whom tradition says if you believe in him and are good, then he will give you good gifts… No! Believing in Jesus means that we understand our desperate need for God to intervene to save us. It means we know that we aren’t good enough on our own, but we need Him. It means that we trust God and know he is the only one who can accomplish His plan to save us.

So what are we to believe exactly? The next phrase tells us: “in Him.” If we are going to believe “in him,” it means we need to know who he is—He is God with us, the Messiah, the promised one.  It also means we believe that we need Him.  We recognize that we are, without Him, moving towards death, towards “perishing.”  We recognize that the only way to have eternal life is through Him because God accomplished his rescue plan through every aspect of Jesus’ miraculous life: his promised birth, his birth, his childhood, his years of ministry, his death and his resurrection. 

I understood this concept as a kid, but I didn’t want to need to be rescued. I thought it was nice that God could give us eternal life in Jesus, but I also wanted to feel like I deserved God’s favor. I didn’t realize that I was undermining the gift of God by trying to earn it. The reality is that, from the first chapters of Genesis, right after Adam and Eve sinned and chose their own way over God’s way and plan, humans were on the path to death and destruction—unless God intervened! So from that time, out of love for the people he created, God began to execute his rescue plan to send Jesus as THE WAY for people to go from death to life.

So the sequence to remember is this: We Learn about and see God — We choose to believe in Jesus — We can be confident that we have eternal life.

Then here is the cool thing: knowing that we have eternal life changes how we live here in this life too because we have the ability (through his love, example, and power, not through our own effort) to do good and love people. We do this, not so that we can earn God’s favor, but because we already have his love, the incredible gift of relationship with Jesus, and the promise of life with the one who loves us unconditionally forever.

If you believe this, you can join me in saying “Thank you, God, for saving me.” If not, I encourage you to stay on your spiritual journey and seek to learn about and come to know the God who loves you.

This summer, Jeremiah and I both had the assignment with our ministry of sabbatical. Although we are now deep into the busyness of Fall, we are so thankful that we were given that time to step away from our normal rhythms of ministry (and also legal responsibilities for me) for a couple of months in order to focus on personal reflection, development and rest.

This was our first ministry sabbatical, after 20 years of ministry, so it was needed. The Lord used the time to teach me some things about myself and about his care for us. I thought my growth would come from extra reading and devotional time, and I did find it refreshing, but some of the deepest growth came as I confronted my tendencies toward the idolatry of productivity.

I have a tendency to define myself with a rubric that includes the following: 1) my own sense of productivity and accomplishment and 2) the subjective feeling that others are pleased with my work. So when I paused my normal work, I was tempted to replace it immediately with “fixing up the yard” and “reading lots of books on my list” in order to feel good about myself.  But I realized that wasn’t going to lead to true rest because it was just staying in the same mode. I began to reflect and realized I need to be consistently aware of where I am rooting my primary sense of self. I asked myself: “what would some of the symptoms be if I allow my tendency to root my value in productivity and accomplishment dominate?” Here were some possible symptoms I came up with:

• Unintentionally putting pressure on my children to also perform to gain value.
• Losing the joy of investing in people out of love, and not for what they can then produce (and therefore becoming less effective at pointing people to the true freedom we have in Christ because I wouldn’t be living out that freedom well).
• Feeling unable to truly rest in God’s unconditional love and allowing the lie that ‘I must be disappointing him’ to creep in instead.

I don’t want those symptoms. I have to admit that putting pressure on kids to perform academically has become a greater temptation as we sit like frogs in the academic heating pot of Davis culture, and as we approach many years ahead (starting with this year) where our children will be submitting college applications. Yet I actually deeply want my kids to be free from that pressure. I want (and expect) them to work hard, but I want them to do so not in order to have value, but because they know they already have value, rooted securely in love, and believe that hard work has its own blessings. I want them to desire to love and bless others, not so that they win respect, but in order to reflect God’s beauty and goodness in the world. I want them to see—hopefully modeled through the way I live—that there is a deep and true freedom that enables us to love and invest in people—not so that we get respect or praise—but because we love them as God loves us (I Jn 4:7).

I also want those that I serve through ministry to experience this same heart. Jesus truly did come to bring peace into our lives. He said in John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” Yet we know that this promise did not mean the absence of interpersonal challenges, because he faced them; it did not mean the absence of physical or financial challenges, because he suffered them; it did not mean the avoidance of global conflict, because it was certainly around him at that time. Instead, the peace has to be more deeply rooted.

These truths help me remember that I am first a disciple and follower of Christ myself, and that my desire to encourage others to also follow Him must flow out of my confidence that there is no better place to be rooted than in Him.

I am thankful that my sabbatical did not just turn into another “task.” I needed to be free from the pressure to do or learn something profound to feel like my sabbatical was worth it. Realizing that allowed me to learn. I want to take the long-term view (just as I always tell my students to do). I will have a greater impact if I am healthy and if I am walking in the freedom that comes from deep dependence on God’s grace. Tim Keller, in his book The Prodigal Prophet, said:

“To reach heart bedrock with God’s grace is to recognize all the ways that we make good things into idols and ways of saving ourselves. It is to instead finally recognize that we live wholly by God’s grace. When we’ve reached bedrock with God’s grace, it begins to drain us, slowly but surely, of both self-righteousness and fear.”

My first week back to my normal work responsibilities, my boss commented in a video call that I seemed very relaxed. I did not expect the comment, but I hope that what he saw is evidence that I am living each day, and accomplishing each task, with awareness of the light of God’s grace at work in my life. 

On Mother’s Day, as I sat in church thinking about my journey as a mother (involving 3 birth kids, 7 foster kids, 2 adopted kids), I remembered the pressure I put on myself to figure out how to parent right before my first son was born. I felt confused, frustrated, and worried as I read books that seemed to contradict one another about things like handling a baby’s crying, bonding with my child, and teaching obedience. How could I do it right, if “experts” couldn’t even agree, much less the different parents and mentors in our lives. Now, don’t get me wrong—I still put plenty of pressure on myself nowadays, and parenting teenagers is a whole different ballgame, but my perspective is a little different now.

Early on, I subconsciously believed that if I could just do things perfectly as a parent, then my kids would be guaranteed to turn out great. And I also allowed the perhaps more damaging belief to creep in as well—that if I didn’t do things right, it would be “my fault” if they didn’t end up healthy, well-adjusted followers of Jesus. I think we all know that is a lie, but we still spend a lot of our time acting like it is true, and beating ourselves up for not living up to whatever we see as the standard (somewhat culturally determined, and somewhat affected by nurture, personality, faith, and our individual passions). Sometimes, people swing to the opposite extreme—they justify almost any bad parenting behavior, by just saying “well, nobody is perfect.” I have seen the result of just “not parenting,” and that is not a good option either. Our choices do affect our children, and we should strive to model a good path for them, but we also don’t and shouldn’t try to take responsibility for everything in their lives.

So how do we handle the fact that failure is everywhere, yet we still long for what is good and right, and we truly do want good for our children? It is a tension…I want the best, but I can’t even live up to it, so how can I expect my children to?

Let me share a very brief picture of my “failure is everywhere” experience by sharing two of my very recent mundane parenting fails that might feel insignificant, but are the very kinds of things that plague us. Maybe you can relate—or maybe I am just weird. First, when a certain child left her backpack out (again!) after getting home from school, despite my reminder as she walked in the door, I failed to display patience and to calmly communicate my expectation that she try again and put it away. I instead resorted to sarcasm and a demeaning comment; I felt instantly bad.  Second, when I was at a flea market, I bought shirts for two of my girls, but didn’t get one for the third girl because I wasn’t sure she would like them…but then she felt hurt, and I beat myself up for not deciding to get it for her too. I didn’t want her to feel unseen or undervalued.

I have found, through the hard knocks of parenting so far, that there is no parenting formula, but there are helpful parenting principles. One key principle for me is to both accept and live out grace and truth, with patience.  Successful parenting means that I guide my kids to value what matters most and brings true happiness—having healthy relationships with God and other people, and using what we have to be a blessing. It means that I seek to discover and live out what is right and good, actively modeling it for my children to the best of my ability, yet also modeling the practice of admitting when I am wrong and walking in humility, grace and truth. It means I help them discover the freedom of joyfully doing good in the world—not so that we can earn our place and prove we have value, but because we know that we are already secure and full relationally, with a God who accepts and loves us, and hopefully family that imperfectly roots us in unconditional love as well.

Prominently positioned in our family room, we have a poster with some of our key family principles listed. It says “In our family, we …” and lists things like “choose respect,” “learn and grow,” “obey our Lord Jesus Christ,” “are for, and not against, one another,” “admit when we are wrong,” and more.  We frequently refer to it in the midst of arguments. I confess that I don’t live up to our values in all of my actions all the time, and neither do the kids. So how do I deal with those symptoms of hypocrisy in myself? Well, I accept the truth that I missed the mark and receive the grace from the Lord that reminds me I am his beloved child. I then also seek to extend that to my kids. I have to receive God’s love to be able to offer it freely. Both wisdom and compassion and forgiveness and grace come from God and His Word, and the best way to live them out is to consider and openly talk about these truths and principles as we live life, in the midst of all of its ups and downs.  Deuteronomy 6:6-7 says “And these words that I command you shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

I want to use God’s Word as a guide, not as a cudgel.  Ephesians 6:4 “do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”  My deepest hope is not that my kids would be perfect, but that they would think rightly (about themselves, life, love, joy and hope), and that they would let it affect how they live.

So I have to parent with something better than perfection in mind. I want them seeing how I deal with my failures and disappointments. Rather than hate myself for my weaknesses and mistakes, even in my parenting, I can see those weaknesses as an opportunity to live out humility, thankfulness for God’s grace, and contentment in the midst of my struggles. I can keep going, not because I think I can achieve perfection, but because I have hope in Christ, the one who is perfect, and yet compassionate and patient with us. He loves us and gave himself for us so that we can have peace. We can taste it now, and can know we will see its true fulfillment in eternity.

I love my children. Parenting is the hardest thing I have ever done, and also the greatest gift!

Growing up in a Christian community in the 90s meant I had some cheezy Christian shirts. One of them was a little illustration of a bunch of different fish going one direction, and then a Christian fish going the other way. It said “Go against the flow.” I think it was supposed to help me remember that, even though it might not be popular to trust God and His Word, it was still worth it.  Nevertheless, something about the way it was framed caused me to understand the verse, Romans 1:16, which I memorized as a girl, with a certain unhelpful lens.  The verse says “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation of everyone who believes.” I reinterpreted it with a “Look at me. I am going to stand firm, even if others don’t…” mentality. That “us/them” thinking and the resulting self-centered focus completely misses the point. It isn’t about me—it’s about God.  The verse is actually saying that I have been given the gift of good news—an incredible foundation of hope, love and meaning for life—and I can have the tremendous privilege of sharing that good news with others, so they too can have that hope.

The Apostle Paul is “eager” (v.15) to share the good news broadly with people from all different backgrounds and experiences. He knows that the good news of Jesus transforms people. He wants to invite people into the hope and freedom that is NOT found in being religious and is NOT found in rejecting God and going our own way, but is found in receiving God’s gift of righteousness and life by faith, and then walking with Him by faith.

I believe that nothing in the world can offer peace, love and hope in the midst of a struggling world like Jesus does.  That I see him, know him, see myself the way he does, and love people with the love he has shown me, is absolutely the most important thing about me.  I am not ashamed of him, and look forward to spending the rest of my life journey continuing to follow him and live for him.

Yet it can still feel hard to identify as a Christian.

So what do we tend to be “ashamed” of that feels tied to the trappings of Christianity in this culture? And is that the same thing as being ashamed of the gospel itself? I believe the answer is a clear no. I do, however, need to make sure that the gospel I am proclaiming is the good news that the Bible is actually about—centered on Jesus, not my preferences or my comfort.  I must avoid the painfully common us/them thinking that leads to arrogance, hate and judgmentalism, and instead live as a follower of Jesus, filled with love and humility, rooted in truth and walking in grace. If I do, I indeed will often feel like I don’t fit very well in the dominant culture. The good news of Jesus is for all people and cultures, so it will challenge tendencies in every culture.

Principle-based living and the hard work of nuance.

When I look closely at Jesus’ life, I see that he both loved and challenged every pocket of society, from the deeply religious to the social outcast to the Roman soldiers to the zealots who wanted to overthrow Rome. He was not ashamed of truth, and he determined to live out the will of the Father (Jn. 6:38), even when it meant upsetting the elite of his day. He did not jump on bandwagons or seek out power and prestige, but preached the Word and acted with compassion. He did not just pick what seemed best for him and his reputation, but chose the way of service and sacrifice.

So my standard cannot be to avoid what is uncomfortable. Neither can it be to choose what feels right in my own mind. God’s Word is clear that a gospel-centered life will always include love, not selfishness, as a motivating and animating principle (Colossians 3:14).

We have all heard the proverbial phrase “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” This is the challenge for true followers of Jesus today. We are called to reject the cultural trappings of arrogance and hatred, politics and nationalism, and “look-down-at-others” judgmentalism. When popular expressions of Christianity feel like they are marinated in these cultural attitudes, let’s do the hard work to instead marinate ourselves in God’s Word.  Let us not reject Jesus, but rather get to know him, and make him Lord and King in our hearts and lives. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel…”

[I originally shared this post at https://davischristianfaculty.wordpress.com/, but I wanted to share it here as well.]

I am selfish.

I am needy.

I don’t want to be, but I am like a moth drawn to a flame.

I don’t want to be, because I know that, even when I get or achieve that thing I want, there is just the next thing. The next thing to accomplish, get, experience, feel…

I was playing a game the other day, and I had made my plan. I had a few steps envisioned that would get me into a better position.  Very quickly, every path I had was cut off by an opponent. I suddenly had no plan. I felt like the options were gone, and the whole game suddenly felt very unsatisfying.  I am ashamed to say that I became irritable and rude to my fellow players.  Granted, it was just a game. I could get up, apologize for my sour attitude, and move on with my life.  But what about when life feels like that?

If my life is built around seeing certain things happen, then when more complications come, or my plans become disrupted, it can feel hugely destabilizing.  It is loss.  Similarly, if my desires begin to shift due to disappointments or evolving perspectives, and I don’t even know what I really want anymore, that too is destabilizing.  Part of the problem is that our culture has brainwashed us to think that self-fulfillment and self-actualization are what will lead to happiness. Therefore, if we don’t know what we want, or if we aren’t as good at something as we thought we should be, we can feel like we have failed.

“Self.” “Me.” “My.” Much of our culture says each of us is the center of our own lives. We are each at the center of our dreams and hopes. No wonder selfishness feels so normal. Abraham Maslow’s theory of human motivation has “self-actualization” as the pinnacle of his hierarchy of needs with the goal of achieving one’s “ideal self.” This ‘focus-on-your-needs-and-achieve-your-potential’ mentality feels very normal in our present-day life in the United States. The theory seems to posit that if we can discover who we are and achieve what we are capable of being, then we can find happiness… This framework can analyze the lives of successful people who made a difference in society and conclude that they achieved self-actualization because they realized their full potential through doing great work for society (e.g., Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela). Therefore—it could be extrapolated—a person who wants to achieve happiness should focus on his development opportunities, and find challenges to enhance his skills and realize his full potential.

I think this framing cheapens the accomplishments of history if they are really about individual “selves” achieving their potential. If we all have this individualized lens in looking at both history and our little dot of a life in the grand scheme of history, do we expect that perspective (e.g., making my goal achieving my potential) to bring peace and satisfaction?  One reason it can’t bring satisfaction is that it is too small and weak. Another reason is that it causes tremendous stress to have to figure out my potential and to worry constantly about whether or not I am on track to achieve it. How do I recover from feelings of failure, except to either lower my standard or re-double my efforts?

For example, I might have a vision for an ideal of mothering that I think I should be able to achieve based on my knowledge and potential. And maybe there are days when I live it out well. But what about the other days where I fail…and what about the uncertainty of the “product” because I can’t actually control if each of my five children will be happy, safe, secure, emotionally/physically/spiritually healthy, and successful in their own lives? To give another example, what about the ideal of career success that I believe, if unhindered, I could achieve? If I am not advancing towards it, peace or satisfaction feel far off, and then I might tend to blame and resent the things in my life keeping me from that ideal of success (maybe even my spouse or my children, who require so much of my emotional energy). I will be tempted to say no to anything that could hold me back, and in the process will undermine my ability to experience or live out real unconditional love, which the Bible describes with words like “it does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…” (I Corinthians 13:5-7).

There is in fact a much more compelling vision for life that is not focused on “self,” lived out most compellingly in the life of Jesus. In fact, I believe the real core of human relationships and human meaning in the world must be grounded in love, not self. The only way to move away from my selfishness is to replace myself as the center of my life. But it can’t be another person in my circle. They also can’t handle being the center. None of us have the right gravity. We can’t handle keeping things going without everything crashing into itself. We don’t have the ability to set up the world perfectly to sustain life—spinning at just the right speed, with just the right distance from the sun, with just the right gravity from the moon to keep the tides going, with just the right atmosphere so that the water cycle works, and all the other myriad of details that only God can handle.

So it is God who must be at the center, not me.  But why do I keep trying to claw my way back into the center? I somehow can even make it about me when my children disobey me (don’t they know how hard it makes it for me when they do that?). I make things about me when I worry about possibly offending someone that I barely know, because somehow I think it deeply matters if they think I am a good person. I am not actually that important.

Freedom comes from grounding myself in the love God has so graciously shown to me, and from knowing that, as someone made in His image (Genesis 1:27), I get to reflect his goodness and be part of what he is doing in the world. That means being part of serving other people, seeing them as more important than myself (Philippians 2:3), because I see them as equally beautiful and made in God’s image, just like me.  I can be free to fail, because I know that when I admit my weakness, it all the more reflects just how good God is as he loves and restores and transforms me. I am at rest because I am relationally loved and secure, and I can be part of that rest for others as I share that love with them.

What a school year it has been…I have seen joy and laughter; I have seen uncertainty and pain. Many people I know, especially teachers, have reached points of complete exhaustion along the way. I too have felt the weariness. These two-plus years of “the pandemic that won’t quite end” have taken a toll. I feel it when I sit next to a college student who is uncertain of his skills and afraid for his future. I feel it as I observe the elementary student with social anxiety who isn’t sure who her true friends are. I feel it when I see the young teacher who spent a year teaching online, and a year teaching 25 traumatized kids at 25 different levels, who is now questioning her calling. I feel it on those days when I wonder why I am so tired and yet don’t know how to process the deep emotions I feel; when the tears feel just under the surface and a few notes of a familiar song can spill them out. Sometimes they spill out in hope, after a glimpse of beauty; sometimes they spill out in sorrow, connecting with the pain of those I see or even strangers I read about that somehow don’t feel so distant because of our common humanity.

Treading Water

I am constantly moving
Managing to stay afloat.
I am determined to keep pressing on,
Yet uncertain if I am getting anywhere.
Will weariness defeat me?

I fear if I stop, I will start to sink;
Resting feels out of reach.
I am both inadequate and overconfident,
Thinking I alone must keep my people safe.
Will fear disable me?

I long for more than staying afloat,
Desiring impact, meaning, love, change.
I want to grow and help others grow,
To swim toward a peace-filled shore.
Will dependence strengthen me?

I will never give up. Yet it won’t be because of me, but as I depend on the Lord’s strength. He has loved me with a steadfast love. I always tell the girls that I mentor to “take the long-term view.” God will not leave us and he is not done loving us and transforming us for our good as we walk with Him. When I have trouble following my own advice, I need to once again fix my eyes on Jesus and trust in him! (Phil 1:6; Heb 12:2; Isaiah 26:3; Prov 3:5-6).

A final talk to seniors and students heading info finals…and I hope a blessing to you

I want to pray a blessing over you all, a blessing for your finals, a blessing for the summer, a blessing for your post-college life.

I’m sure for some of you, you’ve never had a blessing prayed over you.

I’m sure for just about every one of you, you have a vague sense of what I’m talking about, but you’re not really sure.

Blessing. What is a blessing? What is this idea?

• Some of you when you go home may be asked to give a blessing at a meal. (This happens to me a lot, now that I’m a professional Christian)
• Blessing to get engaged
• Sometimes say ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes.

But what is its meaning?

Bible: Genesis 1:22 — God makes animals, then it says, Genesis 1:22 — And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” (ESV)

Genesis 1:28 — And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (ESV)

Genesis 2:3 — So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. (ESV)

So we see that blessing has two ideas:

1. God’s favor: His positive inclination towards something or someone. It is the promise of a more powerful person to give, to protect, to bless, the lesser. It’s entering into a relationship with them for their good.  All the life we see around us is because God has blessed the living creatures of the earth to have life. All the people of the earth are blessed to produce more life, as well as to be good stewards over the other things God has blessed. We are blessed with responsibilities. To bless is to give favor
2. Consecration: God blessed the seventh day, the day of rest. He set it aside as a day of rest to people, because we need that rest. When Israel were slaves in Egypt, they had no days off. I wonder, are we slaves to our work and school in America?  God blessed the day off to worship God through rest, through praise and thanksgiving. To bless is to consecrate it.

These two blessings fall to all people. It’s called God’s common grace.

There is another blessing God gives called a covenant.

1. Covenant: God’s special relationship for favor and consecration, to set apart people for a more specific purpose. We see this in Genesis 12:1–3

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (ESV)

God made a special partnership with Abraham, to bless Him, so that through Him, all the other families of the earth, the other tribes, cultures, people groups, could experience the blessing of God’s covenant with them.

Which brings up the opposite of a blessing…a curse.

To be blessed by God is the most wonderful thing you can possibly have, but that isn’t the default of the world God’s common grace is the default, but we are separated from God’s covenant because we’re all under the curse.

The curse is when death and destruction come, when things fall apart. 

How did this happen, how does this happen?

When God put our first parents in the garden he put before them two trees. The tree of blessing, called the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. They were to trust God to define right and wrong, trust God to live for Him, not for themselves, and thus eat from the tree of life, experiencing that covenant relationship of love.

But the deceiver came, and tricked them. God had told Adam and Eve that they day they eat of  the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, that death would come…not that God would kill them, but that the curse would come, death would come, because they would no longer be under God’s blessing, but out on their own.

So the blessing of covenant is now the main story of the Bible. How will humans get back out of the curse and into the blessing of God?

The answer lies in God Himself. What humans could not do, get back to God, God did for us.

Jesus is God who became human. He lived a life that earned God’s blessing, yet when he was about 33 years old he received now the blessing, but the curse.

When Jesus died on the cross, he took the full weight of the curse upon himself. The apostle Paul says it like this in the book of Galatians

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” (ESV)

The blessing of Abraham, that every culture and people would be blessed through his offspring comes to us through Jesus, because he took the curse.

He was cursed so that we could be blessed.

We can experience the blessing of God, because God himself took the curse for us.

Now let me read the ancient blessing that God commanded the tribe of Israel, the descendants of Abraham to speak over one another.

Numbers 6:22–26

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,

The LORD bless you and keep you;

the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. (ESV)

I was correcting one of my daughters in her thinking the other day, and I asked her some questions to try to get her to acknowledge the truth of what her choices were causing and resulting in…. She refused to respond and just stared with that little “eyes of steel” and straight-line mouth expression that she is so good at. I pressed further. After a few more moments of silence and my expectant penetrating gaze that she could see quite clearly out of the side of those hardened eyes, she verbally lashed out with exasperation, “Why should I answer your stupid questions when you already know the answers?!”

“Because, sweet girl”—my endearing name for my girls that helps me in those hot moments to remember that my correction needs to always remain grounded in love—”I am not asking for my benefit. I am asking because I am trying to teach you the good way, and I know that there is power in speaking what is true. I know that freedom comes from admitting things, and that we can only start to change our negative patterns when we see them clearly. It is harder to believe the lie that it is “me against the world” when I actually admit that I am wrong out loud (which is NOT to say others are not also wrong, but does make room for me to learn and grow). Then I can experience love and forgiveness and actually move towards making a better choice next time.”

I had to admit to my daughter that I also brought my sin into this encounter. I probably kept monologuing, like I often do—not particularly helpful… I was also defensive and snarky when I probed, “By the way, do your teachers ever ask you questions that they know the answers to? Hmmm?” All that to say, I need to learn and grow in this area too…

Verbally speaking things about ourselves—both celebratory and painful things—is meaningful. It matters to say it.

• I like ___.
• I am a Christian.
• I am struggling with my identity.
• I am feeling alone.
• I don’t like that.
• I did that thing that hurt you.
• I was wrong (which is different from “I’m sorry”).

Why are these kinds of statements often hard to say?

The Bible points to this principle about how words can bring life and/or death in Proverbs 18:21, where it says “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.”

Yet admitting my mistakes, and verbalizing my emotions and my fears enables me to take steps to move forward in a positive way. I want to embrace the truth, and I want to invite others into my journey of life and growth in this messy, broken world I find myself in.  I don’t want my emotional energy to be used up in denying or hiding that thing I am ashamed of, or in worrying about what people will do when they see the real me. When I speak truth and receive grace from God (and hopefully from those around me who love me), then I can safely enter the process of healing and growing. It may be a long journey, but it is the road I need to travel.

Out in the village

Fun Times

Pacaya Volcano