Tag: Jeremiah

When Winter Stretches Past Its ‘Use By’ Date

Published on by Marilyn12 Comments

I feel so restless I could bite someone. Winter is stretching far past its ‘use by’ date and with every passing day the longing for spring grows greater, the belief that it will never come stronger.

I feel like I am in exile.

Banished to the land of “Forever Winter”. Lost in the White Witch’s spell of “Always winter and never Christmas”. The video above, created by a friend, completely captures how I feel. 

I do everything I know to do to cope with this restlessness:

  • I work
  • I exercise
  • I read
  • I write
  • I bake bread, muffins, cookies
  • I play games
  • I watch Brooklyn Nine Nine, Downton Abbey, Sherlock, Nashville, Figure Skating. (yup – I watch a lot of TV during Exile)

But the restlessness pursues and I feel like I’m climbing the walls.

Exiled. Marooned. Banished.

The prophets write a great deal about exile and a people in exile. And it is no coincidence that God is speaking to me through the prophetic voices of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Speaking to me, a 21st century woman, and confronting, convicting me.

Jeremiah had a strong message for a people in exile. In fact chapter 29 of the book is devoted to those living in exile. And he offers instruction, hope, and warning.

The instruction is basically to keep on living life. Despite the exile, despite not being in the place they belong, the place they wish to be, despite wanting to (perhaps) bite someone, they are to build houses, settle down, have kids, “Seek the welfare of the city in which they live”.

The hope is a look to the future – a look to when the people of Israel will be back in a place where they belong, where God will show them a future that includes Him, answers to prayers, fulfillment of longings.

And then there is the warning – the part I want to skip over or write out of the narrative. Because the warning is as clear and straightforward as the instruction and the hope. The warning has to do with not listening, with not heeding words that have come from God and have been said again. And again. And again. Words that came from God and through prophets.

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So in this time where I feel exiled, even though I’m really not; where I feel far from where I want to be, the words of Jeremiah creep into my waking and my sleeping. Words of truth about exile.

Words that include God bringing me out of, back from, but most of all — faithfully through exile.

Do you feel exiled? How do you deal? 

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Live in the Land, Do Good, Bake Muffins

Published on by Marilyn20 Comments

Woven throughout the Old Testament is the theme of exile.

We are given example on example of individuals in exile, of a people in exile, of a community in exile. The why, where, and how of exile are detailed in Ezra, Nehemiah, the Prophets and more.

Exile and return.

It is the prophet Jeremiah who speaks practical words into the life of the displaced, the life of the exile. He gives instructions that I would sometimes like to forget, dismiss, say they are unimportant.

But the instruction is there and it is good.

Instruction to build houses and live in them.

Instruction to plant gardens, to settle down.

Instruction to get married, have kids.

Instruction to seek the welfare of the city in which you now live.

There have been times when I have been displaced, feeling as though in exile, and it has taken me a long time to act on this instruction. The instruction doesn’t say the exiled won’t feel longing, the instruction doesn’t promise full integration.

But it gives instruction to do these things despite a longing for another place, another time.

Today I enter into life feeling exiled. I have once again experienced a world beyond and I am basking in the beauty of that time. For a few moments my world was warm and full of color. For a brief time I experienced the chaos that comforts me, the sounds and smells that declare I am home. But today? Today I am back at my official address with my official passport. I’d love to wax wise about how the notion that my passport identifies my “home” is absurd, about how what you see on the outside is rarely what makes up the inside – but I don’t have the energy and besides, you can read other posts where I’ve done just that.

If I could paraphrase Jeremiah’s instruction for today, Monday, as I am reeling in displaced chaos I would say “Live in the land, do good, bake muffins.” So I offer up a prayer for the day: 

“Show me how to live in the land and do good and as you show me, help me to make really good muffins.”

It is a prayer for the day, the hour, the minute.

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Jeremiah 29:4-8

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Browned Butter Pecan Banana MuffinsToday’s Muffins look amazing! The recipe is for Browned Butter Pecan Banana Muffins. How Stacy finds these is beyond me but I thank her for them. Either click here or on the picture to go to the recipe and thank you Stacy!

Early Morning Warnings

Published on by Marilyn8 Comments

I get off the subway early. We, the early morning crowd, share a special bond. We nod to each other, though we don’t know each other’s names, places of work, or families. It’s the “We’re up with the birds” look, a “knowing” look. A “we’re up while everyone else is still asleep waiting for their alarms to ring” look.

I pass by people who I see almost everyday, say hello to Mary who sells the Boston Herald. And today Mary says to me, as she periodically does: “Watch your bag honey”. And I nod and thank her.

And so I watch my bag. Because Mary knows this area well. While I think I know it well, I’ve only been walking this route for a few years. She has lived and worked this area for many more. and she knows the various characters that live life on these streets. She knows who you can trust, and who you need to watch. She knows that poverty and homelessness does not mean you are automatically a good person who has fallen into hard times, does not mean you are automatically trustworthy. She is an astute observer of human nature and knows that the mean come in all sizes and income levels.  The sly and the underhanded, the mocking and disrespectful – these are not just categories that the middle-class and rich fall into.

It’s an interesting dilemma for me as a white privileged woman. I observe many white middle-class Americans, I read their essays on the poor and I wish they would talk to Mary. Because their subtext is that the rich are bad and the poor are good, the rich deceptive and the poor honest, the rich rude and the poor kind. But if we’re honest we know that’s not the case.

I have met wealthy people who give graciously and responsively, aware that every penny is from God. I have met poor people who would (and did) kill their last chicken to show you hospitality. I have met rich people who wear arrogance around their necks with their latest Gucci scarves, and poor who mock and yell and rant at all those who pass by.

And so Mary periodically tells me to watch my bag. She tells me who to give to and who not to give to, she tells me who to watch out for and when I should cross the street and go to the other side. And I listen – because Mary knows these streets.

Picture 188These early morning warnings teach me a couple of life lessons. One is that the worst and the best of humanity are represented in all spheres of society; the second is that in life we need our “Marys” – those people who know where we walk and can help us discern true and false, can help us walk in the ‘good’ way, the wise way.

Mary’s early morning warning made me think of one of my favorite verses in the Bible. It’s a verse that gives instruction from the prophet Jeremiah:

Stand at the crossroads and look; Ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is – and walk in it.~ Jeremiah 6:16a 

So on this early morning, just as I chose to watch my bag, I will choose to ask where the good way is – and walk in it. 

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Complaining or Lamenting

Published on by Marilyn12 Comments

I struggle with the ‘in all things give thanks’ piece of scripture. I know. I know. Many of us have read with poetic passion Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts and no doubt most of us think it is an amazing book. We marvel at how we feel as we begin to keep that journal and give thanks. Initially words fly onto the pages, our pens barely keeping up with the flowing ink.

And then life happens with all its fights, disease, chaos, uncertainty, and discord. And suddenly the pen feels heavy on our paper, the passion is gone. We shout “Where is Ann Voskamp when I need her?” (and Ann undoubtedly shouts back “You’re supposed to say “Where is God, NOT Where is Ann!”)

I think what I haven’t always understood is that lamenting, and by that I mean true grief over a broken world, a broken relationship, a death, is not complaining. Lamenting is aching for a world that is not as it should be. Lamenting is crying out to a God who cares that it’s not as it should be. Lamenting is giving appropriate voice to those things that disappoint, those things that grieve.

If God had wanted our constant happiness he would have created wind-up robots – instead he asks for our deepest trust, faith, and yes – a lamenting now and then. We have evidence of this through the book of Lamentations where the prophet Jeremiah laments for the fall of Jerusalem. He’s in solitude in a fixed posture of grief. He cries out to God with his whole being – from his toes to his nose. And through his cries we are given a portrait of one in anguish.

“He has filled me with bitter herbs and sated me with gall. He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust.I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is. So I say, ‘My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the LORD.’ I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.”*

Laments can heal the soul because they take us back to God as God. While complaints lead us into an abyss of discontent and wondering why the manna went bad, laments get at the core of the human heart, the dilemma of living out truth in a broken world.

At the end of complaining is greater discontent; at the end of lamenting is the whisper of hope, for at the end of the bitterness and gall is this: “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.”*

*Lamentations 3: 15-20 *Lamentations 3:21,22

Blogger’s note – and today I am lamenting for Israel and Gaza as rockets fly and civilians are killed. My heart goes out to those who have already died with prayers for what seems an impossible peace.

The Psalm 139 Challenge

Published on by Marilyn10 Comments

The Psalm 139 Challenge – Fridays with Robynn
I still remember the challenge that Debby gave us: memorize Psalm 139. For four years she was my dorm mother at our small “Nestled ‘neath the great Himalayas” boarding school, and for four years the challenge remained the same: see if you can memorize Psalm 139. There must have been some sort of incentive, high school girls rarely agree without one, but I can’t remember what that was.

You see, I find myself now the age Debby was when she dared us to take on the Psalm. I’m forty-two years old and I’ve recently stumbled again in to the arms of Psalm 139.

And I love it.

It’s deeply consoling and reassuring. And I think I finally understand Debby’s deep attachment to it all those years ago.

This psalm of David speaks repeatedly of how well the Lord knows us. It doesn’t merely mention it once or twice. Oh no. The Psalmist wants us to be certain,

“Oh Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away. You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord. You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head.” Psalm 139:1-5

It’s unnerving and overwhelming, even to King David who writes in verse 6,

“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand.” 

But he won’t let it rest,

“I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your Presence! If I go to heaven you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night—but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you.” Psalm 139:7-12

To a room full of high school girls, such a Formidable Presence of a God wasn’t necessarily what we were looking for. The All Knowing God wasn’t our ideal deity. We had secret crushes, late night clandestine rendezvous (okay, most of them were in our dreams—but every once in a while we’d actually manage one)! We had serious doubts and relentless questions. We had our cliques and our dramatic divisions. There were sins, flirtations and temptations. There were hidden tears and muffled sobs. Insecurities, rebellions, deceptions played hide and seek in our souls.

We weren’t interested in a God who truly knew us. We didn’t like Him knowing where we stood, who we sat with, what words we were thinking to use but not quite daring to.

And we certainly shirked from the Psalms great climax:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.” Psalm 139:23-24

However, we were quite happy to know the God which every graduation card and yearbook signature attested to. The God who, “(knew) the plans (He had) for (us)…plans for good and not for disaster, to give (us) a future and a hope”. The God of Jeremiah 29:11. That was a safe, promising God – a God of the Future and of a happy ending.

This other God knew too much. He knew way too much!

But now that I’m in my forties I think I understand. There seems to be a fresh round of horrors in the forties. Some of the same adolescent questions continue to haunt: Who am I? Who am I really? Where do I belong? Where am I from? Why am I here? Where am I going? What’s my purpose? For the adult Third Culture Kid our midlife crises are traced with the same old questions…only in this decade those questions seem louder and less easily silenced.

Now I read Psalm 139 and I am consoled. It’s no longer frightening to be found out—it’s comforting to let Someone else know me. When suddenly in my fifth decade I realize to my surprise that I hardly know myself—that I can’t make sense of the riffraff and noise in my head. When I can’t seem to see where duty ends and me begins—I find great joy and relief that God, who created me and formed me up—that He knows me. He understands. He gets it. All of it. Me. The hormones waxing and waning, the intentions, the dreads, the longings, the griefs, the perpetual insecurities (surely I should have outgrown those!?), the foibles, the faults. He knows me. All of me. He knows my story. Where I’ve been. Where I wish I was. Where I feel most at home.

And even more mysterious and maddening—He loves me.

Once when I was stopped at US Immigration and denied entry I tried to explain, “Can I just tell my story?” If the border guard could just hear how complex my comings and goings had been, I reasoned, surely then he’d have pity on me and allow me to enter. Imagine my pain when he gruffly replied, “I don’t care about your story!”

The God of Psalm 139 knew me. In fact He knew my whole story and He loves me.

And I realize something about Debby’s challenge—it wasn’t so much to us as it was to herself. And it wasn’t really about memorizing Psalm 139. It was about knowing the God of Psalm 139 and the sweet, sweet reality and relief of being truly and finally known by Him.

Debby, I finally get it. And even more amazing, He gets me!