She was not virginal in her purity. Not completely. Not like the younger maidens working near her to glean in the master’s field. She had been married before; she had been known.
And she came to him in the dead of night, where he rested, in obedience to her mother-in-law’s advice. Advice that put her in a very prone position. He could choose to further mar her reputation or he could choose to respectfully protect it.
And he could have chosen another woman from among so many. A younger woman. A non-foreign woman. A richer woman. A previously-unmarried woman.
But he saw her. And he chose her. And he protected her with his own robe, his own presence, and later his own follow-up actions. Until he could bring her home as his bride.
The woman he loved. The woman he saw as beautiful and pure. The one he had been waiting his whole life to meet and cherish.
Today, in honor of this couple and the renewal of physical purity through the eyes of love, a third short poem.
Next in this series on purity, we pause to consider the power of beauty via emotional purity. According to Genesis 12, Sarah was exceptionally physically beautiful, even as she aged. Yet, she is more fondly remembered and rightly praised in 1 Peter 3 for her projected image of one with a gentle and quiet spirit, living in a proper and good sense of humility and obedience. Certainly she laughed and doubted and jumped the gun. But in the end, she learned how to master her feelings and accept her assigned place in life with hope.
This sounds foreign to me as a modern American woman. But when I dig deeper, I see this is not just an antiquated cultural demand. No. According to Peter, such submission shines from a pure heart, from an honest-core self that wants good and chooses service for the sake of those who are loved. Will there be fear, negative reactions, and mistakes? Yes. But inner beauty lights a woman’s face and shines through the storms of life (and marriage) like low car beams glowing through a dark, snowy drive.
We do not know exactly what Sarah looked like physically. But it doesn’t really matter. We know the essence of her heart: a much more enduring legacy.
Growing up, I quickly came under the impression that the central focus of purity as a virtue had to do with sexual chastity or keeping one’s body and thoughts clean and unblemished in that area of life. While that certainly is important to consider, especially in our evermore-desensitized culture, I now stand on the cusp of marriage in these last few weeks of singlehood and ponder what it will mean to approach my husband as a pure bride in each sense of my person: spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically.
In that light, four times over the course of this month, I want to share a piece of word art and a short poem to highlight the life of each of four different women from the Bible. In each case, focusing on one of those aspects, I hope to think differently about who they were, who I am, and who each of us (men and women alike) is meant to be.
So, this time, I begin with the mother of all mankind. Not the first woman who usually comes to mind when we think of spiritual purity, is she?
Starting off a new month with a multifaceted, often misunderstood, and easy-to-lose yet hard-to-truly-gain virtue, I would like to share a short series of haiku written inhonorof Job. He is often still included in that old comparison when we say someone “has the patience of Job.” But ultimately, just as much as he had patience, he had honor.
Instead of writing more about patience in this five-Sunday month, I want to pause and breathe.
I want to stop and dwell for a little while on the greatest virtue of all.
I want to exhale hatred and fear and angst and rage and grief.
And I want to inhale healing and hope and peace and trust.
I want to love.
I have read that George Floyd was my brother. I know he was already my brother in a general human sense. But I have read that he was a Christ-follower like me.
So that makes him my brother twice over. And while he was a stranger to me in this life, I will be honored to embrace him in Heaven one day.
And even though he was a stranger to me, a man I “wouldn’t know from Adam” on the street while he was living, I would never wish suffering upon another–let alone suffering a death like he did.
God, havemercy.
My heart grieves over every act of mercilessness. Every act of harming. Every act of dehumanization. Every act of cruel destruction.
And when any such act seems to be fueled by discrimination, it does more than “add insult to injury.” It slathers a despicable coating over a heep of seething evil.
Where is love? That greatest virtue…?
True love is in God’s heart that still beats with the desire for our redemption and our best. And it is in our hearts when we are attune to Him.
I realize in this moment that I don’t really want to be colorblind. Because if I were, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate and revel in glorious diversity and the gifts that all of us bring to the banquet of humanity.
I don’t want to be colorblind. Instead, I want to have x-ray vision of the Spirit that looks at other people and automatically sees the soul. I want to want the best for the stranger beside me, no matter what. And if they should become less of a stranger to me, I want to want their best even more.
Yes, let this be the heart of such love in me. And let that heart, that vision, do some small part today to melt the despicable coating and drive back the seething evil.
May I…may we…be conduits for the love and peace that leads to unity.
How God must smile when He sees us unified. And how He must weep when He sees us divided and hurting one another. My heart aches for His heartache.
I want to close these thoughts with a very short, untitled poem in Mr. Floyd’s honor:
Every solid long-term or marriage relationship requires a great deal more than attraction and charm to remain vibrant and to grow even more meaningful. One of the most important ingredients in that recipe is a steady and liberal dose of patience. That is true as the years go by, but also in the early stages, when the relationship first forms and then stands or fails during its initial tests.
I have known about this in theory, of course, after studying marriage and family counseling two decades ago and now taking further counseling classes again. And I have had the privilege of observing couples who demonstrated such patience to one another.
But I have always felt a particular appreciation for a good man who will exhibit patience towards a woman he cares for. Such behavior is one of the most endearing human displays of Christlikeness that I can think of.
And, dare I say that I have often despaired when I looked around me and considered what a lack of such men I have seen out in the world. These days, it seems that a man either has to apologize for being a man, or that he has to be assertive, aggressive, or forceful to prove that true “men” really do still exist.
While I have worked and served and prayed, I have observed and waited. I have indeed known and thought these things in theory. But I despaired at some moments. Would my own patience and hoping pay off, in the realm of relationships? Would it be possible that such a good man could still exist, and that he would be interested in me romantically?
Enter one man named Paul, stage right. A man who has turned out to show me incredible patience, from nearly the first day I met him.
Yesterday, while we spent time enjoying each other’s company and swapping stories on a bench underneath a cobalt, cloudless sky, listening to rushing water and birdsong, I rested against his shoulder and prayed something like the following in a whisper: “Dear God, I wish every woman in the world could be loved like this. This is the kind of beautiful human love that is such a gift for a woman’s heart. Thank You.”
Before we met up for some quality time yesterday, I had recently sent Paul a link to a classic Billy Joel song (since Paul and I like to share fun and meaningful songs daily with each other). I told him that I have always loved the melody of the song, but now that I was listening to it again at a different stage in my life, there were some traits of the woman as described in the lyrics that I really did NOT want to possess or show–especially towards him.
Later, the idea took root in my mind. What if I could use the tune and rewrite the words to reflect my appreciation for Paul and his patience and gentleness and goodness shown to me? In a fit of inspiration, I did so.
And yesterday, near the end of our time spent together, I sang him the result.
I smile at the irony, how I started this month with a profile sketch of a man named Paul who wrote about love being patient. And I am ending the month with a profile of a man named Paul, as sketched in song lyrics, who has showed a very patient and growing love to me already. Below, I would like to share my new words with you, as well as recordings of both the original song and the melody alone.
As I share this piece of my heart along with a reflection of the man who has captured it, I hope the words will bless you.
Round the bend in my path, I looked up and I saw you
Felt a tug in my soul, a sweet longing to know you
All the hints of true goodness, they turned out to be
May I never forget what a blessing your trust is to me
Through the ups and the downs, you spoke truth I needed
Brought the tears to my eyes, held my heart in its bleeding
Then you prayed with conviction to set my pain free
May I never forget what a blessing your words are to me
Oh, you have shown such a light
You have laid down your pride
You have beckoned me near
Oh, you have stepped through each door
You have given me more
You have shattered my fears
You rejoice in my hopes and delight in my laughter
You wait out my storming and draw me close after
Through it all, we grow deep, like the roots of a tree
May I never forget what a blessing your heart to me
Oh, you have shown such a light
You have laid down your pride
You have beckoned me near
Oh, you have stepped through each door
You have given me more
You have shattered my fears
Take my hand, we’ll walk on until we reached the next bend
Turn the way that He leads and cherish every season
May His grace be our heartbeat, His presence our peace
With God as my help, may I never forget what a blessing your love is to me
As with some other virtues, trying to define patience can be a challenging thing. The definition of it, and the many angles from which it can be viewed or understood… The way it may be easier to define patience by noticing a lack of it rather then reveling in it and appreciating it at the moments when it surrounds and embraces us…
So often, I think of patience in a more positive to negative sense. That is, when I am expecting someone to become angry or frustrated with me, and they don’t show that anger or frustration, and they wait for me to say what I need to say or do what I need to do, that has so often been to me a sign of patience. And I think I have so often thought of my own patience as being reflected in those types of behaviors toward other people too.
But there is another side to patience, that I think has to do a lot more with endurance and perseverance and hope, especially in the long dark nights of life. Patience in that case is synonymous with persistence and resilience. It does not give up but literally suffers long.
Certainly, God is patient in that sense, but the difference with God is that in His all-knowing way, He sees the ending and what will come at the breaking point of the long dark night. We, however, in our limited finite sense and bindings of time, cannot see into the future. We do not know when the end of the battle and the long dark night will come. We can only hold on, wait, pray, and use every ounce of our faith to not give up in the long stretches and the struggles and the pain we may encounter along life’s way.
A great example of this that comes to mind from history today is the example shown by the early citizens of the United States. They fought for years, even decades, for their complete freedom, independence, and ability to really establish themselves in the land they dreamed of calling home on their own terms.
A survey of all they went through in hindsight shows us the points where they were closer to victory and other points where they were so near to defeat. But of course, in their time, they could not know exactly what was happening and what would happen next. They fought, stood, responded, and carried on, helping each other and believing in faith that if they would keep fighting and keep looking upward, in the end they would it gain something sweet.
As one who has benefited my whole life so greatly from the sacrifices they made and the patience and persistence they exhibited, I am grateful. And I think this teaches us that when we show such patience and persistence, reaching out for the dreams and the hopes that we have, we may benefit in our lifetime, but it may be the generations that come after us that benefit even more. And both of those things, in God’s all-knowing plan, are great blessings. In honor of those early revolutionaries and the patience and perseverance that they exhibited, I would like to share a “sentence” poem that I wrote just now.
Sincerity, according to the dictionary I use when my ESL students, means that we show outwardly what we really think or feel inwardly.
By extension, many people may think of sincerity as being synonymous with transparency or even predictability. But is that always the case? In the life of one man, I would say both yes and no.
He was a young, brilliant intellectual with a quiet passion for truth. Over the course of his years living, studying, working, and thinking, he developed an ever increasing sense that the truest measure of abstract faith is found in visible obedience. “One act of obedience,” he wrote, “is worth a hundred sermons.”
No one who read his works or heard him preach could doubt his sincerity, that what he observed and taught fell one hundred percent in line with what he believed. And such sincerity would cost him increasingly more, test his faith even more fully, as the years went by.
Yet, as those years went by and his nation descended into further evil and chaos, the young man who had long held a pacifist’s stance began to secretly but actively try to overthrow his nation’s sovereign in a violent way. Were his feelings at that time fully transparent to the world? No. Fully predictable to the world? Absolutely not. But were they nonetheless sincere? I sincerely believe so.
For he would go to his death for his actions, but he would still preach what he knew to be true and show his Master’s love towards those around him in his prison to the very end.
His name was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and he was executed at the age of 39. One cold spring morning at dawn, he was brought from his cell in a Nazi camp and led to a gallows to be hanged. It was April 9th, 75 years ago this past week. And it was just days after he had led his fellow prisoners in a worship celebration of his Master’s resurrection.
Protestants don’t canonize saints in the sense of the Catholic tradition. But if we started, I imagine this young man would be at the top of our collective list. And I find irony in that. Because he wanted always to mainly point others to the One he followed. As he once prayed, “May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself.”
And maybe that’s the most beautiful thing we see reflected in his life: that while it was not always completely transparent or predictable, no one could doubt the depth of its sincerity.
Sounds a lot like the earthly life of his Master.
In Bonhoeffer’s honor and to the praise of the One who was there to lead him home, I offer a short poem:
Growing up with a mother who has always loved all things western, from cowboys and Native Americans to horses and guitar-picked ballads, I think it only fitting that I should write a post about justice and lawmen of the “Wild West” period.
I decided to do a flash jaunt of research and was fascinated by a list of archives I discovered at legendsofamerica.com. What I found most interesting about browsing the biographical blurbs there was how a number of those real-life sheriffs, deputies, rangers, and marshals lived a kind of double life — being both some sort of criminal and some sort of lawman.
That led me to think about how this concept of justice is ultimately an objective one…but that it can seem subjective, especially in self-regulating societies like the western frontier or in daily circumstances where we are right in the middle of things.
What is the difference? Essentially, it is simply in point of view. God, being high above, can see both or all sides much more equally than we can from a limited, horizontal plain.
In that light, and in honor of all the frontier-based lawmen who were really good, fair, and just, I have written the following poem to help us maintain such perspective.
Last week, I wrote about the brave women of whaling families who let their men go for months and years at a time while courageously holding down the fort. Today, I offer another shout out, admiration of and appreciation for their modern counterparts: the spouses of active duty service members.
Their husbands or wives are shipped off for tours to far away places, usually to face hard circumstances and often to handle unpleasant or even horrible duties.
And when those husbands or wives come home, they have to readjust to life together again, sometimes with the special challenges of injury, mental illness, or emotional distress thrown in to complicate matters.
They may have to move many times across the country or even around the world.
If there are children involved, they must do what they can to be both mother and father to those children during deployments and help the children readjust to every change, every sudden up or down, every normal childhood milestone that may be more complicated in the face of military life.
And while it’s true that some will quickly say, “This is what we signed up for and I am just doing what I need to do,” as far as I am concerned, they are not sincerely thanked nearly often enough.
Because it takes an incredible amount of courage to face the unknown and the what ifs, to remain faithful to one’s spouse when they are so far away, and to keep caring and supporting when the hazards of the job lead to additional relationship stress.
That is some kind of courage. And some kind of tenacious love.
In honor of these military spouses, I offer a very short poem, written in the voice of a committed wife writing to her deployed husband.
Many things may worry you but let this not be one.
My heart will be staying true until this trip is done.
And evermore. And evermore.
Some pain lodges in the mind and some invades the heart.
Release in Grace your pain can find while we remain apart.
And evermore. And evermore.
You will stand, risk, and obey until the time has passed.
Then you will come back one day, come home to me at last.
